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

[TPR]

@Folly I'm considering adding FM Towns to my Pi 5 build. What would be the best steps to follow to get that set up?

[Folly]

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

@Folly I'm considering adding FM Towns to my Pi 5 build. What would be the best steps to follow to get that set up?

I would start with installing the fmtowns from my script.
My script will add 6M of ram to the runcommand.
More ram will mean that games will run that need that extra ram.

Then get the bios roms and the chd's and place them in the correct folders.

If you want to test some others then you can also try :
Driver fmtowns (FM-Towns (Model 1 / 2)):
Driver fmtownsftv (FM-Towns II FreshTV):
Driver fmtownshr (FM-Towns II HR):
Driver fmtownsmx (FM-Towns II MX):
Driver fmtownssj (FM-Towns II SJ):
Driver fmtownsux (FM-Towns II UX):
Driver fmtownsv03 (FM-Towns (unknown, V03 L01 00 91/07/09)):
Driver fmtmarty (FM-Towns Marty):
Driver fmtmarty2 (FM-Towns Marty 2):
Driver carmarty (FM-Towns Car Marty):

For the fmtmarty's 4M will be added.
I believe carmarty has issues and no ram will be added by my script.

[testudo]

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

@Folly I have found one game that seems to have a scrambled screen:

Adventures of the Space Ship Beagle. Not sure if it's just not emulated well, but I tried two different roms and the same results. This one doesn't require the digital video adapter but I'm going to guess it just isn't emulated in MESS properly?

I saw this listed in the comment section of a YouTube video of the game:

"@MrBurnsObscureGamesTester
1 year ago
There's a handful of discs like this one that was released 1989/1990 that only work on early cdi test/dev/monitor units"

[Folly]

@testudo
Can you share the youtube link ?

[testudo]

@Folly

[Folly]

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

@Folly

MAME 0.271 is released

265-in-1 Handheld Game (SPG2xx based) [David Haywood, TeamEurope] (All in 1)

I updated everything to 0271.
Again this was quite some work.
To give you an idea here I added a readme on how I do that (just scroll down):
https://github.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/tree/main/00-databases-00/sorted_info_creation/0XXX
I also added this so others can join in if they want.

Hope everything works like expected.
Only the mame0271 aarch64 binary has been added to the gdrive
X86_64 binaries are still missing
lr-mess/lr-mame binaries are also still missing.
Will see if I have the time this week to add more binaries.

edit1:
X86/X86_64 binaries have been added.

edit2:
lr-mess_0.271_x86_64_BuildBot_gccXX_PC_generic_full_mame.7z has been updated with the hash table that I forgot to add (24-11-2024)

[TPR]

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

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

@Folly I'm considering adding FM Towns to my Pi 5 build. What would be the best steps to follow to get that set up?

I would start with installing the fmtowns from my script.
My script will add 6M of ram to the runcommand.
More ram will mean that games will run that need that extra ram.

Then get the bios roms and the chd's and place them in the correct folders.

If you want to test some others then you can also try :
Driver fmtowns (FM-Towns (Model 1 / 2)):
Driver fmtownsftv (FM-Towns II FreshTV):
Driver fmtownshr (FM-Towns II HR):
Driver fmtownsmx (FM-Towns II MX):
Driver fmtownssj (FM-Towns II SJ):
Driver fmtownsux (FM-Towns II UX):
Driver fmtownsv03 (FM-Towns (unknown, V03 L01 00 91/07/09)):
Driver fmtmarty (FM-Towns Marty):
Driver fmtmarty2 (FM-Towns Marty 2):
Driver carmarty (FM-Towns Car Marty):

For the fmtmarty's 4M will be added.
I believe carmarty has issues and no ram will be added by my script.

Up and running! Thank you!

I did notice that .chd and .cue/.bin seem to work okay but a .zip just hung on the FM Towns Marty screen.

[Folly]

@TPR

Nice, good job ;-)

[TPR]

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

@TPR

Nice, good job ;-)

With your help! Thank you!

[TPR]

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

@TPR

Nice, good job ;-)

Question for you. I got the games that require a blank floppy disk running by following your instructions here:
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/27806/tutorial-fujitsu-fm-towns-marty-with-lr-mess/36?_=1732340369432

But is there a way to load the game with already having the flop inserted into the drive when the game loads? Is there something I can add to a game specific command line in emulators.cfg that will pre-load the floppy so I don't have to into the mame menu and load it when I boot up a game?

