Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons
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@mediamogul That's cool man. It's all a matter of personal preferance, right?
I haven't seen what an Atari 7800 actually looks like on a screen in probably 20 years or more, and except for once when my brother showed me a 5200 with working controllers he got off of ebay it's been closer to 30 or more years since I've seen the 5200.
I'm pretty much just going with what I like over accuracy. Plus, I only have one screen to work with so trying to compare things is really just by memory in between launches.
I noticed that outside of kat5200, the colors that everybody uses are extremely muted compared to later systems. Seems that the 8-bit Atari systems used pretty washed out colors from what I remember them to be. Either way, anything I've tried in the last 24 hours since you posted that link with the way to change them has brought a lot of life to the screen compared to the default settings in atari800. Thanks. :)
BTW... that Atari 5200 I spoke of is actually in my possession now. :)
It's even got the original box and everything, even though it's pretty damaged. Last time my brother used it he says both controllers worked. I'm going to have to figure out how to rig that thing up to a more modern TV and try it out one of these days. Too bad we never found that gray cart.
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@used2berx said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:
I'm pretty much just going with what I like over accuracy.
I can definitely understand that. I'm an art director by profession, tasked with making sure every little artistic detail is correct before anything goes out the door. Needless to say that once I start going down these rabbit holes, it's tough to stop until I get things looking as accurate as possible. Two things you may want to consider after looking at the settings more closely is that one; these settings apparently don't go over 1.0, so anything over won't do any good and two; a brightness setting of anything less that 0 will increasingly darken colors to the point of gradually turning anything white into a shade of grey. Mileage may vary between displays, but it seems that -0.16 is the lowest setting possible that will still result in a black background.
BTW... that Atari 5200 I spoke of is actually in my possession now. :)
Very nice. A friend of mine has one with a damaged power supply and I've been meaning to help him with it. The 5200 power supply is pretty unique in that the RF runs through it as well. I'm betting that'll be somewhat of a challenge to mod for a modern TV.
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@mediamogul said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:
@used2berx said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:
I'm pretty much just going with what I like over accuracy.
I can definitely understand that. I'm an art director by profession, tasked with making sure every little artistic detail is correct before anything goes out the door. Needless to say that once I start going down these rabbit holes, it's tough to stop until I get things looking as accurate as possible. Two things you may want to consider after looking at the settings more closely is that one; these settings apparently don't go over 1.0, so anything over won't do any good and two; a brightness setting of anything less that 0 will increasingly darken colors to the point of gradually turning anything white into a shade of grey. Mileage may vary between displays, but it seems that -0.16 is the lowest setting possible that will still result in a black background.
That's cool man. I haven't been able to land a decent job since I was laid off. Just been working part time jobs way under my abilities since it's pretty hard to find anything decent these days without a degree. My job right now keeps me in real good shape though, even if it just barely pays the bills. :)
I'm putting the same kind of detail into my projects regarding the emulation here though. I don't know when I'll ever be satisfied with the NES/FDS project, but one of these days I will be releasing it for everyone to enjoy.
Thanks for the tips. I didn't realize that anything over "1" didn't actually change anything.
BTW... that Atari 5200 I spoke of is actually in my possession now. :)
Very nice. A friend of mine has one with a damaged power supply and I've been meaning to help him with it. The 5200 power supply is pretty unique in that the RF runs through it as well. I'm betting that'll be somewhat of a challenge to mod for a modern TV.
I'm still working with old TV's myself. I actually don't even own a TV that was made in the last 10 years. It probably won't be all that hard to figure out how to convert it. I'm assuming that it still has that RF adapter that you need to screw into the back of an ancient TV, but who knows what's in there. My brother might have already picked up some sort of converter for it.
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So.... you guys have any idea why the left direction on both my d-pad and left joystick would not move the guys left on Beamrider, but it still works for every other game using my default
atari5200.cfgfile?This one is kind of driving me nuts. Every other game that uses the default configuration has no problems moving left, but when you play Beamrider once you've gone to the right side of the screen you're all out of moves.
