I haven't spent any of the fundraiser money yet and might use it to instead have the RGR Plugin rebuilt from the ground up.

The RGR Plugin source code is messy and uses a lot of outdated components. I think it's going to be difficult for someone to update to make it functional again (without having to use flash).

If I had it rebuilt from the ground up and if the only thing it had was RetroArch (which contains all of the systems already in the RGR plus many more), I'm thinking the cost wouldn't be more than US $1000, which is about what I have left from that fundraiser (after paying for the hard drive perks, paypal fees, etc).

Keep in mind that the games would play as flawlessly as they did with the RGR Plugin (in other words, the emulation wouldn't have the same resource restrictions that the HTML5 RetroArch emulator has). Here are the Pros and Cons of doing this.


PROS:
-Gives us access to so many more game systems, potentially every single one ever made
-Better game compatibility and playability
-If developed properly, it could load the RetroArch cores (emulators) on demand, which means that we could update the emulators without requiring a new RGR Plugin release or update
-Would have a lot of control over how the games are played and the options used
-Opens up the doors to a lot of new features
-Netplay for more systems
-Could potentially be later made for more devices (Windows of course would be the 1st OS it'd be made for)
-Could potentially make it so that the games you've already played on Vizzed will play on your computer even if you're not online (since the games would already be "cached" on your computer)

CONS:
-Most likely wouldn't be compatible with save files made with the current RGR Plugin (but the current would always be available and users can still continue using it using the 'outdated browser' method)


Below is probably the description I'll be using for posting the job offer. Let me know if I forgot any requirements necessary for the plugin to function as the current does.

---

Develop a windows application that can load RetroArch on my website (in the web browser) using the settings that my website tells it to use. RetroArch is an open source frontend that has many emulators available to load (more info here: https://www.retroarch.com/). I'd want my application to make it appear as if these games are playing on my website.

This application would have RetroArch built into it and should be able to communicate with my website. For example, a page on my site should be able to tell RetroArch which core (emulator) to use and which game rom to load into that emulator. I should also have the ability to tell it what settings to use. When a core is chosen, it should automatically download to the user's machine to the directory that the application was installed (but don't have it download it again if it has already been downloaded and is up to date) and the game rom should also be downloaded (from the selected URL) to the user's computer and then loaded into that core once that download is complete (game shouldn't be downloaded if it has already been downloaded).

Features must include:
-Dynamically download and load RetroArch cores (emulators) from a URL
-Download and load game roms from a URL to be loaded into the core
-Ability to specify options and config settings to be used in RetroArch and selected core
-Save files, screenshots, config files and pretty much anything that can be saved should be saved based on the ID of a user
-When a user takes a screenshot with RetroArch, that screenshot should be uploaded to my server to a specific directory based on that user's ID
-RetroArch's netplay must work, allowing users on my site to play online together

Staff : I wanted to get your opinions on this. Also let me know if there are any "requirements" I'm forgetting.

I honestly think it's worth looking into, but maybe first we should do some testing on which retroarch cores work. I do know of a few that don't work at least for me, and there's also the fact of the systems with more than one core available. Lastly, it seems as if the cores themselves are lower in "performance/quality", so to speak, emulators that worked very fine for me presented problems when being loaded as cores in retroarch.

Once we manage to somewhat sort that out, I'm all in for this. The con of the save files is minimal "damage" compared to everything we could gain from this, plus I'm sure users would allow the sacrifice of their save files if it means recovering the RGR entirely with a clear chance of improvements.

As for the requirements, I saw nothing else in need to be added. I see only one thing missing: gameplay recording. That feature is currently down and also needs to be rebuilt (or at least be fixed) but you should include it in the development program for future use.

Retroarch has always been finicky for me, but the auto updates to emulators are absolutely necessary. Why wouldn't the saves be compatible exactly?

Davideo7 : from me, I heard there is some are good without damage, but I will look into 3 or 4 that I know of that you don't have to updated all of the time and you can choose when to updated it. I think retroarch is a if one will be a problem with few keys as we get a good one is a point we can use. plus it depend on the thing it is capable to a laptop or computer as well plus if there is virus is a bigger key as well.

Doing a quick look at a very bad viewpoint in my opinion I think at least GBA saves will still be compatible as long as they maintain a .sav extension for ingame saves and a .sgm for quicksaves aka snapshot saves of the game.

One other thing I see that might need to happen is bringing back a game tester role to test individual cores. I don't know much about retroarch but I do know some consoles have 2+ cores and they can run just as well as the other but sometimes one can give better results in terms of emulation accuracy.
Alternatively could just run the latest core of each system and hope it emulates all games just well enough to be passable.

EX Palen : Some of the cores don't work if they don't have bios files or if they don't have the proper settings. More than likely what I would do is get a already configured RetroArch setup that has all of the configuration and files in place. I did this with my RetroPie RetroArch build with my Raspberry Pi and pretty much every system worked great that I tested out and I had tested out 30+ systems.

Since RetroArch is already capable of recording videos natively, it'd pretty much work the same as the current RGR Plugin where you click a key to record, click a key to stop, and then manually upload it to Vizzed. I'd hopefully have the YouTube upload page fixed by that time.


pennylessz : I think some save file formats are exclusive to some emulators. Some saves might still work but it'd also require a user to manually move their save files from 1 directory to another.


pokemon x : Yeah I'd probably have to add a few game tester roles. I think NES alone has like 4 cores available, SNES has like 3, etc. Now those 2 systems probably have like 99% compatibility with each of their available cores so for them, it'd be a matter of which features you want. However, systems like Nintendo 64 and Sega Saturn never have a high compatibility or playability rate for any single emulator. The great thing is, there's such a big community for RetroArch that in some cases, users have already gone through and tested out to see which game works best in which emulator and in these situations, it's just a matter of downloading the config file that these users have uploaded and using those config files for the Vizzed build of RetroArch.

I believe I've had some success in the past by changing the file extension of emulator specific save files. Though that was a decade ago, I'm not sure how things have changed.

pennylessz : And in some cases, there are programs that can convert the save files.