Ok I just had the bot army create the documentation… man what a world we live in:
I haven’t read through it completely so sorry if it sounds robotic and may not be totally clear.
I’ve personally used and tested most of these configs
Elf Menu Arcade - This was part of a public arcade machine, used for about 3 months
Pi 3 / Pi Zero Single-Game ELF - Used briefly on my own machine, didn’t last long
Chromium Kiosk (Menu) - This is what’s currently running in a public 4 player arcade, several monthsl
Chromium Single-Game - This was used briefly as a public machine during a 3 hour event
Native SDL Single-Game - Untested in an arcade machine just yet..
All “public” machines were built to be “simply power it on, it’ll just start working”.
Fun side note, my cheap joysticks last for about 34,000 presses in a single direction before they start to fail. It’s worth spending some extra $$ on good switches if you have a public machine.
Let me know if there’s anything I should update or refine. I have a plan to get #5 tested this weekend. I’m also out of Raspbery Pi 5s, so I can’t test the native + RPi5 combo.
check out How to Run a Game on a Raspberry pi 5 SD Card Directly! because I think that’s what I did also getting a elf from McAirpos or adding that thing to the URL on a raspberry pi 5 I think I ran it as a native program and it most of the time work for around 1-2-3 games before it crashed it seem to I think happen more when adiuo was there
I tested changing the Hardware line and nope still crashes same thing also with changing the adiuo driver (its not in this photo) to asla or OSS and still nope
Yeah they are very similar, your instructions are very much like what my setup script does. We have the config in the /sd folder (or whatever it’s called) and then makes the elf executable.
Knowing that it works on a raspberry pi 5 is encouraging, but what I found is that any newer version of the OS or 64bit and the elf just doesn’t work at all.
The compiler actually builds a 64bit version and is a “normal” executable, no need for the /sd directory and the keyboard/gamepad functionality is just built right into the app itself.
The compilers goal was “it just works” on almost any system. And so far so good, at least on linux. I’m testing Windows tonight.
well i asked google and it said use a converter to converter 64 bit commands into 32 bit commnads i cant try that right now but
and also does that mean that your PNG to ELF would work on a raspberry pi 5 and do you know why it works for only so long on a raspberry pi 5 with the 32 bit os
I wish I did… it was one of the reasons I kind of quit elf (at least the stock version of it). I know it was intended for rpi zero and very limited resources. I wanted to go down the path of “you have all the power you ever need”.
Also stock .elf files don’t come with 4 player support (I have other threads on that). So my compiler took care of that (and my png-to-elf).
The whole site isn’t quite ready for a pile of eyes yet, the game fetching seems to have hung up (so new games don’t seem to be added right now). And I’m a little worried about context limits on the extensions search. I have to find the time to scale that a little bit.
In theory… yes.
But I have to get my hands on a RPI5 (right now it’s in a coffee shop with a 4 player arcade machine using the “chromium” setup I have).
I take donations
Thing is the RPI5 is such a hard sell for me right now as you can get a used Lenovo ThinkCentre (basically any model) for a fraction of the price and a multiple of power. Yes bigger but the arcade boxes are typically pretty big already.
