Installation of Mamedev MAME

George

Cool.

I did a test on a system with 2gb of memory and used rpSwap 8192 and everything compiled fine (took over a day to compile though). Any thoughts on having separate rpSwap amounts based on x86 (8192) vs. Pi (2048)? I feel 8192M on a Pi is a bit much, taking a considerable amount of space on an SD card, but I don't have any evidence to say whether it would be more than what most people have available or if too much swap is detrimental on these systems. I haven't pushed my updates to GitHub yet.

Thanks for the pointer on isPlatform. I'll look to use that to distinguish mame64 vs. mame. I looked at the mame makefile, but it looks like the TARGET parameter gets overridden deep in a sub-makefile that seems to be generated somehow.

In other news, I attempted to load the binary, which was compiled on a Raspberry Pi 3, onto a Raspberry Pi 0 and got an "Illegal instruction" error when trying to run it. That's new to me, since I've done this before on the previous version of RetroPie/Raspbian without a problem. Any thoughts on what might cause the issue? I'm currently attempting to compile on the Raspberry Pi 0 to see if I can narrow down the issue. It will probably take ...some... time though before it is complete.

Thanks!

- George

mitu

I think you can add the swap based on the platform - 6/8Gb on an x86 and 2Gb otherwise. Also, regarding the exe name, I think it's best to not fiddle/hack the build system just for the name, you can just move or rename the file after the compilation or just keep the different names.
For the Pi 0 not running the Pi3 binary - I think it's normal since they have different CPUs (ARM6-Z vs ARM7-A) and the CFLAGS used during compilation target either the Pi1/0 or Pi2/3 (via -mcpu, see here).

George

Thanks for the pointers.

I'm thinking I'll add a few checks for x86 and x64 and set swap and rename the executable accordingly. So far, that seems to be the most straightforward way to do it.

On the Pi 0 end, I'm doing some compile tests to see how things go. I'm really just looking at compile-ability and run-ability. Performance-wise, the Pi 0 does not do very well with recent versions of MAME.

Side question: Is there any way to have the scriptmodule pick up where it gets left off? For example, if a compilation fails, I can go back and fix an error, but the next time the script runs, compilation will start from scratch. So far, the only thing I've been able to workaround is make a backup copy of the build directory and then put it back after the download step finishes.

mitu

@George said in Installation of Mamedev MAME:

On the Pi 0 end, I'm doing some compile tests to see how things go. I'm really just looking at compile-ability and run-ability. Performance-wise, the Pi 0 does not do very well with recent versions of MAME.

You might as well disable it, waiting for 4 days to compile then finding out it's not really up to par it's not so user friendly.

Side question: Is there any way to have the scriptmodule pick up where it gets left off? For example, if a compilation fails, I can go back and fix an error, but the next time the script runs, compilation will start from scratch. So far, the only thing I've been able to workaround is make a backup copy of the build directory and then put it back after the download step finishes.

You can invoke different stages of the scriptmodule workflow through retropie_packages.sh:

sudo ./retropie_packages.sh mame sources # to download sources and apply patches
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh mame build # to compile the package
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh mame configure # to configure the package
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh mame clean # to clean up/wipe build folder
[.. etc..]

Make sure the build_mame function doesn't run 'make clean' and you should be able to resume compilation by using the build command for the package.

George

Oh wow. Thank you for the workflow info! That is invaluable! (Guess I should have asked before!)

Also, good point on disabling for Pi 0. I'll probably do that unless I find some games actually work well on it. ChoccyHobNob had some benchmarks done on a Pi B+. I'll try to replicate without overclocking. If nothing works, then it will be disabled.

George

Just wanted to let folks know that I have not abandoned this. In fact, I've just been continuing my tests. One of these tests has been to try a fresh install and compile on a Raspberry Pi Zero. The compilation step has taken over a month SO FAR. There may be something wrong with my SD card, but I have not seen any other issues, so I've just let it run. Hopefully it will finish soon and I can test out the binary which is expected to be very slow.

I'll update my Github with the latest scriptmodule once I've done some more tests. Thanks for the patience!

George

MAME is finally linking on my Raspberry Pi Zero. It's taken around 51 days so far. Haha!

jkman999

WOW!! That is crazy. I, for one, am watching this fairly closely as I would love to have just a few of those things running on the PI that are only in the newer versions. I really appreciate the work you are putting into it. Thanks.

J_K_M_A_N

George

Thanks JKMan,

It's been pretty smooth, so far, with the exception of getting it to compile on a Pi Zero. I'm still at that linking stage. I've gotten a couple of linker errors that I'm fighting through. The problem is that the linking process takes DAYS until it errors out on me again. I'm not ready to admit defeat on this yet though, even if the performance is abysmal on a Pi Zero.

I know it's been about a month since my last update. I'll try to give updates a little more regularly.

Thanks again,

George

meyers980

I know I'm definitely interested in this. George mentioned them up top, the recently added handheld LCD games (like Tiger Electronics, Coleco, and Game and Watch) are a big interest of mine. And building a handheld with a pi of some sort that could play those games would be wonderful.
The DEV team seems to be adding handfuls of old handhelds with each new build, as well. It seems like those games would run wonderfully on a pi but require new MAME to work.

mitu

@meyers980 You can get that by installing the lr-mess emulator, if you're interested in non-arcade systems emulated in current MAME. Currently, after installing it, it will configure the emulator to run VTech CRVision, Coleco, GB , Nes and Arcadia systems - so you'll have to manually add the other systems you're interested.

Compiling lr-mess on a Pi3 can take up to 30 hours.

meyers980

@mitu I thought MESS stopped being developed a while back when it was rolled into MAME.

