Joust Crash - Retropie 4.6 - Raspberry Pi 4B

csetera

I'm building a Retrocade and have noticed that Joust is crashing on the Mame emulator. Let me know if I can provide any further information.

Thanks,
Craig

Raspberry Pi 4B - 4G
Power Supply: Vilros Kit Power Supply (https://vilros.com/collections/raspberry-pi-kits/products/vilros-raspberry-pi-4-model-b-complete-starter-kit-with-clear-transparent-case-and-built-in-fan)
Retropie: 4.6
Used weekly image a couple of weeks ago and just updated to latest of everything as of 4/28/2020
USB Connected: Logitech F710 controller + Power for monitor
Controller: Logitech F710
Joust (US Set) Crashing
Runcommand.log => https://pastebin.com/nVjQDwDB

mitu

Are all games crashing, or just Joust ? Did it worked since you installed or it the first time you're running it ?

csetera

Joust is the only one crashing that I've noticed, however I haven't done an exhaustive test. It has been crashing since I first tried it on this new hardware about 2 weeks ago. I immediately installed the weekly tests at that point and have done updates since.

mitu

Are you sure you have the right ROMset for Mame2003 (MAME 0.78 ROM set) ?

csetera

Good question. The set is called MAME_2003_Plus_Reference_Set_2018. Now that I read that, does that imply that I need to be running lr-mame2003-plus instead of lr-mame2003? I guess I didn't originally make the connection if that is the case.

mitu

@csetera I'm not sure if Joust has some differences between Mame2003/Mame2003 plus, but I suggest trying mame2003-plus. With a 0.78 ROMset, I don't see an issue running Joust with Mame2003.

csetera

I will give it a try and report back. Thanks!

csetera

Unfortunately, I'm not seeing any real difference. Here is the latest run log. https://pastebin.com/buM5n1Gp

Riverstorm

I believe they should be the same ROM sets for both 2003 & 2003plus.

joust - (White-Green label)
joustr - (Solid Red label)
joustwr - (White-Red label)

mitu

@csetera said in Joust Crash - Retropie 4.6 - Raspberry Pi 4B:

Unfortunately, I'm not seeing any real difference. Here is the latest run log. https://pastebin.com/buM5n1Gp

My neither, but the game still loads and starts ok for me.

[...]
INFO] Loading history file: [/home/pi/.config/retroarch/content_history.lpl].
[INFO] Loading history file: [/home/pi/.config/retroarch/content_music_history.lpl].
[INFO] Loading history file: [/home/pi/.config/retroarch/content_video_history.lpl].
[INFO] Loading history file: [/home/pi/.config/retroarch/content_image_history.lpl].
[INFO] Loading favorites file: [/home/pi/.config/retroarch/content_favorites.lpl].
[INFO] [GL]: VSync => on
[INFO] Written to playlist file: /home/pi/.config/retroarch/content_history.lpl
[libretro INFO] [MAME 2003] options.nvram_bootstrap: 1
[libretro INFO] [MAME 2003] Delegating population of initial NVRAM to emulated system.
[libretro INFO] [MAME 2003] Preparing emulated CPUs for execution.
[libretro INFO] [MAME 2003] hiscore.dat not found: generating new hiscore.dat
[libretro INFO] [MAME 2003] joust hiscore memory map found in hiscore.dat!
[libretro INFO] watchdog armed
[INFO] [Environ]: SET_GEOMETRY.
...

Can you check if the permissions on your mame-libretro ROM folder are correct - i.e. the pi user can write to them ? Maybe the emulator trying to create the NVRAM for the game fails because of it ?

For comparison, here's the checksum of joust.zip that loads for me:

$ md5sum `pwd`/joust.zip
65b26bfbbfb9f3081a348a2bdc84edeb  /home/pi/roms/mame-libretro/joust.zip

Riverstorm

If I remember correctly I think with mame2003 it hangs on the 1st run but on the 2nd run it will boot successfully due to a NVRAM creation issue. In 2003plus markwkidd coded a "bootstrap" to create the NVRAM file correctly on start. There are several games this way.

@mitu - Just a thought but that checksum assumes the ROM is torrent zipped and may not match an identical working ROM set. Depending on compression settings, etc. you could have several different hashes that are correctly working ROMs.

