Pico-8 games run very poorly on RPi 4B

[nsrosenqvist]

I've found most pico-8 cartridges to not be able to boot or run with distorted colors or sounds. From what I've gathered, batocera doesn't integrate the official pico-8 runtime but has its own, but I can't seem to find any instructions on how to add the official runtime. Is there a way to do this somehow?

[jul059]

I don't have any issues on x64 i3-6100T. On which computer/architecture are you having issues?

[lbrpdx]

@nsrosenqvist the official pico-8 binaries are not available for all architectures supported by Batocera. We are using an emulator (https://github.com/Jakz/retro8) -- and like all emulators, it's not 100% perfect. It's getting better and better with each new release, but you won't have the same experience as with the real pico-8 binary. The official pico-8 runtime is a commercial product, we'll never ship it with Batocera -- it's an awesome project, and constantly evolving, if you like pico-8, please support Lexaloffle!

If you have it, there is no written instruction to add the official commercial pico-8 binary yet. It's feasible, at least for supported archs, although you won't have all features available (like [hotkey]+[start] to quit, automatic controller mapping and so on...). It's something that can most probably be done through pad2key configuration, but that requires a bit of work, it's not available "off the shelf" as of now.

[nsrosenqvist]

Hmm, I run batocera on a RPi 4B so the issues might be due to the ARM architecture. I do own the commercial product but I would like to retain the integration. I'll check out the repo and see if anyone else have reported similar issues

[nsrosenqvist]

Corresponding issue in the retro8 issue tracker: Jakz/retro8#31

[lbrpdx]

I added support for the official (commercial) Pico-8 engine if you have it. This should be in V32 - that said, on Raspberry Pi, Lexaloffle doesn't produce 64-bit binaries yet, so it won't work until they make one.
They have a 64-bit PC version that works with Batocera PC x86_64, a 32-bit PC version that I assume works also with Batocera x86 (32 bits) and a RPi binary that might work with Batocera 32-bit on Pi 0/1/2/3 but not 4 since we switched to 64 bits.

[nsrosenqvist]

@lbrpdx thanks! I will give it a try! Is there a documentation page on how to do this?

[lbrpdx]

With Batocera 32 beta: https://wiki.batocera.org/systems:pico8#support_for_official_pico-8_engine (and again, tested with PC x86_64 only at the moment)

[lbrpdx]

Closing this, as there is nothing more we can do beyond the optional integration of the official pico-8 engine from Lexaloffle as described above.

[nsrosenqvist]

@lbrpdx just letting you know that 64-bit builds will be coming up shortly: https://twitter.com/lexaloffle/status/1434621872411316225

[lbrpdx]

That is EXCELLENT news. I’m so looking forward to it.

[Darknior]

Excellent news :)