[zachmorris]

Internet Archive Game Launcher

The Internet Archive Game Launcher (IAGL - /eye/gull/) will browse and launch games from the internet using Kodi

HELP!?!?
Before you ask a question here, for more info please see the addon wiki here and the FAQ here.

If those don't answer the question, you can ask here in the forum or on discord

The #1 question / issue is: "It doesnt work".... How can we help you with no information!?! If you find a bug, please include a link to a debug log.

Install and Setup:
Go Here

Screenshots:


Video:


Currently Available Platforms (over 10k games and counting):

• Amiga
  
• Apple 2GS
  
• Atari 2600
  
• Atari 5200
  
• Atari 7800
  
• Atari 800
  
• Atari Jaguar
  
• Atari Lynx
  
• Atari ST
  
• Atomiswave
  
• CannonBall (Port)
  
• CaveStory (Port)
  
• ColecoVision
  
• Commodore 64
  
• Dinothawr (Port)
  
• Doom (Ports)
  
• Final Burn Alpha (Arcade)
  
• Game and Watch
  
• Game Boy Advance
  
• Game Boy Classic
  
• Game Boy Color
  
• Intellivision
  
• Lutro (Ports)
  
• Magnavox Odyssey2
  
• MAME (Arcade) (Multiple Versions)
  
• MS-DOS
  
• MSX1
  
• MSX2
  
• NAOMI
  
• N64
  
• NeoGeo CD
  
• NeoGeo Pocket Color
  
• NES
  
• Panasonic 3DO
  
• PCE CD
  
• Phillips CD-i
  
• Powder Toy (Port)
  
• PS1
  
• Quake (Ports)
  
• ScummVM
  
• Sega 32X
  
• Sega CD
  
• Sega Dreamcast
  
• Sega Game Gear
  
• Sega Genesis
  
• Sega Master System
  
• Sega Saturn
  
• Sega SG1000
  
• SNES
  
• TurboGrafx16 / PCE
  
• Vectrex
  
• Wonderswan
  
• Wonderswan Color
  
• x68000
  
• ZX Spectrum
  

Known Issues:
See Github Issues page here

Contribute:

• A lot of people have contacted me and said "IAGL is too hard to setup". I can understand this sentiment - IAGL (and emulator front ends in general) is a delicate balance between "working easily" and "working for everybody".  As you can imagine it's hard to provide a one size fits all solution with infinite tweak-able options for 5 different operating systems that all work a little different.  That being said, this is totally an open source project - please submit your suggestions for updates to the setup wiki here.
  

• Make a cool list and share it with the community (post it here in the forum)
  

Support:
I've made this addon for the fun of it (and to teach myself python. I mean look at my code. You can tell I have no idea what I'm doing...), so personally not looking for any donations. BUT, I highly recommend a small donation to the internet archive. The internet archive is a non profit library, providing all of this content to us, lets help keep it that way!
Please donate here

[zachmorris]

Ahead of Kodi v18, I've been working on an update to IARL for a while (v2.0), essentially rewrote the entire addon, and changed the name to encompass GAMES rather than ROMs. The addon is still kind of in Beta as I work out some of the final bugs (if you find any please post issues on Github), so no repository release yet, but you can download the addon from the Github page if you're interested in helping test it with Kodi v18.

Updates in IAGL are numerous, too many to list, but here's some highlights:
 

• Super cool new name
  'eye gull' has such a beautiful ring to it, way cooler than 'eye rle'
  
  
• Organization
  I've updated the browsing of game lists into Categories, so groups of games / game systems can be accessed based on a specific category.
  Example:
  Super Nintendo games are categorized in Nintendo, 1990s, Console, 16 Bit
  Genesis games are categorized in Sega, 1980s, Console, 16 Bit
  Genesis and Super Nintendo will be included when browsing in common categories like 16 Bit or Console
  Categories are customizable as well so you can organize as you like.
  
  Each game list can also be browsed in various ways:
  As one big list, browsing alphabetically, browsing by genre, browsing by year, browsing by number of players, browsing by studio
  
  All of the categories and subcategories can also be added as Kodi favorites so you can further customize / organize games.
  
  
• Browsing Speed
  Kodi v18 allows for some differences in the addon that speed up browsing immensly. For example when browsing a game list with ~2500 games, the old addon took 20+ seconds to display the results on a Raspberry Pi, the new addon takes less than 1 second to display the same results.
  Game images have also been changed to load as fast as possible. I'm working on a seperate project to release game metadata as a standalone scrapable database for others to use as they like as well.
  
  
• Game Info Window
  Updated to mimic Kodi default skin
  
  
• More integration with Retroplayer
  Define which retroplayer game addon will be used for launching
  
  
• Metadata Editing
  Edit most metadata for a game list directly in Kodi
  
  For anyone thats fully invested (emotionally or otherwise) in an IARL installation, don't worry. I'm not deleting or removing IARL. It will just remain in it's current working state for the very foreseeable future.
  

[Roncore]

Either I'm doing something wrong, or this is not available yet in the repo.  I've been using IARL forever, so went to the repo, made sure it was updated, and there is no option for the IAGL, just the current 1.7 version of IARL.  Uninstalled the repo, downloaded the current repository zip via your link (which is the same 1.0 version that was installed), installed the repo again from the newly obtained file from the IAGL setup, and still the same exact option.  Only addon available is IARL 1.7, no sign of IAGL.  Repo zip file from the setup instructions is the same exact zip file I've had, and shows no changes in modified dates or file size.

[ghizzu]

Windows 10, latest Retroplayer test build (Leia): IAGL doesn't navigate. It gives 2 items at start, Browse all Lists and Browse by Category. You choose either one of them, and the same two options are presented as result. In Kripton works well, though.
Debug Log

@Roncore: you have to download the addon zip file directly, it's not in the repository yet.