Are you saying non-arcade games added to MAME .204 for example can be played in lr-mess? Or just games added up until the merger?

mitu

@meyers980 said in Installation of Mamedev MAME:

I thought MESS stopped being developed a while back when it was rolled into MAME.

I'm not sure about naming, but Mess is now part of MAME - the lr-mess target is built from the same repository as MAME, including all the non-arcade targets. So yes, it's up to date - https://github.com/libretro/mame - with the current Libretro MAME core. You can check to which MAME version the Libretro core is synchronized.

meyers980

@mitu That's very interesting! I'm definitely going to be testing that soon then. Thanks for the info.

George

Some updates:

I encountered linking errors with MAME on the Raspberry Pi 0, and when I attempted to resolve them, it restarted the compilation process. Sigh. For the time being, I've disabled Pi 0/ARM V6 (by adding !armv6 into the module flags).
The script will now detect when being built on a PC and set the Swap space to be larger.
Also when building for 64 bit, it will move the binary from mame64 to mame, so that it is still recognized by the script.
Updated for MAME v0207

Feel free to have a look. I'm currently testing it out. https://github.com/GeorgeMcMullen/RetroPie-Setup/blob/master/scriptmodules/emulators/mame.sh

- George

markwkidd

@mitu said in Installation of Mamedev MAME:

@meyers980 said in Installation of Mamedev MAME:

I thought MESS stopped being developed a while back when it was rolled into MAME.

I'm not sure about naming, but Mess is now part of MAME - the lr-mess target is built from the same repository as MAME, including all the non-arcade targets. So yes, it's up to date - https://github.com/libretro/mame - with the current Libretro MAME core. You can check to which MAME version the Libretro core is synchronized.

I have just created a guide to compiling libretro-mame (including the MESS target: https://docs.libretro.com/development/cores/core-specific/mame/

If there is anything that folks discover would be useful to add for rpi and other RetroPie users, please feel free to either edit that doc directly or you can submit updates via a github issue in the docs repository http://github.com/libretro/docs

mitu

@George said in Installation of Mamedev MAME:

Feel free to have a look. I'm currently testing it out. https://github.com/GeorgeMcMullen/RetroPie-Setup/blob/master/scriptmodules/emulators/mame.sh

Just a couple of comments

you don't need to rename the binary, I'd leave it as is and have a separate function (_mame_get_binary_name) that will return different values depending on the target platform. Use that function in the subsequent routines where the binary name is expected. Just a suggestion.
due to the way ES works, you'll not be able to have arcade/mame as a (sub)system. arcade is already an existing system and its configuration will override any sub-folders' configs.

George

Thanks @mitu,

My most recent Pi 3 build was successful with my changes and v0207. So things are looking good.

@mitu said in Installation of Mamedev MAME:

you don't need to rename the binary, I'd leave it as is and have a separate function (_mame_get_binary_name) that will return different values depending on the target platform. Use that function in the subsequent routines where the binary name is expected. Just a suggestion.

I'll look into adding a function like _mame_get_binary_name. I think that will help keep it clean.

due to the way ES works, you'll not be able to have arcade/mame as a (sub)system. arcade is already an existing system and its configuration will override any sub-folders' configs.

I was using the scriptmodules for mame4all and advmame as a reference while doing the script. That's why I included the addSystem "arcade" lines (though I also include the optional arguments for description and file extension). Are you saying I should remove the addSystem line for arcade or remove the optional arguments?

In other news, I've found that the Pi can get very hot during compilation. I did not experience this before, but I recently put my Pi in a new mini-arcade case (reusing a case from an old broken Coleco tabletop arcade) and have the Adafruit LCD Kippah on it. All this adds up to very little ventilation. I noticed that certain files were taking an inordinate amount of time to compile. Did a little research and found this post:

https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/83184/raspberry-pi-thermal-throttle

Sure enough, when running the commands:

vcgencmd measure_clock arm && vcgencmd measure_temp && vcgencmd get_throttled

My temperature was around 81C and the CPU clock was getting throttled. This may also explain why my Pi 0 was taking so long to compile, but that will require more research for another time.

So, heat sinks and ventilation are a must when trying to compile MAME (probably most versions). @markwkidd would that be useful info for your compilation guide?

- George

mitu

@George said in Installation of Mamedev MAME:

I was using the scriptmodules for mame4all and advmame as a reference while doing the script. That's why I included the addSystem "arcade" lines (though I also include the optional arguments for description and file extension). Are you saying I should remove the addSystem line for arcade or remove the optional arguments?

Advmane is using arcade and mame-advmame as ROM folders - see here.
Mame4All is using arcade and mame as ROMs folders - see here.

They're not configuring any sub-folders. So you can probably use arcade and mame (similar to Mame4ALL).

In other news, I've found that the Pi can get very hot during compilation. [...]

Did you hear about cross-compiling :) ?
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/19854/install-and-configure-precompiled-emulator-binaries/5

George

@mitu said in Installation of Mamedev MAME:

Advmane is using arcade and mame-advmame as ROM folders - see here.

Mame4All is using arcade and mame as ROMs folders - see here.

I see that advmame is creating a sub-directory here, but it's not actually being referenced in the configuration file. In fact, I don't reference the arcade/mame subfolder either, so I could probably take out:

mkRomDir "arcade/$system"

as well as:

ln -sf "$romdir/$system/$mame_sub_dir" "$romdir/arcade/$system"
# fix for older broken symlink generation
rm -f "$romdir/$system/$mame_sub_dir/$mame_sub_dir"

Would that be it?

Did you hear about cross-compiling :) ?
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/19854/install-and-configure-precompiled-emulator-binaries/5

8-O!!! I did not know about cross-compiling for RetroPie. I will have to check it out! Though, it's probably still good to do a compile test on the actual device.

- George