NES RessurctionXtras 2.0 Project (thread previously titled: Does anybody work on Emulators to fix broken games here?)
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Just a reminder that most of those Xbox emulators and some of the MAME engine changes they made for COINOPS never got their sources released as they were supposed to.
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@zerojay Yeah. You're never going to see source from CoinOPS.
I wasn't even talking about porting over emus from the XBox though. I've already talked to people about porting old versions of mame that would work with the existing romsets I have from that era, but nobody is interested in doing that.
Most of those emulators are based off of old versions now anyhow. Because of physical limitations of the XBox they had to just make changes to them. What I'm talking about here is integrating any changes in the emulators used on the RetroPie setup where needed. Things like mapper updates.
Who knows.... Maybe most of them were fixed on emus used here already? I won't know until I begin testing. I was just wondering ahead of time what would need to be done to get these fixes in place.
I won't have any involvement in any arcade stuff other than just using what other people come up with. I'll be doing consoles and handhelds that generally already have non-changing verified dumps. Mame is too much of a hassle with all the constant changes and I can't be arsed with it anymore.
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Does anybody think I should add a column to the spreadsheet for the matching CRC TOSEC game file name as well as the No-Intro and GoodNES 3.23b?
I'm not sure if people really use TOSEC anymore or not.
People told me not to bother with GoodNES 3.23b because they said it was massively out of date. It turns out that this wasn't really true at all. When you see the spreadsheet you'll find that the "Good" rom is a match to the most current No-Intro rom about 99% of the time. I actually took preference with Good over No-Intro on the NES collection because No-Intro completely removes the iNES header from the games since they weren't an actual part of the dump. This was a problem though because in most emulators even in 2017 the games won't play without this header.
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@capeman said in Does anybody work on Emulators to fix broken games here?:
I'd personally like to see somebody make RadMobile work on Mame2003, haha.
What's the problem with Rad Mobile exactly..??
Arcade Addict
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So I've begun going through the synopsis files for the Official releases again in an attempt to make sure that all information fields are accounted for and filled in correctly as well as shrinking the body of them down to under 1kb a piece.
Something I've noticed is that a lot of the game descriptions out there are pretty boring and just informational, but if you look around at different gaming sites you can find some pretty good descriptions for the games... yanno... like a quick blurb that would be on the back of the box or a game advertisement to grab your attention.
I'm going to be doing my best to have a description like this for all of the games in the collection.
Example: Othello, NES, US Licensed
Launchbox description:
"Black and White. The battle of opposites... as old as time itself... comes to life in Othello. Its origins are part Western, part Eastern. Othello is fast-paced, as easy to learn as checkers, yet as fascinating as chess. Play against a friend. Or play against the Othello computer in four challenging skill levels. You play the black discs and your opponent plays the white. Trap his discs between two of your own, and his "flip" to your color. One move can change the entire game. Finding that move is the secret to Othello. That's why it takes a minute to learn... but a lifetime to master!"
Moby Games Description:
"Othello is a conversion of the board game. Each player tries to fill the game board with as many discs of his color as possible. On each turn the player places a disc on the board by selecting a location where the opponents discs will become trapped between two of his discs. The trapped discs are flipped over to the players color. The game ends when the board is filled or time runs out, and the player with the greatest number of his color discs on the board wins. Two players can play against each other, or one player against the computer."
One of these things is more exciting than the other. :)
But there are plenty of times when Moby Games has a better description too. Heck, even Gamefaqs wins that competition sometimes.
I'm not necessarily looking for the best one. I tend to look at Moby Games first, then launchbox, then gamefaqs, then wikipedia, then anywhere else. If the first choice or two have a great description, I don't even bother checking any more. I haven't found any in about 100 games so far where I couldn't find something pretty good like the one above.
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@gamez-fan said in Does anybody work on Emulators to fix broken games here?:
@capeman said in Does anybody work on Emulators to fix broken games here?:
I'd personally like to see somebody make RadMobile work on Mame2003, haha.
What's the problem with Rad Mobile exactly..??
As far as my testing goes, any game running on Sega's system32 is slooooooooowwww on a raspberry pi if it works at all.
Vector Artist, Designer and Maker of Stuff: Laser Cut Atari / Pixel Theme Bartop
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@capeman said in Does anybody work on Emulators to fix broken games here?:
As far as my testing goes, any game running on Sega's system32 is slooooooooowwww on a raspberry pi if it works at all.
