Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone

bbilford83

@Folly I took your advice and did the gimp thing with the cartridges, replaced the art for the gamelist. I agree it looks much cleaner this way.

Folly

@bbilford83

I have a pure retroarch overlay working now and could somehow use a semi absolute path, in the overlay config file :
~/RetroPie/roms/sag/media/retroarch/overlays/sag-pacman2.cfg

The season it didn't work is that I forgot a folder in the path, haha.

See now why you cropped it as the overlay doesn't match up.
Will look at it if I can think of a solution.

Aha, playable now with a pure retroarch ovelay using a the cropped image:

bbilford83

@Folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

Aha, playable now with a pure retroarch ovelay using a the cropped image:

Yes that's how I'm playing it - certainly good enough but it would be nice to be able to see the whole overlay.

I am having an unexpected problem. If you have a moment, can you try to run footb4? It won't play for me! And I found a different source and it still won't work. The .zip has 3 files in it instead of 1, like all the others. I tried deleting the other two (and tried after deleting only one and then the other) and it still isn't running. I haven't seen anything to suggest it wasn't a good dump though...

Folly

@bbilford83 said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

can you try to run footb4? It won't play for me!

Seem to run.
It started odd and pressed "space" and then it seems to start ok.

bbilford83

@Folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

@bbilford83 said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

can you try to run footb4? It won't play for me!

Seem to run.
It started odd and pressed "space" and then it seems to start ok.

Thanks, made me keep trying and I discovered it works if I run it in the basename option but not in the cart option. I had the default set to cart and it worked with all the others. Weird.

Also FYI I got the football overlay working well! It is added to the folder, both cropped and not cropped. It was trickier than some of the others because one row on each side of the LEDs is not used - the overlay is meant to cover them. The resolution is notably lower than the other ones I made but I think it is good enough. This one is like the baseball one that it has words indicating what some lights mean, but they're all on the inside of even the cropped overlay (on the inside of the scoreboard), so that's nice.

I will update the gamelist in a bit and then that system is complete, very satisfying when there are only six games :). Edit: done.

Folly

@bbilford83

Found a solution for scaling the game so it becomes tinier.
Sadly the ovelay goes with it and can't be scaled bigger this way, so can't use this solution.
Seems we are stuck right now with the cropped ones.

If you like I can share the overlays + configs together with your gamelist.

bbilford83

@Folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

@bbilford83

Found a solution for scaling the game so it becomes tinier.
Sadly the ovelay goes with it and can't be scaled bigger this way, so can't use this solution.
Seems we are stuck right now with the cropped ones.

If you like I can share the overlays + configs together with your gamelist.

Of course, feel free. I'll add the overlay .cfg files to the same folder with the overlay pngs. I am leaving the full-size ones there too in case we figure out a better solution later.

Btw, probably you already thought of this, but whatever you did to make the game tinier, did you try changing the setting for the overlay file to say this?

overlay0_full_screen = true

Default is usually false, I think.

Folly

@bbilford83 said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

Default is usually false, I think.

Yes usually it's false.
Though we can experiment scaling the video smaller and making the overlay fullscreen.
Perhaps it can work.

Btw,
I am almost ready, no need to do the same.

Edit :
Took me while but I have added it now.
( make sure you backup if you have the same files in the same place ;-) )

bbilford83

@Folly forgive me I'm confused, do you mean you figured out how to use the full overlay with the game shrunk in it?

Folly

@bbilford83

No not ready it was an idea I got when you asked me about this :

overlay0_full_screen = true

Default is usually false, I think

I have added false in the overlay configs and uploaded it all to my gamelists so you can download it with my script (or manual if you want).

Let me know if it works for you.

bbilford83

@Folly Ah I understand, great.

Folly

@bbilford83

FYI I tried to make a sag.zip artwork file.
However I could not get it working.
Also trying another good file renaming it to sag.zip didn't work and got error in the runcommand.log :
Error instantiating layout view ______: invalid screen index 0

After a search I found this link :
https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/LAY_File_Basics_-_Part_I
It's referring also to standard layout files like this one :
https://git.redump.net/mame/tree/src/mame/layout/sag.lay

Here every segment is in the layout.
Could be the reason that a regular made artwork file doesn't work.
Still guessing though.

Edit :
Found that I have to use and edit the layout from the link.
Experimenting with the bounds in the renamed "internal layout part", seems to have an effect.
Using this will make it half times smaller (or about, not perfectly sure yet) :

        <view name="smaller">
		<bounds left="-23.3" right="46" top="-23.3" bottom="46.6" />

		<!-- default display orientation: visitor side at bottom -->
		<group ref="display">
			<bounds left="-0.3" right="23" top="-0.3" bottom="23.3" />
			<orientation rotate="180" />
		</group>

	</view>

original :

        <view name="Internal Layout">
		<bounds left="-0.3" right="23" top="-0.3" bottom="23.3" />

		<!-- default display orientation: visitor side at bottom -->
		<group ref="display">
			<bounds left="-0.3" right="23" top="-0.3" bottom="23.3" />
			<orientation rotate="180" />
		</group>

	</view>

This could make it somehow possible to use the whole overlay image.

