The Odroid go advance

Over the last few weeks we have been working very hard to get a build of Retro Arena ready for the launch of the Odroid Go Super. I am happy to say we were successful in our endeavors and are able to provide users with a new OGA/OGS RC2 as of 2021-02-24

This release is built on Ubuntu 20, and has about 100 systems set up to launch through EmulationStation, as well as numerous cores that can be used via RetroArch directly. Both EmulationStation and RetroArch have been rebuilt to work on all models of OGA/OGS. This is a new version of EmulationStation shown to me by Christian, and it can scrape 2d, 3d, screenshots, and videos. Video screensavers and video snaps are also now working on all models. 

*Video playback up to 720p is currently only working on OGS, as is Drastic, but we are working to fix the issue and allow these to work on OGA as well. Team member Stephen worked very hard to design and create a Python script that handles the MPV functions, including mapping keyboard keys to joystick buttons to enable videos to rewind, fast forwards, pause and exit. As a beta it might have a bug or two, and is not the final image, it can be used on all 3 devices, OGA OGA 2 and OGS.

*You can change scaling options by opening  RetroArch and go to Options > Video > Scaling and switch the ratio to 480 x 320.

*Do not delete the MPV.py script in the videos folder, or you will lose the ability to play movies and shows. 

*If you have an issue with games not scraping, scrape a game with thegamesdb first to generate the folders, then switch to screenscraper to scrape 3d box art and videos.

*Ports have been added, for Doom you must place your .wad files at /roms/doom

For CannonBall(Outrun) you must place the files at /home/odroid/.config/retroarch/downloads into the CannonBall folder, a file in that folder will tell you what you need.

SDLPOP is not yet working on OGA.

*The other ports are shareware made by non commercial developers or are abandoned, so we did not remove their files. Lutro and Chailove are also shareware open source projects.

*For users having trouble with bluetooth:

sudo apt-get install bluez-tools

sudo service bluetooth start

and successfully connect to it and get mac

sudo bluetoothctl

[bluetooth] agent on

[bluetooth] default-agent

[bluetooth] scan on

[bluetooth] devices

[bluetooth] pair <bluetooth_mac_address>

A new version of EmulationStation  that removes the top banner in favor of adding a battery icon to the start menu has been used, if you want a version with the banner, a zip will be included at the link below to revert.

Image available at:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13p2jiU7PlCWcbllsGYStBFqBqzGHuogN?usp=sharing

Older Images and information below:

Here is The Retro Arena RC 2.6.1 Beta for the Odroid Go Advance, this release resolves the joystick issue with N64 and PSP, as well as enables PS1, SNES, NES, Genesis/Megadrive and Dreamcast to use the new two player mode from crashoverride.

This is a Beta, as such bugs are to be expected. The release is intended to get feedback from the community to fix any remaining bugs or issues before the final version.

Nintendo DS has been temporarily removed as it is having issues, and will be added back later. 

Please not that for Dreamcast, Naomi, Atomiswave, and PSX the bios go with the cores in /opt/libretro, and for the rest they go to /roms/bios. 

Please be advised two player mode is in early development stages and has some bugs still, if using this image for a model 1 OGA you need to use Retroarch and Retroarch32 and go to input and rebind the controller.

Link below: 

https://mega.nz/file/Tfg3XQZA#wUVR0EZBxNtoAnB9zXcBWjyY3736Rw8r7MKwaXVgwtY

For help using two player mode see this video:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfvIf2MBlz0 

A mostly complete system list:

Arcade/FBNeo, Dreamcast, Atomiswave, Naomi, Sega Saturn, Neo Geo, CPS 1 2 and 3, MAME, Famicom, Famicom Disk System, Virtual Boy, Super Famicom, Sufami Turbo, Snes MSU1, SNES, the Snes-hacks folder is for games like Yoshi's island with a special chip in it, intellivision, N64, N64DD, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, PlayStation 1, PSP, PSP Minis, Sega Master System,  Sega CD, Mega Drive, Sega 32x, Game Gear, Neo Geo Pocket, Neo Geo Pocket Color, TurboGrafx 16, TurboGrafx CD, PC Engine, PC Engine CD, Supergrafx, NEC-PC98, Vectrex, Wonderswan, Wonderswan Color, Atari 2600, 5200, 800, 7800, Lynx, MSX 1 and 2, DosBox, Coleco, Sharp X1, Scumm VM, Commodore 64, Nintendo DS, Vectrex.

I have included RetroRoller from Valadaa48, which basically installs Retroarch into the build via a debian package that supports rolling updates. Because of this the majority of emulators now have the Retroarch menu and the settings and customization options that go with it. Also with the exception of Dreamcast and Saturn all bios now go into /roms/bios  as of RC 2.4. Flycast and Yabasanshiro are the only bios needed in the /opt/libretro folder in with the core. 

keyboard based games require you to remap the key layout in Retroarch or connect a USB or wireless keyboard. 

Release Candidate 2.5 (temporary) is available as of 06/06/2020.

This is based on Arch Linux, still has RetroRoller from Valadaa48, and all the things the previous build had, there are some differences as this image is not finalized yet. To connect to wifi navigate to the sd card after the image is written to it(while it is still in your pc), open network.sh an fill in your ssid and password. The GUI from RC 2.4 for network connection is still being ported. Also the Drastic button layout is broken until next week, and you will be able to drag and drop the fix in, it will only work on model 1 currently.

When using Dreamcast, Naomi and Atomiswave press F3 + F1 to exit or it might hang for a few seconds if only pressing F1. and ScummVM must be launched from Retroarch. 

to see your IP click on the Retroarch logo inside of es then click Retrolauncher, click Emulationstation to return.

