mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support

UDb23

@grant2258 Sorry I meant 2003plus of course, and that's where pull request was made. Edited previous post.

Riverstorm

@UDb23 - Thanks for testing. Now all the calculations make sense on what was happening and why they needed transposed.

Thanks for the new backdrops they look great. I pulled out the Pi late afternoon yesterday and it was a big hit. Way more interest than I thought it would have. It took me a few minutes to figure out I had to force the HDMI audio to the TV but after that it was smooth sailing. I always bring along a small wireless keyboard just for those types of situations.

I need to figure another hotkey for player 2 start on controller 1. For single stick games they had to press player 2 start for 2 players on the second controller and then pass only the first controller back and forth to play. They kind of frowned upon it since they needed to reach over to it every time to start a game so it was good to have others "testing" to see how intuitive it is for new players.

UDb23

@Riverstorm said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

player 2 start on controller 1

I usually remap left and right analog "buttons" on player 1 gamepad to "coin 2" and "start 2".
Think few console games require pushing the analog sticks as buttons anyway.

Riverstorm

@UDb23 said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

I usually remap left and right analog "buttons" on player 1 gamepad to "coin 2" and "start 2".
Think few console games require pushing the analog sticks as buttons anyway.

I think that was the only thing that seemed "clunky" so to speak when playing 2 player games. I will give that setup a try. When I am at home I have a controller and keyboard in front of me. I don't get 2 players to often as the wife only likes a few arcade games. Her wheelhouse is Mario Bros. games on NES/SNES. Then she starts talking smack.

Riverstorm

@UDb23 - Do you have any idea how multiple submissions are handled? If say someone else wants to refine or there's an alternate background for an arcade game someone wants to share. They need to named the sames as the ROM correct? How is that handled on on pull request since it's automatically pulled down to your artwork directory when updating from source.

Clyde

@Riverstorm said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

@Clyde - I would be curious if you do test SI would you be willing to post a screenshot when you have it all loaded? I struggle with what a 16:9 backdrop image will look like on a 3:4 or 5:4 display. Will it be squished on the y axis, clipped/zoomed on the sides or look correct. I only have standard 16:9 displays at home so a 16:9 backdrop fits perfectly.

I think it would help to understand if people using different displays will need custom backdrops or if one size fits all.

I finally got around trying @UDB23's invaders.zip on my 1600x1200 display. Alas, it won't fill the screen, but display as a 1600x901 picture:

alt text

The areas above and below the image are displayed plain black on the 1600x1200 screen.

I then tried to resize the backdrop picture to 1200x1600 and change the position in invaders.art to -0.214286,0,1.214286,1, calculated by @UDb23's spreadsheet for a backdrop of 1600x1200 and a game area of 1120x1200 (upscaled SA's original resolution of 224x240), but the backdrop isn't displayed then.

What am I doing wrong?

UDb23

@Clyde For SI, as the CRT was physically rotated in the cabinet you need to use the following as input in the sheet to calculate the coords to place in the.ART file:
backdrop: 1200x1600
game area: 1200x1120

For the game area please check first in the RGUI what is the resolution with your monitor (without any artwork enabled). Then use that as reference for calc (transposing X/Y in the case of SI as explained before).

Riverstorm

@Clyde - Ok that make sense and is good to know. The backdrop is going to attempt to scale for different ratios. If you fill the screen horizontally (1600) to keep the same ratio of the original backdrop it would be 1600 x 0.5626 = 900. So 1600 x 900 would be the best ratio possible (of the original artwork) without clipping. If you attempt to fill it vertically to 1200 and calculate the numbers it would go beyond the edges horizontally (beyond 1600).

Why 901? I am not sure but it should be 900. It's the same on HD displays it shows as 1918 x 1080 which is two pixels off (it should be 1920 x 1080). I don't know if it's the calculations or the core doing these minor miscalculations.

I have a little bit of black on the border of HD TV's naturally but I believe the backdrop and game area align at the same level. My RA screenshots definitely show a black bar that doesn't exist in game play but at 900 you probably have some hefty black bars.

