An Understanding on how LibreElec ties together with games

1st Official Post

    Hello all,

    I've been at this for a couple of days now and a little frustrated at this point. What I need is a clarification on how most of these technologies tie together. I've looked through many articles but am actually more lost now than when I began.

    I began with LibreElec then was introduced to ReCalBox. I liked the idea of being able to play games from one system so I wanted to dual-boot LibreElec and ReCalBox on the same machine. Then I noticed in LibreElec/Kodi there was a way to play games from within it. This was the beginning of all my confusion.

    Can someone please tell me if LibreElec/Kodi, can play games through its interface if provided BOS and ROMs, or are other add-ons needed? From what I can gather, it's not clear if I need to also download retroarch, libreto, or if these are standard in Kodi.

    Can someone please set me straight on exactly what is needed to play retro games from within Kodi/LibreElec?

    Thank you

    • Official Post

    Kodi supports binary add-ons which can add functionalty. One of the available add-ons (installed as a dependency if needed, so it's not a starting point for gaming) is libretro libraries which allow Kodi "RetroPlayer" to run. You can also load emulator cores, which sometimes depend upon BIOS images to work, allowing you to run a game. In the retro console world games are often ROM dumps of cartriges. For example:

    Open Game ROM > Select Emulator to use > Kodi loads dependencies and maps controllers > Play Game.

    Retro gaming is inherently a bit complicated due to the number of moving parts, frequent choices of many different emulators for some of the more popular platforms (each with different quirks), with some emulators using licenses that prevent redistribution (so they must be installed not bundled in a pre-configured way) and Kodi is missing a "Game Library" that allows you to map/store frequently used or preferred combinations.

    BUT .. it does work, and games are fun :)

    For more specific advice you'll need to explain what hardware bits you have and what games you are trying to play? Note that Kodi does not provide game ROMs and we are not going to discuss where to obtain them.

    Thank you for the explanation on that and how it all works together.

    I have a Dell Optiplex I'm using with LibreElec and I'm trying to run a few games like Doom II and Pacman. But, I have no idea at all how to get this working within LibreElec. I can't seem to find a good tutorial either.

    Can you please tell me if it's possibe to run these 2 games from within LibreElec? I don't want to run ReCalBox alongside of LibreElec if LibreElec can do it by itself. This is my whole issue. :)

    • Official Post
    Quote from x0x0

    Thank you for the explanation on that and how it all works together.

    I have a Dell Optiplex I'm using with LibreElec and I'm trying to run a few games like Doom II and Pacman. But, I have no idea at all how to get this working within LibreElec. I can't seem to find a good tutorial either.

    Can you please tell me if it's possibe to run these 2 games from within LibreElec? I don't want to run ReCalBox alongside of LibreElec if LibreElec can do it by itself. This is my whole issue. :)

    If you can find an emulator in the add-on list that supports the game you want to play then yes.

    • Official Post
    Quote from x0x0

    I'm totally lost here. Maybe a Dummies book on how to do this?

    You said doom2. So googling libretro based emulators to play doom2 I found prboom Doom (PrBoom) - Libretro Docs

    We offer the add-on labelled as "Doom (PrBoom)" in our add-on repo. You will need some firmware and the game to go along with this of course. The add-on information will tell you where to get them.

    Unfortunately adding fw isn't the easiest task (as you have to do it manually).

    You might be better off starting with NES or SNES emulators as you only need to have the game rom in order to start them.

    Thanks Zero. I'll have a look there and start with the NES emulators until I get a little more familiar with all these moving parts.

    Can you please tell me exactly what an emulator is? Does an emulator emulate the hardware that used to run the BIOS? I'm sorry for asking what seems to be such an elementary question, but I've googled it several times and still have no idea exactly what it's supposed to emulate exactly.

    Thanks

    • Official Post
    Quote from x0x0

    Thanks Zero. I'll have a look there and start with the NES emulators until I get a little more familiar with all these moving parts.

    Can you please tell me exactly what an emulator is? Does an emulator emulate the hardware that used to run the BIOS? I'm sorry for asking what seems to be such an elementary question, but I've googled it several times and still have no idea exactly what it's supposed to emulate exactly.

    Thanks

    An emulator is a program/binary that is designed to "emulate" the functionality of the original console.

    Some emulator examples and their real world counterparts:

    Emulator NameConsole Name
    snes9xSuper Nintendo (SNES)
    nestopiaNintendo Entertainment System (NES)
    beetle-psxPlaystation 1
    gambatteGame Boy (color)

    So in order to use an emulator you typically need a ROM or ISO that is basically a dump of the original game (non-free). You need to provide the games yourself (google) and then you can load them in an emulator.

    Quote from lrusak

    An emulator is a program/binary that is designed to "emulate" the functionality of the original console.

    Thank you, Zero. I am still playing around with things and trying to familiarize myself with how everything ties together. I had NO idea this would be such a learning experience. All I wanted to do was to play a couple games. :) It tuned out to be more, much more than I barganed for.

    • Official Post
    Quote from x0x0

    Thank you, Zero. I am still playing around with things and trying to familiarize myself with how everything ties together. I had NO idea this would be such a learning experience. All I wanted to do was to play a couple games. :) It tuned out to be more, much more than I barganed for.

    It's pretty easy if you don't have to deal with firmware.

    For SNES games:

    1) download snes rom from internet

    2) install snes emulator (snes9x) from the LibreELEC add-on repo

    3) navigate in kodi to the rom that you downloaded in step one and select it

    4) play game

    Quote from lrusak

    It's pretty easy if you don't have to deal with firmware.

    Yes, it's the firmware that I can't seem to figure out; to me, it's the least straightforward thing about retro gaming. Is there a resource you can point me to that would give me more info about how to know when, and if I need to get new firmware? I've been to many sites already looking for firmware and noticed many of them want to give you files with viruses in them. This makes me less willing to really get into the gaming.

    So, please help me understand something about how LibreELEC and retro gaming tie together. I have Lakka running now, outside of LibreELEC. So, if gaming is available from within LibreELEC, do I need an add-on to get that working?

    I should mention that I also use this computer without an Internet connection.

    Last night, I pointed LibreELEC to my NAS and tried to build my movie library but no matter what I do, LibreELEC will always give the message that there is no library set up and that I should click "files" to build it. I can build my music library justy fine but anything to do with Video or Movies will fail. I've checked the log and all I see is that the scraper fails to download. There are no errors.

    When I try and build the movie library, nothing shows up. Is it because I'm not connected to the Internet? Does this have to do with the .nfo files or something like that? Is there a workaround to get a library built? I should mention that I have all of my movies in separate folders and inside each folder is the actual movie.

    Thanks again for the info on SNES. I have some of those games I'd love to play. If I can get LibreELEC to do this, I'll gladly dump Lakka.

    Thanks for the help!

    Maybe this will ease some things for you but first you have to read the according Wiki. Then it should be pretty much straight forward:

    LibreELEC-RR 10.x [ Brave | Spotify | Moonlight | Emulationstation | Retroarch | Pegasus ]

    Home · SupervisedThinking/LibreELEC-RR Wiki · GitHub

    About the "firmware" & "roms":

    firmware = "operating system of the console"

    rom = actual game

    So some emulators depend on a firmware file to emulate the console and need them beside the rom. Some don't need the firmware because they emulate it too and only need the rom. But this always differs from case to case.

    But beware... technically you have to dump your roms from your game cartridges or create images of your game media like cd or dvd-rom. Downloading from the internet is often not legal, it might be a grey zone if it comes to abandonware.

    I recommend the libretro docs about those topics:

    What is BIOS? - Libretro Docs