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

Used2BeRX

@hfgx1 Nice dude. I should probably save this post for posterity since a few months from now if I ever get back to 5200 emulation I'd never be able to find it again.

Now you've got controls working for 1 game that only uses 3 buttons including the start button. Lets' see if you can get some of the crazier ones that make use of the keypad working in libretro. :)

hfgx1

@used2berx said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:

@hfgx1> Now you've got controls working for 1 game that only uses 3 buttons including the start button. Lets' see if you can get some of the crazier ones that make use of the keypad working in libretro. :)

LOL, I doubt I'll ever get that to work :)
But in all seriousness, this is all I wanted. I really wanted the Atari 5200 (and Atari 800) to work without a keyboard for a bunch of games like MOON PATROL etc.. No crazy multi-button games.
Due to where I'm playing the Raspberry Pi, a keyboard would be inconvenient.

I now have lr-Atari800 and KAT5200 installed, and am able to switch between the 2 flawlessly using a two button original NES controller.
I'm totally happy :)

Anyhow, its been great chatting with you. You seem like a cool dude. Take care.

Used2BeRX

@hfgx1 Glad you got what you were looking for man.

There are some really great games that aren't very complex overall, but they use the keypad though. First one that comes to mind is Miner 2049'er. The whole damn game can be played with just a single button except for the level with the elevators. You need to press the different numbers to move between them. There's a few of them that play just fine, but you need to use number presses to just start the amount of players or the difficulty.

I was kind of laughing when putting all of my configs together before. I couldn't figure out if the whole world was so new to game programming that nobody realized that instead of having all of these complex menus that you could have just used the joystick directions and buttons to make choices, or if they purposefully made things complex just to justify that stupid keypad.

Man those controllers sucked...

My brother actually gave me a 5200 he picked up about a decade ago off of ebay with about 10 games. If I can ever figure out how to get it working on my TV I guess I'll see if my controllers are broke just like everybody elses are.

Take it easy

darknior

@hfgx1 said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:

But in all seriousness, this is all I wanted. I really wanted the Atari 5200 (and Atari 800) to work without a keyboard for a bunch of games like MOON PATROL etc.. No crazy multi-button games.
Due to where I'm playing the Raspberry Pi, a keyboard would be inconvenient.

I think exactly same :)

I now have lr-Atari800 and KAT5200 installed, and am able to switch between the 2 flawlessly using a two button original NES controller.
I'm totally happy :)

You write before a fantastic tuto to use lr-a800 for 5200 games, i love it and i will try it too :)
But why do you continue to use KAT5200 for some games ?

@used2berx I found my solution.

And i love it, thanks a lot :)
Can you give us same settings and options to use Atari 800 games better with default settings ?
Is there some trick too ?
And for games using analog stick, are they working fine now with your settings ?

Thanks a lot

Used2BeRX

@darknior Eventually I would like to work on Atari800 games as well, but I never even got around to doing the controller configs for them on the XBox, which is probably the first place that I would go to the trouble of doing it since Atari5200/800 emulation is a MUCH better experience overall on that platform.

I only really did the 5200 because I literally grew up with that system and I was the only one I knew growing up that had one. The Atari 800 library is HUGE and I wouldn't even really know where to start. I'd have to have a list of the "best" games on the system or something and go from there.

That would probably be a long while off though. You know how busy I am with other things, and configuring controllers is just about my least favorite thing to do when it comes to emulation. They actually say that when it comes to programming games for VR that the hardest part about porting the games is the human interaction and porting over the controls. It only takes a few days to get the game in a playable state in VR, but it can take 6 months to get the controls right.

Won't it be nice when we can all just do this stuff with our brains?

hfgx1

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

@hfgx1 said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:
But why do you continue to use KAT5200 for some games ?

Atari5200 version of Bounty Bob Strikes Back does not work in lr-atari800 but there is atleast one 5200 version that appears to work with sound in kat5200. Not yet tested beyond level 2.

I personally prefer lr-atari800, because kat5200 crashes and freezes the entire RPi. Appears to happen randomly, during loading, during game play, during exit. Not often, but it does happen. And when it freezes I have to unplug the Pi.

