Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons

EvilDindon

Hey dudes,

Apparently I missed important things since my last connection on here.

Is kat5200 the way to go now ? Better than the modified atari800 emu ?

Can you link me to the post that announces the port of kat5200 to retropie ?

Cheers,

Mike

future.child

@evildindon I personally believe the Kat5200 offers more functionality in controller configuration over atari800 like per rom configs, flexible input mapping and fixes for specific roms.

I abandoned my modification to atari800 as it would take too much effort changing from polling to a event driven input handler and polling causes too much lag for comfort. The retroarch port of atari800 offers no real improvement to this either.

Kat5200 was announced here, as unofficial/experimental.
Initially i just wrote a small script too have it installed under retropie with a few modifications, lateron zerojay added it to his extra's menu, which is now my preferred way of installing.

@future-child said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:

@keithmason The instructions for zerojay's extra's can be found here.

Step one is to install the extra's menu:
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/zerojay/RetroPie-Extra.git
cd RetroPie-Extra/
./install-extras.sh
Step two is to run the extra's menu:
cd ~
cd RetroPie-Extra/
git pull origin
./install-extras.sh
You should be able to find kat5200 under emulators and install it from there.

Step three is to place you roms and bios files in their proper folders, after rebooting the roms should be listed and be able to launch kat5200.
First start of kat5200 should begin with a configuration wizard for which you need keyboard/mouse.

If you want Atari800 as a menu option as well you could modify the /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg and /opt/retropie/configs/atari800/emulators.cfg files.

cloudlink

What do I put in the /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg and /opt/retropie/configs/atari800/emulators.cfg files if I want Kat5200 as a menu option?

future.child

@cloudlink

you can use the following as a guide:

es_systems.cfg :

<system>
    <name>atari800</name>
    <fullname>Atari 800</fullname>
    <path>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari800</path>
    <extension>.a52 .bin .7Z .A52 .BIN</extension>
    <command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ atari5200 %ROM%</command>
    <platform>atari800</platform>
    <theme>atari800</theme>
  </system>

/opt/retropie/configs/atari800/emulators.cfg:

kat5200 = "/usr/local/bin/kat5200 %ROM%"
default = "kat5200"

kruuth

So far I'm pretty happy with Kat5200. I've gotten things running and things play fine with a digital controller. I was planning on using the analogue stick but I haven't been able to get it to work right. Other than that, it's great.

EvilDindon

Ok, thanks future.child for links. Will try it later.

cloudlink

@future-child thank you! This works great!

hansolo77

I've still not messed much with Atari 5200/800 stuff. I was waiting to see what the results were with lr-atari800, and this kat5200 emulator. Has anybody got any recommendations/suggestions? Is the LibRetro core the way to go, or is this one, with all the mods, fully up and running? I'm sure a future addon to the LibRetro core will be the eventuality of cheevos, so I'm leaning towards that. But I've not bothered installing anything as yet.

mediamogul

@hansolo77

There's always the original Atari800 emulator as well. Once it's set up, it'll run the largest portion of the Atari 8-bit library. it'll also emulate all the various control schemes unique to the system that are missing in most other emulators.

jamesnj

@hansolo77 see my recent thread here

I don't know yet if kat5200 solves all 5200 emulation desired, but so far it seem to work well for me. My last comment sums up most of the thread.

hansolo77

@jamesnj
Thanks , I'll give it a go when I have some free time!

Used2BeRX

@future-child Hey bud,

I'm running a completely new RetroPie 4.4 build on my Pi Zero so I can make an image for my brother sometime in the next week or two.

Nothing we did in the past here works anymore. :(

Did anything change with the install files here or with RetroPie 4.4 that would change anything? Every game I try to launch with all of the configuration files I had put together just fades to black and then kicks you back to the romlist.

Any ideas?

future.child

@used2berx the 4.4 release of retropie switched to a retroarch port of the atari800 emulator, whis has none of the "enhancements" discussed in this thread to it (aside retroarch integration it's the stock atari800 emulator, and afaik has some issues getting it configured properly).

Downloading the atari800 binary alone won't work unless you also point the runcommand to it (i think it now points to lr-atari800 or something like that).