F3 is the global hotkey on this release. 

To expand your sd once you have connected wifi, use Putty to ssh connect and then enter sudo systemctl start firstboot.

The Ubuntu image is RC 2.4 with the kernel and uboot from Ubuntu 20 backported so that wifi and l2 r2 work. If you use this image in model 1 you need to remap your controller in es and retroarch, you will also need to swap the drastic config depending what version of OGA you are using.

Drastic will work on model 1, but for OGA-BE please click the ubuntu link below and grab the config files, place them into /opt/drastic/config

***For Ubuntu RC 2.5 when you first boot, connect to wifi, use ssh to connect to the device and type sudo ./resize.sh and follow the instructions, this will resize your image to fill the sd,  the default size is 16GB. 

If you wish to enable the joystick for Retroarch games press f3+f4 to open the menu, navigate to input,  port 1 binds, then set analog to digital type to left analog. 

**If you have any issues with the sleep function open a ssh connection and type sudo nano /etc/systemd/logind.conf and scroll down the the line saying Power=Ignore and add a # at the start of the line, this will disable the sleep function until it is resolved. 

More detailed information for RetroRoller and using Arch can be found at this link:

https://github.com/valadaa48/retroroller/wiki

Download Link for RC 2.5(ArchBeta):

https://mega.nz/folder/zC4yDYjY#ArtG-RVcYHftJvrIXfGiow

Download link for RC 2.5.2(Ubuntu):

https://mega.nz/folder/KOBRxYgD#8J_Wmdf5x1vI9SzhFhG6Mw

This is a long term project from our team, and as such will receive updates with new firmware, emulators and themes as they become available.

The Retro Arena Release Candidate 1 Download:

https://mega.nz/#F!SL4jXSJK!4V1hZ4p2XQI2E2YgNR-hrw

The Retro Arena Release Candidate 2.2 Download:

https://mega.nz/#F!SXpniCbI!wK_pOpcNxz-zpSwuH-Mk3Q

The Retro Arena Release Candidate 2.3(includes Dreamcast and Saturn):

https://mega.nz/#F!OHRTwAqK!lw4mmJoei-PPvajzofhcSg

The Retro Arena Release Candidate 2.4(includes Dreamcast, Saturn, Nintendo DS)

The second zip named roms is to be drag and dropped to the root directory and will fix Colecovision issues.

https://mega.nz/#F!iWYyFKxQ!nAfVS4DVUAsZORSjEAr89w

Lakka for OGA, built from the Lakka git:

https://mega.nz/#F!6H5R1KZI!ztxgISygCT8oqXQFzfPaCQ

The page below will let you know what bios is needed for which core:

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Supported-Systems/

For version RC2.4:

This build incorporates the base image from Crashoverride, meaning Ubuntu has been updated from 18 to 19.
Sega Dreamcast, Naomi, Atomiswave, Dos, Commodore 64, Sega Saturn, NDS and a couple other systems have been added.
The themes by Travis Wilson have been updated to include the new systems and Retroarch. Also Mame cores by the year have been added.
Retro Roller from Valadaa48 has been added, this integrates a full Retroarch into the build and that has been added to the theme as well, both 64 and 32 bit Retroarch are included.
Most of the emus that were cores have been moved to Retroarch to allow use of the Retroarch menu. The bios for all of these now belong in /roms/bios
The exceptions that do not use Retro Roller are:

Dreamcast, PSP, N64, ScummVM, and blue Msx for Msx 1 and 2. Coleco uses Retroarch.  These bios still go into /opt/libretro (saturn and dc only) into their respective core folders. While the rest now all go into one folder as noted above.
The sleep kernel function as also been added, tapping power once is sleep, holding it down is power off.  

Snes9x_2002 and Snes9x_2005 32 bit cores have been added, along with Parallel N64 both 32 and 64 bit cores, to Retroarch directly. When you launch the n64 core you must enter the Retroarch menu and change the gfx plugin from auto to rice for proper playback.

When using Drastic for DS the f1 key brings up the menu, its a bit buggy in the sense sometimes it stays black. if you tap the dpad a couple of times it pops up. To full screen a game, go into the menu and options, change screen orientation to tingle. Now the main screen is full screen. F3 will swap between screens. When playing in 2 screen mode you can use the f key to swap the positioning of the screens to make the picture larger. 

Edit: the Drastic menu has been fixed. please redownload RC 2.4 correct the bug.

 to change the language to English in Drastic, edit: /opt/drastic/config/drastic.cfg

firmware.language = 5 to firmware.language = 1 

Please note Saturn and Dreamcast function like n64, not all titles are playable.

I would like to thank Crashoverride, Kamots and their team of community developers for  their base image and continuous contributions to this device and the Odroid community. 

Also, Travis Wilson for the beautiful custom made Odroid Go Advance themes.

And Valadaa48 for his creation of  Retro Roller.

Along with the Lakka Team, especially Demetris and Natinusala.

NoirBright for the hotkey functions, and photo to go with them.

ETAPrime for his videos and support of the build,  it is greatly appreciated.  

This project is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather Rudolf Laminger, Born December 16, 1934 and passed away November 24th, 2019. My grandfather was very proud of me and the work I do, the happiness and nostalgia it brought to others,  and I was very proud to have spent 33 wonderful years learning from him. He always taught me to follow my heart, and that is why I started Tech Toy Tinker. I hope you all truly enjoy this device and retro gaming as much as I do. 

Videos of the Odroid Go Advance running Retro Arena can be seen below.