[TPR]

@Folly Nevermind, I figured it out. My command line looks like this now:

lr-mess-fmtmarty-carmen = "/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch --config /opt/retropie/configs/fmtmarty/retroarch.cfg --appendconfig /opt/retropie/configs/fmtmarty/retroarch.cfg.add -S /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/fmtmarty -s /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/fmtmarty -v -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-mess/mamemess_libretro.so 'fmtmarty -ram 4M -rompath /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame;/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/fmtmarty/ -cfg_directory /opt/retropie/configs/fmtmarty/lr-mess -c -ui_active -flop /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/fm_towns_disks/carmen.mfi -cdrm %ROM%'"

and I added:
-flop /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/fm_towns_disks/carmen.mfi

which pointed to the disk and the game loaded with the floppy already in the drive!

[Folly]

Just added the lr-mame and lr-mess binaries for aarch64 too.
(Versions 0.271)

[TPR]

@Folly Was Tomy Tutor ever a consideration for your script?

[TPR]

@Folly I'm finding a few games hanging on the Marty intro blue screen. For example, "Yuuwaku (Japan)" - I've tried both the cue/bin version and a chd and none of them seem to load. Anything but the cdrm command line kicks me back to emulationstation. Any ideas on some of these to get them to load up?

[TPR]

@Folly Samurai Spirits is another one. Tried both chd and cue/bin and no matter what options in emulators.cfg I choose it just hangs on this screen:

[Folly]

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

@Folly Was Tomy Tutor ever a consideration for your script?

Not specifically.
The consideration was that it could install and use all mame drivers if possible.
Basically that what it does depending on the database.
Mostly the rest depends on mame if the drive works or not.
For some drivers I added some patches in the script in order to let them work better.
I just tested tutor and this seems to work OOB ;-)

[Folly]

@TPR

If I have the time to do so then I might install fmtowns to see what it does on my computer.

[Folly]

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

@Folly I'm finding a few games hanging on the Marty intro blue screen. For example, "Yuuwaku (Japan)" - I've tried both the cue/bin version and a chd and none of them seem to load. Anything but the cdrm command line kicks me back to emulationstation. Any ideas on some of these to get them to load up?

I found the file Yuwaku (1996)(T2)(Jp)[+UserDisk].zip.
Just running the .cue with the -cdrm runcommand the fmtowns driver started up but didn't find the cd.
However it did not kick me back !
You might want to check you /dev/shm/runcommand.log.
I manually added the .bin user disk in the UI and restarted mame with F3 then it booted into the game.
Seems like adding the user disk is the solution.

I never added patches for fmtowns to load cdrom + floppy in one go but could be something to think about as more games use user/data disks.
However that said, not directly sure what simple fix/patch this should be as every method has it's own advantages or dis-advantages.

Edit:
Above method is obviously not the basename/softlist way but the -cdrm (-flop) method.
However, looking at the softlist files the fmtowns_cd holds the bootdisks needed to get the chd's loaded.
It should therefor be possible to load the disk via basename and then the chd cd image should automatically be found.
My runcommands have the BIOS/mame and of-course the roms/fmtowns paths in them to search in.
This line in the runcommand.log :
yuuwaku (japan).chd NOT FOUND (tried in fmtowns_cd/yuuwaku yuuwaku fmtowns_cd
reveals that you could place the "yuuwaku (japan).chd" in :
BIOS/mame/fmtowns_cd/yuuwaku
or
roms/fmtowns/fmtowns_cd/yuuwaku
If you are lucky it should load in 1 go.

[Folly]

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

@Folly Samurai Spirits is another one. Tried both chd and cue/bin and no matter what options in emulators.cfg I choose it just hangs on this screen:

I got the boot-disk (sspirit.zip) from the mame-sl softlist in fmtowns_cd.
Tried to get samurai spirits (japan).chd from the mame-chd set but it wasn't there so I got my file from elsewhere and pasted in :
~/RetroPie/BIOS/mame/fmtowns_cd/sspirits/samurai spirits (japan).chd
Then I ran sspirit.zip from roms/fmtowns with a basename loader and got it running.
I did this now on a 2.6Ghz intel I5 and it was a bit stuttering so I used some frameskipping to improve the speed in mame standalone.
I did some fighting and it did not freeze in the time I played with it.
I think this game might be too heavy for the pi4 or pi5.

Here is my picture :

[Folly]

@TPR

This page might be interesting for you :
https://arcade.vastheman.com/minimaws/softwarelist/fmtowns_cd

BTW:
I did all the tests on fmtowns not fmtmarty.