How to play SNES on Kodi 19/20?

Help and Support Vero 4K / Vero 4K +
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Not offtopic in my book.

Welll, if adding the games is an issue try IAL addon, Since Since test if Snes emu is working in kodi 20, then the temporary source of the rom file isn’t the bit that is important.

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Just trying right now, gettng some errors with not finding the emulator core that is installed…

To bad that I’m low on time, or I would have had a go at this.

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Well smack me silly, enabled debug logg, AND RESTARTED the Vero4k. Voila it’s working.

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I figured out what I was doing wrong - i scrolled down to games on the left menu but didn’t ENTER the games.
I have managed to get a gameboy rom running fine and a snes rom running fine. But then, I entered the options and played around with the aspect ratio - Normal, 4:3, 16:9, Zoomed and now when I go into the game its zoomed right in and when I exit a game (any emulator) kodi is still zoomed in! I can;t find on the file system where this setting is but uninstalling and reinstalling emulators doesn’t help.

LOL Look at my UI when I exit the game

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changing guisettings.xml under defaultgamesettings fixed it:
Mine was:

        <stretchmode>original</stretchmode>

Changing it to this fixed it:

        <stretchmode>4:3</stretchmode>

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=332966&pid=3108738#pid3108738

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Welp after some playing around a bit, I have some games running fine and others are just very crashy.
None of the megadrive cores work - neither picodrive nor genesis plus gx. They seem to have the same issue - just locking up with nothing in the logss and causing mediacenter to restart. Additionally, neither will load games from the network of you browse it using the zeroconf inside Kodi. These two failures make me suspect they share code. Autofs is a good solution.

The Gameboy, Gameboy colour, SNES, nes, and master system seem to work alright but I only tried Alex Kidd.

I’m really keen on getting megadrive to work. Is it worth trying old builds of picodrive or genesis plus gx? Or should I just give up, and maybe look at dual booting retropi…

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I can’t adress one emulatore core per say, since I haven’t had enough experioence with them all. But generally, some cores have no “VFS” support, that mean no zip or network drives. Other’s need a bios/fiwrmware file saved at a special location in the filesystem. When it comes to SEGA i got Phantsiestar II running once I moved it to Veros internal storage. I think it was with the genesis core.

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That didn’t fix my problem. “Libretro Compability” is already enabled.

This also doesn’t work, I get the error: “Could not connect to repository.”

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@ilf Sorry been having a few intense weeks here, your username rings a bell, and it’s related to emulator-bit. I just dont remember where we left it last time we talked, and if it was in pm or another thread.

I’ll gladly try to get you up and running a few emulators at least, but since I know we have “failed attempts” since before. I’m going to start from scratch, that is clean installation, then run post #35 in this thread. It was a few weeks ago, but i think I had to edit the libretro-gamebot-repo, since the V.20 install. Haven’t checked if it has beed fixed upstream yet…

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I started this thread last year, and you provided a solution for Kodi 19.
I would still love to play SNES on Kodi 20, but the error persists even in 20.2.
If you get around to fixing the repo, that would be much appreciated. Thanks.

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Fixing the soon 5 year old armhf binary repo seems “non optimal”, I’ve started planning a aarch64 version of the repo. But it’s a bit away, since we have to make a “stable” arm64 build environment. And I’m unsure about the how to get the 3Ds tuff working with multiple hw-vendors.

I can take a peek on a that repo again, since i know there was a change in repo-handling in v.20. But that has slipped my mind…

Edit: Seems like there has been some recent updates to the repo (20230729) but at first glance i can’t see what has been changed.

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I don’t know what the ETA for arm64 OCMC is. But Kodi advertises Games as a core feature on its frontpage. It sure would be nice to play games on the currently supported OSMC.

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now “wget https://github.com/zach-morris/kodi_libretro_buildbot_game_addons/raw/main/repository.kodi_libretro_buildbot_game_addons_le_armhf.zip” and install from zip, worked for me with the latest zip (3 days old).

Now to try core, for ease I’ll try snes, just have to hook up a controller to the Vero.