I know when I tested this game a year ago that this wasn't an issue.
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@used2berx This is for player 1 when player 2 joystick is attached as well ? what happens when only player 1 joystick is attached ?
Have you tried launching this rom with a different config file (just to be sure you're not using a wrong config file) ?I don't really have a clue why Beamrider only moves right in you're case , but i seem to remember successfully testing it's controls about a year ago with you.
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@future-child said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:
@used2berx This is for player 1 when player 2 joystick is attached as well ? what happens when only player 1 joystick is attached ?
Have you tried launching this rom with a different config file (just to be sure you're not using a wrong config file) ?
I don't really have a clue why Beamrider only moves right in you're case , but i seem to remember successfully testing it's controls aboutHey man. I'm completely stumped here.
This happens whether or not I have 1 or 2 controllers plugged in. I did try various other configurations (including the "alternate.cfg" as well as a few game specific configs) with no luck. It happens no matter what.
I really wasn't expecting that to be the issue though because Beamrider uses my default "atari5200.cfg" that about half of the game library uses and I can press left on any one of the other games that I controlled.
We did successfully test this game as working about a year ago. I actually noticed this almost right away when you recently fixed the atari800 emulator for use with 4.4 and made a note about it, but I forgot to go back to it when I completed a thourough re-test of every game with 1 and 2 player controls. I just happened to be going through my recent notes last night and I ended up spending about a half hour trying to figure this mystery out without any success.
Any suggestions you might have would be appreciated. Maybe you could give Beamrider a try with your updated build and see if you have the same problem or not. It just doesn't make any sense why only this one single game would suffer from that issue when about 40-50 other games use the exact same configuration and are launched exactly the same way.
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@used2berx It's odd to say the least, using Peter's diagnostic cartridge i have confirmed the analog input's to be working correct for horizontal direction (vertical as well but there are no problems reported there).
Pokey_pot0 has a value of 0 when the controller is pushed left, 114 when controller is centered and 227 when controller is pushed to the right, which is normal for digital joysticks.
Also whenTRUE_ANALOG_JOYSTICK=1is present in the config files in-between values are also there, also normal when analog controllers are used.
So logically there should be no problems.Beamrider will not go left however when using digital joystick (even with disabled joystick and using keyboard input only).
When analog controller is used (TRUE_ANALOG_JOYSTICK=1andJOY_SPEED_ADJUST=10lines are present in the config) i can sometimes get it to go left (very errattic and with a huge lag) .As the only that has really been changed to the emulator for Retropie 4.4 is the renaming of the libEGL and libGLESv2 libraries to libbrcmEGL and libbrcmGLESv2 i will see what happens when the older libraries are installed used during compilation (if i can still find them somewhere).
Update: I can now confirm it is not my modifications causing these issues because both a freshly compiled original version 3.1.0 as well as the new 4.0.0 release behave in the same way (i didn't figure out yet how to get the original glesv2 and egl libraries installed, but since it has nothing to do with input i highly doubt it matters anyway).
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@future-child hmmmmm....
I wonder if this was actually not working a lot earlier in the process, but some time after I had tested Beamrider and didn't have any problems with it. I know for sure that left worked at the time I had tested it, for all 4 players (on two joysticks alternating). But it is one of the very first few games alphabetically in the 5200 library, and we did make a ton of alterations over many months.
What is version "3.1.0"? Is this before you touched it at all, or the last build you had made before moving to kat5200?
(I guess the good news to report is that a complete re-testing of all of the games I had originally tested didn't bring any other control issues to light. This is baffling though.)
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@used2berx Version 3.1.0 is the version of the original Atari800 emulator upon which i added my modifications.
