Help batch running arcade games
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@luckyluca said in Help batch running arcade games:
It is supposed to be hand-tested and curated before I started using it,...
One of the reasons we don't support 3rd party images loaded with ROMs.
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I understand as it makes perfect sense.
In my case, having tailored a set of arcade roms coming from different sets (taking advantage of per-game cores emulator configs in retropie), that is bound to have some mistakes. I'm glad that thanks to dankcushions I was able to programmatically check obvious issues without wasting hours manually.Edit:
Added one question about Retroarch.
Being OCD, do you think that killing retroarch using a killall -9 retroarch, over and over, would harm my installation? I suppose not. -
The modified script worked like a charm, I found looking at snapshots super-useful for debugging purposes, thank you all.
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However, screenshots doesn't say anything about sound quality or other issues that only arise when actually playing the game. So, be prepared for some suprises later.
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@clyde said in Help batch running arcade games:
However, screenshots doesn't say anything about sound quality or other issues that only arise when actually playing the game. So, be prepared for some suprises later.
Exactly, and some of them are quite hard to notice even when playing the game :
- missing gfx elements (because in the first place you might not know they were there)
- wrong game behavior (a very common issue with older romsets & emulators is wrong enemy patterns because of missing MCU dump)
Using some proper compatibility list and fixing your romsets through clrmamepro is just the better approach, by far.
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That's a valid point, although I feel so close to completing this, with a few hundred left to check.
Anyway, assuming I was to do this from scratch by sourcing the right roms from scratch based on the shared excel doc (which is amazing by the way), and assuming non-merged sets:
am I right to assume that all rom zips that are actually bioses, such as pgm and stvbios, have no reason to exist in rom/arcade, and should only be present in the retropie bios folder?
And, being as it may, should I use the most recent bios zips?
As for instance, mame 2010 bios files contain exactly the same 2003 content in addition to other roms, so presumably they're preferred? -
@luckyluca said in Help batch running arcade games:
am I right to assume that all rom zips that are actually bioses, such as pgm and stvbios, have no reason to exist in rom/arcade, and should only be present in the retropie bios folder?
Yes, however "getting the most recent bios and putting it in the bios folder" might cause issues, as an example you were mentioning stvbios, and i'm pretty sure advmame, which you'll probably use to play ST-V games, expects an older version of the bios.
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@barbudreadmon
I see, I suppose it doesn't help that both the old and newer version of stvbios.zip contain exactly the same roms (with matching CRC), with the newer version of the zip just containing additional files.It would be awesome to being able to add bios by emulator version, and have the right bios selected based on the core in use:
Retropie/bios/mame2003/.zip
Retropie/bios/advmame/.zip -
@luckyluca said in Help batch running arcade games:
I see, I suppose it doesn't help that both the old and newer version of stvbios.zip contain exactly the same roms (with matching CRC), with the newer version of the zip just containing additional files.
Actually you are right, i thought some of the old files had been discarded but they were simply renamed, which shouldn't be a problem since the emulator will base its search on crc. Well, stvbios was a bad example then, but there might be newer bios that doesn't contain older files.
@luckyluca said in Help batch running arcade games:
It would be awesome to being able to add bios by emulator version, and have the right bios selected based on the core in use
Retropie/bios/mame2003/.zip
Retropie/bios/advmame/.zipI can't tell you about the mame cores, but that's exactly what i did in the FBNeo core to avoid conflicting bioses.
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Thanks, just wanted to add that I've been involved in using and enjoying emulators and cores for more than a decade and wanted to thank you for your contribution to the retro gaming scene!
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Regarding Roslof's doc, does the following mean that lr-mame core is using the mame non-merged romset version 0.222? does it also mean that the actual core version in Retropie must be 0.222?
Without causing controversy, I'm asking because 0.222 is a tricky romset one to source, let's just say that it's not too common.Major testing is complete. Occasionally checking when new versions pop-up (lr-fbneo changes VERY rapidly, but... trying to keep up).
of emulators are updated. Note lr-mame tested with version lr-mame 0.222.Also, regarding fbneo, from the retropie doc, I suppose that it uses FB Neo v0.2.97.44 and that it superseeds fbalpha2012 completely.
Regarding bios, neogeo and neogeo-cd aside, I suppose there are no bios zips required for fbneo arcade, or am I terribly wrong?Thanks and happy Saturday!
