bootleg

Bootleg is a hackable game console made for indie devs and homebrewers.

How it's built and what it supports

• Designed for Xbox One controllers, however everything that exposes itself to evdev is supported
  • xpadneo could potentially give us controller batterylevels, forcefeedback etc https://github.com/atar-axis/xpadneo/
• Designed for Raspberry Pi 4b 8GB
  • Overclocked to 2.1GHz CPU and 900MHz GPU
  • Cooled by tower heatsink/fan cooler
  • 240GB SATA SSD
  • Minimum goal is for native games to run at 1080p30 or 720p60 (vkQuake3 testing shows we have plenty of headroom already!)
• Additionally supports any x86_64 system with dedicated NVidia/AMD graphics
• Built on a custom Linux distribution (without a preinstalled xorg/X11 stack)
• Renders directly to a display surface, completely bypassing any windowing system
• Custom Dashboard application, just like on Xbox and Playstation: BootlegDashboard
• Customized KIT/Odin/WIR technology stack that powers native games as well as the dashboard and overlays:
  • Efficient and powerful Vulkan-powered rendering everywhere
  • Great input support out of the box
• Integrated Steam Link, if possible. Pretty low priority, but if easy then just do it.
• Potentially integrated emulator support out of the box; NES, SNES, N64, PSX, PS2, GC, PSP, Switch?
  • Requires extra steps for the user to install system files.
  • Requires lot of work
  • Is a big want

Where we actually are now

• [X] Preliminary case design
• [X] Testfitting and full internal system build
• [X] Port WIR to Linux and ARM64
• [X] Port Odin to Linux and ARM64
• [X] Port KIT to Linux and ARM64
• [X] Get Dashboard running on X11 for development purposes
• [X] Temporarily workaround lack of shaderSampledImageArrayDynamicIndexing support (mesa issue #3943)
• [X] Implement direct rendering using VK_KHR_display
• [ ] Implement input in Linux using evdev (/dev/input)
• [ ] Optimize performance to get at least 60 FPS @ 1080p in dashboard
• [ ] Get Dashboard to MVP status

End goal

Development notes

Stable OC

2.1 GHz arm_freq
900 MHz v3d_freq
6 overvolt
28c idle (and running OpenArena)
36c heavy CPU load

vkQuake3 (High settings) on X11:
800x480 250fps+
1280x720 120fps+
1920x1080 55fps

Mesa build cheatsheet

Clone repo:

git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa

Install buildtools:

sudo apt install meson flex bison
sudo -H pip install Mako

Install dependencies:

sudo apt build-dep mesa
sudo apt install libxcb-shm0-dev

X11 devel:

CFLAGS="-mcpu=cortex-a72" CXXFLAGS="-mcpu=cortex-a72" meson --prefix /usr -Dplatforms=x11 -Dvulkan-drivers=broadcom -Ddri-drivers= -Dgallium-drivers=kmsro,v3d,vc4 -Dbuildtype=release build-system/

Optimized headless:

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=armv8-a+crc+simd -mtune=cortex-a72" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=armv8-a+crc+simd -mtune=cortex-a72" meson --prefix=/usr -Dglx=disabled -Dplatforms= -Dllvm=disabled -Dvulkan-drivers=broadcom -Ddri-drivers='' -Dgallium-drivers=v3d,vc4,kmsro -Dbuildtype=release build-system/

Testing it:

sudo apt install vulkan-utils
vkcube
vulkaninfo

Getting vkQuake3 to build

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=armv8-a+crc+simd -mtune=cortex-a72 -DSDL_DISABLE_IMMINTRIN_H" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=armv8-a+crc+simd -mtune=cortex-a72 -DSDL_DISABLE_IMMINTRIN_H"  make -j4