The following tests have been made:
Atari 3.1.0 (original) retropie 4.4 : Beamrider only moves right
Atari 3.1.0 (my ver.) retropie 4.4 : Beamrider only moves right
Atari 4.0.0 (original) retropie 4.4 : Beamrider only moves right
Atari 4.0.0 (my ver.) retropie 4.4 : not yet finished*Atari 3.1.0 (original) retropie 4.3: works as intended
Atari 3.1.0 (my ver.) retropie 4.3: Beamrider only moves right (so somethin's off there i can't explain yet)
Atari 4.0.0 (original) retropie 4.4: testing
Atari 4.0.0 (my ver.) retropie 4.4 : not yet finished**This version has a lot of changes (like native HAT support, i'm looking if analog support can be added as the numerical buttons should pose no problems.
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@future-child Wow! You've decided to kick around the tires on Atari800 a bit more? That's awesome. :)
Glad you seem to have been able to pin down the Beamrider issue. Hopefully you figure out a solution for it.
*This version has a lot of changes (like native HAT support, i'm looking if analog support can be added as the numerical buttons should pose no problems.
These changes your talking about... are they already in the version you updated to work on RP 4.4, or are these new things? I'm just wondering if you're going to need a re-test of all the games again or not when you have an update.
Also, do you think any of these changes you're planning might fix the strange bugs that occur, such as some games like Choplifter having problems using the trigger buttons if you move with the analog stick instead of the D-Pad, or only 1 trigger button working on 2 player games so you can't jump with the 2nd player in Moon Patrol?
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@used2berx
The HAT support is new in the original 4.0 Atari emulator, this was added in my version (actually it was added by jfroco) because the original 3.1 did not have this, my release for RP-4.4 is still based on Atari800-3.1 .I'm looking at the source of Atari-4.0 too see if the new code lends itself for adding real analog control's (the dreamcast built seems too support it so there is a starting point to investigate there).
The code is still not event driven though but just maybe analog is feasible.
When (if) it happens i will probably release it parallel to the existing one. -
@future-child Cool man... let me know if you come up with anything and I'll test it out on my end.
I've put the breaks on my NES/FDS project for now while trying to wrap up this Pi Zero setup for my brother. I've got to give him a call and let him know that I'm going to take some extra time to set up the SNES and configure all of the emulators/roms for the best performance. I think I can get 95% of them working great on Pi Zero, but it's going to take a bit of tinkering and setting things up on the emulators.cfg file. I discovered that my set didn't have a lot of correct no-intro stuff, and unbelievably Prince of Persia was the German version!!!! I'm in the process of fixing all of that, so I should have this thing for a week or two more. Hope to maybe eek out a little better performance on the 5200 if it's at all possible. :)
Thanks again.
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@future-child said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:
@used2berx I updated the binary for retopie-4.4 (thanks to @mitu for saving me the time to investigate the cause).
I now have a binary for the older retropie versions as well as for the current 4.4 (i named it atari800_4.4) on github.to install :
cd /opt/retropie/emulators/atari800/bin/ sudo cp atari800 atari800.original sudo wget https://github.com/futurechild/atari800-rpi/blob/master/atari800_4.4?raw=true -O atari800 sudo chmod +x atari800Hey man. It turns out I'm going to have to revert to a 4.3 build for my Pi Zero. Do I use the same instructions above, but remove the
_4.4from thewgetline?Thanks. :)
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@used2berx Yes, the original version is still there that way.
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@future-child Thanks again man. Works perfect. :)
Well... except for that Beamrider issue. No worries. I'll probably figure out how to get it running in kat5200 someday whenever I put my focus on 5200/800 emulation for my own projects.
This was a lot easier setting up this time since I just did it. I was dreading having to put the 5200 again for the 4th time, but everything is up and running with very little pain.
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Could someone kindly help.
All I want to do is in Moon Patrol, instead of pressing X to jump, I want to press B on the controller.
