Guide to running HBMAME games in Retropie

barbudreadmon

JimmyFromTheBay

@barbudreadmon Thanks. So maybe I'm doing something wrong here. I'm trying to run the 1.7 version of the Donkey Kong Barrelpalooza mod, which has the filename dkongbp1.zip but isn't recognised by FBNeo (I haven't updated in a few weeks, maybe that's changed).

I've copied the 1.7 files into the 1.6 version, dkongbp.zip, which works beautifully in FBNeo. I've put the altered file in my normal MAME ROMs directory, and also put a copy of it in /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/fbneo/patched.

But when I try to run it I just get the usual error message - "This fileset is recognised but the ROMs are wrong" - and it won't run. Where am I messing up?

EDIT: Ah, I figured it out. FBNeo crashes as soon as it finds a single missing ROM, so if you look at RUNCOMMAND.LOG and replace that ROM, it'll still crash if there was more than one missing, because it only tells you about the first one. (Unlike MAME, which tells you ALL the ones you're missing.) Eventually I sussed that dkongbp wants all of the files from dkong, which it didn't have because I put it in a different folder to my other Kong hacks, because obviously I couldn't have two files with the same name in one folder. All sorted now, ta for the help.

barbudreadmon

@jimmyfromthebay said in Guide to running HBMAME games in Retropie:

it only tells you about the first one

Indeed, i never noticed since i rarely get those errors, i'll change that.

barbudreadmon

@jimmyfromthebay said in Guide to running HBMAME games in Retropie:

crashes

Also, please don't use that word for an emulator that is displaying an error, this is misleading, except if FBNeo really did crash ?

JimmyFromTheBay

@barbudreadmon Well, we can quibble over semantics - to me you only display an error message if you've crashed, to explain the reason WHY you've crashed, but I appreciate you may regard it differently... :D

barbudreadmon

@jimmyfromthebay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(computing)

=> FBNeo is functioning properly, and didn't exit abruptly, so this is not a crash, the only issue here is that you didn't follow the instructions about verifying your romsets

barbudreadmon

@jimmyfromthebay improved error messages yet again, and added support for dkongbp1

JimmyFromTheBay

@barbudreadmon Ace. I'm still fascinated by some of the quirks with Ms Pac-Man in particular, so I tried the new method to see if I could get Super Zola Pac-Gal working, and it did exactly the same as it does on every version of MAME - hung with a black screen during boot. There's clearly something about that timer code that the Raspberry Pi just does not like.

I also couldn't get Pac-Man Unleashed (actually another Ms Pac-Man hack despite the name) to speed up by replacing boot2 with the fastplus.2 ROM, although that's worked with everything else I've tried and though I tried building the file up from every direction. (And despite the fact that it's certainly capable of running with a turbo Pac, because it does in HBMAME.)

And when I tried to run Pac-Man X, a cute high-res mod, the "put the patched ROM in the fbneo/patched folder" trick just flat-out didn't work at all - FBNeo quit with the "wrong ROMset" error rather than trying to run it and see what happened.

I find all this stuff a really fascinating puzzle to solve, but Super Zola really has me perplexed.

barbudreadmon

@jimmyfromthebay said in Guide to running HBMAME games in Retropie:

rather than trying to run it and see what happened.

Yet this is precisely what putting roms in the "patched" folder does. Bad romset are likely to fail working, this is why i don't allow users to load them without going through the "patched" folder method.

JimmyFromTheBay

@barbudreadmon said in Guide to running HBMAME games in Retropie:

Yet this is precisely what putting roms in the "patched" folder does. Bad romset are likely to fail working, this is why i don't allow users to load them without going through the "patched" folder method.

No, that's what I'm saying. I did use the patched folder method for both games, but got totally different results. For Pac-Man Unleashed (a Ms Pac-Man mod) it tried to run it but the game hung on booting. For Pac-Man X (a Pac-Man mod) FBNeo didn't even try to run it, it just gave the "wrong ROMset" error.

barbudreadmon

@jimmyfromthebay said in Guide to running HBMAME games in Retropie:

For Pac-Man X (a Pac-Man mod) FBNeo didn't even try to run it, it just gave the "wrong ROMset" error.

Putting files in patched allows to ignore crc, you famous "crc doesn't match, give it a try anyway", but romsets still need to be complete, meaning each file must exist with the correct filename and size. I don't know what pacmanx is, but it's obviously not meant to run on a pacman cabinet if filenames and sizes aren't matching.

Edit : i did some research, pacmanx's gfx roms sizes don't match, they are 4 times the normal size of pacman gfx roms. You can't load roms that aren't the right size, even if you could the hardware wouldn't know what to do of them so you'd still have to rewrite the emulation code, because they aren't the digital representation of a pacman chip anymore.

Floob

@barbudreadmon
What would be the best way to identify hacks that FBNeo supports?
I see <comment>Hack</comment> in the dat file, but just wondering if there was a more accurate way of doing it.

barbudreadmon

@Floob said in Guide to running HBMAME games in Retropie:

I see <comment>Hack</comment> in the dat file, but just wondering if there was a more accurate way of doing it.

There isn't, comment should have the information you seek, except if the information wasn't properly set

Floob

@barbudreadmon
Thanks, I'll check out some hacks based on that.