lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport

Riverstorm

@maxbeanz - Here's a new DAT. I added the pre 0.125u2 Gorf set & corrected emperor.wav. I also verified the sets are current where applicable as some are from the older section on Twisty's. Lastly I updated the set to use the unofficial enhanced versions of the samples described below with a brief description. If you prefer the current set or older just let me know.

Arcade Accurate Unofficial Samples

Berzerk - enhanced version by Gyrovision, who states that it sounds more accurate in comparison to a real machine. Try it out!

Carnival - enhanced version by Gyrovision, who states, "Just a couple tweaks, upped the quality a little and gave the bear a new attitude. Grrr! :)"

Donkey Kong - lower pitch adjustment by Gyrovision.

Space Invaders - Gyrovision assembled this set by merging some edited Retrocade samples with the Mame ones, and the result is magnificant 8D. There is a significant quality increase that is very noticeable. I now use these instead.

Qbert - enhanced by Gyrovision.

Rallyx - enhanced by Gyrovision.

Star Castle - this was submitted by Gyrovision - he modified the pitch on the 'drone' sample and increased by 50% the volume on the 'star' sample within the set to make it sound much more accurate in relation to the real arcade machine - recommended.

Vanguard - enhanced by Gyrovision.

maxbeanz

@riverstorm I think this is a good set of samples and should be the default DAT for mame2003plus samples. One minor point, as stated in the readme, the 'emperor' sample in Gorf isn't even needed and people may struggle to find it anyway at a later date. Maybe just leave it as it is in the Twisty's archive ?

Riverstorm

@maxbeanz said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

One minor point, as stated in the readme, the 'emperor' sample in Gorf isn't even needed and people may struggle to find it anyway at a later date. Maybe just leave it as it is in the Twisty's archive ?

Yeah that makes sense then all the samples may be obtained from one location at Twisty's. Even the 188 byte samples has no audible audio when played back. I put corrected emperor.wav in a separate zip with a note so when I go back to it a few years later or whenever I'll have an idea what it is.

markwkidd

If there is going to be a 'null sample' in the DAT, I suggest it should be the 188 byte CRC. I'm making an educated guess that the 188 byte file is a valid WAV file (meaning it has a header) with no audio.

On the other hand a 0-byte file can't be a valid WAV file. Based on my reading while looking for emperor.wav, older versions of MAME might crash when trying to load a 0-byte WAV. In other words, if there is going to be a 'fake' WAV it seems best to make it a valid fake WAV. :)

Riverstorm

@markwkidd said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

In other words, if there is going to be a 'fake' WAV it seems best to make it a valid fake WAV. :)

Thanks Mark, that makes sense why I didn't hear anything with the 188 byte sample. That's the one we were going to use (the older 188 byte) samples from the 0.125u1 and older set. Current samples (0.125u2 and newer) are the ones using the zero-byte files.

maxbeanz

I read in the 'whatsnew.txt' on Github (2003plus) that 'Explosive Breaker' was added but I don't see it in the datfile. Are there more missing ? (I used the DAT posted on Github, does anyone detect this game with the manually generated DAT ?)

EDIT: Also, I just noticed this post . Apparently there are no unofficial roms used.

markwkidd

@maxbeanz said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

I read in the 'whatsnew.txt' on Github (2003plus) that 'Explosive Breaker' was added but I don't see it in the datfile. Are there more missing ? (I used the DAT posted on Github, does anyone detect this game with the manually generated DAT ?)

EDIT: Also, I just noticed this post . Apparently there are no unofficial roms used.

From arcadez: "Explosive Breaker didn't make the cut so i've removed it from the newly supported games list, however the japan version of this game Bakuretsu Breaker is now playable in this core via my Kaneko16 updated from a while back."

Riverstorm

@maxbeanz said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

I used the DAT posted on Github, does anyone detect this game with the manually generated DAT ?)

I just generated one this morning after updating from source and the samples are not in the DAT under Bakuretsu Breaker yet.

Another quick question Shark Attack has 2 sample sets. One is 'full size' and the other is 'reduced size'. I added the full size is that the one you would prefer. I don't think I've played Shark Attack so not quite sure the difference. It's 35MB vs. about 1.5MB.

maxbeanz

@riverstorm I was talking about the actual game (Explosive Breaker), not samples :)

Regarding Shark Attack, I think the larger version has the same sample played over and over for 3 and a half minutes ! whereas the reduced one only plays the sample once and lets MAME repeat it as needed (i think). Maybe use the reduced one as there's quite a size difference.

Riverstorm

@maxbeanz said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

@riverstorm I was talking about the actual game (Explosive Breaker), not samples :)

Regarding Shark Attack, I think the larger version has the same sample played over and over for 3 and a half minutes ! whereas the reduced one only plays the sample once and lets MAME repeat it as needed (i think). Maybe use the reduced one as there's quite a size difference.

Ah, that's interesting. I'll change it to reduced.

Yes the newest generated DAT does have Bakuretsu Breaker. I was looking for samples with it as they are on the mind lately. ;)

maxbeanz

Built from source (2003plus) using the latest manually generated DAT (from the MAME menu) new 'svc.zip' has corrupted graphics, 'svcboot.zip' works fine.

Samples don't work on any game ? (BIOS/mame2003-plus/samples)

Riverstorm

@maxbeanz - Here's the new DAT. All sets are pulled from the 'Current Section' on Twisty's site. If a sample didn't exist that's current then I pulled it from the 'Older Section'. Things to note on the sets used.

