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

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/

UDb23

@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?

FYI
I used 7 zip under windows and 7zip's counterpart on Mac; both with default compression: no issues.

grant2258

use the legacy .zip format not. zipx

http://kb.winzip.com/kb/entry/36/

mame does support deflate its the default format for zip universally. winzip and 7zip use it by default your zip compression util must be setting it to something else.

Ive never had any issues in linux using zip or unzip at the command line either or with winrar/winzip/7zip.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_(file_format)

Clyde

@grant2258 said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

use the legacy .zip format not. zipx

I had to look up zipx because I never heard of it before. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_(file_format), it's the name only Winzip uses for zip files "that use compression methods newer than DEFLATE; specifically, methods BZip, LZMA, PPMd, Jpeg and Wavpack". But my zip files that mame2003-plus rejects do use Deflate according to KDE's standard archiver Ark, so they aren't zipx files either. :(

mame does support deflate its the default format for zip universally. winzip and 7zip use it by default your zip compression util must be setting it to something else.

Strangely, even zip files that I create with 7z a invaders.zip * in the directory which contains my PNG and ART files are rejected by mame2003-plus with the "OS not supported" error. I'm using 7-Zip [64] 16.02 from Kubuntu 18.04.1's official repositories.

But files created with the standard zip tool Zip 3.0 (July 5th 2008), also from Kubuntu's repos, can be read by mame2003-plus! Again, I used no other options than zip invaders.zip *.

Very strange … as is the error "OS not supported". But I don't want to hijack this thread with this, I'm just extremely puzzled about it. And using the ziptool, I now have the means to create deflated files that mame2003-plus will recognize. \o/

grant2258

it the way your creating your zips send a link to a zip thats not working ill look at whats getting set. Its another flag thats getting set somewhere would need a zip to see what flag is being set cant really help beyond that

grant2258

run zipinfo -v you will see the problem is in the header compare 7z and zip created archives. I believe from a quick look at the source the problem is with with

minimum file system compatibility required:     Unix

this is causing the os error

A Former User

Where are you guys putting your roms, for Mame 2003 Plus ?
I've tried here

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/mame2003-plus/roms

And here

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-libretro/mame2003-plus/roms

And Mame 2003 Plus just doesn't see them. It runs a few roms, so it must be reading them from the arcade roms folder.
Here is what I've done so far.
Compile the latest Mame-2003-Plus source.
Run a game that works, bring up the menu and export a xml dat file
Using clrmamepro, and the guide on these forums, I made a rom set from a 0.78 set + 0.139 set, non-merged sets.
This worked great, the missing roms text reported
"You are missing 20 of 4875 known mame2003-plus sets (+ BIOS sets)"
So that went well. So it's not the roms, just where they are uploaded to.

One other thing, when I managed to get a rom to work, the Mame menu was just a few entries,

Dip Switches
Bookkeeping Info
Game Info
Game history
Cheat
Generate XML DAT
Return to Game

there was no input menu - so I couldn't make custom inputs per-game.

Clyde

@grant2258 That's it! Krusader and 7z add Unix file system as minimum requirement. I never stumbled upon this because I normally only create zip files for my own use on Linux. I guess I could configure 7z to another minimum, but alas, Krusader don't have any such options (the usual disadvantage of GUI tools).

Here's the output for three test files. Their file names tell which program I used:

$ zipinfo -v krusader_zip.zip | grep minimum
  minimum file system compatibility required:     Unix
  minimum software version required to extract:   2.0
  minimum file system compatibility required:     Unix
  minimum software version required to extract:   2.0
$ zipinfo -v 7z.zip | grep minimum
  minimum file system compatibility required:     Unix
  minimum software version required to extract:   2.0
  minimum file system compatibility required:     Unix
  minimum software version required to extract:   2.0
$ zipinfo -v zip.zip | grep minimum
  minimum file system compatibility required:     MS-DOS, OS/2 or NT FAT
  minimum software version required to extract:   2.0
  minimum file system compatibility required:     MS-DOS, OS/2 or NT FAT
  minimum software version required to extract:   2.0

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. It's only 10 in the morning and I already learned something important. 😊

One last question in this matter: Do you know if the requirements of a zip file can be changed after its creation?

edit: But … shouldn't mame2003-plus or libretro be able to open such zip files on a *nix system? It's a rare case, but an incorrect behaviour nonetheless.

@John_RM_70 I don't think you can place roms in subfolders of the actual roms folders. You can either put your mame2003-plus roms in $HOME/RetroPie/roms/arcade or in $HOME/RetroPie/roms/mame-libretro. The former has the advantage that you can mix roms for multiple arcade emulators.

edit: As for the controls, they're to be managed in RetroArch's RGUI/XMB menu, not in MAME itself anymore. You can change that in RA's GUI under Quick Menu > Options > Input interface.

