RetroFE

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RetroFE is a cross-platform desktop frontend designed for MAME cabinets and game centers, with a focus on simplicity and customization. This repository is actively maintained and hundreds of commits ahead of the original RetroFE project. It is designed for use within CoinOPS builds, bringing with it a significant increase in performance, optimisations, and available feature set.

It's licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later (GPLv3).

What's so special about this fork?

• Performance and optimisations
  • 64-bit codebase
  • C++17 as standard
  • Modern render engine; DX11 for Windows, Metal for MacOS
  • Hardware accelerated video support for Windows
  • VSync and support for high refresh rate
  • Metadata database build time reduced
  • File caching to prevent drive lashing
  • RAM usage reduced by 70%
• Features
  • Ability to start on random item; fed up of seeing the same game every time?
  • Robust video marquee and 2nd screen support
  • Upgraded attract mode
  • Upgraded favouriting system; global and local favourites
  • Start and exit scripts; run programs such as steam at retrofe launch
  • In depth logging system; 7 logging levels
  • Kiosk mode; lock things down for kids or cleanliness
  • Local Hiscores integration with hi2txt
  • And much more!

System Requirements

• OS
  • Windows (10 or higher)
  • Linux (AppImage requires libc 2.38 or higher)
  • macOS (11 Big Sur or higher)
  • Unix-like systems other than Linux are not officially supported but may work
• Processor
  • A modern CPU (2014 or later) is highly recommended
• Graphics
  • A reasonably modern graphics card (Direct3D 11+ / OpenGL 4+ / Metal on MacOS)

Building for Windows

Install Requirements

winget install -e --id Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.Community
winget install -e --id Microsoft.WindowsSDK.10.0.26100
winget install -e --id Microsoft.DotNet.Framework.DeveloperPack_4
winget install -e --id Kitware.CMake
winget install -e --id Git.Git

• Open the Visual Studio Installer, modify the install and add the "Desktop development with C++" package group

• Install gstreamer-runtime and gstreamer-devel MSVC 64-bit complete (https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/download/#windows)

Python 3 - Optional - Read below

winget install -e --id Python.Python.3.11

Alternatively, manually install

• Visual Studio Community (https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads)
• Microsoft Windows SDK and .NET Framework 4 for Windows 10 and higher (https://developer.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/windows-sdk)
• CMake (https://cmake.org/download)
• Git (https://git-scm.com/downloads/win)
• Python 3 (https://www.python.org/downloads/windows)
• gstreamer-runtime and gstreamer-devel MSVC 64-bit complete (https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/download/#windows)

Download and compile the source code

Download the source code

git clone https://github.com/CoinOPS-Official/RetroFE.git

Setup Environment (to setup necessary variables and paths to compile in visual studio)

cd RetroFE

Gather submodule for DLLs

git submodule update --init --recursive

Generate visual studio solution files

cmake -A x64 -B .\RetroFE\Build -D GSTREAMER_ROOT=C:\gstreamer\1.0\msvc_x86_64 -S .\RetroFE\Source

Compile RetroFE

cmake --build RetroFE/Build --config Release

Copy in DLLs

mkdir .\RetroFE\Build\Release\retrofe
xcopy /S /I /Y .\Package\Environment\Windows\retrofe .\RetroFE\Build\Release\retrofe
move .\RetroFE\Build\Release\retrofe.exe .\RetroFE\Build\Release\retrofe\retrofe.exe
copy .\Package\Environment\Windows\RetroFE.lnk .\RetroFE\Build\Release

The executable is then found in /RetroFE/Build, copy RetroFE.lnk and the retrofe folder

Building for Linux

Install libraries

Debian

sudo apt-get install git g++ cmake zlib1g-dev \
libsdl2-2.0 libsdl2-mixer-2.0 libsdl2-image-2.0 libsdl2-ttf-2.0 \
libsdl2-dev libsdl2-mixer-dev libsdl2-image-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev \
libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-good1.0-dev gstreamer1.0-libav \
libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-dev libminizip-dev libwebp-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev libevdev-dev

Fedora

sudo dnf install -y git gcc-c++ cmake zlib-devel \
SDL2 SDL2_mixer SDL2_image SDL2_ttf \
SDL2-devel SDL2_mixer-devel SDL2_image-devel SDL2_ttf-devel \
gstreamer1 gstreamer1-plugins-base gstreamer1-plugins-good gstreamer1-libav \
glib2 glib2-devel minizip-devel libwebp-devel libusb1-devel libevdev-devel \
zlib libusb1 libevdev

Arch

sudo pacman -S git gcc cmake zlib \
sdl2 sdl2_mixer sdl2_image sdl2_ttf \
gstreamer gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-good gst-libav \
glib2 minizip libwebp libusb libevdev

