lr-mame_2003 Tab menu problem

AndrewH

I think this is a relatively new thing - I noticed it last night, but I know that it wasn't like this previously.

Within lr-mame_2003, if I press <Tab> to bring up the in-game menu, it appears wrong, and the various options don't do what the labels say.
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For example, selecting Bookkeeping info will bring me to the Input (this game) screen, Input (general) goes to the Dip Switches screen, and Input (this game) goes to the Game Information screen.

I've noticed that the bottom of some of the screens contain the "To continue, type OK..." message, so I'm wondering if there's a 'strings' file that's become corrupted somehow.
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I've tried updating Retropie, and also the Update from binaries and Update from source options for lr-mame_2003 itself, none of which have made a difference.

Any suggestions?

jonnykesh

@andrewh I noticed this myself last night. I have 3 installs of RetroPie. 2 on Pi's and one on a Debian Laptop. One Pi and the Laptop are on 4.2.20 and the TAB menu is messed up and all cheats are automatically turned on and can't be deactivated and it is crashing some games. The Pi that is still on 4.2.18 still has a working TAB menu. I also tried reinstalling Mame2003, updating from Binary and source and this did not resolve it.
I'm not sure what has changed between versions as I thought the binary was pretty much static at this point. Hopefully Buzz can shed some light on it and provide a fix.

dankcushions

paging @markwkidd - the only one i've seen doing mame2003 updates lately!

AndrewH

Thanks @jonnykesh - I also have another pi which doesn't demonstrate this, but hasn't been updated as recently. I'd feared corruption and was going to revert to a backup, but I guess I should hold off for now until it's investigated further.

In trying to troubleshoot this, I did take a look at the source in github (not that I'd really know what I'm looking at), but I'm guessing that some sort of mis-alignment between ui_text.c and ui_text.h has crept in somehow.. Both of them are showing as having been updated 10 days ago. Maybe @markwkidd could confirm :-)

jonnykesh

@andrewh Yeah, I was worried about corruption too, but after checking my 4.2.18 installation I knew it was just something broken in a recent update. I'm sure it'll be fixed once Mark is aware and gets time to look at it. If you find the problem then even better and easier for him to apply the fix. Was driving me mad last night, spent about 2 hours messing and testing it.

AndrewH

@jonnykesh heh - me too... hours!

jonnykesh

@andrewh I had a look on github and you seem to have identified the issue. As to how to fix it...

AndrewH

Should be an easy fix, although I'm no programmer so I'm not going to touch it...

At the start of ui_text.h we have one entry above the copyright section

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but in ui_text.c we have two - presumably this then pushes every subsequent string out by one

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markwkidd

@andrewh said in lr-mame_2003 Tab menu problem:

Should be an easy fix, although I'm no programmer so I'm not going to touch it...

At the start of ui_text.h we have one entry above the copyright section

but in ui_text.c we have two - presumably this then pushes every subsequent string out by one

Eek. This does look like the issue, and as the one whose been messing around in that file, I'd say I'm the one responsible. I'll try to put together a PR tomorrow or the next day but please if anyone else would like to go ahead sooner that would be fine with me.

jonnykesh

@markwkidd Nice one Mark. I like the way there are warnings in both files that they have to match... Hahahaha! If I had a github account I would submit a PR but I'll leave it to you.

BuZz

There are more problems after some of the recent changes - eg the text when launching galaga -

before:

after:

I am going to rollback the RetroPie libretro mame2003 for now. What is the purpose of the recent changes to catver etc? - I checked a few PR, but there is a lack of detail in there. Looks like there was limited testing of some of these changes :/

[edit] I think this problem is related - due to the wrong string offsets.

jonnykesh

@buzz I think the issue is the same. A line was omitted and it has displaced everything in the mame dialogues / menu.

BuZz

@jonnykesh Yep - submitted a PR here - https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/pull/118

BuZz

I originally put the ifdef back in, but then just removed the MESS string as I saw that all the other MESS strings have been removed. Why were the mess strings removed? I don't think MESS is hooked up in this core, but I don't see any benefit of removing just a few MESS related strings from this file.

jonnykesh

@buzz Hi Buzz, just updated from source and it's all fixed. Thank you very much. And twinaphex for merging it as well, of course.