Sega Dreamcast, Saturn And Mega Drive Hardware Coming From Retro-Bit in 2018

[Autechre]

As far as I am aware, they wanted to support RetroArch because they're using it and hoped for a bit of support as well.
That's the only reason.

And that would be fine. I am not against that. So I don't even see why anti-TIVOization should be an issue then if what you describe is correct about the firmware replacement. Maybe they just assumed there was more to it than met the eye, whatever.

Still, your wish to leave me out of the conversation has been respected

It was always my intent to come back to you and still discuss these things and treat you as an equal partner in all this. The way you will handle this current joystick with a Pi thrown into it is kinda contingent on that, though.

I've never received ANY emails forwarded or know what you discussed (apart from him mentioning to me one time at the beginning that the profit margin you're discussing was very high, but that was weeks ago), except for this last short quote I received so I know about the status.

Want to know how much money I made so far with RetroBit?
Well, the Generations was so bad, that I can't even sell the units for the same price I bought them for.
So it's a loss about 400 - 500 EUR so far.

Okay, I sold the RetroGen-Adaptors... that's about 7 EUR profit per adaptor and I sold about 40. That doesn't even cover the Generations costs.
The SuperRetroTrio was better. I made about 700 EUR profit from that, but had to modify all of them manually to add a PAL/NTSC SNES Switch.

Then I had hours of discussions with you, RetroBit, etc. For free.

So yes, that's how greedy I am. I'm certainly a rich guy now..

It's not about how rich you might or might not have become by selling this, it's about principle. I need to be able to trust people I ally with. One way I cannot trust people is if I see a box being advertised on your store that has in its description 'comes with MAME arcade cores, SNES, Mega Drive, and is powered by a Raspberry Pi 3'. That feels like a deliberate slap in the face and it feels like a betrayal, like that article I just co-authored with byuu was all for nothing. Here we go again, etc. Doesn't matter if you earn one euro from this or 100 million, it's furthering a problem that I thought everybody agreed was a serious issue that we shouldn't repeat anymore.

What is worth more to you, keeping devs happy or selling a product by some no-talent scrappy salesmen like that Spanish shop that you know doesn't even make you any real money and which you know is on shaky ground? And it seems you seem to telegraph to me that this Spanish shop is worth more to you than any potential relationship with RetroArch/Libretro.

Why do we need to have a 3+ page long conversation on this when honestly you could have saved everybody in here a ton of time and just do the honorable and respectful thing and pulled the goddamn thing? At the very least blank the SD card (RetroPie being non-commercial means it cannot be sold - period), and/or make your own image (NOT derived from RetroPie/Lakka/Recalbox) and remove the infringing cores, do at least something so that the rights of non-commercially licensed emulators are not being infringed upon. Not even that token gesture is granted. How can I consider that person a friend to the scene and a reliable business partner when he's furthering a problem that we should be putting to bed already? If there's no respect for coders and the rights they hold on this code, whether it's GPL or non-commercial, then don't count on me to want to stick around.

I am well aware that nobody might be making massive profits off this. Maybe in light of that, it would pay to perhaps treat me with a little bit more respect and decorum. You never know who could be coming out with the next hit product after all...

If it doesn't make you any real money, then I figure it wouldn't be that much of a big deal to at least rectify the issue in the short term and at least blank the SD card. You can keep selling the device itself, but that image should be stripped regardless, since even if you do remove the non-commercial cores, RetroPie is not at all cool with their distribution/combined work being sold either. So there are honestly multiple aggrieved parties here. Keep things fair to the scene, keep people happy, and we can all get together and have decent relationships in here.

And if you think RetroPie don't care about this, I could invite them to this thread (I know a fair of them) and we can see where they stand on this and how well the weak justifications regarding stil selling this with this joystick will fare with them.

So why are we doing this exactly if we can prevent people being upset and hurt by this? Not doing anything is siding with the manufacturer who put this out and put no actual work or effort into the actual underlying software that is being manhandled here. If you insist on being a sincere and honest broker here, I give you one last benefit of the doubt - let's fix this shit. Don't try to defend the indefensible thing they are trying to do, and let's resolve it in a way so that you can still sell this shit but do it in a way so that it doesn't rub an entire scene the wrong way.

