Star Engine/Sonic Retro Engine
Star Engine (formerly Sonic Retro Engine) are multiple engine ports developed by Rubberduckycooly. They were released in 2021.
These engines, part of the Ports section of Batocera, are enhanced versions of the original Sonic 1, 2 and Sonic CD for the Sega Megadrive/Genesis and CD32. They require additional game files from the recent iOS/Android ports to setup the games.
This system scrapes metadata for the “sonicretro” group(s) and loads the sonicretro set from the currently selected theme, if available.
Grouped with the “ports” group of systems.
Quick reference
BIOS
The Star Engine itself does not need any BIOS file to run, however it is non-functional without the appropriate .rsdk file for the Sonic game you wish to play.
Data Files Setup ("ROMS")
Sonic 1 and 2
This port requires the .rsdk files from the Android or iOS versions of Sonic 1 & Sonic 2.
The Android APKs can be opened up in an extractor program like 7-zip. You need to extract the file /assets/Data.rsdk.xmf and rename it to Data.rsdk and place it in a folder named <Game Name>.son (for example Sonic 1.son).
Sonic CD
For Sonic CD, you can use the files from the Android, iOS, or Steam versions, as well as the video files from the Steam version.
The Data.rsdk is not included in the Play Store version of the Android APK files. It is a downloaded asset, and may be extractable on a rooted Android device. It is, however, included in the XAPK distributions from third-party app stores, which can also be treated as a zip file for extraction purposes. The file will match the pattern Android/obb/com.sega.soniccd.classic/patch.*.com.sega.soniccd.classic.obb. If you're using the Steam version, the Data.rsdk file is in the game's folder.
The Data.rsdk file and videos/ folder should be in a folder named <Game Name>.scd (i.e. roms/sonicretro/Sonic CD.scd/).
The <Game Name>.scd/videos/ folder is optional, and is only used for some full motion video sequences, including the “INTRO MOVIE” selectable from the game's main menu. The video files added to this folder must be the .ogv video files from the Steam version, regardless of which platform's Data.rsdk is used. Note however that the filename case for these files will require some tweaking, e.g. Opening.ogv from the Steam game must be called opening.ogv for use with the Android data file. For reference, the Android MP4 video assets can be extracted from the zip Android/obb/com.sega.soniccd.classic/main.*.com.sega.soniccd.classic.obb and can be viewed with any compatible video player software.
Working game data files
Here are the checksums of some data files that have been reported to be working.
| Sonic game | Game file | md5 | Source system | Game package versions | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sonic 1 | Sonic 1.son/Data.rsdk | f679e87477bbed17ff1bdb9a6793f49c | iOS | v3.7.0 | |
| ad10f658daf0f09b367ad7f23e35ff57 | Android | v3.0.0 - v3.3.0_57 | |||
| 39d3aa33504909a1f0771a7b3045f952 | Android | v3.3.0_60 - v3.4.9 | |||
| 150e44dfea6a140dbf5575cc18944c51 | Android | v3.5.0 - v3.5.1 | |||
| b0a17e35bbc95b00ede921c1c0b80d40 | Android | v3.8.1 | |||
| 2881d2492be3ba5d3b6106cdbf82c3e5 | Unknown | Unknown | |||
| Sonic 2 | Sonic 2.son/Data.rsdk | b7339e7a4cf4ae6264449eec06465c7c | iOS | v4.6.0 | |
| 2b2e44eaacbed7a12823e87a500f236f | Android | v1.0.1 - v1.2.9 | |||
