lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport

markwkidd

edit:

mediamogul

I must have had an incomplete transfer, because the game wasn't launching with lr-fbalpha either. I resent the file and it launched in both cores. However, while I've obtained the improved dkong.zip sample and it works perfectly in lr-fbalpha, it doesn't seem to work in lr-mame2003-plus.

I have to admit to being a bit confused about how the newer samples are placed for this core. I haven't seen mention of a separate location for them, so I put the sample in ~/RetroPie/BIOS/mame2003/sample/ which didn't work. I can only imagine that there's another location, as 2003/2003-plus couldn't really coexist otherwise.

As a somewhat funny side note, dkongx needs dkong as a parent ROM, so I thought I'd see if it would launch using the Pauline Edition of dkong and it did actually launch, albeit with a messed up color palette for the character and collectable item sprites.

SuperMagicom

@herb_fargus I was talking about old Xbox tools related to the old sets, not the roms themselves. ;)

markwkidd

@supermagicom Yes there is no problem posting publicly here about patch files and ROM tools or talking about them. (That's pretty much what supermagicom PM'd me over @ libretro)

No posting about ways to get copyrighted ROMs themselves though of course.

I'm going to have to take a longer look at the old NeFe tool you have. I've never patched arcade ROMs with any tool, just rebuilt ROM sets. I'm not sure right off what kind of starting ROM NeFe is looking for or exactly what it will produce! This is the tedious side of digital archival...

dankcushions

@mediamogul said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

I have to admit to being a bit confused about how the newer samples are placed for this core. I haven't seen mention of a separate location for them, so I put the sample in ~/RetroPie/BIOS/mame2003/sample/ which didn't work. I can only imagine that there's another location, as 2003/2003-plus couldn't really coexist otherwise.

they will be in the same location as lr-mame2003: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/lr-mame2003#samples

ie: /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame2003/samples/ (note: samples not sample)

so, yes - 2003/2003-plus can't really co-exist in this regard. it would be a simple code change to make it store in mame2003-plus/samples, though, if anyone wants to do that.

mediamogul

@dankcushions

Good to know. I opened an issue.

Riverstorm

@herb_fargus said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

@supermagicom said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

I'd like to help track some of these down but, unfortunately, there's no way for anyone to contact users here privately

This being the primary reason private messages are disabled on this forum.

Introducing a more direct way to contact, communicate and collaborate with other users that don't exclusively involve leaving them a public comment every time would be great.

Pretty much every mainstream site has the ability and also a way to disable those features it if you don't wish to utilize them.

It does feels a bit like a paranoid big brother scenario assuming it's primary reason/use would be to discuss illicit ROM activity. I have to admit I wished for the feature more than once and none of them instances was ROM related.

I read @gamez-fan comment over on Github. He's slightly torqued off and threatened to take his ball and go home if we don't do it his way. I honestly don't want to make him mad but I am not sure how to communicate with him. I get the "I did it my way" mentality and how the XBOX was more like a wild-west scenario and DATs are a waste as he put it but it also seems fair to discuss the challenges of locating these old ROMs too.

He definitely seems a little anti-DAT from his comments. It seems like a reasonable way to build/verify a ROM set for a "homebrew" project. I guess the good is from his comment he's only using official ROMs from the correct time period now and removed all the old ones which is great.

Riverstorm

Not sure if you saw this @mediamogul but it looks like he already implemented a fix.

Some games require an additional zip file with recorded sounds or music in order for audio to work correctly. Audio 'sample' files should be placed in subdirectories within /libretro system dir/mame2003-plus/ e.g.:

/libretro system dir/mame2003-plus/samples/

High score, cheat, and history metadata files should be moved from github's /libretro/mame2003-plus-libretro/tree/master/metadata and placed within /libretro system dir/mame2003-plus/ e.g.:

/libretro system dir/mame2003-plus/hiscore.dat
/libretro system dir/mame2003-plus/cheat.dat
/libretro system dir/mame2003-plus/history.dat

User-generated content is placed in sub-directories within /libretro savefile dir/mame2003-plus/ e.g.:

/libretro savefile dir/mame2003-plus/diff/
/libretro savefile dir/mame2003-plus/nvram/
/libretro savefile dir/mame2003-plus/hi/
/libretro savefile dir/mame2003-plus/cfg/
/libretro savefile dir/mame2003-plus/inp/
/libretro savefile dir/mame2003-plus/memcard/
/libretro savefile dir/mame2003-plus/snap/

mediamogul

@riverstorm

Groovie ghoulies! Thanks for the heads up.

markwkidd

Hey @Riverstorm I wanted to call your attention to this github issue: https://github.com/arcadez/-mame2003-plus-libretro/issues/2

Seems like there are some new checksums for those NeoGeo ROMs. I haven't searched for them yet but I wanted to make sure you'd seen it too :)

Riverstorm

Thanks Mark I did see it and will take a look in a few weeks. We are heading out to Trinidad for Carnival in the morning and will be down there for a few weeks.

It's going to be a challenging day tomorrow as we travel through Chicago and Miami. American Airlines sent out a wearning of inclement weather in Chicago and expect possible delays out of O'Hare. We should be good if we can stay one step ahead of it. Also our flight is out at 5:50AM so we'll be up in the middle of the night, getting to the airport, not much sleep tonight.

Here we also have a winter weather advisory tomorrow and it supposed to drop down to -6F/-21C by weeks end so it's all good if we get out ok.

I always pack a change of clothes and the basics in a carry on going through O'Hare. I've been stuck there more than once. I still prefer like Minneapolis or Denver to Dallas or even LaGuardia out of New York for international.

GreenHawk84

So are these improvements going straight to the existing lr-mame2003? Or is this a new core being developed?

markwkidd

Too soon to say. My impression is that on the libretro side there definitely is a willingness to consider merging the improvements, depending on testing and consensus.

markwkidd

Imagine a world where vector titles are smooth and antialiased in mame2003. Wait --- that world is the world of MAME 0.78!

Does anyone have ideas on how to get MAME 2003 to display vectors as nicely as its source? Join the fun: https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/issues/30

markwkidd

@markwkidd said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

Imagine a world where vector titles are smooth and antialiased in mame2003. Wait --- that world is the world of MAME 0.78!

Does anyone have ideas on how to get MAME 2003 to display vectors as nicely as its source? Join the fun: https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/issues/30

For anyone interested in recompiling mame2003 from source, there are now some additional vector-related core features exposed that are kinda nice.

Unfortunately still no vector antialiasing or high resolution rendering though!

markwkidd

I created a bounty regarding this vector rendering quality issue, specifically framed as a bugfix to bring mame2003 up to the standards of MAME 0.78.

Please feel free to track the progress or make a contribution on the bounty page:https://www.bountysource.com/issues/56042669-regression-mame2003-renders-vectors-worse-than-mame0-78

thelostsoul

Not sure if this place is right, but I have a suggestion. If Rewind is enabled, some games don't boot. Rewind needs working Save States to be working itself. So my suggestion is, if Rewind is enabled and the game don't support Save States, then disable Rewind on the fly for this game, to make it playable. Maybe with a message note on left corner while booting up.

dankcushions

@thelostsoul a core cannot disable rewind as this is retroarch functionality. maybe retroarch can? i don't know. might be worth asking on their forums: https://forums.libretro.com

markwkidd

@thelostsoul said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

Not sure if this place is right, but I have a suggestion. If Rewind is enabled, some games don't boot. Rewind needs working Save States to be working itself. So my suggestion is, if Rewind is enabled and the game don't support Save States, then disable Rewind on the fly for this game, to make it playable. Maybe with a message note on left corner while booting up.

This seems like important information.

Please do post in the libretro forums, and include in your post at least one specific game which has this issue.

thelostsoul

@dankcushions I did register a temporary account there, but I cannot find a button to create new topic. I feel dumb, but it is how it is. If someone else feel free, here is my thread how I found this out, with a list of games which was affected:
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/16835/solved-some-mame2003-games-stopped-working