Working Dreamcast games

[Efriim]

I updated reicast yesterday, I noticed Jet Grind Radio renders shadows now, unfortunately they render and flash sometimes and Jet Grind Radio needs all the performance it can get. Is there a way to disable them again, or do I need the old binary? Do I have to edit the build source? Is there any rundown for reicast emu.cfg file? I've searched and couldn't find anything until I just now installed lr-reicast, which has the core options listed I could try to cross reference.

[BJRetro]

@George-Spiggott

This is the best I can do:

1. update the retropie setup script

2. update Retroarch from the the retropie setup menu choosing the “from binary” option

3. once you reboot and are back in emulation station press F4

4. type sudo nano /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/libretrocores/lr-reicast.sh

This lets you edit the lr-reicast setup script to allow it to appear on the raspberry pi retropie setup menu under experimental packages. Edit the lines motion pointed you to:

replace the rp_module_flags with
rp_module_flags=""

in the build_lr-reicast function, replace the single make line with
make platform=rpi3
Press Ctrl and X on your keyboard then y to save changes.

5)type sudo reboot to reboot then in EmulationStation go to the retropie setup menu, manage experimental packages, and lr-reicast should now be there. Install from source.

6. type sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/dreamcast/emulators.cfg

You will see a line that says lr-reicast= and at the very end of the line inside the last quotation mark put < /dev/null

7. put the bios files you need in the Dreamcast bios folder

8. Dreamcast should now work when you start a game.

If the paths are wrong in steps 4 or 6 let me know as I am not in front of my pi so doing it from memory.

[shavecat]

@BJRetro
Thanks , now i can also try it too later ;)

[Stuart2773]

@BJRetro @mitu

just tested this install and works great, i had about 10 games that would not load via the standard reicast and this lr-reicast version loads them ( especially the new independent releases.

its definatley worth considering this adding it to the experimental packages

thank you.

[shavecat]

Worked for me very slow and leggy , then for some reason stop to work....
not worth it from my side.
Why is it jumping back to the emulator ?

[BJRetro]

@shavecat I am not sure what you mean or what game you tried. But I was playing around with the settings on Virtua Fighter (yay I was right; by enabling analog to digital controls for left analog in the retro arch settings I can finally use this game on my bar top! That alone makes it worth it for me to have lr-reicast). What I found was that at least for that particular game, using the runcommand menu to select CEA-3 as the video mode (so a lower resolution)and then using the retro arch menu and turning on bilinear filtering on video settings in-game, made it run very well and also look good rather than fuzzy or jagged edges. I can tell it is still running slightly slower than the game was supposed to run originally but I can have a lot of fun this way. So the big benefit of using lr-Reicast is you can mess with the settings a lot easier and see what works best for you.

[George Spiggott]

@BJRetro Thanks. That was a clear description. It worked first time for me.

And so onto the testing with a vanilla Pi3B & vanilla LR-Reicast. Comparisons are with the lastest version of Reicast where relevant:

General: Set to Spanish language for some reason and cannot be changed AFAIK. Games pick up on the general Retropie settings for screen size (widescreen), volume and joypad buttons (more on this) as you would expect.
[edit] The language and controls (disable User X Analog To Digital) can be fixed in Core Options and setting Frameskip to 1 speeds things up a little.

Soulcalibur: Still has graphical glitches and stutters. This is worse on LR Reicast than on Reicast IMO.

Rez: No graphical errors, stutters slightly in places. Much improved on LR Reicast.

Soul Reaver. Still stutters on intro screens and is slower. Also has an odd interaction with the dpad up being mapped to the analogue left stick. Worse on LR-Reicast. Best played on PS1 with the hi-res graphics hack IMO.
[edit] Core options can be used to fix the analogue stick problem. Still a little slower on a Pi3B+

Rayman 2: Stutters slightly and has some odd graphical glitches. Better on Reicast where it runs flawlessly.

Shadowman: Some graphical glitches. the dpad/analogue stick problem makes the game unplayable. Better on Reicast.
[edit] As above for controls.

Panzer Front: Runs too slowly to play. Appears to have cleaner graphics than on Reicast though. Better on Reicast.

Marvel VS. Capcom: Game runs slower in intros but plays fine. Slightly better on Reicast.

Daytona USA: Game music is choppy and there are graphical glitches. Better on Reicast.

Jet Grind Radio: Plays fine. I didn't notice the shadows problem mentioned above. Fine on either LR-Reicast or Reicast.

Conclusion: Only one of my games actually plays better on LR-Reicast but I see this as in no way a failure (since I can still use Reicast). I suspect many of my problems are easily resolved with a little modification of settings. [edit] Indeed the language and joypad issues can be easily fixed. Speed issues can be mitigated to some extent without resorting to overclocking.

This is to my mind a great step forward for the Retropie and Dreamcast emulation communities. Kudos to all (especially @mitu and @BJRetro in this thread) who have made this possible.

[shavecat]

@BJRetro
Worked at the start but very slowly (the same games i have the ruining already)....
maybe your fix your fix it.
but for now it is just going to black screen then back to menu station :\

[Efriim]

@George-Spiggott
I think Soul Reaver on reicast is best, the widescreen and high resolution gives it a remarkable placement. With frameskips at the lake of the dead with all the waterfalls, and maybe some other places with rain effects. Comparably I got slowdowns at the first pool of water in the PSX version. But I didn't have any controller problems, and the videos are worse I was thinking it was because of chd compression or downsizing.

In JGR in the area after it introduces the love shockers, theres a waterway and quite a few shadowed areas, the shadows were not rendered in the previous reicast version around retropie 4.4.1. Entering the shadows they look mostly fine but sometimes the shadow layer will disappear and it will suddenly be bright again, not to mention this game needs all the performance adjustments it can get. The same level there are the police that use tear gas and that was super slow.

