Daphne Dragon's Lair Enhancement Tutorial?

AdamBeGood

@jamrom2 I am still not sure about whether I want to move to HD files. Isn't the poor quality more retro and fitting anyway? 🤔

But it's good to have the option to consider, so thanks for the link!

jamrom2

@adambegood No it's not.

The quality on the original laser discs was outstanding, especially for back then. What we got from the first gen CD's and DVD's were "best possible" rips of whatever laserdiscs or whatever they did to make them available for the general public. The original Digital Leisure DVD's don't compare at all to these cleaned-up versions. This is what DL should look like.

There is no harm in using these HD files. I say preserve these old classics in their best form. You can always downgrade them with software if you want.

I've used both. I've had DL running on Daphne in on of my MAME cabinets for well over 18 years. The cabinet is actually 20 years old now (well... it's really an original 1982 Stern Frenzy cabinet converted to a BerZerk MAME cabinet I restored 20 years ago) and I recently upgraded it to a new, smaller and faster PC with a 20" Dell LCD from an old 19" CRT.

The difference is stunning. DL and all the Daphne games I have look incredible, as they should.

Agrajag

@roslof So are you using the HD art version?

My dle21.daphne is set up like yours where the location just points to the m2v file of lair.daphne.

My dle.daphne has the following:

dl21.ogg (which I don't think is being used since the frame file directs to lair.daphne and thus it would use the ogg(s) that are there.

dle21.commands which contains just this:
-bank 0 11001000 -bank 1 00100111 -useoverlaysb 2
That tells the game how to set options for two banks of dip switches and to turn on score overlay 2 (which I'm just testing out).

dle21.dat which I think is required.

dle21.txt which is the framefile and has this in it:

../lair.daphne/

151	lair.m2v

Very simple and it works.

The challenge is how to make it all work with the myriad of HD files.

Agrajag

@jamrom2

Let me know if you get this working. I'd love to know your setup if you do. I've spent the entire day on it so far and somehow haven't gotten the combination lock picked yet to have it work.

I mainly started by taking the lair.daphne, copying it (on the SD card) and then just replacing the M2V stuff and Ogg stuff, then the framefile and that just didn't want to run. I have to think my 4b can run 4:3 HD. I have his stuff running in PC-based Daphne with no problem, so I've seen it. Incredible. Now I have to have it.

roslof

@agrajag said in Daphne Dragon's Lair Enhancement Tutorial?:

Very simple and it works.
The challenge is how to make it all work with the myriad of HD files.

Let's use Dragon's Lair as an example again. Use your favorite video set. Doesn't matter which set, provided it has matching ogg(s) and matching framefile named lair.txt. Exactly one full, complete set. It should all live in lair.daphne. This framefile should have just a period on its first line and only m2v/ogg data after that. The various DL ROMs should be in their separate place. You don't need anything else, except the optional .commands file for your settings. DAT files will generate automatically when Daphne runs with the correct framefile.

Once lair is tested and working, COPY the lair.txt framefile all by itself into the other Dragon's Lair directories, like dle21.daphne. You don't need any dle21 video files or ogg files or dat files. Optionally, you could use .command files. Then, you only need to rename your copied framefile as the same name as the romname (so in the dle21.daphne directory, rename lair.txt to dle21.txt). Then, just edit the framefile topline to point to the folder with the original videos, which should be '''../lair.daphne'''

That should get you squared.

roslof

Oh, perhaps I misunderstood. Do you mean that you have a bunch of new videos, but you don't have a corresponding framefile that references them? The author should provide this. If not, you could TRY using one that already exists, and with a text editor search/replace or manually change so the references in the framefile match your videos. No guarantees this will work. Being off a few frames could cause issues, especially with the slates.

Sounds like your HD videos were derived from the 720P videos, so last resort, maybe check there?

