Feature request: Unified games system, savestates and savefiles directories

[Wintermute0110]

Feature request

Describe the bug

The system directory is where the BIOS and other important files needed by the Game cores are placed. Currently each addon requires to put the BIOSse on a directory USER_DATA/game.libretro.core_name/resources/system. As discussed in this and subsequent posts with @garbear, this is a design flaw because many BIOSes are shared among cores. With the current implementation this is not possible. The system directory is a property of the libretro frontend, not of the cores.

Another problem is that the savestates are created next to each ROM. ROM directories must not be writable by the libretro frontend (that is, Kodi).

Expected Behavior

A better implementation is to create the system, savestates and savefiles directories in a special directory in USER_DATA. For example:

profile://user_data/games/system/ --> system directory
profile://user_data/games/savefiles/core_name/ROM_name
profile://user_data/games/savestates/core_name/ROM_name
profile://user_data/games/info/ --> core info files.

Kodi core is expected to create these directories and use them instead of the current directories.

Current Behavior

Explained in the bug description. The current implementation works, however it complicates a lot the setup of emulators in Kodi Leia. The proposed implementation is based on Retroarch behaviour, it's more efficient in terms of disk space and easy to set up.

Possible Fix

Explained in the Expected behaviour.

Your Environment

Used Operating system: tested on Debian Linux amd64 architecture with a custom-built Kodi version cloning Github repository.

[MartijnKaijser]

Feature request belong on the forum

[enen92]

Or in this case maybe you want to bring it as an issue to https://github.com/garbear/xbmc

[MartijnKaijser]

Garbear was planning to move his issues here as roadmap so that's pointless imo (unless he changed his mind).

[Wintermute0110]

@MartijnKaijser, @garbear told me to write it here ...

@enen92 garbear branch is merged into master right?

[Wintermute0110]

@MartijnKaijser so, Retroplayer will be developed exclusively by garbear? No Retroplayer issues in Kodi master branch????

[MartijnKaijser]

Is your keyboard stuck on ??????

You made a request using a bug ticket which is wrong. Roadmap items are to be made by team members only. Users should note their requests on the forum as always.

[Wintermute0110]

@MartijnKaijser No, but it will help if you speak the things clearly and answer to the questions properly. Do you have a code of conduct? It took me 20 minutes to write this report (plus the time to think about the solution), it took 10 seconds to close it without any reasonable explanations beyond "I close it because I want to close it".

[Wintermute0110]

@MartijnKaijser Thank you for your clarification. I will post the FR in the forum.

Also, should I post Retroplayer bugs here, in @garbear branch, or in the forum?

[garbear]

I've identified that the current behavior diverges from the libretro API. libretro specifies a single system directory: https://github.com/kodi-game/game.libretro/blob/af15fa7/src/libretro/libretro.h#L532

I don't know if non-conformance is considered a "bug", but it is certainly an issue that needs to be fixed, so if possible I'd like to track the problem here instead of making @Wintermute0110 shuffle this information around even more.

[garbear]

Forum thread for non-development related discussion: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=337526