Custom configs for CRT using the built-in composite out

Sakitoshi

@dimetrius yup, that looks right.

dimetrius

@Sakitoshi Thank you very much, CRT TV is just great. There is a request, you can do it or tell me how to do it for zxspectrum 64,128. Thanks a lot for your attention

Sakitoshi

@dimetrius sorry if the reply is late, I was out the whole week.
I'm not familiar with the zx spectrum, but I see that it has a retroarch core so I'll see what I can do.

Sakitoshi

Requested update:

support for zx spectrum added (via lr-fuse).

Since I though my job was done after I added coleco/intellivision and msx I didn't investigated further which other emulators I could create configs for. that and I'm not really interested in microcomputers in general (I never had one and I'm not from Europe or even USA, my first piece of technology was a custom built 80486).
But here it is the support for the zx spectrum some were waiting for, better late than never I guess.

Rion

@Sakitoshi Have you looked at how the Guys/Gals over at the Facebook group Pi2Jamma / Pi2SCART (Google: facebook group 1649021265123737) solved the problem with automatic switching for vertical arcade games?

From retropie-4.4.12-pi2scart-v1
runcommand-onstart.sh
runcommand-onend.sh
vertical.txt

Sakitoshi

@Rion No, I havent. there are fundamental differences between built-in composite and other methods of analog tv out (mainly they have access to custom timings and resolutions while we are stuck at 720x480 interlaced or progressive skipping every other line) that make 90% of those configs useless for my purpose, so I usually just take a quick look and move on (that and I don't use facebook and stay away as far as possible from it).

and for what I can see they use a list and modify the config at launch time, both things that I try to avoid. the first because then I'll have to maintain said list and the second to not burn write cycles of the sd card every time you launch a game.
of course the list method is better (for me since the list was already made by them), but I don't want to burn out everyone's sd card.
another way to do it would be to create unique configs for each game (like I did for neogeo before giving it a dedicated scaling shader), but I prefer to avoid adding +2500 files just for a niche feature.

Rion

@Sakitoshi

Well sadly facebook is where they are. To bad that they don't use a forum. The "official" (circuit-board dot de) is sadly not updated with the latest info.

Its a pain in the ass to find something on facebook.

Anyway... I could not help myself so i created a 480i.txt containing all the games from the file vertical.txt with file extension to be place in:

/opt/retropie/configs/arcade/ 
/opt/retropie/configs/fba/

Then i went ahead and created *.cfg files for all the 2500 vertical games in the list.

Place in

/opt/retropie/configs/fba/config_crt/FinalBurn Neo/ 
/opt/retropie/configs/arcade/config_crt/emulator/

zip or rar pick your poison.

I have tested about 20 or so games and all looks good. But i am only using FinalBurn Neo at the moment.

Sakitoshi

@Rion I guess I can add an optional zip or rar with all the vertical configs.
I'll be testing a couple games to assure that at least the most popular ones work as intended, but it'll take some time.

Rion

@Sakitoshi

I was not aware of this until yesterday.

240p via HDMI on Raspberry Pi to RGBS, no need for RGB hats!
Non-powered active HDMI to VGA adapters for OSSC But i think you need a powered one for the pi if you look at the link below.
Connect your recalbox to a CRT with HDMI (EN)

Sakitoshi

Arcade update:

optional zip file added which contains every game that uses a vertical monitor.
also in the zip are a couple tweaks for popeye and the mortal kombat series.
new optional configs to help frame arcade games.

vertical configs for every (I think) arcade game are here!
and also I went ahead and tried to make some other arcade games look better.
arcade games are such a complicated beast that I really tried to avoid the issue, but since I also play them from time to time I just couldn't stand how they looked, so I had to open up my box of tricks and come up with something to frame them inside the viewable area of my tv. the results aren't perfect (if you put attention you can see there are missing lines thanks to the scaling going on), but it really helps since some games miss some information without doing that (you couldn't see the time in mortal kombat).

and as always, the details are in the github readme.

@Rion interesting information, but all of those links point to using pc monitors or rgb, which is not the goal of this.

handlolo

Hello again guys, I wanted to ask you one thing, how you have managed to make the controls work in Fuse, I have tried everything and I do not get the Pad or keyboard to work

Sakitoshi

@handlolo as a computer emulator, fuse controls highly depends on the game. you can open a virtual keyboard with select to choose kempston joystick in games that support it.
try jetpac or manic miner, I tested the configs with those games and both support the kempston joystick interface.

handlolo

@Sakitoshi thanks for the clarification.
But the problem I see is that absolutely nothing works, neither the kempston nor the keyboard, can you pass me a photo with your configuration?