 

[Dark Pulse]

> 'apparently approved by a lawyer'

LOL. A lawyer whose credentials I'd very much put into question if he co-signed on this nonsense and one that might not even be particularly well versed in corporate IT law. Yeah, I'd put a lot of stock into that.

Anyway, if this is the caliber of business people that EvilDragon wants to do business with, some scrappy company from Spain, a glorified computer repair shop coming up with this kind of nonsense, knock yourself out man. I'm out.

You don't even know the credentials of this lawyer, and yet you're attacking them?

This is beyond belief. Have you no sense of decency, or any tact whatsoever? Do you not understand how you are making yourself and your project look? I'd be goddamn embarrassed if that were me, and as someone who had anger issues in his younger life, I think I have a right to point out when someone is shooting himself in the foot. And you, sir, aren't just shooting yourself in the foot, you're turning it into swiss cheese.

I will once again defend your position to be right to be mad about this, but I will once again say that as a representative of RetroArch (which - guess what - you are!), your conduct is ridiculously childish and appalling. This is not how I'd expect a "CEO" (for lack of a better term) of a project to conduct himself. IF YOU WANT ANYONE TO GIVE A CRAP ABOUT YOUR ARGUMENT, STOP ACTING LIKE PEOPLE WHO ARE ARGUING AGAINST YOUR VIEWS ARE THE ENEMY.

Instead start listening to what they say.

"My way or the highway" doesn't mean dick but the death of your project eventually, because if you piss enough people off, either they will feel JUSTIFIED in ripping you off ("Devs are assholes, fuck them, they deserve it" - a sentiment I've already seen towards YOU, specifically, on places like 4chan), or they will decide not to donate to your cause ("Devs feel too entitled, fuck them, they don't deserve it"), or they will just plain ignore you - perhaps the worst fate of all, to "not exist." RetroArch wasn't the first "multi-system frontend" to exist, after all (anyone remember Hyperspin?), and as you acutely pointed out, "You never know what could become the next hit product after all" - it certainly won't be the last.

Some other product could be what becomes the death knell for RetroArch, and for that to have happened because users abandoned your product en masse over dumb things you said would be the saddest and stupidest way for a project with thousands of hours of man-hours of work to become scuttled. Have you ever considered your outbursts could hurt not only the project, but all the other devs who work under you and who help you make it what it is? Or are you so shortsighted in your zeal that you have no problem with potentially fucking their livelihoods, recognition, and renown just to settle a grudge with one reseller instead of the people who actually use your stuff and make a device with it?

I don't know the credentials of the lawyers ED (or any of these other companies) consulted, but if you believe you've got a case, go ahead - challenge that. Ask who they are. Look up their information, that stuff is usually public file. If you believe you've got a case of your own, consult lawyers yourself - as a GPL project, you've literally got the FSF/EFF who will defend you if you truly feel you have a case to claim copyright infringement. You have a copyright, you literally have the right to do this. The onus of defending the copyright is on YOU.

But going "I bet his lawyers are just corporate stooges who can't argue their way out of a wet paper bag!" makes you look amazingly childish. You attacking a distributor of a product is even more childish. You attacking a distributor who is actually TRYING to respect your copyright claims by investigating it after you brought it to his attention simply because he sold another product that you feel may have also infringed on your coyprights is even MORE childish. And frankly, if all that it takes to make you foam at the mouth and wage jihad on him, his store, his family, his products, his users, and his forums is merely mentioning what the product is designed to do - TO EMULATE THINGS - then I'd frankly just rather download individual emulators and say "screw RetroArch." I've done emulation that way for 15 years now - not like it will bother me to have to launch one emulator to play one thing and another emulator to play another thing.

ED's bending over backwards trying to get the product's legal situation cleared up, to appease you, taking time out of both his projects he needs to do to keep his bills paid, as well as this (which is a SIDE HOBBY of his), and you're acting like he robbed you blind. If anyone robbed you, it's the manufacturer of this device, not the guy who's managed to sell a handful of the things and who made a pledge to not restock it if it is found to be infringing. Yes, he's making a few bucks off it, but all he's doing is reselling. That's like punishing the drug pusher with a death sentence, instead of the guy who's receiving, cutting and packaging the cocaine.