To each their own.

[BJRetro]

@George-Spiggott thanks but real credit goes to @barbudreadmon And @mitu I just put it all on one post (I don’t know how to edit the reicast wiki page but if someone knows how maybe they can take my post and put the info on there for someone who wants to try lr-reicast until it makes its way back into the setup script by default). Barbudreadmon actually worked on lr-reicast and was the one who brought it to our attention it would run on rpi. Also I have a 3b+ overclocked so that may make a difference on performance too.

[George Spiggott]

@Efriim I don't doubt that there is a shadow problem, I just didn't see it.

The controller problem crops up in games where the D pad and the analogue stick are used for different commands. For example in Soul Reaver D pad up is used to open the Glyph menu. When you push directly up on the analogue stick it opens the Glyph menu instead of moving Raziel forward.

To solve my language problem I need to access the Dreamcast Bios menu mid game.

@BJRetro Thanks for the clarification. Thanks to @barbudreadmon for all of his hard work.

[ninuzzu]

@barbudreadmon I've tested the mame dumped rom mslug6.zip, with naomi.zip and awbios.zip.
It's the same as the .lst version that I have, I think it's an alpha channel issue with textures.
What are the settings for reicast_frame_skipping in the core options? I can't see any change ingame.
I've also checked Virtua Tennis, Virtua Tennis 2 ad Wacky Races

Virtua Tennis - Dreamcast .chd - works good on reicast, has texture issues in lr-reicast
Virtua Tennis - Naomi .zip - lr-reicast crashes after I put some coins and press start
Virtua Tennis - Naomi.lst - lr-reicast crashes, same as before

Virtua Tennis 2 - Dreamcast .chd - works good on reicast, has texture issuesin lr-reicast
Virtua Tennis 2 - Naomi .zip - texture issues, unplayable
Virtua Tennis 2 - Naomi.lst - texture issues, unplayable, same as before

Wacky Races - Dreamcast .chd - has rendering issues in reicast (unplayable) , rendering issues are fixed in lr-reicast, but performance is worse than reicast.

[barbudreadmon]

@ninuzzu last time i checked, most of those games were working properly, so maybe that's something related to the performance settings ? Could you try setting "div matching" to "auto" or "disabled" and tell me if it's solving some of your texture issues ? I confirm the issue with naomi version of virtua tennis 1, that's actually a known issue (https://github.com/libretro/reicast-emulator/issues?q=is%3Aissue+virtua+tennis+is%3Aopen).

[ninuzzu]

@barbudreadmon Thanks, setting it to auto has solved the black textures issues in MS6. What about performance? Almost any dreamcast game run way better in reicast than in lr-reicast, there must be something I'm missing with my settings....:

reicast_alpha_sorting = "per-strip (fast, least accurate)"
reicast_audio_buffer_size = "1024"
reicast_cpu_mode = "dynamic_recompiler"
reicast_custom_textures = "disabled"
reicast_digital_triggers = "disabled"
reicast_div_matching = "auto"
reicast_dump_textures = "disabled"
reicast_enable_dsp = "disabled"
reicast_enable_purupuru = "enabled"
reicast_enable_rtt = "enabled"
reicast_enable_rttb = "disabled"
reicast_frame_skipping = "1"
reicast_framerate = "normal"
reicast_gdrom_fast_loading = "enabled"
reicast_internal_resolution = "640x480"
reicast_mipmapping = "enabled"
reicast_render_to_texture_upscaling = "1x"
reicast_synchronous_rendering = "disabled"
reicast_texupscale = "off"
reicast_texupscale_max_filtered_texture_size = "256"
reicast_threaded_rendering = "enabled"
reicast_volume_modifier_enable = "disabled"
reicast_widescreen_hack = "disabled"

[barbudreadmon]

@ninuzzu said in Working Dreamcast games:

What about performance? Almost any dreamcast game run way better in reicast than in lr-reicast

Your settings seem fine, it is a fact that lr-reicast is slightly slower than standalone reicast, not by much though, many games i tried had the same playability than standalone, maybe not the ones you tried ?
Did you try rising frameskip above 1 ? Also, what's your raspberry model and overclock settings ?

[ninuzzu]

RPi3 B+ no overclock. I'll try to raise frameskip and report
Here more info about Wacky Races (they say it's fixed but maybe not on the Pi,going to test it on my phone) :

https://github.com/reicast/reicast-emulator/pull/1448

[barbudreadmon]

@ninuzzu said in Working Dreamcast games:

no overclock

That's an issue, if you intend to play 3D games on a raspberry you should really consider overclocking, the following values should be pretty safe and will improve 3D emulation dramatically :

arm_freq=1450
gpu_freq=500
core_freq=500
v3d_freq=500
sdram_freq=500
sdram_schmoo=0x02000020
over_voltage=6

You can read more about rpi3b+ overclocking in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/21138/overclocking-the-pi3b-gpu-results

[ninuzzu]

Wow thanks, let's do some test :D
Would you mind sharing with me you lr-reicast core ? Maybe mine is different.

[shavecat]

• lr-reicast -
  just going back to the emulation station after i pick a rom.
  any idea why ?

[ninuzzu]

@shavecat said in Working Dreamcast games:

• lr-reicast -
  just going back to the emulation station after i pick a rom.
  any idea why ?

Yes, see post by BJRetro (some posts above)

basically you have to edit /opt/retropie/configs/dreamcast/emulators.cfg and add
< /dev/null
at the very end of the line inside the last quotation mark in the line that says lr-reicast=