Solved R36S/Arkos/Openbor

[Mahasamatman]

Recently I put a few .pak files on my son's R36S running on the stock Arkos memory card it came with. Pak files downloaded straight for Android worked like charm. No issues, I even finished a few games no problem. I got greedy. Grabbed .pak files straight out of every game in the past I liked, some very old .paks from 2010 for windows and put them on the SD card. Needless to say the Openbor emulator stopped loading the games at first, and now it does not even react launching the paks. The rest of R36S works great, I have no problem with other emulators or games on it, so I dont want to reinstall Arkos just for Openbor.

Is there anybody with knowledge how to reinstall Openbor on Arkos/R36S, or to make the Paks run again?

 

[danno]

Hello @Mahasamatman welcome to the forum, about your problem, in short you are miss using the Openbor engine, it's not an emulator, it's a game building engine like unreal engine.

Pak files are packed files that run on the specific version of the engine the game was created on, although you can run multiple paks those paks would have been created on Openbor version 2 for example.

You'll have overwritten files that are not compatible with different releases of the engine. Delete the contents of your save folder and make sure you only use the version of the engine that was made specifically with that game.

Downloading random bloated paks and dumping them using a single version of the Openbor engine like you would do an emulator is only gonna lead to unfixable problems.

Think of it as trying to play a game created on Unreal engine 4 on Unreal engine 2.

 

[Mahasamatman]

I kinda figured out that is what I did. If I ever get it running again I will stick to Master Zvitor's latest paks, those worked like a charm.
Coming back to the problem, the OpenBor on my R36S using the updated Arkos 2 is not loading at all now. It is there, just not launching at all. I select a pak, it shows them all, in EmulationStation, a quick flash and nothing happens. I deleted the save files from opt/OpenBor, they regenerate after a restart anyways but that did not fix my problem. I asked on github too, and Reddit, nobody answered, so I ended up here. What I think I need is to reinstall OpenBor on Arkos, on r36s. Does anyone know how to do that or has experience with OpenBor on R36S?

 

[O Ilusionista]

I select a pak, it shows them all, in EmulationStation, a quick flash and nothing happens.

Looks like you are using OpenBOR as a core in Emulationstation.
I don't have much experience with Linux, maybe @msmalik681 can give you hand here. OpenBOR has an official Linux version, but any deviated version like that on Emulationstation isn't developted by the oficial dev team.

 

[Mahasamatman]

Thank you for your reply. I had been a fan of your Mugen characters a decade ago.

 

[O Ilusionista]

Thank you for your reply. I had been a fan of your Mugen characters a decade ago.

oh thanks, It's always cool to see someone remembering my old works
I have some OpenBOR stuff too, check my signature

 

[Mahasamatman]

The issue was not just with OpenBor, that is how I noticed, but gradually all emulators are stopping working, my son said this has been going on for a while, only he ignored it. It is the classic R36S problem, seemingly, the original SD card it comes with gives up quick. Thanks for everyone anyways.

 

[Mahasamatman]

Final thoughts: R36S is a nice handheld device, it runs smoothly a lot of ROMs from Sega to Playstation 1, I recommend it. Yeah, the stock SD card it comes with will fail in less then a month, and you have to read up a lot and watch a lot of Youtube videos to get the best of it, all confusing in the beginning, gets simple once you learn what you are doing. I reflashed it with the community maintained Arkos 2 image, and currently I am hunting for Roms of all kind, including Openbor paks
I spent half a day testing paks seeing which one works, and which one does not.

As for Openbor, it is preinstalled in it, all you need to do is just place the paks in the second SD card Openbor folder. That is it. The only caution here is to use only recent Paks specifically for Android. Many older paks specially if you yank them out of Windows just break the Openbor emulator of the R36S.

 

[O Ilusionista]

That is it. The only caution here is to use only recent Paks specifically for Android. Many older paks specially if you yank them out of Windows just break the Openbor emulator of the R36S.

It's a bit more than that: As Danno said above, OpenBOR is an engine, not an emulator. So you will need to use the specific version the dev used to develop the game, not higher, not lower.

Using lower versions: the games could be using new stuff added after the version you are using, so the game won't run.
Using newer version: Not all OpenBOR games done using older versions (like V3) will run on the V4. Specially if they use scripts, thanks to some changes made on the scripts.

For example, my games won't run on V4, as they where developed for the V3. Zvitor's game won't run either, as he uses part of my code library which were developed for V3.

I have no idea which version that system is using, but you can check it by opening OpenBorLog.txt under LOGS folder.

 

[msmalik681]

Think this runs on android not linux.

 

[O Ilusionista]

Think this runs on android not linux.

Unless it has a dual boot, it runs natively on linux

 

[Joaquim Filho]

Hello everyone. First of all, I apologize for any writing problems. I'm from Brazil and I use Google Translate.

About my problem, I always played OpenBor normally on my r36s, updated Arkos system. However, suddenly, the games stopped being read. Before, the game would open directly, and now, it goes to the emulator screen and locks all the buttons, leaving me with no choice but to reset the console to turn it off. Other people had the same problem:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SBCGaming/comments/1feapiq/help_with_openbor_on_r36s

I don't know what to do, because I can't find any function to configure and reset OpenBor on Arkos.

 

[danno]

Threads merged

 

[Joaquim Filho]

Final thoughts: R36S is a nice handheld device, it runs smoothly a lot of ROMs from Sega to Playstation 1, I recommend it. Yeah, the stock SD card it comes with will fail in less then a month, and you have to read up a lot and watch a lot of Youtube videos to get the best of it, all confusing in the beginning, gets simple once you learn what you are doing. I reflashed it with the community maintained Arkos 2 image, and currently I am hunting for Roms of all kind, including Openbor paks
I spent half a day testing paks seeing which one works, and which one does not.

As for Openbor, it is preinstalled in it, all you need to do is just place the paks in the second SD card Openbor folder. That is it. The only caution here is to use only recent Paks specifically for Android. Many older paks specially if you yank them out of Windows just break the Openbor emulator of the R36S.

Friend, in the case of r36s-arkos, if the emulator breaks, is there any way to reset it, without having to reinstall the system?

 

[DCurrent]

Friend, in the case of r36s-arkos, if the emulator breaks, is there any way to reset it, without having to reinstall the system?

The first issue you are having is that OpenBOR IS NOT AN EMULATOR - see earlier posts in the thread. It is a game engine, same as Unity, or Unreal. You can't treat it like an emulator, and if you do, it will never work properly.

I don't even know what an r36s-arkos is, but if it is anything like the other Unbuntu distros floating around, your best best is @msmalik681.

DC

 

[msmalik681]

@Joaquim Filho this console seems to be running build 7126, have you tested with any other builds ?

You might want to contact the developer who updated the firmware and see if they can revert to the previous openbor build as this one has issues.