| 7c638025b63d2da158dfaa70a402ec51 | Android | v1.3.0 - v1.3.1 | |||
| 4d0821083a7cdb36a39e5cc1afb2e640 | Android | v1.6.1 | |||
| Sonic CD | Sonic CD.scd/Data.rsdk | 78a03b962acf3e2622addab9cdb8e2ce | Unknown | Unknown | |
| 8879cd4d4656683cdce84877b3c9f64d | Android | v1.0.0 | |||
| f21825684f8794fab41424ee682182b7 | Android | v1.0.2 | |||
| f3767127e84d11a59bdf18dfbde457a9 | Android | v1.0.4_33 | |||
| bc886a704acf60aab6c23e0e4b52b7e8 | Android | v1.0.4_37 - v1.0.4_38 | |||
| 774e7e01ba3d6764fb678812150cbf38 | Android | v1.0.5 | |||
| 8ba3cf699e9e48478ba9563c5e4aa33e | Android | v1.0.9 | |||
| 6649dd9866d07d6e588e29b101da3488 | Android | v2.0.0 | |||
| 496b02ff3edcfbbcfd3983a626fecf41 | Android | v3.4.2 - v3.4.3 | |||
| 3e0d65650fefed8882977d6732fa0bc4 | Android | v3.4.4 | |||
| 8c373a84d66bec9eedfbe178f2de39d2 | Android | v3.4.5 | |||
| 1bd5ad366df1765c98d20b53c092a528 | iOS | Unknown | Controller doesn't work Mouse works (but no visible mouse cursor) |
||
| d497da2c7bac6485d1257dd35ee7f598 | Unknown | Unknown |
Emulators
Batocera will auto-select the port to use based on the folder's extension - sonic2013/rsdk4 for .son folders, or soniccd/rsdk3 for .scd folders.
Selecting the wrong emulator will be ignored as the two versions are not compatible. The options are slightly different between the two, so you may need to manually select the emulator to change them.
The dev menu option is needed to run mods.
sonic2013
sonic2013 configuration
Standardized features available to all cores of this emulator: sonicretro.videomode
ES setting name batocera.conf_key | Description ⇒ ES option key_value |
|---|---|
| Settings that apply to all cores of this emulator | |
LANGUAGE sonicretro.language | Change the game language ⇒ English 0, French 1, Italian 2, German 3, Spanish 4, Japanese 5, Portugese 6, Russian 7, Korean 8, Chinese 9. |
VSYNC sonicretro.vsync | Enable vertical sync ⇒ Off 0, On 1. |
SCALING MODE sonicretro.scalingmode | Screen scaling options ⇒ Nearest Neighbour 0, Integer Scale 1, Sharp Bilinear 2, Regular Bilnear 3. |
HQ Mode sonicretro.hqmode | Enable High Quality effects for special stages ⇒ Off 0, On 1. |
SKIP START MENU sonicretro.skipstart | Bypass the pre-game menu ⇒ Off 0, On 1. |
DEV MENU sonicretro.devmenu | Modding and other advanced options ⇒ Off 0, On 1. |
soniccd
soniccd configuration
Standardized features available to all cores of this emulator: sonicretro.videomode
ES setting name batocera.conf_key | Description ⇒ ES option key_value |
|---|---|
| Settings that apply to all cores of this emulator | |
LANGUAGE sonicretro.language | Change the game language ⇒ English 0, French 1, Italian 2, German 3, Spanish 4, Japanese 5. |
VSYNC sonicretro.vsync | ⇒ Off 0, On 1. |
SCALING MODE sonicretro.scalingmode | Screen scaling options ⇒ Nearest Neighbour 0, Integer Scale 1, Sharp Bilinear 2, Regular Bilnear 3. |
HQ Mode sonicretro.hqmode | Enable high quality effects for special stages ⇒ Off 0, On 1. |
SPINDASH TYPE sonicretro.spindash | Spindash type ⇒ By Save -1, Sonic 2 0, Sonic CD 1. |
DEV MENU sonicretro.devmenu | For modding and other advanced options ⇒ Off 0, On 1. |
Controls
Here are the default Sonic Retro Engine's controls shown on a Batocera Retropad:
Troubleshooting
Further troubleshooting
For further troubleshooting, refer to the generic support pages.
- systems/sonicretro.txt
- Last modified: 5 weeks ago
- by maximumentropy