NES RessurctionXtras 2.0 Project (thread previously titled: Does anybody work on Emulators to fix broken games here?)
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So... small update, just because it's good news :)
So far I've tested all the way through the letter R in Translated NES games and every single one works on a Pi Zero in at least one of the emulators.
Only the following issues to report so far:
Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water - Minor graphical errors in all 3 emulators.
Banana: If you go to item screen, the game won't refresh right. Maybe unplayable because of this. (All 3 emulators).
I will be re-testing any of these games on the XBox to see if the problems are exclusively on the PI or if they happen elsewhere.
So far, so good. I wasn't expecting this section to go so well. That's 264 additional games working with problems on only 2 of them. :)
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@used2berx Overall, great news for the NES Translations.
Out of 346 of them, only 3 seem to have problems on the Pi Zero. Unfortunately, YS III: Wanderers from Ys is one of them. It's only really playable in Nestopia, but the audio stutters. :(
Not bad at all though. There was no way I thought 343 of them wouuld seem to play fine on the Pi Zero going into this.
Still got about 700 more to test. Updates will follow.
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Okay... So I did re-test Banana and Nadia on the XBox and have confirmed that the issues were there as well, so this is a rom problem and not an emulation problem. I will work on fixing these roms sometime in the near future and re-testing them. (Sometimes you got to test these things 3 or 4 times before you find a bug :) )
Great news in a way though. That means only 1 out of 346 NES Translations run poorly on a PI Zero, and the problem I'm seeing is just an audio stutter that shouldn't cause any issues on a Pi 3.
Amazing.
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Out of 74 Unlicensed games (Non US Unlicensed), 2 of them don't work. "2002 World Cup PK" doesn't work on either of the XBox emus currently either. I will look for a different dump of this. "Jurassic Boy II" has minor graphic glitches that may or may not make some parts of the game unplayable. I will have to re-test this game on the XBox emulators to see if that problem happened there. No other issues to report for Unlicensed games though.
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Out of 39 Prototype titles, only one currently has issues on a PI Zero. "The Legend of Robin Hood" has some minor text ghosting on the screen when pressing the start button. It's not a game breaking bug. I have to see if this happened on the XBox as well. It's probable that this is a rom issue because of the nature of unfinished prototypes. All 38 of the other Prototypes seem to play fine.
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Out of 78 (non VS Fighting) Pirates, 1 of them don't work and 2 of them run with minor issues on a Pi Zero.
"Boogerman II" doesn't start on any of the 3 emulators. This rom didn't work on either of the two XBox emulators either, even though it was the verified good "[!]" rom. There are alternate versions that work on the XBox though, so I will pick the best one that works on both platforms.
"Magic Dragon" has some minor graphical glitches on the info bar at the top of the screen. Need to re-test in XBox to see if this happened there too.
"Super Mario World" runs the best on Nestopia, but suffers from audio stutter. This shouldn't be an issue with any Pi 3 users. Unfortunately, this is also the case for the hacked "Improvement" version which is much more faithful to the SNES original game in the "Other Updates" section of roms that I have not begun testing otherwise.
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Out of 36 Pirate VS Fighting titles, only one has issues on Retropie.
"Mortal Kombat III" - The options screen right after the title screen bounces around in all 3 emulators. I will re-test this on the XBox, but I doubt that I saw this there since it's really noticeable. It is not a game breaking bug by any means, but it's just annoying.
All other games in this category seem to run without issue.
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Bummer.....
The Original Homebrew marks our first instance of a game that does not work in any of the 3 Pi emulators, but works on the XBox. "Sokoban" works in MednafenX on the XBox without any problems. The graphics are garbled in Quicknes and Fceumm, and the Start button just loops back to the title screen in Nestopia.
Out of 54 Original Homebrew, only 3 have issues (including Sokoban).
"Adventures of Lex & Grim" freezes right after action begins in all three emulators. This happens on both XBox emulators as well. I will try to track down a working dump.
"Utaco" has some severe flashing before the action begins in all three emus. It is not game breaking, by any means. I will re-check if this happens in XBox, but I likely will not be able to provide a better dump. This is the rom given to the Public Domain by the author of this game.
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@used2berx Got my hands on a TOSEC set of NES, so I'm considering the possibility of adding a column to the spreadsheet that will have all of the info for matching CRC32 values for that collection as well as the GoodNES 3.23b and latest No-Intro matches already included. That should pretty much cover all the bases. Will update whether or not I end up doing this.
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Okay.... I added TOSEC to the spreadsheet, tying all three major romsets to the Rx2.0 NES collection.
