Game add-ons: Difference between revisions

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==BIOS requirements==
==BIOS requirements==
Some libretro cores require a BIOS to work. You need to find those BIOSes by yourself as it may be illegal to provide them bundled with each libretro core that needs the. For example, since all PlayStation emulators, like Beetle PSX & PCSX ReARMed, (as well as some other libretro cores), require a closed source BIOS file to work, these BIOSes are usually considered to be in an legal gray-zone and can be a little difficult to aquire, at least legally. Those BIOSes must be placed in the system folder on your emulator software (libretro core in this case).
Some libretro cores require a BIOS to work. You need to find those BIOSes by yourself as it may be illegal to provide them bundled with each libretro core that needs the. For example, since all PlayStation emulators, like Beetle PSX & PCSX ReARMed, (as well as some other libretro cores), require a closed source BIOS file to work, these BIOSes are usually considered to be in an legal gray-zone and can be a little difficult to aquire, at least legally. Those BIOSes must be placed in the system folder on your emulator software (libretro core in this case).



Revision as of 12:55, 22 December 2015

Home icon grey.png   ▶ Kodi Game ▶ Game add-ons

Status on ported currently existing game add-ons for the new Game API made available in Kodi Game branch.

Stand-alone game add-ons

Stand-alone games or emulators that does not use the Libretro API. Possible examples could be, Nvidia GameStream via Limelight or WINE capture could possible through the Game API.

Here will be a list of existing/ongoing non-libretro games or game-platforms/systems once they have been ported into game add-ons for Kodi:

  • None so far ?

Here will be a list of existing/ongoing and future/upcoming project for making new stand-alone game add-ons for Kodi:

Libretro cores

The Game API in the Kodi Game branch has a Libretro wrapper which is 1:1 compatibility with the libretro API, so all libretro cores are valid game add-ons. Libretro itself is a well defined interface to handle the communication between a frontend (Kodi with RetroPlayer) and an Emulator Core (e.g. nestopia).

Here is a list of Libretro cores which have already been ported into game add-ons for Kodi:

NOTE: Status fields are out-of-date and do not reflect the current state of emulators.

* License is GPLv2 compatible

BIOS requirements

Some libretro cores require a BIOS to work. You need to find those BIOSes by yourself as it may be illegal to provide them bundled with each libretro core that needs the. For example, since all PlayStation emulators, like Beetle PSX & PCSX ReARMed, (as well as some other libretro cores), require a closed source BIOS file to work, these BIOSes are usually considered to be in an legal gray-zone and can be a little difficult to aquire, at least legally. Those BIOSes must be placed in the system folder on your emulator software (libretro core in this case).

This linked table lists all the required BIOSes which some emulators requires, so if a systems BIOS is not listed here then it means that it does not require a BIOS file.

Remember, since Linux is a case sensitive system, you have to rename the BIOS files according to this table so that the libretro cores will be able to find the BIOS files.

Note that most of these BIOSes are not revered engineered releases but binary ROMs ripped from the EEPROM inside of an actual game console system hardwarre, so it is proprietary binary blobs (precompiled software binaries) which might still be under copyright depending on the console age and origins. It may be that some of those BIOSes are can be seen as Fair use since these game consoles are no longer sold and there is probabably no commercial value of them, but that is something that the XBMC Foundation need to talk about with attorneys about before being able to distributing such BIOS files as resource add-ons or bundled with each libretro core in an official repository.

See also