Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?

thelostsoul

@barbudreadmon This is indeed a possible solution. Need to test this out, before I can say anything about this. Nice idea.
@pjft You can set which folder should be used as BIOS folder. You can check which one is currently active, if you look it up through running emulators RetroPie settings (Hotkey+X). Maybe it depends on the games as well. And I suppose the checksum for the neogeo.zip is MD5 format. Mine is

93adcaa22d652417cbc3927d46b11806  neogeo.zip

And I looked up, in my neogeo.zip is no usa_2slt.bin, but you have it in the 10 files zip. So maybe we are missing this file?
Just a note, the file "retroarch-core-options.cfg" in configs / all contain a lot of dipswitch settings, specific to games. Here are some of the lines from that file:

fba-dipswitch-aof2-BIOS = "(Default) MVS Asia/Europe ver. 6 (1 slot)"

pjft

@thelostsoul Correct, it was MD5.

True, I'm aware of the common core-options file. That line on my system's retroarch.cfg file is to deliberately use a different core-options file, so that I can have separate core options between AES and MVS versions should I want to.

I explicitly tried out a new game that had never been played, to test things out (gamelist showed as never played and I didn't really remember playing it, just in case)

The BIOS it's using is /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS indeed - good call on checking the folders. :)

Hope these help!

thelostsoul

Ah, now I get it.
@pjft said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

So, I have this set up and NEOGEO mode is indeed set to "Use BIOS specified in BIOS dipswitch below", and then indeed BIOS is set to "MVS Asia/Europe ver. 6 (1 slot)".

Yes, i am aware of that, it is English in my case too using this BIOS. Seems like everything with "Asia" is in English. The problem with this is, it is MVS, not AES. I try to setup a default behavior, so that every Neo Geo game starts in HOME version and in ENGLISH.

Setting to Use BIOS from DIPSWITCH and then using the "AES Asia" below will result in English language Home version. But this setting is game based, not system wide. How can we turn this setting to be used as default for all games, played or not played yet?

pjft

@thelostsoul Apologies - my bad. I mix up MVS and AES.

My AES system - NEOGEO folder, with those settings I specified - actually have NEOGEO mode as "Use AES BIOS", and then uses "MVS Asia/Europe" as the BIOS setting there.

It opens unplayed games in English. Is that not what happens in your case?

I can dig into further config files on my end if it helps, but it does start as the home version in English. There are no coins, there are practice modes, options, etc.

thelostsoul

@pjft If you set Force Neo Geo mode to "AES", then it does not matter what you set the setting below at "BIOS". The "MVS Asia/Europe" will be ignored. Can you check fatfury2 - Fatal Fury 2? It is Jap. in this case. Wait for the text ingame tutorial. Menus and names are in English, but tutorial text is Japanese. Also at the beginning where the Level Select (Easy, Normal, Hard, MVS), look at right bottom game title. Its Japanese title.

pjft

Got it - giving me a specific game helped, I was trying Metal Slug 1 and 4.

Indeed you're right, I need to set use BIOS in dipswitch, and then make it use AES Asia. The alternative would be UNIBIOS, but I imagine that's not what you'd want.

I imagine that getting it to use the dipswitch BIOS and just keeping the AES Asia one could help, but see how it goes.

Cook1e_mr

@barbudreadmon I had your suggested solution in mind, however haven't been able to get it to work. My logic was to place a neogeo.zip with only neo-epo.bin within the archive in the neogeo folder (and then a full Neogeo.zip with all BIOS in the FBA folder). This in theory should give the emulator access to the AES Asia BIOS only when a rom is launched from the neogeo folder and then allow the fbneo-neogeo-mode = "AES" solution to work on a system basis.

However for some reason when I go to retroarch menu within the dipswitch i still see the full BIOS's AES Japan, AES Asia etc. I have removed all other neogeo.zip as interim to see if it was accessing a BIOS from elsewhere but still, see all the BIOS in retroarch menu.

Is there a way of finding where the BIOS is being sourced from?

pjft

@Cook1e_mr The directories option in RGUI should show you where it's sourcing the BIOS from. It might be that it's getting it from RetroPie/BIOS.

barbudreadmon

@Cook1e_mr said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

I go to retroarch menu within the dipswitch i still see the full BIOS's AES Japan, AES Asia etc

That's perfectly normal, dipswitches are hardcoded and don't care about the file actually present in your neogeo.zip

@Cook1e_mr said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

My logic was to place a neogeo.zip with only neo-epo.bin

Don't do that, there are other required files in neogeo.zip, i suggest removing only neo-po.bin instead.

@Cook1e_mr said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

Is there a way of finding where the BIOS is being sourced from?