As i said before, i ditched this emu, as soon as i learned modding it was a dead end effort, in favor of kat5200 (which has all i need already built-in, like settings per rom-crc, flexible button/axis config, analog support, combo-buttons)

Used2BeRX

@future-child Yeah.... I'm kind of on a time crunch here and don't have time to re-configure everything on a new emulator. After all the work I did getting everything set up for Atari 5200 to work almost perfectly, I'm going to try to get that setup working again.

Any ideas about where I need to change lr-atari800 to atari800 to get this to work then?

Used2BeRX

kat5200 doesn't work. After looking for BIOS for about a half hour it said "Error Loading BIOS Image". Now when I restart it, it just automatically says that. I can't figure out how to do anything at that point and I have to unplug the Pi.

atari800 doesn't work. As I've said before, it just boots me back to the romlist.

lr-atari800 doesn't work. It loads a blue screen that you can type on, but nothing else happens.

Kind of annoyed that all of these massive changes were done to the Atari5200/800 in 4.4 if there wasn't any good working option that was implemented. I've read that even if you get lr-atari800 it doesn't work well anyhow and everybody seems to be trying to use kat5200 instead.

I guess I'm just going to delete all the 5200 stuff off of my brother's Pi since I don't have time to mess with any of this right now. Shame, since he just recently gave me a legitimate boxed 5200 system with 10 games.

mediamogul

@used2berx

I play 5200 games a lot and the best solution I've found is simply Atari800. It runs the most amount of games and emulates the largest amount of control peripherals which are necessary for certain games. Seeing as how you're under a time crunch, you're probably better off leaving the whole system out, but perhaps when you have some more time I could help you troubleshoot the software exiting. At first blush it sounds like a BIOS issue, but there might be some additional clues in /dev/shm/runcommand.log.

future.child

@used2berx If you still have a working system you could copy the /opt/retropie/emulators/atari800 folder.
The config files /opt/retropie/configs/atari800/atari800.cfgand /opt/retropie/configs/atari5200/atari5200.cfg.
The emulators.cfg files /opt/retropie/configs/atari800/emulators.cfg and /opt/retropie/configs/atari5200/emulators.cfgto your new system.

Otherwise i'd guess you have to install from source.

As for kat5200 freezing on adding the bios, if memory serves it had to do with the database being corrupted or not having proper permissions.

darknior

I've finished my two set Atari 5200 and 7800 some month ago.
And the 2600 with 153 games is done too but i must work on some media to really finish it ... like ever nothing perfect to take and use over the web.

Atari 5200 with 71 games :

Atari 7800 with 48 games :

With many cool homebrews i love and make media.
But i've some problems to configure games fine on my PI, @future-child do you think it's possible for you to work with me ?
We can speak easily on my Youtube videos if you want. I can share you all my medias to save you many time ;)
I can replace French Synopsis by English one, it's on my plan, i want my set was usable by every one in English.

Used2BeRX

@mediamogul Yeah. I was using the atari800 that had the upgraded controls in this thread. If you remember, over a year ago, I made a spreadsheet with all of the control configs for the Atari 5200 games as well as some Atari 800 games.

I reinstalled it using the following commands:
cd /opt/retropie/emulators/atari800/bin/
sudo cp atari800 atari800.original
sudo wget https://github.com/futurechild/atari800-rpi/blob/master/atari800?raw=true -O atari800
sudo chmod +x atari800

I have the 5 Atari BIOS files in the '/home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/' folder, all the names are good. I did notice that my old setup used atari5200.rom, but the new instructions call for simply 5200.rom.... so I copied and renamed it and I now have both.

@future-child

My pi is tied up the rest of the day making a new nes_gamelist.xml. I'll double check that I have all of those files where they belong. I was pretty thourough. Thanks for the locations though.

EDIT: Yeah.... I just went over what I have on my PC. I copied all of those over as well. Remember... I had a LOT more than just a few config files. I had a few "default" ones, and a lot of games required specific configurations because of the controls. They're all copied over.

Strangely, the old "emulators.cfg" that remembered the choices before no longer remembers them, and makes completely new entries for each game that look very different than the old ones did. The old ones had a very long random number string, similar to arcade games being launched with MAMNE, where these do not.

My configs look good, or at least they are as they were over a year ago.

Could you look at those instructions I posted above to get the emulator and let me know if I need to do something else?

Do we still use the atari5200.py script with it, or was that abandoned at some point?

future.child

@darknior If you have questions i am able to answer i will do so, please pose them in english as my french is rusty at best.