lr-armsnes and Retropie 4.4
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Let me just say, this thread has been incredibly helpful to me. I'm currently building a zero to use in a Freeplay Zero build. So far, all cores are running full speed for me on 4.3, with frame delay set for the best control experience.
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@r4l Glad to help. Thanks for confirmation that 4.3 works better for you as well.
Overall, the Pi Zero with 4.3 works very well, but you will notice that it has its limitations when actually testing out all the games.
For the NES I managed to get 100% compatibility with it. SNES hasn't been as kind, sadly. I'd say about 80% of them are running damn near perfect, with another 10% running at an acceptable rate as to be enjoyable. The other 10% are either completely unplayable with a Pi Zero or suffer from enough lag and audio stutter that they would not be enjoyable (because of the limitations of which emulators will even play on the Zero, and how slow snes9x2005 and x2010 run for most SNES games).
Sadly, I need to add all 3 Mortal Kombat games to that list. They are playable in lr-snes9x2002 and pisnes, but during the menus there is a strange echo effect that is very annoying. It doesn't seem to effect the actual matches though. Using lr-snes9x2005 seems to fix this issue on all 3 games, but it's too slow and has way too much audio stutter to be enjoyable.
Fortunately, most of the games on the non-working list so far are titles that I don't think anybody would miss, but there are some really great SNES games that you'll never be able to play on a Zero.
Stay tuned for the compatibility lists for SNES and NES when I release them. They also will have compatibility for the Pi 3 eventually, as well as XBox compatibility.
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That is unfortunate (about the games), but at this point it's probably a hardware limitation. 1GHz and 512 RAM aren't much to go about, so I guess Pi zero users are stuck between speed and compatibility. However, can't wait to see this list of yours.
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@used2berx said in lr-armsnes and Retropie 4.4:
Oh... and will it work normally if you plug in a mouse? I might just recommend doing that instead of setting up the D-Pad with an external controller.
A mouse will indeed work and is definitely the way to go with 'Mario Paint'. I thought maybe you had tried it and were looking for alternative options.
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@r4l said in lr-armsnes and Retropie 4.4:
That is unfortunate (about the games), but at this point it's probably a hardware limitation. 1GHz and 512 RAM aren't much to go about, so I guess Pi zero users are stuck between speed and compatibility. However, can't wait to see this list of yours.
Yeah. I don't think there is much more that can be done to eek out any better performance on the Pi Zero. I was actually surprised that the SNES (and NES as well) required so much power under the hood for good emulation. I just took that for granted with the XBox since there were no problems there. The specs on the Pi Zero are actually "better" than the XBox, but one was a 5 dollar computer put on a tiny chip and the other was a gaming console made by M$ that cost hundreds of dollars when it came out. Shouldn't really be surprised.
Whenever I can afford a Pi 3 I'm going to start testing on that as well for my spreadsheets as I bounce from system to system. I'm not really in a huge hurry since there's still so much to do with the PI Zero.
@mediamogul said in lr-armsnes and Retropie 4.4:
@used2berx said in lr-armsnes and Retropie 4.4:
Oh... and will it work normally if you plug in a mouse? I might just recommend doing that instead of setting up the D-Pad with an external controller.
A mouse will indeed work and is definitely the way to go with 'Mario Paint'. I thought maybe you had tried it and were looking for alternative options.
@mediamogul said in lr-armsnes and Retropie 4.4:
@used2berx said in lr-armsnes and Retropie 4.4:
Oh... and will it work normally if you plug in a mouse? I might just recommend doing that instead of setting up the D-Pad with an external controller.
A mouse will indeed work and is definitely the way to go with 'Mario Paint'. I thought maybe you had tried it and were looking for alternative options.
Oh... cool. I didn't try it. I'd have to take my mouse out of my computer to test it and I just didn't bother with it yet. When I'm all done testing I'll go back and re-test the short list of games that work with a mouse and put the results in the spreadsheet. Thanks.
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@used2berx said in lr-armsnes and Retropie 4.4:
he specs on the Pi Zero are actually "better" than the XBox, but one was a 5 dollar computer put on a tiny chip and the other was a gaming console made by M$ that cost hundreds of dollars when it came out. Shouldn't really be surprised.
yeah the pi zero's cpu is likely quite a bit slower than the xbox's pentium 3. the pi 1 was said to be around the cpu speed of a pentium 2 @ 300MHz, and the pi zero is has the same cpu, just clocked a bit faster.
