Game Emulator

This project is aimed at running different game emulators on CE 96Boards.

1) Hardware
- 1.1) Hardware requirements
- 1.2) Hardware setup
2) Software
- 2.1) Operating System
- 2.2) Package dependencies
3) RetroArch
4) RetroPie
- 4.1) Installation

1) Hardware

1.1 Hardware requirements

1.2 Hardware setup

DragonBoard 410 is powered off
Connect I/O devices (Monitor, Keyboard, etc...)
Power on your DragonBoard 410c with 96Boards compliant power supply

2) Software

2.1 Operating System

Linaro Debian based OS (latest)

2.2 Package Dependencies

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

> Note: HiKey: Some packages might get corrupted by this, so run the following commmand to resolve.
$ sudo apt-get -f install

$ sudo apt-get install -y libsdl1.2-dev libsdl2-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-filesystem-dev \
libboost-date-time-dev libfreeimage-dev libfreetype6-dev libeigen3-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libasound2-dev \
libgl1-mesa-dev cmake build-essential git pkg-config ffmpeg libavdevice-dev

3) RetroArch

Turn ON SWAP partition:

Use swapfile to prevent DragonBoard from running out of RAM. Follow the instructions here for allocating swap space in SD card.

3.1 Emulator Installation

Clone the Emulator source

$ git clone git://github.com/libretro/RetroArch.git

Building and Installing the Emulator

$ cd RetroArch
$ ./configure
$ make -j 2
$ sudo make install

3.2 Core Installation

Clone the core source

All of the supported cores for RetroArch is available here. You can use any of them. For instance, follow the below instructions to clone and build snes core.

$ git clone https://github.com/libretro/snes9x2010.git

Building the core

$ cd snes9x2010 
$ make -f Makefile.libretro

After building, the core snes9x2010_libretro.so will get generated

3.3 Game Execution

Run the Emulator with compiled core and ROM.

retroarch -L snes9x2010_libretro.so <path_to_rom>

Note: Replace <path_to_rom> with the path of appropriate ROM. Instructions for downloading ROM is not provided here.

4) RetroPie

4.1 Installation

Clone the source

$ git clone -b 96Boards https://github.com/Mani-Sadhasivam/RetroPie-Setup.git

Building the source

$ cd RetroPie-Setup

This script will install emulation station, RetroArch and few cores.

$ sudo ./retropie_setup.sh

Select yes to Copyright agreement and select Basic install from the opened dialog. After the installation has finished successfully, exit the dialog.

4.2 Game Execution

Place the downloaded ROMs into the appropriate core directory under /home/linaro/RetroPie/roms/

Execute the following command and configure the keypad then select games by choosing the emulator in main window.

$ emulationstation

For more info please visit the official RetroPie Wiki here

96boards-projects/game_emulator