The numbers are subject to change, since I still have more games to add while I'm working on various parts of the project, but here's where we stand now.
TOTAL RX2.0 NES ROMS: 2,022
MISSING in GoodNES 3.23b: 447
MISSING in current No-Intro: 934
MISSING in current TOSEC: 826 -
I've done some re-testing of the problem roms. Here's where we're at. (Roms still a Pi issue are in bold).
Devil World (EU) - Doesn't allow 2 players in any Pi emulator. This is still the case. Both XBox emulators allow for 2 players without any problems using the exact same rom. This bug is certainly strange.
Hyper Sports (Japan) - Will be moving this game to "Zapper Games" category, where it will remain with an "Untested" status unless I ever get a USB zapper to try out on the Pi.
Exciting Boxing (Japan) - Pack-in Controller doesn't seem to be supported in either XBox or all 3 Pi emulators. Moving this to the "Unsupported Controllers" category until anybody ever comes along and adds support for it.
VS Gumshoe: Will not load in any of the 3 emulators. The same image works fine in both XBox emulators.
VS Ninja Jajamaru-Kun (VS Games): Works as designed in MednafenX on XBox. Strangely, 1st player controller controls both 1st and 2nd players in NestopiaX on XBox. No change with the problems on the Pi. I doubt many people would ever play this game anyhow, and if they did, they can always play the NES version without any issues.
Banana (Translated - Japan): I patched an alternate "bad" overdump and now it works fine in all XBox and Pi emulators. :)
Nadia - Secret of the Blue Water (Translated - Japan): The screen bounce when making menu selections is not an emulator problem. It happens on the XBox emus as well. It doesn't happen on the non-patched rom. I've tried patching every known dump of the game and it still happens. It's theorized by another rom hacker that it has something to do with the sizes of the boxes changing after the translation. If you want to play this game you have to deal with that unless somebody ever tries fixing the issue in the game code.
2002 World Cup PK (Unlicensed): Works on XBox if you use "PAL" mode in 1 player mode. Still freezes in both emulators in 2 player mode. Doesn't really seem to be a game. You don't actually play soccer here. You're just taking turns kicking at a goalie or defending the goal as a goalie. Music is terrible and the game just seems boring as hell. I'm removing this game.
Jurassic Boy II (Unlicensed): The UNF version had some annoying graphics garble, and after testing on the XBox it was there as well. Tried the NES version instead and it seems to play fine on all XBox and Pi emulators now.
The Legend of Robin Hood (Prototype): Some pretty annoying text ghosting when going into menus occurs. This happens on both XBox emulators as well. This is the only image of the prototype I'm aware of and is likely an issue with the rom itself.
Boogerman II (Pirate): The UNF version of the game works on all XBox emulators and plays just fine in quicknes.
Magic Dragon (Pirate): Some minor glitch on info bar at top of game. Happens on both XBox emulators as well, so likely a rom issue, which isn't a big surprise given it's an Asian pirate game. Only other version I could find was an "Ex" version in GoodNES3.23b which is likely a romhack since the title screen doesn't say "Ex" anywhere. It had the same issue as well.
Mortal Kombat III (VS Fighting Pirates): The option screen bounces around a bit in all 3 Pi emulators right after the title screen. This happens in both XBox emulators as well. This occurs for both dumps of the rom in GoodNES 3.23b. It is assumed this is another problem with it being an Asian pirate game. It doesn't effect gameplay.
Adventures of Lex & Grimm (Original Homebrew): I won't post a link here in case it contains roms, but I found a site where there is a rather recent discussion about PD games floating around out there and it doesn't look like this game was ever playable, whether on emulation or actual hardware! This game will not be included unless a good dump ever surfaces.
Utaco (Original Homebrew): The severe flashing before action starts is in both XBox emulators as well and the Pi emulators. Given that it's a very Japan type of game and it would fit in with the theme, and the rom is the exact one the author offers on his site, it's just going to be assumed it's working as designed.
Castle VI (Castlevania Updates): Minor graphics glitches on top part of screen where your life and enemy's life is. Doesn't effect gameplay. This happens in all Pi and XBox emulators. No way to try a different rom since the patch doesn't seem to be available anywhere for this old NES hack. This is the version in GoodNES 3.23b.
Famicom Grand Prix II (FDS Translated): Nestopia: Info on bottom flashes (was fixed on XBox Nestopia). Fceumm: Graphics boucne everywhere.
Druid (FDS Untranslated): Nestopia/Fceumm: Info flickers (Fixed on XBox NestopiaX and Mednafenx).