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@luckyluca said in Help batch running arcade games:
Regarding Roslof's doc, does the following mean that lr-mame core is using the mame non-merged romset version 0.222? does it also mean that the actual core version in Retropie must be 0.222?
Without causing controversy, I'm asking because 0.222 is a tricky romset one to source, let's just say that it's not too common.i don't maintain the doc so you'll have to ask roslof about that. that said, it's simple enough to find the current version of lr-mame on github: https://github.com/libretro/mame - looks like 0.230 currently, if you updated from source. lr-mame should track current mame, so it's constantly updated.
Also, regarding fbneo, from the retropie doc, I suppose that it uses FB Neo v0.2.97.44 and that it superseeds fbalpha2012 completely.
nope, it's 1.0.0.02 now. though, again, fbn's romset is a derivative of current MAME afaik, so it's constantly updated.
to this end it's fairly difficult to keep the various compatibility lists and doc pages up to date for current MAME and FBN. i removed all the compatibility lists from retropie's docs. i prefer to just refer people to their respective project pages.
Regarding bios, neogeo and neogeo-cd aside, I suppose there are no bios zips required for fbneo arcade, or am I terribly wrong?
fbn needs BIOS for other stuff also. see https://retropie.org.uk/docs/FinalBurn-Neo/ - a current dat will have the details
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thanks a lot, I feel like Alice following the white rabbit in the hole.
I can imagine maintaining compatibility must be hell;
I assumed 0.297.44 was the right romset version, from the fbneo retropie docs, and thought that was aligned with the google sheet. I'll need to rethink my approach :-)Edit: I found the other page listing 1.0 as correct for fbneo.
@dankcushions
So, am I right to assume that if I update the fbneo core, and then have the latest 1.0 full non-merged romset, all games contained would work aka there is no need for mame, unless a game is not included in the romset? -
@dankcushions said in Help batch running arcade games:
nope, it's 1.0.0.02 now
Actually, current wip is 1.0.0.03 (odd numbers are wips, even numbers are releases)
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@luckyluca said in Help batch running arcade games:
thanks a lot, I feel like Alice following the white rabbit in the hole.
I can imagine maintaining compatibility must be hell;
I assumed 0.297.44 was the right romset version, from the fbneo retropie docs, and thought that was aligned with the google sheet. I'll need to rethink my approach :-)Edit: I found the other page listing 1.0 as correct for fbneo.
@dankcushions
So, am I right to assume that if I update the fbneo core, and then have the latest 1.0 full non-merged romset, all games contained would work aka there is no need for mame, unless a game is not included in the romset?i am not sure about that - there may be occasions when the mame20xx version performs better, or the finalburneo version has emulation bugs or a crash or whatever, but generally, yeah.
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@dankcushions said in Help batch running arcade games:
there may be occasions when the mame20xx version performs better, or the finalburneo version has emulation bugs or a crash or whatever
I'm not too worried about crashes, i have a batch script to detect those, but if you find an emulation bug please let me know.
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@barbudreadmon Speaking of neogeo games, is there a compability list I could browse?
Especially for neogeo games set in MVS mode, using fbneo.
For instance, I came across kf2k5uni that fails to load.
(I'm using an older build of fbneo and corresponding romset, v0.2.97.44, on the pi400). -
@luckyluca said in Help batch running arcade games:
For instance, I came across kf2k5uni that fails to load.
Any arcade game will fail to load as long as you don't use the right romset, kf2k5uni works in FBNeo. All i can say is to follow the documentation which says to build proper romsets...
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Thanks, that's exactly what I did, I followed the documentation and cross-checked the version required, against the Package help, which is which is v0.2.97.44. (Fbneo core was installed via source on 05 Nov 2020).
The romset I'm using is supposed to be the full non-merged v0.2.97.44 as per above.I understand this is not up to date, but so is not the core, so I suppose that as long as the two match all should be well.
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@luckyluca said in Help batch running arcade games:
The romset I'm using is supposed to be the full non-merged v0.2.97.44 as per above.
v0.2.97.44 is the version number we used for nearly 30 months, with probably thousands of changes to the supported romsets, so thinking your download is gonna match your version from 5 nov 2020 without checking it through clrmamepro is very far fetched.
Furthermore, on 5 nov 2020, we had moved past v1.0.0.00, so i have absolutely no idea what a v0.2.97.44 version built from source on that date is supposed to be, a version built from source on that date should probably be tagged v1.0.0.01
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