A Former User

Thanks Clyde. The problem with using the RetroPie/roms/arcade folder is that it's already occupied by a older Mame set. Do you think Mame 2003 Plus is in a good enough state to wipe the older roms and only use 2003 plus ?

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

edit: As for the controls, they're to be managed in RetroArch's RGUI/XMB menu, not in MAME itself anymore. You can change that in RA's GUI under Quick Menu > Options > Input interface

I'm not at my Pi at the moment, but going the Retroarch Input interface way - can you still map controls per-game ? For example, I use twin sticks in Robotron, so they need to be mapped properly for the twin sticks. Thanks for your help.

Clyde

@John_RM_70 said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

Thanks Clyde. The problem with using the RetroPie/roms/arcade folder is that it's already occupied by a older Mame set. Do you think Mame 2003 Plus is in a good enough state to wipe the older roms and only use 2003 plus ?

I did just that over the holidays. 😊 So a) yes, I think it should be good enough (it's "only" an enhanced fork of mame2003 after all), but b) I haven't much actual experience with it. I'm in the process of testing all of the new and fixed games one after another.

I would suggest that you backup your old set before replacing it with a mame2003-plus set.

Another option is to put only the new and fixed games in arcade together with your old set, and configure only them to be run by mame2003-plus via the Runcommand menu.

As a third option, you can put your old set in arcade and your plus set in mame-libretro. You'll then have "Arcade" as well as "MAME" as systems in Emulation Station. I have this setup on my Linux pc that is fast enough to run mame2016 in "Arcade", whereas in "MAME" I keep a copy of the mame2003(-plus) set of my Pi for testing.

I'm not at my Pi at the moment, but going the Retroarch Input interface way - can you still map controls per-game ? For example, I use twin sticks in Robotron, so they need to be mapped properly for the twin sticks. Thanks for your help.

Yes, that's possible. The Quick Menu > Controls in RA can save your mappings either for a single game or for the current core (e.g. mame2003-plus).

If some bind you want is not possible via RA, you can still switch to mame input, bind the buttons in MAME, and then reset RA to retroarch input. MAME should retain the mappings you did in its menu, I think. But others here can tell you that for sure.

A Former User

@Clyde Thanks Clyde, that is exactly what I was looking for.

UDb23

@John_RM_70 there is also another option; create a new system in ES dedicated just to lr-mame2003plus. In this way you can keep you other roms and have 2003plus roms in their own folder.

A Former User

@UDb23 I Did think of doing that, I just don't have the space on the SDCard to have Mame-Advance, Mame-old, and now Mame 2003 Plus. So, I have wiped them all and now only have 2003 plus - and so far it's working on the few roms I have tested. Appreciate the suggestion.

Clyde

While testing my newly created mame2003-plus set, I heard the optional soundtrack for outrun for the first time. Man, am I glad that I didn't use cheap speakers in my upright cabinet … 😮😄

Thanks to all of you that made this possible!

Riverstorm

@Clyde - I agree the custom OST's are one of the neatest additions to Plus.

UDb23

I can't get rid of the disclaimer. Even if I edit the core options file as suggested(with ES closed) at next boot a line will be added again at the end of the cfg with "skip" disabled!
Any suggestions ?

Clyde

@UDb23 Like with your backdrop problem, the option to skip the disclaimer is working in my mame2003-plus 644b581. What is different in your system?

robertvb83

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

While testing my newly created mame2003-plus set, I heard the optional soundtrack for outrun for the first time. Man, am I glad that I didn't use cheap speakers in my upright cabinet … 😮😄

Thanks to all of you that made this possible!

Yeah its so great. Have you tried moonwalker ost? Its just epic

Clyde

@robertvb83 Now I have. Wow … I'm not that into MJ, but I am nevertheless stunned how much this is completing the game.

edit: It's a little like playing a MJ music video. ;)

janderclander14

Does Mame2003-plus supports or plans to support Mame "outputs"? By "outputs" I mean the commands to control the arcade hardware (mainly lights, but also motion) that certain games implement. For example, the blinking start/coin buttons in certain games, the light marquee in multi-slot neogeo games, brake lights in Outrun, police lights in Chase HQ:

The regular Mame implements an output system that can be used with the Pi, but is too slow for most games. This is an example of changing leds via GPIO according to the selected game in a multislot rom:

Also, RGBCommander (a daemon capable of controlling leds) already supports Mame outputs through led controllers (such as LedWiz), thus making it possible to use them on the Pi but again, it seems to work only with the standard Mame output system.

I understand that the integration of Mame within retroarch could hamper the support of standard Mame outputs but, since Mame2003-plus has been capable of supporting quite an amount of advanced functionalities of other mame forks, I was curious about the viability of the Mame output system.