hiding bios file.

lostless

@riverstorm or-fbalpha is exactly what I use. I have no idea what’s going on with others. I’ve gotten it to work on 2 copies of retropie. Try fixing permissions from the retropie menu. Somewhere in there is an option to reset the rom folder permissions

Riverstorm

@lostless said in hiding bios file.:

Try fixing permissions from the retropie menu. Somewhere in there is an option to reset the rom folder permissions

I do not believe it's a folder permissions issue. I manually create folders when logged in as pi. Current permissions shown below.

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/fba

Group: pi [1000]
Owner: pi [1000]

EDIT: I am using RetroPie 4.3 updated to 4.3.3.

lostless

@riverstorm I’ll give the fba folder a try. It works in the neogeo foldwr

caver01

Well, I looked at permissions too as you can see in my ls command output. Pi Pi, and no different than any other files (zip files) that are otherwise working.

I think I need to do some digging in the logs and see what is appearing there. Neither MAME nor FBA will open a NeoGeo game unless the BIOS files are merged into the game ROM, or they are next to it in a neogeo.zip file. Using just a neogeo folder inside the roms folder just isn't working.

I can try the neogeo roms folder as a test, but I need it to work inside my arcade roms folder. I am not interested in separating my games by NeoGeo or by emulator. That kinda defeats the point of using Arcade.

@Riverstorm at least you are seeing the same thing that I am. Are you using the unibios? @lostless Does your neogeo bios folder contain the same files as mine?

Riverstorm

@caver01 said in hiding bios file.:

@Riverstorm at least you are seeing the same thing that I am. Are you using the unibios?

Yes but my files are slightly different. I think I ran it through ClrMamePro. I usually let it decide from version to version what files are needed but it's been a few versions ago so it might be out of date for some games but works for what I play.

I don't have a lot of games in FBA (mainly the Metal Slug series) but the ones I do have have all been tested and work fine. The only way I can get them to run correctly was when they are zipped in an archive as I've always done. Any folder structure didn't work.

10/23/2017  12:43 PM    <DIR>          .
10/23/2017  12:43 PM    <DIR>          ..
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 000-lo.lo
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 asia-s3.rom
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 japan-j3.bin
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 neo-epo.bin
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 neo-po.bin
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 neodebug.bin
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 sfix.sfix
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 sm1.sm1
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 sp-1v1_3db8c.bin
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           524,288 sp-45.sp1
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 sp-e.sp1
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 sp-j2.sp1
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 sp-s.sp1
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 sp-s2.sp1
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 sp-u2.sp1
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 sp1.jipan.1024
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 uni-bios_1_0.rom
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 uni-bios_1_1.rom
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 uni-bios_1_2.rom
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 uni-bios_1_2o.rom
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 uni-bios_1_3.rom
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 uni-bios_2_0.rom
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 uni-bios_2_1.rom
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 uni-bios_2_2.rom
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 uni-bios_2_3.rom
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 uni-bios_2_3o.rom
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 uni-bios_3_0.rom
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 uni-bios_3_1.rom
12/25/1996  12:32 AM           131,072 vs-bios.rom
              30 File(s)      4,194,304 bytes

Riverstorm

@lostless said in hiding bios file.:

@riverstorm I’ll give the fba folder a try. It works in the neogeo foldwr

I unzipped neogeo.zip directly into the roms folder and it doesn't work that way either.

Is it possible you have the neogeo.zip in with the roms and didn't know it?

The first time I thought it worked but realized I hadn't deleted the neogeo.zip after creating the folder with the files.

lostless

@riverstorm @caver01 well i feel like a horses patoot. I found why mine worked. It wasn't the unzipped bios file. I have a neogeo.zip file in my bios folder. I guess i put one in there a long time ago and each pi i build i just copy over all the bios files. So im assuming that retropie now checks the bios folder for lr-fbalpha. probably a recent update to retroarch cause i dont remember that working.

lostless

UPDATE: it is a update to lr-fbalpha. lr-fbalpha 2012 and standalone FBA still require a zipped neogeo.zip file in the roms folder. NOW WE KNOW

caver01

@lostless so where exactly can I drop my neogeo.zip? Just the root of the bios shared folder (/home/pi/RetroPie/bios)? That’s great news!

lostless

@caver01 yes, just with lr-fbalpha. Mame2003 and the other fba emulators still require it in the roms folder.

dankcushions

just checked the code and yeah it looks like lr-fbalpha looks for the files it needs in the system (BIOS) AND content (rom) folders. i guess you could use the same functionality - for example - to hide parent games in the BIOS directory, if you only wanted to play the clone.

meleu

@dankcushions really cool feature for tmnt, simpsons, sunset riders and other 4players games with a 2players clone.

Thanks for checking and sharing that!

Riverstorm

@lostless said in hiding bios file.:

UPDATE: it is a update to lr-fbalpha. lr-fbalpha 2012 and standalone FBA still require a zipped neogeo.zip file in the roms folder. NOW WE KNOW

Very nice thanks for the update on getting this to work. I'll move mine over and test it out later today.

i guess you could use the same functionality - for example - to hide parent games in the BIOS directory, if you only wanted to play the clone.

Dank now that's just a cool idea thanks for that tip!

Wombat

@lostless Awesome! Thanks for the help. Moved the neogeo.zip from the neogeo folder and placed it directly into /home/pi/RetroPie/bios

Everything works and no bios is visible with the roms!

cyperghost

@dankcushions Can you explainn why changing mixing upper/lower case for some system works and for some not?

So I can hide BIOS in Arcade system by renaming zip to ZiP for ex.
This works for FBA system, too but not for NEOGEO?

Anyway great outfindings.... Thx

jell

I've hidden my BIOS files by scraping all of the files, then selecting "Parse gamelists only" from the start menu on emulationstation, then manually deleting the bios entries in the gamelist.xml files.

It's a little time up front, but it's clean. Just have to remember to unselect the "Parse gamelists only" option when adding new, unscraped roms, then scrape them, then select it again.