The bios/parent are sourced from rom folder, then BIOS/fbneo folder, then BIOS folder, it'll stop after finding one romset by the right name, meaning if a neogeo.zip is present in your rom folder it won't even look at the other folders, even if the first neogeo.zip found is missing files.

Clyde

@barbudreadmon said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

The bios/parent are sourced from rom folder, then BIOS/fbneo folder, then BIOS folder, it'll stop after finding one romset by the right name, meaning if a neogeo.zip is present in your rom folder it won't even look at the other folders, even if the first neogeo.zip found is missing files.

Is it the same with integrated bios files when built by Clrmamepro with the option "Separate BIOS Sets" unchecked? (I suspect so.)

Just curious, as I recently built a new FBNeo set in this form.

barbudreadmon

@Clyde said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

Is it the same with integrated bios files when built by Clrmamepro with the option "Separate BIOS Sets" unchecked

Yes, it won't even look at neogeo.zip if it can find the bios files in the game romset

Cook1e_mr

@barbudreadmon said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

Don't do that, there are other required files in neogeo.zip, i suggest removing only neo-po.bin instead.

I did this originally but the emulator was still loading in Japanese. I therefore think something else is at play. so i was trying to rule out as many variables as i possibly could.

@Clyde said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

Yes, it won't even look at neogeo.zip if it can find the bios files in the game romset

hadn't considered that, will have to check my archives

Cook1e_mr

@Cook1e_mr said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

@Clyde said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

Yes, it won't even look at neogeo.zip if it can find the bios files in the game romset

hadn't considered that, will have to check my archives

OK checked and this is my problem, the BIOS is within the ROM archive, need to work out how to remove that easily now.

thanks for the help

Clyde

@Cook1e_mr said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

OK checked and this is my problem, the BIOS is within the ROM archive, need to work out how to remove that easily now.

Remove the bios from the game roms? One relatively easy way is to rebuild the romset as "non-merged" with Clrmame and the option "Separate BIOS Sets" turned ON in the scanner and the rebuilder.

CapNinja

@thelostsoul after using this tutorial for a few months, the comment from our fellow above made me think about games in japanese. I was just accepting that with suspension of belief and now I'm trying to put in english, but I'm having this problem:
If I change to "Dipswitch below"and then "AES ASIA", automatically all roms will change to MVS.
If I do the changes one by one, my choice will be maintained. But I don't want to open every single game for this.
Help, please.

thelostsoul

@CapNinja My reply may be disappointing, so sorry to say that. Above we discussed this issue and we couldn't find a solution. Changing to "Dipswitch" means, that the setting from the individual cabinet (Dipswitches) will be used. Then you can have individual settings for each single game, but off course this is not what we want.

Currently it seems to be a limitation by the emulator settings not to be able to set the specific BIOS version system wide.

CargoRunner

Just wanted to thank you for this fantastic and comprehensive piece of work. It is EXACTLY what I want to do and you have done all the hard work and research to put this together. Thank you so much for sharing your work

thelostsoul

@cargorunner What a nice reply, hehe. Just a little disclaimer, as someone pointed it out in the replies here. There is a thing I could not solve and maybe a reason not to do all this stuff here. Apparently the games are all in Japanese then, not the US version, because RetroArch/RetroPie lack the ability to specify this thing. The last replies in this thread talk about this "issue".

To change the BIOS to English, you have to change emulator setting to "Use BIOS specified in BIOS dipswitch below". The problem is, the dipswitch setting is per game and you would need to set it for each individual game and save the settings for each game separately. That is not what I want to do, therefore the games stay in Japanese version.

Also have in mind this tutorial is for an older version of the emulator and RetroPie and Raspberry Pi 3. I just want to bring this to your attention. Always do a backup before following the instructions. And have fun tinkering. :-)

philcsf

Been setting this up the past few days, cheers from the advice.

I already knew about "core_options_path" after some long google searching the other month, but wish it was advertised more on the RetroPie docs. Useful for many things, such as turning on BLARGG filters for some platforms (SMS, GEN) but not for others (GG) while using the same emulator.

I have all my BIOS files merged into the individual ZIPs rather than using an external neogeo.zip. All I needed to do was force that folder's core options to "AES Mode", then delete neo-po.bin (Japanese AES BIOS) from each ZIP in that folder. If it's missing, FBNeo falls back to neo-epo.bin (Asia/English AES BIOS) automatically.

I can even re-add neo-po.bin to certain ZIP files by preference, such as getting blood in the Metal Slug games.

thelostsoul

@philcsf Great to know its working! Deleting the Japanese BIOS withing the files would be my last resort, as there is no other way to accomplish the goal within the emulator settings.