Although my V60 will be different from the one in MAME78 aka 2003 with regards to clock devides this should work it's a trick i used to speed up
these games on the xbox when using the newer Segas32 video code which is very resource heavy, in MAME2003 you have the older faster video
code so hopefully underclocking the main CPU will get you a nice performance boost to make these games playable.If you can compile your own source do the following and then make a new build, in drivers/system32.c find..............
static MACHINE_DRIVER_START( system32 )
/* basic machine hardware */ MDRV_CPU_ADD(V60, OSC_A/2/12) // Reality is 16.somethingMHz, use magic /12 factor to get approximate speedAnd replace with
static MACHINE_DRIVER_START( system32 )
/* basic machine hardware */ MDRV_CPU_ADD(V60, 12000000 )// should be 16mhz but make it this to speed things up for the XboxIf the above works we can likely do the same for the Sega Multi32 games eg Outrunners etc etc
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Strangely enough, gamefaqs seems to have the "best" brief description for the games out of mobygames and launchbox and gamefaqs in a majority of the cases. I started out looking at gamefaqs last, but now that's the first place I check.
Somebody must have added some cool blurbs about most of the official licensed games on their site at some point over the years, because when I was using that site to do this years ago it was mostly generic descriptions just saying the name of the game, what type of game it was made, the developer and publisher and the date of release.
My original NES synopsis collection size was MUCH larger. Because of the nature of the
gamelist.xmland how EmulationStation handles them, a smaller size is necessary. Even with this smaller size per-game, this body information might have to be left out of the entries on a Pi Zero, but hopefully with a Pi3 there won't be any problems with the massive amount of titles that will be included.The amount of game titles and the combined size of the synopsis that was made 10 years ago: 1,769 files at 3.83MB
New files and size: 2,020 files at 2.29MB
I'm hoping to get this well under 2MB when it's done.
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Synopsis Update:
US Licensed completely updated. Every single field of information is filled in for every single game, and are as follows for Official Licensed releases.
[Full Game Title] (Synopsis First Line on XBox, Romlist Name on RetroPie)
Platform:
Region:
Media:
Controller:
Genre:
Gametype:
Release Year:
Developer:
Publisher:
Players:The only data that will be double checked and/or altered are Genre and Players. I will be verifying by hand the number of players for all Official games when I re-test them on the Pi. I will also homogenize the Genre field when I can see this displayed in the romlist on the Pi.
TOTAL US LICENSED SYNOPSIS FILES: 648
TOTAL US LICENSED SYNOPSIS SIZE: 529kbTOTAL SYNOPSIS FILES: 2,020
TOTAL SYNOPSIS SIZE: 2.25mbEvery body text has been reduced in size to keep each individual games under 1kb (1024 characters or less). In many cases one of the 3 websites I cited before had a great description as-is. In quite a few other cases I edited these down by removing superfluous information to keep the file size per game down.
I still have around 300 Licensed games to go through, including Europe and Japan games that aren't clones of US games, as well as Zapper games and VS Arcade System games.
After that, I will be going through all of the unofficial games including Translations, Hacks, Unlicensed, Prototypes, Pirates and then it's on to Famicom Disk System releases.
Still working on the spreadsheet. I hope to release that soon. :)
Oh... and I've been reducing the original synopsis files made years ago. This is because we only need the small blurb about the game in the romlist and the "novels" we used to have would likely cause a lot of problems when the
gamelist.xmlfiles by system would be needlessly huge, even with a Pi3.Original files and size: 1,769 files at 3.83MB
Current files and size: 2,020 files at 2.24MBHoping to get this well under 2.00MB by the time it's done. :)
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I just finished testing NES US Licensed games (not zapper or power pad). 100% of the games work on a Pi Zero with proper CPU clock settings and smooth video set. The only one that has any problems at all that I could see is Goal! II. Quicknes won't even play it, fceumm plays it slow and Nestopia has some audio stutter. Plays best in Nestopia though, and is still entirely playable.
I still have to re-test any 4-Player games when I have more controllers to make sure that function works, but all of the 4-Player games work with up to 2 players for sure.
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@used2berx I have to say im mighty impressed with your dedication to this project!
Have you taught about starting the same thread over at the libretro forums?
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@rion I didn't even know there were libretro forums. :)
That would probably be the way to go when I conclude my NES testing and have a list of all of the non-working games though, huh?
I wasn't really expecting any problems with the Official games, especially the US/EU ones. I've got a feeling though that once I delve into the pirate/unlicensed/translations/hacks testing that there are going to be a lot of them.
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Finished testing US unlicensed games (Tengen, Codemasters, Wisdom Tree, American Video Entertainment, etc.)
100% working again, although unfortunately the 1 game that seems to suffer a bit with audio stutter is Alien Syndrome that wont' run at all in Quicknes, suffers gameplay slowdown in fceumm and has some light audio stutter in Nestopia on the Pi Zero.
I don't believe that any of these games would have any problems running on a Pi 3. The Unlicensed games overall were not a huge fan of the Quicknes emulator. About half or more of them would not play at all in Quicknes. Most of these played fine in either Nestopia or fceumm though.