Agrajag

@roslof I was just tripping over this issue now. I had created a folder on daphne called lair43hd and had everything named that assuming it wasn't important to DAPHNE, but then I noticed the runcommand error:

Parameters: 
Executing: SDL1_VIDEODRIVER=dispmanx SDL_DISPMANX_WIDTH=1920 SDL_DISPMANX_HEIGHT=1080 /opt/retropie/emulators/daphne/daphne.sh "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/daphne/lair43hd.daphne"
ls: cannot access '/proc/kcore': No such file or directory
--DAPHNE version 1.0.13
--Command line is: /opt/retropie/emulators/daphne/daphne.bin lair43hd vldp -nohwaccel -framefile /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/daphne/lair43hd.daphne/lair43hd.txt -homedir /opt/retropie/emulators/daphne -fullscreen dle21 -useoverlaysb 2 
--CPU : UnknownCPU 0 MHz || Mem : 0 megs
--OS : Linux 5.4 || Video : Unknown video
--OpenGL: Compiled In
--RGB2YUV Function: C
--Line Blending Function: C
--Audio Mixing Function: C
Setting alternate home dir:
/opt/retropie/emulators/daphne
ERROR: Unknown game type specified : lair43hd
Bad command line or initialization problem (see daphne_log.txt for details). 
To run DAPHNE, you must specify which game to run and which laserdisc player you are using. 
For example, try 'daphne lair noldp' to run Dragon's Lair in testing mode.

ERROR: Unknown game type specified: lair43hd

AHA. But WHY is it calling for that game TYPE? I even try to reset it in the commands file to call a valid game type (dle21, dle11, lair, etc.) but it sticks to this which suggests that it'd be really hard to have BOTH the HD version AND the non-HD version on the same system, no?

Agrajag

@roslof No. That's not it. I have the correct framefile for the videos in question.

roslof

@agrajag said in Daphne Dragon's Lair Enhancement Tutorial?:

I had created a folder on daphne called lair43hd

The script that is launching Daphne assumes that the directory name matches the ROM name, so since you're using the script, folder names must match a strict criteria.

One option is that you could opt to create a different emulator line in ../configs/daphne/emulators.cfg that doesn't use the script and calls the daphne executable directly and force command-lines, and then only use it for a single game... But a bit of a pain. But it is possible.

Another option, if you just want the novelty of having two video sets is to maybe use the classic videos for lair, and use the newer enhanced videos for dle21. Here, if course, you would need dle21.daphne to contain a full m2v/ogg set and change the top of the dle21.txt framefile to a period.

The script itself could also be modified, but that'll take some knowledge.

Agrajag

@roslog

Okay, that got it working, mainly.

My issue was the command file. I was trying to call a specific rom version within it and RP Daphne doesn't seem to like that. PC-based Daphne uses this to determine which rom version to apply. The valid commands list is here:

http://www.daphne-emu.com/mediawiki/index.php/CmdLine

Now mine just says:

-fastboot -useoverlaysb 2

This skips the long diagnostic load and puts up a score overlay (just testing this).

The video was stunning, BUT I think I might need something else in commands due to performance. I kept getting errors between scenes that said, "Video parsing" and it would list a percentage of it getting through the parsing. Perhaps this video is just too much for the Pi4b as well?

Agrajag

@roslof I suspect the script is making things a bit harder:

#!/bin/bash
dir="$1"
name="${dir##*/}"
name="${name%.*}"

if [[ -f "$dir/$name.commands" ]]; then
    params=$(<"$dir/$name.commands")
fi

"/opt/retropie/emulators/daphne/daphne.bin" "$name" vldp -nohwaccel -framefile "$dir/$name.txt" -homedir "/opt/retropie/emulators/daphne" -fullscreen $params

My scripting days are long behind me, but it's clear this script is hard-coding a number of things like the $name right before the vldp (which says use a virtual laser disc player) which is forcing "lair" to be the name of the version being run. If this were removed and you then just put the correct version in the commands file then you could run lair, dle11, dle22, etc. This is also a shame as the lair roms have a bug that doesn't support the opening bridge scene.