When you resized the backdrop your numbers are backward so maybe that's why it doesn't display at all. You need to reverse your numbers so try them as below and your numbers should come out to 0,-0.214286,1,1.214286.

Backdrop image:
x (width) = 1200
y (height) = 1600

Game area:
x (width) = 1200
y (height) = 1120

UDb23

@Riverstorm said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

Do you have any idea how multiple submissions are handled?

Currently lr-mame2003plus is supposed to simply copy the artwork files during installation from the github folder. That means no way to select multiple. Maybe @markwkidd can implement a system that requests monitor aspect during installation and copies artwork from specific github folder.
Otherwise I can keep multiple versions in the Overlay repo and we could kindly ask @meleu if he can "upgrade" his script to manage also backdrops as we do for multiple overlays.

UDb23

@Clyde if you are going to resize the backdrop to fit your display it's better you use a higher res image source for the backdrop (as you have more pixels on vertical than 1080).
High Res Taito moon image here.

I would suggest we create a separate thread to discuss about backdrops to avoid "cluttering" this thread. ;-)

Riverstorm

@UDb23 - Ok, yeah from what Clyde is showing it seems different displays will need different sizes or it might be possible to use negative positioning but would have a side effect of clipping. Basically filling the y axis (1200) and clip what goes beyond 1600. I don't even know if it's possible just a guess.

Yeah I was thinking if a game had 2 backdrops. Let's say you submit one named invaders.zip and "John" comes along and submits an alternate "invaders.zip" you can't sumbit that in a pull request correct? One would overwrite the other?

Riverstorm

@UDb23 said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

I would suggest we create a separate thread to discuss about backdrops to avoid "cluttering" this thread. ;-)

Sounds good.

UDb23

@Riverstorm said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

One would overwrite the other?

yes

Clyde

@Riverstorm said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

@UDb23 said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

I would suggest we create a separate thread to discuss about backdrops to avoid "cluttering" this thread. ;-)

Sounds good.

Okay, I will do that. Stay tuned while I am testing your suggestions.

Clyde

Done. :)

Clyde

@Clyde said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

I then tried to resize the backdrop picture to 1200x1600 and change the position in invaders.art to -0.214286,0,1.214286,1, calculated by @UDb23's spreadsheet for a backdrop of 1600x1200 and a game area of 1120x1200 (upscaled SA's original resolution of 224x240), but the backdrop isn't displayed then.

That it didn't display in my previous attempt may have been a problem with the format of my zip files. My file manager Krusader for Linux/KDE uses the compression method "Deflate". Mame2003-plus can't read this compression, apparently (runcommand.log):

[libretro ERROR] [MAME 2003+] Error in zipfile invaders.zip
The format of this zipfile is not supported, please recompress it
[libretro ERROR] [MAME 2003+] Error in zipfile invaders.zip: OS not supported

So I had to manually choose "Copy" as compression method, all other methods I can choose – namely Bzip2, Deflate64, LZMA, and PPMd – result in a different error, Compression method unsupported.

So mame2003-plus can only read zip files with "Copy" compression?

Riverstorm

@Clyde said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

So mame2003-plus can only read zip files with "Copy" compression?

That's definitely a question for the core guys. I use a program named RAR with maximum zip only compression set and haven't had any issues. Copy to me implies zero compression, basically stored in a zip file.

Clyde

@Riverstorm said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

Copy to me implies zero compression, basically stored in a zip file.

That's what I thought, too. Besides, the error "OS not supported" seems very strange to me for opening an archive file, especially since both the pc which created the file and the Pi who received it run Linux, although x86-64 and ARM variants.

And all other methods get the "method not supported" error, only Deflate gets the "OS not supported" one. 😒

But you're right, that is more a topic for libretro (I guess). I just wanted to note that the image not displaying was most probably not a result of the positioning in the .art file.

Riverstorm

@Clyde said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

But you're right, that is more a topic for libretro (I guess)

Maybe @markwkidd or @grant2258 would know the answer.

Clyde

@Riverstorm Again, that's what I thought, too. I'm off to offline things like supper now, anyway. Have a nice evening or whatever time of the day is at your place. o/