Riverstorm

@mitu - I wasn't trying to contradict the validity of the checksum check or maybe it doesn't matter much. It's a quick and dirty step that can prove to be useful for troubleshooting. I know MAME standard sets like 2003 have a good chance of matching checksums, due more to downloading a set that's been around a few decades, rather than building a set using the steps outlined in the Wiki.

Non-standard sets, like 2003plus and fbneo, that aren't as easily available and/or change frequently rely more on rom management utilities to stay current/verified. They pretty much have zero chance of matching checksums that way once rebuilt through a tool unless specifically torrent zipped.

Though not foolproof I've always listed the individual ROM checksums for matching a game if the ROMs come into serious consideration as the issue. Some ROM management tools use the CRC-32's stored in the zip/archive header to save a whole lot of overhead processing time.

I have a habit of doing it for all things MAME ROM set related but I guess I've never saw any other reason for torrent zipping files except for ROM distribution consistency. Such as PD which maintains its own tools due to some of the complexities of getting consistent zip checksums. Some files are just weird when it comes to archiving. It's an extra step that mainstream ROM management tools do not do, that I know of.

It's near impossible to guess if someone is using light to heavy compression or just storing the individual ROMs for speed of processing. The tools do give you that type of flexibility and will produce multiple valid hashes per game. I don't imagine most rebuilding sets here take the extra steps and time to torrentzip due to being completely unnecessary to run the games.

csetera

OK. A few updates. I have my roms on a SMB share. I just checked writability and it failed:

pi@retropie:~/RetroPie/roms/mame-libretro $ touch test.txt
touch: cannot touch 'test.txt': Permission denied

My hash is also different:

pi@retropie:~/RetroPie/roms/mame-libretro $ md5sum joust.zip 
be7fcedf0ebc9d5bbc192d321584c3f7  joust.zip

I guess what I don't understand relative to write permissions is that Joust is the only game that I've tried that is currently failing. I can work on figuring out write permissions, but I'm wondering if there is anything else I should be looking at?

Thanks again,
Craig

csetera

For grins, I just tried joustr.zip and joustwr.zip with the same results.

csetera

Good news! I followed the information in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/post/137642 and changed my mount parameters for the SMB roms mount. With that the mount folders are writable and Joust now works! I switched back to base lr-mame2003, which seemed to work a bit better.

Thanks for the direction on the writable folder.
Craig

mitu

@Riverstorm No worries, I understand the reasoning (perfectly valid), the only reason I posted it is because the source of the zip could have been the same (not everyone re-builds their ROMSet).

@csetera glad you got it working, without write access to the ROM folder it would have been difficult to use save states also. Have fun !

Riverstorm

@csetera - Nice, it's for sure a worthy, staple, golden age era game I keep in my build too.

@mitu - Thanks, that makes sense. Through the years I never found ROM management to be intuitive and may be time consuming to get a good grasp on it. Most just want to get gaming. It's all about the games.

I know you work the front-end by day endlessly helping others and work the back-end by night coding all the goodness. If you don't know the answer you know where to find it! ;)

Not sure if Superman has any following across the pond. I have a younger brother that's quite the character. He'll wear two Superman t-shirts and flex for people at the bar or whatever and then he'll ask if they want to know his real identity. So he'll peel off one t-shirt and of course he's still Superman...the first time he did it it was hilarious! He's a pretty charismatic fellow which makes it really work...

Faster than gigbit. More powerful than a i9-9900K. Able to code whole modules in a single bound.

*"Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird!...

It's a plane!...

It's Super...errr...RetroPieMan!"*

mitu

@Riverstorm said in Joust Crash - Retropie 4.6 - Raspberry Pi 4B:

Not sure if Superman has any following across the pond.

Superman is universal, despite the lack of recent 'updates' - though for me it's always imagined as Christopher Reeves.

Riverstorm

@mitu said in Joust Crash - Retropie 4.6 - Raspberry Pi 4B:

for me it's always imagined as Christopher Reeves.

I wholeheartedly agree Christopher Reeves defined the face of Superman for cinema in the 70's. :) I'm still not sure what "sparked" the Marvel/DC craze of this past decade but I'm certain Disney getting their meat hooks in Marvel helped it along. They seem to know profitable marketing and branding for sure, or maybe technology as a whole, as the visuals are pretty stunning. No doubt it'll be part of what defines pop culture of the 10's.