Sakitoshi

@handlolo I'm using default core options, only needed to change the model to spectrum 48k for jetpac to actually load, manic miner works regardless.
for the controls you need to change the controls setting from retropad to kempston joystick.
I think you can also assign keyboard buttons to gamepad buttons (there are joypad X mapping core options), but I haven't tinkered with the options at all.

Rion

@Sakitoshi said in Custom configs for CRT using the built-in composite out:

@Rion interesting information, but all of those links point to using pc monitors or rgb, which is not the goal of this.

That is true. What i wanted to say was you can get true Rgb output from the HDMI port without buying a Pi2Scart or Retrotink Ultimate.

But here is the interesting part. @mikechi2 Mike Chi the creator of the RetroTink product line recently did an Interview with Bob from RetroRGB where he talks about a new device he is developing that can output 240p super resolution over HDMI from the Pi to Component, Scart or Composite.

The Interview is

and if you want to skip ahead it starts from 9:00.

@Sakitoshi said in Custom configs for CRT using the built-in composite out:

Arcade update:

optional zip file added which contains every game that uses a vertical monitor.

also in the zip are a couple tweaks for popeye and the mortal kombat series.

new optional configs to help frame arcade games.

vertical configs for every (I think) arcade game are here!
and also I went ahead and tried to make some other arcade games look better.
arcade games are such a complicated beast that I really tried to avoid the issue, but since I also play them from time to time I just couldn't stand how they looked, so I had to open up my box of tricks and come up with something to frame them inside the viewable area of my tv. the results aren't perfect (if you put attention you can see there are missing lines thanks to the scaling going on), but it really helps since some games miss some information without doing that (you couldn't see the time in mortal kombat).

and as always, the details are in the github readme.

This is very interesting.

Especially since the Mortal Kombat games outputs at a rather odd resolution of 400x254@54.7H.
I think you could do a lot of easy game specific configurations this way if you use the Mame/Final Burn Neo resolution database.

Sure it's true that arcade games used different resolutions but the ones like Mortal Kombat is a handful of games that uses non standard resolutions.

Here is the arcade rez table from Regamebox 3.0.20.

Rion

@Sakitoshi

Would you care to add these handheld overlays as an alternative to the ones already available?

Game Boy Advance Black
alt text
Game Boy Color Black

Game Boy Pocket Black

Dipkid

Having a bit of trouble..
New clean 4.5.1 image on a pi3 with all the cfgs and bios in their place.
Im getting nice clean images on my LG 2001 Coca-cola CRT tv! Iv edited the config.txt to sdtv_mode =2 since Im in europe & the tv is PAL. Could that be why I dont get fullscreen on any emulators? The cores doesent seem to be 4:3 / full screen, i have pretty big black bars at top and bottom on SNES and Genesis / 32X.
Neo-Geo is even weirder. There I get the screen cut off at the left & right sides although all of the green border on the Retroarch GUI is visible.

Now, I can fix these things manually by changeing X & Y aspect ratio custom values, but then I wont get the results the author had in mind. Wanted to know if I made some rookie misstake. I was under the impression that I shouldnt mess with the overscan settings when using these configs? / In advance thanks, Dipkid

Sakitoshi

@Rion sorry if is a little too late, but I was busy managing another project.
I rather not add custom configs for every arcade game, it's too much work since those will not work well unless I take care of them one by one. arcade monitors are calibrated for the specific game they are running and so would I need to do in order to get good results.
regarding the gameboy overlays, I prefer to keep things simple and have a single default overlay per system or I would have already added a gb pocket, gb light, gba sp and gb micro overlays.
If you want to change them though, you have to match the existing overlays in size and screen window. I know the resolution is weird but it's because of the aspect ratio correction I have to apply.
remember the pi outputs 720x480 but a crt tv visually squishes that to 4:3, so it looks like 640x480. my little secret number to get the right proportions is 1.125 (720 / 640), so gb/c for example 160 x 1.125 = 180 x 2 = 360. vertical is fixed so no need to mess with that. do the same with all the other portables.

@Dipkid sorry, but this is designed for ntsc. I have no access to a pal tv so I can't guarantee it works, but some have reported it works fine with pal60.

Dipkid

@Sakitoshi Ok, thanks for the reply.
(I`ll start messing with the overscan then :D )

tix

Hey sakitoshi, Well done for your contribution !

Yesterday I took the plunge and did a fresh install so that I can use your settings !!
I can report that everything in the consoles front plays beautifully !
In the arcade front I have mixed results.. I understand that it's a "best possible" solution but some games are simply broken..
for instance Moon Patrol, R-Type 1 and 2 are displayed in a stretched wide screen stripe making them unplayable..
I know that the two R-Types at least used a standard 4:3 monitor..

So do you have a tip how to fix them ?
I don't mind doing a per game configuration setting !!

Thanks anyway.