Edit: With a controller, I got Snes9xCurrent running the game “Animaniacs”, not in perfect condition, but that can be other factors. There probably better cores to try to run, but I knew this one wouldn’t be asking for bios or firmware files. Anyway seems like the “installing error” is no more, i got the repo installed and could install a core and run it.

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I can confirm that the current repository.kodi_libretro_buildbot_game_addons_le_armhf.zip fixes the repository errors from How to play SNES on Kodi 19/20? - #37 by ilf.

Interesting that the repository zach-morris/kodi_libretro_buildbot_game_addons only has a single commit - from five days ago.

I couldn’t upgrade the game add-on “Nintendo - SNES / SFC (Snes9x - Current)”. I already had version 1.2020.18549 installed, and there is no upgrade available.

I can also confirm that running a ROM.sfc works. Thanks.

However, my savestate ROM.sav doesn’t work anymore. :frowning: But this is probably outside of the realm of OSMC.

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Unfortunately, playing ROMs with Snex9x on OSMC 20.2 is not stable any more. Sometimes, it kills Kodi.

I get these errors in kodi.log:

error <general>: Cheevos: Rich Presence script was not found
error <general>: CAESinkALSA - snd_pcm_writei(-32) Broken pipe - trying to recover

And this in journalctl:

kernel: hdmitx: audio: aout notify rate 32000
kernel: hdmitx: audio: aout notify size 32
kernel: hdmitx: audio: hdmi_ch: 0 speaker_layout: 0
kernel: systemd-journal invoked oom-killer: gfp_mask=0x24200ca(GFP_HIGHUSER_MOVABLE), nodemask=0, order=0, oom_score_adj=-250
kernel: systemd-journal cpuset=/ mems_allowed=0
kernel: CPU: 0 PID: 2341 Comm: systemd-journal Tainted: G           O    4.9.269-32-osmc #1
kernel: Hardware name: Vero4KPlus (DT)
kernel: Call trace:
<snip>
kernel: Out of memory: Kill process 3578 (kodi.bin) score 869 or sacrifice child
kernel: Killed process 3578 (kodi.bin) total-vm:3117212kB, anon-rss:1765392kB, file-rss:0kB, shmem-rss:0kB
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As you are aware of, there is a bunch of Snes-cores, I personally don’t have time to try em all. My focus earlier, and when I get enough time to spare is to try to make a not just armhf compatible core solution, but hopefully “arm64” and some more hardware specific optimizations.

Zacks repo is great, but i believe it’s based on a armhf binary branch of libretro, that hasn’t been touched in >3 years. That would explain why there is no update to the emu-core you mentioned.

Now I haven’t dived deep into this yet, but that is the impression I’ve managed to compile with all the data I’ve seen so far.

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I don’t understand.

  1. Why is the CPU architecture relevant? Currently, Vero 4k+, OSMC 20.2, Kodi 20.2 and libretro Snex9x are all armhf. The future might bring arm64, but how is that relevant now?

  2. Yes, Zach’s repo provides five versions of Snes9x (Nintendo - SNES / SFC): Current, 2002, 2005 Plus, 2005, and 2010. I installed “Nintendo - SNES / SFC (Snes9x - Current)” - which you are recommending.

Am I doing something wrong? Which SNES emulator works on current Vero 4k+ with OSMC 20.2?

Thanks for your support.

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  1. In order to have it working better, having binarys using the “best of” an architecture. Often makes them faster, less resource hungry, and more future compatible.

  2. I have no clue which is better, some are better for some roms, some are better with others. I haven’t had time or motivation, to try out every little Core.

I don’t believe you are doing anything wrong, but what works for me can OOM-kill kodi.bin for you because environmental differences. And I haven’t had the urge to get emulation optimized for the 4k, been preoccupied with other more pressing matters (in and outside of OSMC-verse). Play around, and get back to me with your opinions about best SNES-core for Vero4k, it is not that i think it’s non vital information, it is just to much work for me. I might have 2-3 hours a month to sit with a controller in hand and play games (mrs irritation factor is heard), while if I sit and optimise compiler settings or go through build logs with a fine tooth comb (either I hear it less or she don’t know if it’s important enough not to grumble).

Best of luck / J

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