[zachmorris]

Windows 10, latest Retroplayer test build (Leia): IAGL doesn't navigate. It gives 2 items at start, Browse all Lists and Browse by Category. You choose either one of them, and the same two options are presented as result. In Kripton works well, though.
Debug Log

@Roncore: you have to download the addon zip file directly, it's not in the repository yet.

Interesting, I see that happens for me on the latest nightlies now, but it didn't with garbears last test build for OSX, so something changed in Kodi to cause the problem.  I'll have to dig into it - thanks for the report.

Edit:  I found the issue is with this change:
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/13814

Fixed

[Arber]

Just wanted to stop by and say thanks for this. Only messed around with it for about an hour, but it looks great. Your hard work is much appreciated. Thank you.

[zachmorris]

IAGL has been released in the repository.  It's not perfect, but good enough to start testing with Leia.  Lots of updates to the game lists are included (including lists for some recently updated/added libretro cores)

[skarragallagher]

I have a couple questions, I have both IARL and IAGL installed on my kodi 18. I also have the RetroArch installed as a standalone application. Currently I am using IARL with retroarch as en external launcher.

I know that Kodi has been working on integrating games the retrolib stuff into kodi 18. Moving forward, how should I setup IAGL? It looks like I can basically mirror the setup that I use in IARL by using an external emulator and setting each list to launch via that method. This worked well and offered flexibility to use different settings and configurations for certain platforms however with the integration of the libraries into kodi 18 I am wondering if there is a better or more recommended way.

Ultimately I am asking for a recommendation of how I should set this up moving forward. If the answer is to abandon the external and use the kodi native (which I am cool with) then what settings do I need to configure to get that working?

for reference, back in Kodi 17 I used this guide or a similar guide to this to set everything up originally and most settings are still carried over to Kodi18
https://kodiforu.com/games-on-kodi/

[zachmorris]

I know that Kodi has been working on integrating games the retrolib stuff into kodi 18. Moving forward, how should I setup IAGL? It looks like I can basically mirror the setup that I use in IARL by using an external emulator and setting each list to launch via that method. This worked well and offered flexibility to use different settings and configurations for certain platforms however with the integration of the libraries into kodi 18 I am wondering if there is a better or more recommended way.

Setup between the two is essentially the same. There are a few differences with IAGL for more integration with Retroplayer, but for external launching they are pretty much on par (or at least plan to be).

Ultimately I am asking for a recommendation of how I should set this up moving forward. If the answer is to abandon the external and use the kodi native (which I am cool with) then what settings do I need to configure to get that working?

I'm usually a big fan of "if it aint broke dont fix it".
IAGL supports both Retroplayer and external launchers, or a mixture of the two, which is how I personally use it currently. I don't really have a recommended way of setting it up other than try different stuff out and see what works best. I'm attempting to make the addon as flexible as possible for the kajillions of different setups people have, while providing some 'good enough' starting setup for the type of person that just wants to play a game.

Seeing as how you're here in this forum and using emulators, you're likely the type of person who wants to tweak the setup though. I'd start here in the wiki and see what works for each game list. If you find something thats more optimal that isn't the default, let us know and I can incorporate a change.

[skarragallagher]

I guess I am unclear of what functions Kodi now has integrated and what functions I would still need RetroArch as a standalone emulator.

I am wondering If I could ditch retroarch standalone entirely, and if so what do I need to configure to get the built in retroplayer to function. It doesn't seem to work as is however I am asumming that I need to set something up. Just not 100% sure of what

[zachmorris]

I think you'll find that some emulator cores aren't available yet for Kodi that are available for Retroarch.  Examples would be N64, Sega Dreamcast, and in some cases MAME.

This repository gives you a good list of all the available cores so far:  https://github.com/kodi-game

So, for example, I use Kodi v18 (Retroplayer) to play NES games, but use Retroarch to play Dreamcast and N64 games.   There is really no configuration required to use Kodi v18 - garbear has done an outstanding job at making it work right out of the box, no setup required.  Keep in mind however that it's still a work in progress (both Kodi v18 which is still in Alpha, and my addon which is never perfect).

[skarragallagher]

Thanks for that, I will setup retroarch standalone with IAGL. I did notice something strange today, I went to put on Daniel Tiger today for my 2 year old (which plays through AmazonVOD addon) and it told me that they were no emulators available that played that content. After uninstalling IAGL and restarting Kodi it worked. I am not 100% it is IAGL but I did see the same message when trying to play an IAGL game yesterday when I installed the addon (which prompted my previous messages).

[zachmorris]

Thanks for that, I will setup retroarch standalone with IAGL. I did notice something strange today, I went to put on Daniel Tiger today for my 2 year old (which plays through AmazonVOD addon) and it told me that they were no emulators available that played that content. After uninstalling IAGL and restarting Kodi it worked. I am not 100% it is IAGL but I did see the same message when trying to play an IAGL game yesterday when I installed the addon (which prompted my previous messages).

 Interesting, I highly doubt thats a bug in my addon and likely a bug with the Retroplayer alpha builds.  If you can provide a debug log that would help.

[skarragallagher]

You are probably correct in that line of thinking. I tried to reproduce however was unable too. I still get multiple launches with IAGL unfortunately. I will look at getting a log for you. It doesn't actually launch the game again but it throws an error notification. I am not sure this is a bug in the addon though, it might be something specific related to my system. I will try to capture a log if this and put it here. Maybe from that you can help me understand what is going on.

[skarragallagher]

See this for IAGL error:
https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/ppBVNcz7KQ/