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Does anybody know if there is light gun support for NES games on the RetroPie, and if there is, how to set it up?
I'm going to skip testing these games until somebody lets me know. Onto Europe Licensed games for now.
EDIT: I'm actually referring to the ability to use the D-Pad with a cursor on screen. Both NES emulators on the XBox allow you to do this.
I'd also be curious to know if this could be done with some sort of USB Zapper gun, and if you would need a CRT television or not to do it.
THANKS!!!
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Finished testing Europe Licensed games.
Only problem game was Devil World. It plays fine, but for some reason I am unable to select 2 player mode in any of the 3 emulators. Strange.
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Finished testing Japan Licensed games.
All work except for 2 controller issue games.
Hyper Sports (Requires either Hyper Shot or Zapper support - Works on XBox).
Exciting Boxing (Requires special "Pack'In" Inflatable boxer control. Doesn't work on XBox either. Saw a video on Youtube that shows it supported in an emulator, but unsure what they're using.) -
Nintendo VS Arcade machine testing complete. 5 non-working games.
VS Duck Hunt, VS Freedom Force, VS Gumshoe, VS Hogan's Alley don't work because I don't know how to use the Zapper on RetroPie. Additionally, Gumeshoe doesn't seem to work at all because none of the three NES emulators will even load the game at all.
VS Ninja Jajamaru-Kun "works" very limited. Fceumm is the only emulator that will load the game, but The only way you can play the game at all is with a 2 Player game. 1st player is always non-responsive. You have to wait for 1st player to die and then you can play the 2nd player.
All of these games work on the XBox.
On the Pi, none of them work with Quicknes... most of them just kick back to romlist, some a black screen on load and some play with very bad colors. You can't seem to insert coin with Quicknes anyhow.
Nestopia plays nearly all but 3 or 4 of them. You can insert coins using the trigger buttons in either Nestopia or Quicknes.
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It will be assumed unless somebody tells me otherwise that there is no support for Zapper games (via actual zapper/CRT TV, or on the gamepad). Even if there is support for Power Pad (via joystick), it's nearly impossible to map any of those games in a way that makes sense, even on the XBox, so they will be considered unsupported here as well unless somebody lets me know otherwise.
Total Official NES games tested on the Pi Zero by category:
US Licensed: 648 Total, 647 play great, 1 plays mediocre.
US Unlicensed: 79 Total, 78 play great, 1 plays mediocre.
Zapper Games (Non VS machine): 22 Total, 0 play at all (unknown if zapper supported).
Europe Licensed: 29 Total, 29 play great (although Devil World won't let you play 2 players on any emulator).
Japan Licensed: 116 Total, 114 play great. (Exciting Boxing: Unsupported Controller, Hyper Sports: Needs Hyper Shot or Zapper support).
VS Arcade Machines: 29 Total, 24 play great. (4 light gun games not supported, Gumeshoe & Ninja Jajamaru-Kun won't play right in any of the 3 emulators.
Unsuppored Controller (Mainly Power Pad): 10 Total, 0 supported.
TOTAL UNIQUE LICENSED (AND US UNLICENSED) NES GAMES: 933
TOTAL SUPPORTED/WORKING IN RETROPIE: 892
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Good news so far on the Translations. 100% of the games play so far out of the first 65 of 346 translated games. This includes a few of the Chinese pirates through the letter D as well. The only one with slight problems on the Pi Zero is the pretty sweet Platformer "Armadillo" with some slight audio crackle in Nestopia, but it shouldn't be a problem for anybody with a PI 3.
It will probably be a while before I get back to testing games, but I'll try to push on whenever I get the chance.
EDIT: Sweet.... Out of curiosity, I zipped way forward to "The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods" and it works. This was a Chinese Pirate back-port of "Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past" on the SNES for the Famicom that was recently translated. It didn't play in Quicknes or Nestopia, but it works in Fceumm. :)
EDIT 2: Double sweet... "Bio Hazard", in the Chinese Pirate section works too. It was a Chinese Pirate back-port of the Playstation's first Resident Evil game for the Famicom. Unfortunately, this game isn't translated yet, but one can only hope.
Don't want to jinx anything yet, but the compatibility list for the more obscure games might be better than I was thinking on the Pi.
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@used2berx said in NES RessurctionXtras 2.0 Project (thread previously titled: Does anybody work on Emulators to fix broken games here?):
It will be assumed unless somebody tells me otherwise that there is no support for Zapper games (via actual zapper/CRT TV, or on the gamepad)
You can find instructions for how to use a USB zapper with RetroArch emulators in the docs: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Spinners,-Trackballs,-Lightguns,-and-other-Mouse-Devices
I have only used a Wiimote with Dolphinbar zapper, but other USB zappers should work the same way.
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