Frankly, if that's what the CEO of RetroArch wants to present himself as, I'm fine with not having his "support" on Pyra. Someone else will take it and make it work on Pyra; whether you do it or not basically has little to no bearing. This is a community not used to having official support for a lot of things - if we can have it, great; if not, we'll find a way to deal with it.

PS: Respect is earned, not given. You want people to treat you with a little more "respect and decorum?" Stop acting like the people who are trying to help get to the bottom of this are the enemy, stop being petty and vengeful by threatening to drop support for their hardware platform of choice, and - most importantly of all - start remembering "Would I be okay with what I typed here being representative of my project?" before smacking that reply button, and if the answer is "no," then go back and retype it - or cancel the post entirely.

 

[Wally]

Someone else will take it and make it work on Pyra; whether you do it or not basically has little to no bearing.

Yeah already done.. We just need 3D.

 

[EvilDragon]

I sticked around for the explanation on the Time Machine and yeah, I pretty much figured it would lead to some kind of vapid loophole that is completely untested in court. I don't even think it's a loophole, I think that would be giving it too much credit. I think it's complete bunkum that doesn't even pass the smell test.

Well, as I mentioned, I'm not particularly happy about the situation as well.
However, according to their lawyer, it's legal (and a quick chat I had with one here also turned out to head in that direction).

Unless someone takes it to court, we'll never know the answer, as each lawyer will have a different view on that.
It's not a particularly easy thing.

Not all lawyers agree on everything, and I hope yours at least was one well versed in corporate law at least.

The one I talked to? Yes. He's also knowledgeable of the computer business and licenses for a long time (as mentioned, he's one of my customers).
Keep in mind though that this wasn't an official request and he didn't check any details here, it was just a chat.

But yes, that service fee would be a valid workaround. It's basically handled the same as if you would hire a PC service company to come to your home and install it.
What they would charge you is the service fee, not the free downloadable software.

I very much doubt this would hold up in court, and it seems like deliberate license evasion through some tenuous loophole

You are free to doubt that as I am free to doubt anything else and every lawyer can have his own opinion.
Until someone takes it to court, no one will know for sure.

If RetroPie expressly states that it's non-commercial, it's non-commercial, period. Cannot be sold then either.

Right, that's why not the software is being sold but the service for the installation.
Which is allowed, according to law - but it has to be within a reasonable price range.

This honestly seems like shopping around for some tepid loophole on their part that they know would not hold up.

I know they are small companies. Problem is, they trying to redefine and get away with the indefensible eggs others on to start doing it as well.

I don't think that's easily possible.
Everyone knows what a RasPi is worth. No company could try to sell it for a much higher price.
Almost everyone who has a Raspberry Pi also knows about the free downloadable software.

No, I'm not concerned that any of THESE companies are causing a huge damage.
I also don't think such companies necessarily want to make a lot of money:

There probably are a lot of users out there who think how awesome running classic games on a Raspberry Pi is.
Then they have the idea, for example, of a portable Arcade Stick with a Raspberry Pi included.
And they want it to be as easy as possible for everyone, so they want to include a software that could simply be downloaded be the end-user anyways.

That could be the basic idea behind such a project - and no, money doesn't have to be the primary reason.
Sure, that's my opinion. It could very well be that you still think they want to rip you off. That's your own opinion, but I don't have to agree with that.

And yes, while I do run a shop that makes profit, all profit is currently being reused to develop a fully OpenSource system where even the hardware stuff will be made public.
Is that greedy?

I disagree with this, at least as far as the mentality of the owners of this forum is concerned. I think at this point it's clear that our opinions and rights as creators of software like RetroArch/libretro apparently doesn't matter, and unless we want to go the litigation route, we are not seen as equals to be taken seriously and treated with respect as long as there is money to be made by shady entrepreneurs, and those guys are ultimately given preference by EvilDragon. That part couldn't be more clear.

Well, it seems that there's not a single company in the world that has been able to meet your expectations so far. I have no idea about Hyperkin, etc., but I know at least RetroBit tried and it didn't work out.
My experience with the RetroPi (Raspberry Pi + Retrode2) was similar:
I contacted you that I'm creating a new case where you can put the Raspberry Pi and Retrode2 in to have an OpenSource alternative to the RetroN5. Without including any preinstalled
I asked you whether it would be possible you officially support that device and offered to put a link to your site so people can download the OS.