I'm still working on re-testing some other games, but that's about it so far...
Still working on:
Sokoban (Original Homebrew)
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Just in case anybody was wondering, I did find out something cool about the emulators.cfg file. If you change the file location for any non-MAME roms, it will still launch the proper emulator you picked before.
Maybe it does that with MAME too, but we didn't think it did. With MAME, you get a long seemingly random string of numbers for each game (so there's no way to determine easily which game uses which launch settings, unfortunately). With NES at least, it's very easy to tell which game uses which emulator because it's essentially the rom/zip file name with any spaces or other non alpha-numeric characters taken out.
I had to move a few games around (as referenced in the post above), and as long as you aren't changing the file name at all it will launch properly in the different location.
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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?):
Just in case anybody was wondering, I did find out something cool about the emulators.cfg file. If you change the file location for any non-MAME roms, it will still launch the proper emulator you picked before.
Maybe it does that with MAME too, but we didn't think it did. With MAME, you get a long seemingly random string of numbers for each game (so there's no way to determine easily which game uses which launch settings, unfortunately). With NES at least, it's very easy to tell which game uses which emulator because it's essentially the rom/zip file name with any spaces or other non alpha-numeric characters taken out.
I had to move a few games around (as referenced in the post above), and as long as you aren't changing the file name at all it will launch properly in the different location.
Any luck with the Power Pad? I'm really wanting to play Eggsplode/Short Order and World Track Meet. I know Nestopia has native Power Pad support (or at least I read that) with Windows, but it appears to not have made it to the Linux fork. I keep meaning to ask on the GitHub, but seemingly always forget to ask.
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@hooperre Sorry man. At this point I have all Power Pad games in the "Requires Alternate Controller" category. It might be possible to play them on the Pi, but I don't have a clue how to configure it if it does.
Even if it did, I don't really know how you'd get good configs for it. It's actually supported pretty easily on the XBox, but when I tried to map the games to the pad I couldn't figure out any way to make them work good. There are a lot of multi-presses you need to do for different functions and obviously the layout of a controller doesn't suit the grid style of the Power Pad very well.
If anybody figures this out and wants to try making good configs I'd be happy to test them out and add them to the final project though. :)
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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?):
@hooperre Sorry man. At this point I have all Power Pad games in the "Requires Alternate Controller" category. It might be possible to play them on the Pi, but I don't have a clue how to configure it if it does.
Even if it did, I don't really know how you'd get good configs for it. It's actually supported pretty easily on the XBox, but when I tried to map the games to the pad I couldn't figure out any way to make them work good. There are a lot of multi-presses you need to do for different functions and obviously the layout of a controller doesn't suit the grid style of the Power Pad very well.
If anybody figures this out and wants to try making good configs I'd be happy to test them out and add them to the final project though. :)
Thanks for the response! Well, I'm going to drop something into the GitHub anyway and see if anything comes out of it.
ETA: I've got a USB Dance Pad that I could make work.
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@hooperre Let me know if you have any luck with that dance pad :)
If you happen to have a light gun, let me know about those as well.
I'm just leaving all of those types of game as "Untested" for now, but if they actually work with USB devices (that I don't have) I will mention that you said that they will work with them even though I haven't personally tested them.
On the XBox emulators, we have the ability to have a crosshair put on screen that you can control with the DPad, so the lightgun games were tested there in this way. As far as I know you can't do that on any of the Pi emulators. This is why those games will be tested on the XBox but not on the Pi.
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BTW... I've added more problem roms to the list, they can be found a few posts above. I still have about 250 NES/FDS games to test on the Pi Zero before I'm complete. When I am, I will make a consolidated list of roms that work on the XBox but do not work on the Pi. Hopefully at that point we can get in touch with somebody who might be able to fix these issues, at least in lr-nestopia.
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@used2berx I've had success using an air mouse to play Duck Hunt and, a personal favorite, Wild Gunman on the Pi 3 with Nestopia.
ETA: I used this air mouse.
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@hooperre lol. I didn't even know an air mouse was a thing. I take it that this works on modern HDTVs then? If so, I'll make a note that you tested a few lightgun games with that unit and they played fine.
Let me know if you get anywhere with the Power Pad stuff too.
BTW... the guys you're talking to at github wouldn't have anything to do with trying to get a few games working that aren't working now, would they?
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Oh no! This is terrible!
The amazingly awesome hack "Super Pitfall: 30th Anniversary Edition" doesn't work in any of the 3 Pi emulators!!!!
Now I know I'm going to have to talk to somebody about getting games working. This is one of the top 10 NES hacks of all time IMO.
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