Edit 2 :
<bounds left="-0.3" right="23" top="-0.3" bottom="23.3" /> can be changed into :

<bounds x="-0.3" y="-0.3" width="23" height="23.3" />

I was able to add the element (overlay image), but damn what is it difficult to align.
Seems virtually impossible if you don't precisely understand how it works.
Will have a look again later.

bbilford83

@Folly thank you very much for trying! At least it is usable as it is now Even if you aren't successful with the mame artwork.

bbilford83

@Folly one other question about how you'd prefer gamelists. For whatever reason MAME has a lot of graphical issues on C64 games... some games aren't playable at all (try "Pang" if you are curious). I installed lr-vice as an option just to test and discovered that for the games that didn't work, Vice played them fine. So for at least one or two games in my gamelist I'm making for C64GS, I really only got it working well by cheating and using a different emulator. Is it ok if I still leave those on since the games are in the software list, even if MAME currently emulates them poorly? At least then in the future if MAME emulation improves it will be OK, and if anyone is like me and annoyed the games on the list don't play well they can try out a different emulator.

BTW vice does have the ability to emulate the C64GS specifically, so it is still "the right system" and not just using a regular C64.

Folly

@bbilford83

That is fine just leave them in.

Retrodade

Have these extras been tested in a pi5 yet?
I tried Valerino and Folly M installs all went good till the end hung up and crashed the retro pie set up.
I know the pi5 is early but figured I'd mention it in hopes this all can get carried over to the pi5 and maybe some new emulator installs in the extras packages for pi5

anything in the works possibly?

Folly

@Retrodade

As soon as I get a pi5 I will tests.
Unfortunately, can't buy one over here yet.
Even if I register for one it can take up to 4 months so I don't expect to have one for at least 6 months.

For now, all I can do I test it on a different computer with bookworm.

From your post, really not sure what you tested.
Seem it could be anything.
If you want to test this script then also make sure you test only this one.

If the retropie-setup crashes then it doesn't mean it the scripts do not work.
It could be that you just have script files which are empty due to downloading and having a bad internet connection.
You have to check the files.

Otherwise, if you can't find the problem, then just rename your retropie-setup and clone a new one and add the script as mentioned in the first post.

Btw.
Valerino stopped with his fork, so the lr-mess install stuff definitely will not work anymore due to the renamed lr-mess binary. Although not working it should not be responsible for crashes.

bbilford83

@Folly @DTEAM I am back in my home with my pi and have finished up the last major new system on the list of "consolized" PCs, the Commodore 64 Game System. I have it uploaded to the same place as before, with the gamelist edited as it should be for filepaths and the art included. Again many of these games could be scraped if they were first added to the c64 system, so I defer to you if you don't want to use it, but again the big advantage here is that I have removed all the games that don't work without a keyboard. There were also a fair number where you can play a game in single player mode at whatever the default difficulty level is, but you can't change to 2-player or different difficulties without the keyboard. For those I noted that in the game descriptions.

This turned out to have exactly 100 working games (just a coincidence), so not as many as Zemmix or the XEGS - it seemed like a lot more games needed the keyboard for whatever reason, and also very few C64 games came out on cartridge comparative to other media (the C64GS could only play cartridge games).

Anyway hope this is helpful, next I will probably try to do the Tandy/Memorex "Visual Information System" which you might also want to include.

Happy holidays!

Folly

@bbilford83

Thanks for the work !

Happy Holidays too.

bbilford83

@Folly Happy New Year. I have an update/question about the "consolized" systems and mame romsets. I went back to add non-MAME games that were available (just for my own pi setup). For C64GS, it made very little difference - I added only 12 new games - but C64GS could only play cartridges. I then went back to Atari XEGS, which could play cartridges, floppies, or cassette tapes as I understand it (with added drives that just plugged in... unlike the C64GS which you would have to break apart to try to add drives).

Long story short, the XEGS is going to have massively more games than I originally added once I go beyond the mame set. I am using a TOSEC set, and I have only tested/added games starting with a number/symbol and games that start with "A." According to screenscraper, that should only be about 6% of all games for the system. But already after I finished those, the gamelist has grown from 252 games to a whopping 353 games.

So it is going to probably take me months, but when I am done I assume the gamelist will be much bigger, probably close to 2,000 games. I am sharing this just in case you think it may be worth including this gamelist somehow, even if it isn't automated into the script. Like I could create an extra folder for the "non-mame rom" art and a second gamelist named differently? It seems a shame to waste all the info, and I suspect at least some people would want it (same reasons as before... working without a keyboard, etc.). And even for real hardware, it seems crazy to me that there's no list anywhere of games that could be played on the consolized computer systems.

Any thoughts?