The result? I was bashed to death.

So INSTEAD of being happy that someone creates a perfectly usable, legal and open alternative to the RetroN5 you despised, you actually accused me of trying to rip you off.
For a case that allows everyone to build his own home console with a Raspberry Pi and a Retrode2.

So yeah, based on my experience, it seems to be impossible working in cooperation with you.
I cannot speak for any of the RetroArch team members, as you're the only one I'm in contact with, but from what I experienced myself and through RetroBit, it just doesn't seem to be possible having a fruitful cooperation.

 

[Zoma]

So... I'm lurking these boards for a long time, as one more soul waiting for the Pyra. But I just felt the need to create an account and I'll explain why...

Well, once I saw a post here about RetroArch, where ED seemed to explain about a really bad experience he had with someone involved in that project.

I was on the RA discord server, so I decided to link it since I believe everyone has the right to reply. After all, everything could have been just a misunderstanding.

I was warned not to do it again, which was OK for me. Particularly I don't like this kind of situation, where "things are swept under the rug", where subjects are preferable being forgotten rather than resolved... but whoever did it had a point, since some users there could get angry.

Not wanting to cause more problems by not agreeing with such posture, and also being tired with a certain user complaining day and night about a lot of things, I left that place for good.

For my surprise, minutes later I would see that very same user in these forums. Apparently he had been mentioned in that post, but he made good use of the opportunity, apologizing for what had happened.

It was great, really. Seeing such old quarrel being resolved. A new start, maybe even a future collaboration! I was really happy... Until now.

I'll not touch on this subject about emulators and licenses, cuz frankly I got tired of reading about it long time ago.


I just wanted to say that I'm sorry, @EvilDragon. What is happening now is my fault.

I should just drop diplomacy entirely...

 

[Autechre]

I think you are misrepresenting what happened those months ago @EvilDragon regarding that RetroPi thing. Either that or we simply disagree on the stances we took and where both people were coming from.

I am willing to talk it through with you in PM and come to some kind of mutual understanding that we are both comfortable with, what I'm not willing to do is to continue having this public spat in here and have everybody take pot shots and side jabs at each other.

Since you haven't responded in PM, I'd rather wanted to discuss this in private but since I got no response, I will just state this instead -

[doublepost=1520204537,1520200743][/doublepost]

I contacted you that I'm creating a new case where you can put the Raspberry Pi and Retrode2 in to have an OpenSource alternative to the RetroN5. Without including any preinstalled
I asked you whether it would be possible you officially support that device and offered to put a link to your site so people can download the OS.

The result? I was bashed to death.

My recollection of this is different -

it was actually me that contacted you, I wanted to do a joint project with you where we would put out a Pyra that would boot into Lakka, some custom version with no cores whatsoever.

For whatever reason, you felt this wasn't a good or appealing idea and instead brought up this RetroPi. So it was actually a counter proposal.

And the things that worried us were the NES/SNES/N64 case design ideas, which we believed to be flying too close to the sun and by us collaborating with you on it, would land us into legal hot waters with Nintendo. But you seemed fairly insistent on that. So I think that was one of the things.

Also, as stated before, it was a case of unfortunate timing where this was brought up right after we had just dealt with RetroPac, so we were fresh off one Lakka license violator and in here comes a guy with something where we weren't sure what to think of it, since we wanted to actually do something different with you that revolved around Pyra.

Maybe we both wanted something different at the same time, and I guess we butted heads that way. I also brought up back then that I don't like how SNES/Genesis emulators were advertised for the Raspberry Pi, knowing full well that the only available emulators for that are non-commercial.

So those were my concerns and I expressed them to you. Having to kickstart it was another issue that I didn't feel particularly comfortable with.

Maybe you felt snubbed, but frankly, so did I by being rejected for this custom Pyra edition. We both wanted something different vs. what we were proposing to each other, and neither of us seemed to want to budge. Maybe if both sides can still compromise, we could actually arrive at something where we both help each other out in some way and make things possible.