Alternate sets from the 'Current Section'

Gorf set Pre-0.125u1
Shark Attack reduced version

Enhanced versions for the 'Unofficial Section' enhanced by Gyrovision

Berzerk
Carnival
Donkey Kong
Space Invaders
Qbert
Rallyx
Star Castle
Vanguard

Riverstorm

@markwkidd - I spent some time last night taking a look at the missing ROMs. I am using MAME 0.196 and Rollback 0.196 that came out a few days ago. I verified my sets are accurate.

With the newest DAT (from yesterday). It looks like King of Fighters was removed which corrected the hacked ROMs, SVC was overhauled and now uses official ROMs but Hyper Street Fighter still looks like it's using hacked ROMs. I Rebuilt with all sets, even the BIOS device sets just to be sure and they don't seems to exist in the official set.

I don't mind if they are hacked ROMs but any chance you could use your kung-fu research skills to verify one way or the other? I think Arcadez said they are official so I am not 100% sure. I do have them from the old reference set we made before the fork but it's a bit tough to search every zip in every ROM from the official set which is like 80,000 ROMs to match them but ClrMamePro is not picking these ones up.

It helps so I can make a subfolder and use and Adds-Path in ClrMamePro for one-off and miscellaneous ROMs that aren't official.

Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition (Asia 040202) [folder: hsf2a - size: 45mb]
missing rom: hs2ax.03 [size: 524288] [CRC32: 5f3d7397] [SHA1: 96f327dd998105ad5dc46bc9d3b741805a840d68]
missing rom: hs2ax.04 [size: 524288] [CRC32: 59acf108] [SHA1: e68fe233681175b29a35badab249c2b892b23af3]

maxbeanz

@riverstorm Do any samples work on yours ? They don't seem to play on mine. I have them in 'BIOS/mame2003-plus/samples' which is the folder that's automatically created.

As I posted above, the new 'svc.zip' seems to have corrupted graphics, 'svcboot.zip' works fine though. Arcadez posted the 2 missing roms for hsf2a on Github (not sure if they are official).

Riverstorm

I haven't tested anything yet. I was fiddling with my Pi last night and crashed it. I really dislike those virtual pad inputs. My input looks like "z RETROPAD1 B" when you try and use the letter "z". If you enter 2 or 3 inputs you have a HUGE string of inputs that is hard to follow. I found if I disable/comment out all inputs from Retroarch and just use the controller it does clean up some of the inputs, actually most (my main MAME default.cfg is 100% clean but I couldn't find them all like z and s still have garbage when doing individual game configurations.

I don't know if the "Plus crew" will address it, if it's even possible, but it kind of drives me crazy.

I will test out SVC later today after I rebuild as I have both the sets and samples ready to go.

As for the hsf2a I take it they are just unofficial ROMs? If they are posted on Github they must not be in the official set.

markwkidd

@riverstorm that's an issue on the RetroArch end but as you have been finding out the doubled "RETROPAD" inputs can be prevented by using custom retroarch.cfg.

PS I'm not sure if the double listings hurts anything, although it might. I will probably find out when I finally get around to setting up my brother's X-Arcade Tankstick to work with Lakka.

In brief, you need to have a custom retroarch.cfg mame2003-plus that unmaps all of the 'conflicting' keys listed here: https://docs.libretro.com/guides/retroarch-keyboard-controls/

maxbeanz

@markwkidd Can you confirm that samples are working for you ?

Riverstorm

Yes that is the correct location for samples. I just downloaded from source today. I recently switched over to Arcade and run everything from there. I built my inputs around MAME and had a heck of a time figuring out how to override all/retroarch.cfg for FBA keyboard/IPAC only while keeping everything else the same including controllers but I did finally get everything working.

So that left the mame-libretro folder open for testing mame2003-plus without overwriting my working set but I have to override everything for mame2003-plus. I dumped about 20 games and found several issues.

svc - crashes to the menu
svcboot - crashes to menu
Depth Charge - no sound
Donkey Kong - half sound, missing several pieces
Zaxxon - no sound

The sounds all work perfectly in lr-mame2003. Several sounds do work correctly but out of the handful I tested I had several errors. It's going to take a whole group of testers to really test all these ROMs.

I had to prompt 'ok' on some ROMs things you can bypass with lr-mame2003 core options like mame2003-skip_warnings = "enabled"

Riverstorm

@markwkidd said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

PS I'm not sure if the double listings hurts anything, although it might. I will probably find out when I finally get around to setting up my brother's X-Arcade Tankstick to work with Lakka.
In brief, you need to have a custom retroarch.cfg mame2003-plus that unmaps all of the 'conflicting' keys listed here: https://docs.libretro.com/guides/retroarch-keyboard-controls/

Thanks Mark I will look into it for sure. I don't think it does hurt anything but I would love to see that fixed or at least a clean input screen. If only disabling inputs temporarily to get them clean.

When I used a mouse left click I get something like this "RETROPAD1 LEFT MOUSE RETROPAD2 LEFT MOUSE RETROPAD3 LEFT MOUSE RETROPAD4 LEFT MOUSE. That's from one key press.

It's a real pain as every options shows '...' because the input strings are SO long. Thanks for the links I will check it out. After I disabled everything in Retroarch keys like Z & S were still having "ghost" inputs but couldn't quite figure out where they were defined as everything all/retroarch.cfg were commented out and also arcade/retroarch.cfg had nothing.

markwkidd

Instead of commenting out those lines in the retroarch.cfg, could you try to set them to "nul"?

such as:
input_rewind = "nul"