And for games using analog stick, are they working fine now with your settings ?

Sorry, but I only tested a handful of games. These were games I had and played with as child, so I hold sentimental memories with them.

Do you have any recommendation for Atari 800 images? There are so many.

darknior

Ok thanks

@hfgx1 said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:

Do you have any recommendation for Atari 800 images? There are so many.

For my part my set use .XEX roms, i think there are the best, and some .ATR when i can't found xex.

Used2BeRX

@future-child

Hey man. I just installed EmulationStation/RetroPie over linux on a PC based laptop. I tried installing both of your atari800 emulators since I didn't know which one I should try for this setup and neither of them work.

Is this something you would expect to happen based off of your work, or do you think that maybe I messed something up?

future.child

@used2berx Did you use the binaries for Atari800 ?
They are built built for arm cpu's so i doubt they would work (unless you're using an arm based laptop).

The best thing would be to (manually) compile on the laptop itself.
for Atari800:

download and extract https://github.com/futurechild/atari800-rpi/archive/master.zip
cd *whatever folder*/src
autoreconf -v
./configure 
make clean
make
sudo make install

As Kat5200 is already built locally with my script there should be something other than a difference in cpu, you can try rebuilding :

download and extract http://kat5200.jillybunch.com/downloads/kat5200-0.8.1.tar.gz
cd *whatever folder*
./configure
make
sudo make install

or you can check if you can start kat5200 at all (outside of emulationstation).

I'm not sure if an entry already exists for Atari 5200 in your /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg but is should have a section like this:

  <system>\
    <name>atari5200</name>\
    <fullname>Atari 5200</fullname>\
    <path>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari5200</path>\
    <extension>.7z .a52 .bin .zip .7Z .A52 .BIN .ZIP</extension>\
    <command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ atari5200 %ROM%</command>\
    <platform>atari5200</platform>\
    <theme>atari5200</theme>\
  </system>' /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg

Used2BeRX

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

@used2berx Did you use the binaries for Atari800 ?

I don't know. I just followed the two different instructions you had to download the one for the newer and older versions of RetroPie that I've always used since you first started doing this.

They are built built for arm cpu's so i doubt they would work (unless you're using an arm based laptop).

No. It's a standard PC based laptop.

The best thing would be to (manually) compile on the laptop itself.
for Atari800:
download and extract https://github.com/futurechild/atari800-rpi/archive/master.zip
cd *whatever folder*/src
autoreconf -v
./configure 
make clean
make
sudo make install

You think this would work on my laptop?

As Kat5200 is already built locally with my script there should be something other than a difference in cpu, you can try rebuilding :
download and extract http://kat5200.jillybunch.com/downloads/kat5200-0.8.1.tar.gz
cd *whatever folder*
./configure
make
sudo make install
or you can check if you can start kat5200 at all (outside of emulationstation).

I'm not interested in kat5200 myself. Atari 5200 works out of the box on the XBox already. I had to do a lot of work setting it up for the RetroPie with your old atari800 build. If I can't carry that work over to the laptop then I'm just going to skip it for this build.

I'm not sure if an entry already exists for Atari 5200 in your /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg but is should have a section like this:

  <system>\
    <name>atari5200</name>\
    <fullname>Atari 5200</fullname>\
    <path>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari5200</path>\
    <extension>.7z .a52 .bin .zip .7Z .A52 .BIN .ZIP</extension>\
    <command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ atari5200 %ROM%</command>\
    <platform>atari5200</platform>\
    <theme>atari5200</theme>\
  </system>' /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg

I didn't look, but it's probably doing that. I never had to edit that file by hand on the Pi Zero.

future.child

@used2berx said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:

I don't know. I just followed the two different instructions you had to download the one for the newer and older versions of RetroPie that I've always used since you first started doing this.

Ok, then you just downloaded the binaries.
As they are compiled for arm cpu's (raspberry pi) they will not work in a pc/laptop (they normally have a x86/x64 cpu).

@used2berx said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:

You think this would work on my laptop?

I do not see why not, afaik almost all linux distro's have support to compile software locally.
Maybe you need to install some headers first (i.e. sdl2) but just give it a go.