Still, though, I have to tell you, I do not like that you are selling a box right now on your store that disregards basically the entire article that took weeks to prepare on a big gaming website. That feels like a huge slap in the face and you really can't blame me for feeling particularly aggrieved and backstabbed. I also think this would be something you could remedy really easy by just blanking the SD card, making the issue go away, telling the guys that sell this that you are not comfortable putting it out in this manner. It's really a question of whom you are siding with here. TekSyndicate tried to pull the exact same thing and in the end he just put out a video showing people how to flash the SD card with Retropie/Lakka on it, and no longer shipped it with his device. That is the right thing to do, so that nobody feels aggrieved.

If that could be done, I'd be totally willing to move forward with you on projects like this.

Still though, I really suggest we move towards realtime chat. As you can see, forums are not a good way to communicate since it only leads to more fights and to more misunderstandings. I have offered several venues in private messages how we could further this discussion. I'd really suggest we move in that direction. All respect to the audience here but I don't think these conversations are helped by people continually taking pot shots back and forth, and we should be able to resolve this in better and more professional ways. I'm to blame for the conversation taking this course as well. Let's try to steer course now and not just get irritated at each other and launch pot shots at each other.

I'd love nothing more than to be able to collaborate with you on something that aligns with our interests, given you made the OpenPandora and Pyra. In fact, that was the entire reason I contacted you back then in the first place, and it was my original idea that a Pyra + Lakka/RetroArch partnership would be great, and I was disappointed when that idea was not something you were interested in. And I still would like to see that happen. I want to work here with fledgling hobbyists, as long as we all respect each other and are receptive to each other's concerns.

 

[ible]

it definitely is interesting to see what licenses really mean in practice. lawyers tend to find "loopholes" in the language, but it is important to know that lawyers are the best at knowing what law-like language actually means.

so there's the "letter of the law" and the "spirit of the law," and i think ED has made it pretty clear that he's doing right by the letter of the license (IMO he's not selling the software, he's selling an SD card and charging a reasonable fee for installation, but he's willing to be proved wrong in court). regarding the "spirit of the law," ED (and possibly other retailers) are not making money directly off the software, though i can see the frustration that there's some indirect benefits to including software in the sale of hardware. but by talking things out with the developers, i do believe ED is trying to do right by the developers, too. and if developers want a more strict license (no sales of hardware with pre-installed software), there's maybe a way to make that happen (though probably you'd need to talk to a lawyer to craft the license and see if it's even possible).

personally, i find transparent, public communication good, but the court of public opinion (especially the vocal minority, and/or trolls) can be a festering swamp. thankfully these forums tend to be of the thoughtful type.

 

[EvilDragon]

And that would be fine. I am not against that. So I don't even see why anti-TIVOization should be an issue then if what you describe is correct about the firmware replacement. Maybe they just assumed there was more to it than met the eye, whatever.

I have no idea. But I got a version of the original first Retrocade and can trigger the standard Android Recovery mode to flash a firmware image.
So it's not something they plan to add.

It's not about how rich you might or might not have become by selling this, it's about principle. I need to be able to trust people I ally with. One way I cannot trust people is if I see a box being advertised on your store that has in its description 'comes with MAME arcade cores, SNES, Mega Drive, and is powered by a Raspberry Pi 3'. That feels like a deliberate slap in the face and it feels like a betrayal, like that article I just co-authored with byuu was all for nothing. Here we go again, etc. Doesn't matter if you earn one euro from this or 100 million, it's furthering a problem that I thought everybody agreed was a serious issue that we shouldn't repeat anymore.

While that's true and understandable, the deal for the Time Machine has been made in September, so way before any of our discussions here and also before I knew that it's impossible to SNES9x, for example. And as they told me it's fully legal even WHEN I told them normally, the OS is not free for commercial use, they assured me multiple times that everything is legal...
Well, yes, and it technically is (according to at least two lawyers), but it's a not-so-nice workaround.

What is worth more to you, keeping devs happy or selling a product by some no-talent scrappy salesmen like that Spanish shop that you know doesn't even make you any real money and which you know is on shaky ground? And it seems you seem to telegraph to me that this Spanish shop is worth more to you than any potential relationship with RetroArch/Libretro.

If I wouldn't care about licenses, I wouldn't take the time to work on all that.
However, I bought Time Machines worth 2000 EUR and I need to at least sell them off to not have any loss.

If someone came up to me, telling me that he bought a product in goodwill, finding out later that it's a grey area and he didn't know the product is part of my code which I didn't license out, then I'd simply tell him to keep selling the remaining stock and that's it.
Especially if I hand out the product for free to anyone, so the only difference would be that the end user would have to download it himself (and then everything would be fine).