Download and compile the source code

Download the source code

git clone https://github.com/CoinOPS-Official/RetroFE.git

Generate your gcc make files

cd RetroFE
cmake RetroFE/Source -BRetroFE/Build

Compile RetroFE

cmake --build RetroFE/Build

The executable is then found in /RetroFE/Build

Building for MacOS

Install Homebrew

Both methods use Homebrew in some capacity (https://brew.sh)

Universal2 Binaries

An Xcode project has been created to build universal binaries (x86_64 and arm64)

Download the source code

git clone https://github.com/CoinOPS-Official/RetroFE.git

Install libraries

curl -LO https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/releases/download/release-2.32.4/SDL2-2.32.4.dmg
curl -LO https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL_image/releases/download/release-2.8.8/SDL2_image-2.8.8.dmg
curl -LO https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL_mixer/releases/download/release-2.8.1/SDL2_mixer-2.8.1.dmg
curl -LO https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL_ttf/releases/download/release-2.24.0/SDL2_ttf-2.24.0.dmg
curl -LO https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/pkg/osx/1.22.12/gstreamer-1.0-1.22.12-universal.pkg
curl -LO https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/pkg/osx/1.22.12/gstreamer-1.0-devel-1.22.12-universal.pkg

sudo installer -pkg gstreamer-1.0-1.22.12-universal.pkg -target /
sudo installer -pkg gstreamer-1.0-devel-1.22.12-universal.pkg -target /

hdiutil attach SDL2-2.32.4.dmg
cp -R /Volumes/SDL2/SDL2.framework RetroFE/RetroFE/ThirdPartyMac/
hdiutil detach /Volumes/SDL2

hdiutil attach SDL2_image-2.8.8.dmg
cp -R /Volumes/SDL2_image/SDL2_image.framework RetroFE/RetroFE/ThirdPartyMac/
cp -R /Volumes/SDL2_image/optional/webp.framework RetroFE/RetroFE/ThirdPartyMac/
hdiutil detach /Volumes/SDL2_image

hdiutil attach SDL2_mixer-2.8.1.dmg
cp -R /Volumes/SDL2_mixer/SDL2_mixer.framework RetroFE/RetroFE/ThirdPartyMac/
hdiutil detach /Volumes/SDL2_mixer

hdiutil attach SDL2_ttf-2.24.0.dmg
cp -R /Volumes/SDL2_ttf/SDL2_ttf.framework RetroFE/RetroFE/ThirdPartyMac/
hdiutil detach /Volumes/SDL2_ttf

cp -R /Library/Frameworks/GStreamer.framework RetroFE/RetroFE/ThirdPartyMac/

Install headers

brew install minizip libusb

Compile the source code

Open the Xcodeproj in RetroFE/xcode and build target or

cd RetroFE/
xcodebuild -project RetroFE/xcode/retrofe.xcodeproj

The executable is then found in /RetroFE/Build

Single Architecture Binaries

Install libraries

brew install git gcc cmake zlib \
sdl2 sdl2_mixer sdl2_image sdl2_ttf \
gstreamer \
glib minizip webp libusb

Download and compile the source code

Download the source code

git clone https://github.com/CoinOPS-Official/RetroFE.git

Generate your gcc make files

cd RetroFE
cmake RetroFE/Source -BRetroFE/Build

Compile RetroFE

cmake --build RetroFE/Build

The executable is then found in /RetroFE/Build

Optional

Creating a test environment

A launchable test environment can be created with the following commands

python3 Scripts/Package.py --os=windows/linux/mac --build=full

Copy your live RetroFE system to any folder of your choosing. Files can be found in Artifacts/{os}/RetroFE

Set $RETROFE_PATH via Environment variable

RetroFE will load it's media and configuration files relative to where the binary file is located. This allows the build to be portable. If you want RetroFE to load your configuration from a fixed location regardless of where your install is copy your configuration there and set $RETROFE_PATH. Note this will work if you start RetroFE from the command line.

vi ~/.bash_profile
export RETROFE_PATH=/your/new/retrofe

Set RETROFE_PATH via flat file

Depending on your version of OS X the GUI will read user defined Environment variables from another place. If you find this dificult to setup you can get around it by creating a text file in your HOME directory: /Users//.retrofe with one line no spaces: /your/new/retrofe. This will also work in Linux. RetroFE's configuration search order is 1st: ENV, Flat file, and executable location.

echo /your/new/retrofe > ~/.retrofe

Fix libpng iCCP warnings

The issue is with the png files that are being used with the Artwork. Libpng is pretty touchy about it. You can get rid of these messages with a handy tool called pngcrush found on sourceforge and github.

Error message:

libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile

Install pngcrush on Mac: (linux use apt-get ?)

brew install pngcrush

Use pngcrush to Find and repair pngs:

find /usr/local/opt/retrofe/collections -type f -iname '*.png' -exec pngcrush -ow -rem allb -reduce {} \;