Spectrum roms not working

hawkes_84

@HoraceAndSpider thanks for your input. Ive watched a bunch of YouTube vids where once the roms are on they pretty much work with your already mapped controller. It's quite frustrating as the megadrive and snes roms work fine but older simpler games like Spectrum give me hassle. Any further info you can give would be appreciated

hawkes_84

@mitu tried this last night and had some success with it thanks. Some games still wouldn't function with my gamepad and had to use the keyboard some games just didn't work. It's almost like there isn't a definitive method to get this to work which is silly but progress is progress

mitu

Some games need both keyboard and joystick to work - so just using the gamepad wouldn't be enough. Do you have a game that should work with the gamepad but it doesn't work ?

hawkes_84

@mitu I don't remember playing any games on the spectrum that needed the keys and joystick although I didn't play them all and there were 1000s! Some games that aren't working with my gamepad are Mission Elevator and Impossible Mission. Say if the original game needed only the Keyboard - would I be able to play that game using my gamepad somehow buy choosing a particular option?

youxia

There is no definitive method because that's how Spectrum was. This machine had no definitive control method, unlike SNES, or even other micros, which mostly responded to a certain joystick port.

If you go to Quick Menu >>> Options, you can then map individual keys to your joypad buttons. And you can find controls for most games at the Worldofspectrum.org.

Eg here are controls for Mission Elevator:

Q - Move up with elevator or jump
A - Move down with elevator or duck
O - Go left
P - Go right
SPACE BAR - Fire in every position.

UP LEFT or RIGHT - Attack left or right
DOWN LEFT/RIGHT - Examine object(s) in front of Trevor

So you just have to bind QAOP SPACE to your gamepad. Then make game option file in there too so it's saved.

But this game also allows for Kempston control (huge amount of Spectrum games do). Did you go to Quick Menu>>>Input and chose Kempston as Player 1 input, as it was already mentioned above?

hawkes_84

@youxia. Hi and thanks for your input on this. Yes I tried Kempston on all the games I tried and it only worked for a few of them. What exactly is Kempston? I remember selecting it as a kid but have forgotten what it relates to

youxia

Original ZX Spectrum did not have a joystick port. You had to buy and connect an interface for that. Kempston was the most popular one, others were Fuller, Protek, Sinclair, Cursor (iirc). If you chose Cursor or Sinclair you could use the number/cursor keys too.

I just tried Elevator Action in Retroarch on my PC. It worked fine with my Dualshock4. It should be the same in Retropie. You need to change those options in Retroarch first though: first enable Kempston in Port 1 controls (Device Type) and also enable Sinclair Keyboard in Port 3 controls - so you can actually choose Kempston from keyboard in-game.

hawkes_84

@youxia thanks very much for testing. Did you mean Mission Elevator? I'll give it a go. I'm not sure Keyboard is a choice in the device types options. They all end with joypad. I'll give it a go and let you know the outcome

youxia

Sorry, I've suggested myself and tried Elevator Action. But it's the same stuff with Mission Elevator, I just played this and also Impossible Mission using my DS4 and Kempston.

You need to choose the appropriate options in Retroarch. Sinclair Keyboard is in Port 3, not Port 1.

As an aside, you should try Mission Elevator on Amstrad, its verison is much superior to ZX.

hawkes_84

@youxia how do I save the controls? You mention "make game option file" but not sure where in retroarch I do that? Is it save state?

youxia

If you bind keys in Options then you can "create game options file" there.

When you choose stuff like Kempston/keyboard in Controls then either Save Game Remap (for individual game) or Save Core Remap (for all the games).

hawkes_84

@youxia mostly worked on all the games I wanted to play. I was having issue with the text adventures where Q&W wasn't typing anything but then realised they were mapped to some joystick moves so wouldn't have been responsive. The only thing I noticed is that Kempston wasn't always the best option to use my control pad. Spectrum Joystick 1 option worked better on the majority of them. Thanks for your help on this

youxia

@hawkes_84 No problem, glad you got it sorted. Yeah, a you can see there is no single best solution for ZX, but Retroarch offers lots of ways to deal with it. And you figured out why Q & W don't work, congrats, this has annoyed me to no end back in the day.