Working Dreamcast games

quicksilver

@mitu build was successful but any game I launch just sends me back to ES.

@barbudreadmon is lr-recaist compatible with .chd files?

mitu

@quicksilver said in Working Dreamcast games:

build was successful but any game I launch just sends me back to ES.

Looks like a BIOS issue. Launch with verbose logging and look at the log file (/dev/shm/runcommand.log) and see where it's looking for them.

is lr-recaist compatible with .chd files?

It should be - https://github.com/libretro/reicast-emulator/pull/367.

pjft

Even with a CDI file it doesn't run.

https://pastebin.com/21U0SF8d

The last few lines suggest

[INFO] Environ UNSUPPORTED (#65585).
/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh: line 1006:  5554 Segmentation fault

barbudreadmon

Yes it is compatible with chd, the bioses go into [system]/dc/, [system] being your bios folder for RA cores, same dc_flash.bin and dc_boot.bin as standalone. For naomi support, the bioses are naomi.zip, awbios.zip, f355bios.zip, f355dlx.zip, hod2bios.zip and airlbios.zip from mame romset.

barbudreadmon

@pjft Seems like a no-bios issue too, at the very least i can reproduce a crash at the same moment if i delete my bioses. It might be a good idea to update your RA too, yours might be too old (cf. the Environ UNSUPPORTED messages)

pjft

@barbudreadmon ah, that's fair. My RA is indeed a bit outdated by today's standards.

The BIOS did seem to load in lines 192 and 194 but it might be RA related.

Thanks!

WarC0zes

I tested lr-reicast, but no games are launched, it comes back emulationstation.
I have the bios in Retropie/Bios/dc/
I have this as error : /opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh : ligne 1003 : 5513 Segmentation error

https://pastebin.com/LqnvXhmU

My settings:
Retropie 4.4.8
Rpi 3 B
ES 1.8.1
RA 1.7.6

quicksilver

@barbudreadmon so I updated retroarch to latest version and made sure my bioses are in /BIOS/dc but after launching a game it still kicks me back to emulation station

mitu

I had the same crash while testing, but followed This comment on the Issue tracker and now the core starts.
Only tested Ikaruga (from a .chd) and started a game, looks a bit choppier than the standalone. Note that I didn't apply all the settings that @barbudreadmon mentioned, I only made sure Enable Threaded rendering and put a frameskip of 1 just to check. I suspect lowering the resolution would also help, but remains to be tested further.

Febbweiss

Same thing for me, backing to emulationstation. But lr-reicast works. If you copy/paste the command line in the /dev/shm/rucommand.log and execute it (after quitting or killing emulationstation) the emulator works even Wacky Races.
I don't know why it crashes using emulationstation launcher...

barbudreadmon

I tried the core on my rpi3b+ and didn't experience this issue (i'm using my own custom setup not based on retropie/debian though). You might try what @mitu suggested, aka adding < /dev/null at the end of the command line in your es_system.cfg.

About performances, it was playable in the few games i tried (i tried a few naomi/atomiswave games like "hokuto no ken" too), same as standalone.

mitu

Forgot to mention I'm using a 3B model (non B+). To complete what @barbudreadmon suggested, I've modified the entry for lr-reicast in /opt/retropie/configs/dreamcast/emulators.cfg to get lr-reicast starting.

lr-reicast = "/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-reicast/reicast_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/dreamcast/retroarch.cfg %ROM% </dev/null"

WarC0zes

@mitu Thanks, the games are launching now :)

after test, works better reicast than lr-reicast for rpi 3B.

barbudreadmon

@WarC0zes said in Working Dreamcast games:

after test, works better reicast than lr-reicast for rpi 3B.

You probably mean faster (it is, slightly), because lr-reicast is better in terms of compatibility and features, one example is that the dead zone thing mentioned by @backstander is in core options.

WarC0zes

@barbudreadmon Yes, mean faster. After cool for naomi games, but rpi 3b lack of power.

quicksilver

@mitu @barbudreadmon Thank you for your help on this! I now have lr-reicast working on my pi3b+ (overclocked). Testing crazy taxi, performance is at least on par with the standalone reicast and may actually be better. I think Lr-reicast must use something different for audio because the standalone reicast using omx will drop the sound any time the fps takes a dip. Lr-reicast audio however only stutters a little bit when fps dips. Ive noticed this behavior with OMX while using mupen64plus and thats why I switched to SDL for audio when using that emulator.

I cant wait to test more games with this! Hopefully this can be added directly to the experimental emulators at some point in the future.

mitu

@quicksilver lr-reicast will use ALSA, and I think the standalone Reicast also got ALSA sound support, but the launching script might not be updated for it (on the Pi) - from what I noticed looking at the emulators.cfg, it uses either omx or oss.

EDIT: actually, ALSA support was available in standalone Reicast also, it's not a recent addition as I thought.

barbudreadmon

@quicksilver iirc, the main developper of lr-reicast reimplemented the spu emulation (sound processing unit) last year, i'm not sure those changes were backported to standalone. As to why, the main reason might be that it's not easy to commit something to standalone reicast, even when it is confirmed to fix issues.

quicksilver

Tested a few more games with lr-recaist. Army men Sarge's heroes is significantly slower even with the recommended tweaks @barbudreadmon suggested. Daytona USA is also slower and has some missing textures on the cars (might be caused by one of the tweaks?). But having analog deadzone is great!

I've noticed that quite a few games have textures that flicker (army men, dynamite cop to name a few). This is present in the standalone core as well as lr-recaist. Is this because we are using a gles 2 device? Is this worth reporting on the GitHub issue tracker or is it something we pi users are stuck with?

barbudreadmon

@quicksilver There might be some improvements with textures if you change settings for "Alpha sorting", "Modifier Volumes", and "Div Matching", that will most likely slow down the emulation but feel free to experiment.

Most of the rendering improvements were done on the OIT renderer, which required an OpenGL 4.3 compatible gpu, and preferably a good one (some games are struggling on my gtx960 with the oit renderer, while i'm not even using enhanced resolution or upscaling). For the most part i think the non-OIT renderer is the same as standalone reicast, so turning on/off one option or the other should give the same result.