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Regarding PAL games... Is there any special instructions for playing them in RetroPie? I'm not seeing any RetroArch options for it in Snes9x2002 (1.7.3). Does it automatically detect PAL and adjust?
Thanks. :)
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So far I have 525 US Licensed games tested, as well as 10 EU (PAL) games. Going to be busy the next 5 or so days, so I probably won't get too many done in that time, but then I'll have a few days to wrap up this Pi Zero SNES testing and get the spreadsheet up for everybody.
In the mean time, it would be cool if somebody could point me in the direction of where info on how Pi SNES emulators handle PAL emulation. I was able to find the option to manually change that on a per-rom basis with the NES games, but I couldn't find any RetroArch options for that with SNES.
They actually seem to be playing alright, at least in snes9x2002, so I'm assuming they're handled automatically.
Thanks! :)
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Nice.... one of my buds at another site came back after being away for a while. He's going to put together a script that should manually remove and/or replace a lot of the strange characters that you get in the game descriptions and info that don't display properly in RetroPie or on the XBox. Things like "TM" and the Copyright symbol, any "accent" characters that are common with Japanese and other foreign games, that strange "O" with a line through it that Broderbund uses in there name, etc.
I totally forgot that I had to do this again for the SNES before getting the Zero to my bro. Talk about perfect timing.
Eventually I will incorporate any of this new scripting into the
Synopsis.txt - To - Gamelist.xmlscript that Meleu started and I have tweaked the hell out of. It will be awesome to have this all be a single step in the future. What a time saver that thing already is, and this will make it even better. :)More to come...
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Tested through the letter S in US Licensed. Slowly but surely getting through this. :)
New unfortunate casualties on the PI Zero as follows:
Lock On
NHL '96/'97/'98
Radical Psycho Machine Racing
Star Fox (Already known)
Stunt Race FX (Already known)
Street Fighter II Alpha
Super Mario RPG (Already Known... Actually somewhat playable in lr-snes9x2002 if you're desperate).Secret of Mana will actually play at an acceptable rate if you use pisnes. Unfortunately, the sound isn't that great and the name input is all jagged up, but otherwise it's very playable. :)
At any point in time if somebody figures out how to get any games working that I couldn't please let me know how you did it. Once my spreadsheet is out there will be a full list for them. This also goes for any games I have marked working that do not actually work with the emulators I've selected. My testing is rather limited for most games since it would take me an eternity to actually play every game through to the end. I'm just trying to get a good starting point for everyone with what I felt was the highest performing emulator for every SNES game that's playable on the PI Zero. Testing in all instances has at least 10-20 seconds of actual gameplay involved. In the case of RPG's this means actual fighting events, so testing a lot of the RPGs can take quite a lot of time as you could imagine, having to make it through the initial story lines before getting to the gameplay.
Oh.... and I'm going to go through the EU games under the assumption that the SNES emulation on the Pi automatically detects and adjusts for PAL games. I see no evidence otherwise, and I never found any core options that allowed for you to switch this manually like I did for NES emulation.
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US Licensed games testing complete except for the Super Scope games. I'm going to figure out which emulators seem to run them the best without any lag or audio stutter, but I have no devices to actually test them out, so the testing for them will remain incomplete for the moment.
New casualty list...
Top Gear 3000
Vortex
Wicked 18I've got about 45 more EU games to test as well as around 60 Japan games and about a dozen special releases and then I'll get the spreadsheet ready to go live.
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Super Scope and Europe games (non-US titles) testing complete.
New Pi Zero casualties...
Super Scope:
Metal Combat: Falcon's Revenge - Missing sprites unless you use x2005/x2010 and plays too slow.
(NOTE: Super Scope games were only tested in title screen and demo mode. I don't have an light gun device to actually test that functionality).
Europe:
Dirt Racer (Super FX)
Winter Gold (Super FX)Just need to test around 80 Japan and about a dozen Special Releases and the PI Zero testing is finished. :)
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FYI: Mouse games will not work on the Pi Zero currently.
You're only able to set the "SNES Mouse" in RetroArch when using lr-snes9x2010. It will not work in lr-snes9x2002/x2005, and obviously won't work with pisnes. lr-snes9x2010 runs far to slow on the Pi Zero to be playable.
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Hey bud. Don't know if you saw it or not, but figured I'd send you the link to the SNES compatibility list for the Pi Zero. :)
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/post/158554
Cheers.
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