TI99, Resolution, and Joystick

NewAtThis

Hello.

I've recently created an arcade system, using Lubuntu Linux 20.04 and Retropie (setup script version 4.6.1). My machine is an Optiplex 580 with 8GB RAM. My monitor is a 24" Dell, 1920x1080 resolution.

My wife's one and only game growing up was MunchMan for the TI99. I definitely want this on my arcade.

I installed the TI99 emulator form the experimental packages, and it works very well, except for a couple things:

The resolution is all wrong. It's a short wide rectangle that spans the entire width of the screen, but is only about 4 inches tall. I've gone into the core-specific settings within the Retropie setup, and I've set the resolution to something reasonable. I've also hit the "a" key as I'm starting the game, and I've selected the appropriate video mode there, but neither of these things works. The screen shape and size is always the same.
My control panel has two EasyGet controller sets (1 stick + 7 buttons ) and two Atari paddle controllers with 2600-Daptors. I've adjusted the core-specific settings and the game specific settings to use the sticks, but the game will only respond to the paddles, which just doesn't work well at all.

When I look at the TI99 instructions online, they never seem to mention resolution and controller setup. Apparently it's suppose to work by default. And aside from that, the instructions never seem to be for the experimental packages version of TI99, but instead for the more complex manual installation. I wonder if the manual installation is required for proper functionality.

Does anyone have any advice on this? My wife and I would really appreciate any help you can provide. And if you need any information from me, please let me know!

Thanks.

mitu

The resolution is all wrong. It's a short wide rectangle that spans the entire width of the screen, but is only about 4 inches tall. I've gone into the core-specific settings within the Retropie setup, and I've set the resolution to something reasonable. I've also hit the "a" key as I'm starting the game, and I've selected the appropriate video mode there, but neither of these things works. The screen shape and size is always the same.

Which resolution are you using from the Runcommand launch menu ?

My control panel has two EasyGet controller sets (1 stick + 7 buttons ) and two Atari paddle controllers with 2600-Daptors. I've adjusted the core-specific settings and the game specific settings to use the sticks, but the game will only respond to the paddles, which just doesn't work well at all.

Which 'core' settings are you referring to ? The TI99 emulator is not a RetroArch core, so any configuration specific to libretro cores do not apply here.
The emulator has a CLI switch to choose which joystick to use (--joystickn=<N>). Run, from the command line

/opt/retropie/emulators/ti99sim/ti99sim-sdl --list-joysticks

and see how your gamepads are ordered. Then modify the launch command in /opt/retropie/configs/ti99/emulators.cfg and add a --joystickn=<X> to the emulators command line, with <X> replaced with the joystick number you'd like to use. For instance, to use joystick no. 1:


ti99sim = "/opt/retropie/emulators/ti99sim/ti99sim.sh --joystickn=1 -f %ROM%"
default = "ti99sim"

NewAtThis

@mitu Thank you so much for your help! That joystick argument worked great. The only thing I had to figure out is that in your example, where you say "--joystickn=1", the "n" is actually a variable. So I made that a 1, as in "--joystick1=3". That sets my player1 joystick to device number 3, which I got from the --list-joysticks command, as you mentioned. So that is working great now. Thank you again!

As for the resolution, I'm setting it to "HDMI-1:0x76 960x720 @ 60.00Hz (117.000MHz -HSync +VSync DoubleScan)" in the runcommand menu, reached by holding down the A key while the game is loading. Specifically, in that menu, this is option 4 "Select default video mode for ti99sim".

Looking at the "--list-resolutions" argument, it shows me that 960x720 is an option for full-screen, but I don't see an argument that sets the resolution. And the option in the runcommand menu doesn't seem to do anything, regardless of the video mode I choose. I guess that's what you were saying when you mentioned that Retroarch core-specific configurations don't apply to ti99sim.

Do you have any suggestions for the resolution problem?

And thanks again for the joystick help. That alone improves Munchman considerably.

mitu

@NewAtThis said in TI99, Resolution, and Joystick:

Do you have any suggestions for the resolution problem?

Right now, no, but there seems to be an updated version of this emulator which might be working better on modern Linux installations and we might update it in the near future. I'll test and compare to the current version to see if there's an improvement for video resolution handling in the new version.

mitu

@NewAtThis Can you try updating the ti99sim emulator from source and check again if the resolution handling is better ? It's been updated to the latest version, which was a major update.
Try to remove any video mode set through the runcommand launch menu.