However, all that said, given the video parsing issues I'm seeing, I have doubts now that this version is even possible on Retropie on a pi4. It was nearly unplayable. Lost two lives when "Video parsing" popped up in the middle of a scene.

Agrajag

Got a bit better.

I now have this as my lair.command file:

-fastboot -min_seek_delay 1000 -seek_frames_per_ms 20 -blank_searches -noissues

That did not eliminate the video parsing issues, but it did reduce them dramatically. Perhaps tweaking that some more might do it. I wonder if there's any changes we can make to the pi itself to help with this. It sounds like a video loading performance issue. Perhaps there's an option to increase video caching? I have no idea.

roslof

@agrajag said in Daphne Dragon's Lair Enhancement Tutorial?:

Got a bit better.

I now have this as my lair.command file:

-fastboot -min_seek_delay 1000 -seek_frames_per_ms 20 -blank_searches -noissues

That did not eliminate the video parsing issues, but it did reduce them dramatically. Perhaps tweaking that some more might do it. I wonder if there's any changes we can make to the pi itself to help with this. It sounds like a video loading performance issue. Perhaps there's an option to increase video caching? I have no idea.

It shouldn't parse during play. Might consider removing/deleting all of the DAT files and letting Daphne rebuild them. Then try playing again.

Agrajag

@roslof So you have the HD files playing on your pi without the video parsing?

What's your command file look like?

Also, which version? 4:3? 16:9?

roslof

@agrajag said in Daphne Dragon's Lair Enhancement Tutorial?:

which is forcing "lair" to be the name of the version being run.

That's not what the script is doing.
"name" is the prefix of the directory name, so in EmulationStation when you launch '''ace.daphne''', name becomes '''ace'''

roslof

@agrajag said in Daphne Dragon's Lair Enhancement Tutorial?:

@roslof So you have the HD files playing on your pi without the video parsing?

What's your command file look like?

Also, which version? 4:3? 16:9?

I'm not using the HD videos.

roslof

@agrajag said in Daphne Dragon's Lair Enhancement Tutorial?:

the lair roms have a bug that doesn't support the opening bridge scene.

The original Dragon's Lair arcade game never had a playable bridge scene. dle21 does support the bridge scene correctly and there is no bug in the roms.

Agrajag

@roslof

A couple things, I believe we're saying the same thing on $name, but the problem is the PC version of Daphne uses the commands file (or command line) to determine which rom version to load. If you try to do that with the commands file here, it's pre-empted by what this script is doing. It only allows the items in the command file to be read as extra parameters beyond what the script is setting up.

On the HD thing, sorry, I just assumed you were running those. So you don't think their large size should have any impact? I just re-created all the .dat files so we'll see. So far, it looks like it's a winner. I just played a game and had zero parsing issues.

I also can't thank you enough for the back-and-forth. It's really cleared up a ton. I now have dle11, dle21 and lair versions all running.

Thanks also for the update on the arcade version. It's been literally decades since I played it on a machine. I think I recall the bridge scene from from earlier version like an actual DVD version or maybe on some game system version.

Lastly, you mentioned dle12. I'm not familiar with that version.

roslof

@agrajag said in Daphne Dragon's Lair Enhancement Tutorial?:

Lastly, you mentioned dle12. I'm not familiar with that version.

Yes, it was a typo that I fixed a bit ago. dle21
Glad everything is working. Enjoy!

Agrajag

@roslof I might take a swing at that script and switch things over to the commands approach to see what happens, or if it even helps. Theoretically that would allow setups to be done by just creating a folder and it would have just one file in it, the commands file, but that's not that much different than now and it would risk getting overwritten with an update.

If I play around with it I'll check back in and let the community know. Next up is getting DL2 and Space Ace going. They should be MUCH easier to get going now that I've got this experience behind me. Phew..... I think I might also create the tutorial that started all this and at least show a breakdown of what everything should look like in a completed setup.