Why do we need to have a 3+ page long conversation on this when honestly you could have saved everybody in here a ton of time and just do the honorable and respectful thing and pulled the goddamn thing? At the very least blank the SD card (RetroPie being non-commercial means it cannot be sold - period), and/or make your own image (NOT derived from RetroPie/Lakka/Recalbox) and remove the infringing cores, do at least something so that the rights of non-commercially licensed emulators are not being infringed upon. Not even that token gesture is granted. How can I consider that person a friend to the scene and a reliable business partner when he's furthering a problem that we should be putting to bed already? If there's no respect for coders and the rights they hold on this code, whether it's GPL or non-commercial, then don't count on me to want to stick around.

Want the simple explanation? Because I didn't find the time to do that yet.
Yes, seriously. While toad.es hasn't changed the sourcecode, they have added their own config files, which I'd like to make them available to the customers so the system runs out of the box once they put them upon the card.
I requested those config files multiple times from them, but haven't received them. So I wanted to rip them out myself - but that takes some time which I really didn't have yet.

So yes, I'm actually planning to blank the SD Card, write instructions of how to create your own one including the scripts but didn't manage to find the time.
I'd need at least 2 - 3 people employed in the shop to keep up with all the work, but the whole customer base is still way too small. I could never afford that...

So why are we doing this exactly if we can prevent people being upset and hurt by this? Not doing anything is siding with the manufacturer who put this out and put no actual work or effort into the actual underlying software that is being manhandled here. If you insist on being a sincere and honest broker here, I give you one last benefit of the doubt - let's fix this shit. Don't try to defend the indefensible thing they are trying to do, and let's resolve it in a way so that you can still sell this shit but do it in a way so that it doesn't rub an entire scene the wrong way.

Sure, that's something I'd love to fix as soon as possible myself.

Anyone here who would love to help out?
I could upload the content of the card somewhere and someone could grab all the config files and scripts from there so we can offer them for download.

 

[Autechre]

Alright, I thank you for responding in this way. This is very helpful and positive. I hope we can resolve this situation this way.

Also, there are a couple of PMs I sent - if you are up for it, we can definitely discuss RetroPi again, and maybe you could reconsider my proposal for some custom Pyra/Lakka version (custom Lakka version so it doesn't run afoul of all the issues with the regular version), or some other way we could collab there. If we both give us each other a little something there, I'm sure we can come down to something that works for both and both sides would be happy. Hopefully we can turn this conversation into something positive again this way, nobody is helped by all this bickering and infighting and we are all hobbyists here that love doing this stuff, surely we can find some way to arrive at peaceful co-existence. Having our hobbies turn into nightmares is something that I don't wish on anybody who harbors some kind of joy for what they do.

 

[rygD]

I propose a duel!

Seriously, although my opinion is not needed or asked for, I understand that what ED is doing is trying to make little steps with these companies so that they can see that it isn't hard to do things right. That, and stopping the ordering of more units of popular hardware is a big deal for a small company.

While I appreciate the people who are unwilling to make compromises, that isn't always the best method. The manufacturers are more likely to shut you out and do what they want until legal action is taken. ED tries to be better than that.

Maybe contacting the Time Machine people and proposing another option, such as suggesting a way for customers to connect their device and download the appropriate software with full knowledge of licensing and why it is such a big deal. Believe it or not, getting to the end customers is important, and they need to know. Most won't care, but some will. That spreads. Regardless, the envelope thing is a physical version of clicking "I agree" and while not perfect, I see no reason why it can't be considered adequate.

But what do I know? I intentionally do illegal and immoral stuff all the time. Now I am off to possibly purchase some of the books I pirated.

 

[EvilDragon]

My recollection of this is different -
it was actually me that contacted you, I wanted to do a joint project with you where we would put out a Pyra that would boot into Lakka, some custom version with no cores whatsoever.

Ah, you're right! Sorry about that!

I totally forgot about your Pyra/Lakka idea... I know I planned to contact you as soon as the RetroPi was fully finished, so I thought I did contact you because of that.

But yeah, now that you mention it, I remember that you did contact me upfront, but as I knew the Pyra was still far away whereas the RetroPi was mostly finished, I talked about that.