I have a classic NES controller (USB)
LR-Atari800 emulator
Retropie 4.4
Moon Patrol game atari 5200My NES controller only has A and B button
You need X button or keyboard to jump in moon patrol.
How can I just change it so I can press B on the controller to jump? -
@hfgx1 There's no easy fix to this, unfortunately. It took a lot of work to get all of the 5200 games working in the atari800 emulator, and you'd have to have special launch files for the various games and download @future-child's version to make games like robotron work right on top of it.
He's since abandoned atari800 and works with kat5200 now, but setting that up will take a bit of work as well and is a completely different process to set up correctly. That may be a better option for you though if you want to play Moon Patrol with 2 players. Although I feel that the work done on atari800 is amazing and it works pretty much perfect for 1 player once you take the time to properly set everything up, any 2 player games that had more than one button function like Moon Patrol won't play properly for the 2nd controller since every button on the controller besides the D Pad will perform one of the button presses and none of them will perform the 2nd button press. (In the case of Moon Patrol, I believe the 2nd player can only jump and cannot shoot).
I'd be willing to take some time to help you set atari800 up to properly run, but you'd have to realize going into it that you'd need to have properly headered roms and name them all the way that I've named them to work with the configurations that I have. It won't be a quick process.
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@used2berx Can you please assist me. I have asked elsewhere, and received zero replies.
In the first question I asked how to get Moon Patrol to work with a controller missing an "X" Button. Your reply dove into 2nd player for some reason. I don't have a second player, no one I know would play these old games with me anyhow. So I don't care about a 2nd player.
Here is my setup:
lr-Atari800 and game MOON PATROL
I have edited /opt/retropie/configs/atari5200/retroarch.cfg
added the following lines:
input_player1_a_btn = 0
input_player1_x_btn = 1Now my "B" button on the NES controller works. It Jumps. "A" shoots, "B" jumps
Problem Solved.QUESTION....
How do I get lr-Atari800 to work without a keyboard.
Now I have to press F4 on the keyboard to start a gameWhat do I edit to make the "START" button on the NES Controller start a game, instead of F4 on keyboard?
As a side note, I find the retropie.org.uk forum very weird and frustrating. It only loads sections. Every other forum I visit can load pages. Is there anyway to load every reply within this topic?
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@hfgx1 I don't know how you'd get the start button to work in this case because you are setting up your controller a completely different way than I do.
That's what I meant when there is no easy answer to your question. Setting up the Atari 5200/800 really sucks and takes a lot of work.
Since I got every game for the 5200 working except for some really strange ones like the realsports games and a few others that rely heavily on the keypad, I have around 30 different configuration files which get loaded by runcommand, so instead of saying it's launching with the "atari 800" emulator in the gray box, it will say something like it's loading with "Centipede", or "Pengo", or "Default".
I don't even have a "retroarch.cfg" file in
opt/retropie/configs/atari5200/, but there are 38 other.cfgfiles in that folder, and theemulators.cfgfile in that folder is 5kb.So, I wish I could answer your question, but I have no clue how to do what you're doing. You've edited a file that doesn't even exist on my Pi. I'm assuming that you must be using the new libretro version of atari800 that I won't even use. It doesn't have all the controller upgrades that @future.child made to his version.
As for the forums, I agree. It took me a long time to get used to how this site works, and I still really don't care for it. Maybe it works great for people with new and flashy computers, but for somebody rocking a decade old relic like mine, I find this forum very difficult to navigate and I've all but given up trying to find an old post somewhere.
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@used2berx Thanks for your reply and attempt at help.
I have downloaded KAT5200, got it to run, but I personally still prefer lr-atari800.
Strictly a matter of preference.I really wish there was a way to show every reply in this post, that way I could just use Ctrl-F and find keywords I'm looking for. Oh well.
Regardless, thanks for the replies. I will continue to dabble trying to get the control to start a game, instead of F4 using lr-atari800.
If all else fails, I will keep KAT5200
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