Geez, I'm getting old!

And the things that worried us were the NES/SNES/N64 case design ideas, which we believed to be flying too close to the sun and by us collaborating with you on it, would land us into legal hot waters with Nintendo. But you seemed fairly insistent on that. So I think that was one of the things.

Hm? NES / SNES / N64 case design ideas?
I'm not sure what you mean by that - as the case was simply an extended version of the original Retrode2 case. Just increased in size so that the RasPi would fit in as well.

It doesn't even closely resemble any of those consoles... and I never even planned something like that.
The 3D-Printed case also had been finished already... so not sure how and where you understood me wrong that I wanted an NES/SNES/N64-like case...

Or did you confuse it with a different project?

Also, as stated before, it was a case of unfortunate timing where this was brought up right after we had just dealt with RetroPac, so we were fresh off one Lakka license violator and in here comes a guy with something where we weren't sure what to think of it, since we wanted to actually do something different with you that revolved around Pyra.

Well, I did remember you from when you contacted me about the Pandora, the RetroPi website clearly mentioned that this is simply a case for a RasPi and a Retrode... so I'm not sure how you could get it wrong somehow

Maybe we both wanted something different at the same time, and I guess we butted heads that way. I also brought up back then that I don't like how SNES/Genesis emulators were advertised for the Raspberry Pi, knowing full well that the only available emulators for that are non-commercial.

Well, I can understand that - but I think that goes a bit too far... every article on the internet mentioning that the Raspberry Pi can run SNES and Genesis games with free software would fall under the same category, as the RetroPi is nothing else than a RasPi and a Retrode in the same case.
Nothing more, nothing less.

So those were my concerns and I expressed them to you. Having to kickstart it was another issue that I didn't feel particularly comfortable with.

Well, the problem is: I don't want to pay 10k EUR in advance for the case moulds only to find out there's not enough interest
So how can this be done without Kickstarter (or similar crowdfunding)?

TekSyndicate tried to pull the exact same thing and in the end he just put out a video showing people how to flash the SD card with Retropie/Lakka on it, and no longer shipped it with his device. That is the right thing to do, so that nobody feels aggrieved.
If that could be done, I'd be totally willing to move forward with you on projects like this.

Yes, that's something I'd love to do... I just have way too much work
I need a couple of clones.

Still though, I really suggest we move towards realtime chat. As you can see, forums are not a good way to communicate since it only leads to more fights and to more misunderstandings. I have offered several venues in private messages how we could further this discussion. I'd really suggest we move in that direction. All respect to the audience here but I don't think these conversations are helped by people continually taking pot shots back and forth, and we should be able to resolve this in better and more professional ways. I'm to blame for the conversation taking this course as well. Let's try to steer course now and not just get irritated at each other and launch pot shots at each other.

Well, I'm open for anything, but due to time, I'm not always available for realtime chats :/
Skype works best in that case, as I use it for business stuff during the day as well.
So if that would be fine with you, feel free to add me (EvilDragon17).

BTW: I haven't even read your PMs... didn't have time for that

I'd love nothing more than to be able to collaborate with you on something that aligns with our interests, given you made the OpenPandora and Pyra. In fact, that was the entire reason I contacted you back then in the first place, and it was my original idea that a Pyra + Lakka/RetroArch partnership would be great, and I was disappointed when that idea was not something you were interested in. And I still would like to see that happen. I want to work here with fledgling hobbyists, as long as we all respect each other and are receptive to each other's concerns.

It's not that I'm not interested. I just knew back then that the Pyra was still quite some time away.

 

[Autechre]

Well, I'm open for anything, but due to time, I'm not always available for realtime chats :/
Skype works best in that case, as I use it for business stuff during the day as well.
So if that would be fine with you, feel free to add me (EvilDragon17).

Not really a big Skype person, for now we can continue with PMs on the forum. I can see if I can sometime hop on the phone with you. Guess we need to talk in English as I don't speak German.

We can talk about these projects for sure then.

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Lol. I really did not see the happy ending coming in this tale... quite a twist. The "outer limits" of the "Twilight zone...

The End. (?)

 

[EvilDragon]

Updated the product page of the Time Machine... Now I hope that toad.es releases the configuration files soon so I can make an instructions manual how to easily setup RetroPie with their config files.

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