new mame2010 folder structure

maxbeanz

Does cheat support now work ? I have just built lr-mame2010 from source, I looked in the 'roms/arcade/mame2010' folder but there is no 'cheat.zip'. Do we have to manually add it now ?

markwkidd

@maxbeanz said in new mame2010 folder structure:

Does cheat support now work ? I have just built lr-mame2010 from source, I looked in the 'roms/arcade/mame2010' folder but there is no 'cheat.zip'. Do we have to manually add it now ?

You will have to manually place cheat.zip.

I have honestly never used MAME cheats and I don't know if they're working in mame2010. I do know that mame2010 now has a valid path to load them from :)

Post your results with cheats and if they aren't working we can start a github issue for it.

Edit - I have placed a mame0.139-compatiblecheat.zip at this URL if you find it useful: https://github.com/libretro/mame2010-libretro/blob/master/metadata/cheat.zip

maxbeanz

@markwkidd Thanks, i'll try the cheats at a later date unless someone else confirms they are working.

On playing a few games I noticed that some don't boot. They work fine on Android MAME 0.139 and i'm sure that they previously worked on 2010. The error log says 'Segmentation fault'. These ones didn't boot :-

Contra
Pacland
Splatterhouse
Star Wars

markwkidd

@maxbeanz said in new mame2010 folder structure:

@markwkidd Thanks, i'll try the cheats at a later date unless someone else confirms they are working.

On playing a few games I noticed that some don't boot. They work fine on Android MAME 0.78 and i'm sure that they previously worked on 2010. The error log says 'Segmentation fault'. These ones didn't boot :-

Contra
Pacland
Splatterhouse
Star Wars

contra.zip is flagged 'NO GOOD DUMP'. Could it have been one of the clones?

Edit: contra.zip and pacland.zip don't instantly crash the original mame 0.139. Hmm.

maxbeanz

@markwkidd I couldn't get cheats to work. I placed the 'cheat.zip' in 'roms/arcade/mame2010'. I also tried putting it in 'BIOS/mame2010' but still no Cheat option in the Tab menu.

I don't know why the games I listed above no longer work. As I said, they work on my Android Mame 0.139 (Mame4droid) and i'm pretty sure they used to work on lr-mame2010. There could be a lot more that don't work as I only tried about 15 and 4 of those didn't boot. I haven't tried lr-mame2010 since sometime last year so who knows what commit did it !

Can someone else confirm that the 4 games I mentioned don't boot (using the latest source) ?

markwkidd

@maxbeanz I'm trying to bisect the Contra and Pacland regressions. First I'm looking for a working commit.

At any rate, could you go to the mame2010 subfolder in your ROMs folder. Then go into ini and scroll down to the bottom of the file. Change the 0 next to cheats to 1 (or just add a 1 if there is not a 0).

I hope that will give you better luck. This might be on the list of old mame.ini functionality that needs to be removed.

maxbeanz

@markwkidd Unfortunately, changing the 'ini' file entry didn't make any difference.

markwkidd

@maxbeanz I can confirm those 4 games are not working with the latest source here either.

Did cheats work with mame2010 in the past from your experience?

maxbeanz

@markwkidd No I don't think cheats have ever worked on lr-mame2010. I noticed on the Android MAME that there is also a 'cheat' folder with a 'output.xml' file (probably the last selected game/cheat). Maybe libretro needs that 'cheat' folder available to output the xml file ? I don't have time to test this at the moment though.

markwkidd

@maxbeanz said in new mame2010 folder structure:

@markwkidd No I don't think cheats have ever worked on lr-mame2010. I noticed on the Android MAME that there is also a 'cheat' folder with a 'output.xml' file (probably the last selected game/cheat). Maybe libretro needs that 'cheat' folder available to output the xml file ? I don't have time to test this at the moment though.

Thanks this is all helpful to me. I've only been working with this core for a couple of months.

maxbeanz

Creating a 'cheat' folder doesn't work.

markwkidd

@maxbeanz I made some progress tracking down the problem with contra.zip and the others but no fix yet. I need to stop for now but I'll be tracking this bug here: https://github.com/libretro/mame2010-libretro/issues/101

estefan3112

@markwkidd Happy to report that MAME2010 now successfully runs on both Raspberry Pi (from source) and Ubuntu Retropie. Also highscore support works, yippie! Very eager now to check this core further out.

maxbeanz

@markwkidd I tried a few more games today and found some more that don't boot :( I'll post them here in case you can spot any running themes.

Hypersports (hyperspt.zip)
Pacman 25th Anniversary (25pacman.zip)
Pac-Mania (pacmania.zip)
Renegade (renegade.zip)
Robotron 2084 (robotron.zip)
Rolling Thunder (rthunder.zip)
Smash TV (smashtv.zip)
Terminator 2 (term2.zip)

markwkidd

@maxbeanz Thank you for your notes. I've been working to track down the specific regression that is causing this bug with the hopes of fixing it by the end of the weekend.

On a brighter note, the patch to enable RetroPad controls for Players 3 and 4 in mame2010 did get merged today. My suggested 4-player test romset is simpsons.zip if anyone wants to try it out.

Normally I would be testing 4-player support with NBA Jam Tournament Edition v2.0, but tragically that romset is affected by this same regression that maxbeanz reported. :argh: :argh:

Edit: I had a mistaken understanding of where this regression was introduced. I am pretty sure that it has nothing to do with the new folder structure and everything to do with some bulk changes to the code by Twinaphex last week that removed the last bits of C++ from mame2010. For the curious I have detailed my process as an issue and I'm waiting to hear back from him: https://github.com/libretro/mame2010-libretro/issues/101

markwkidd

This morning Twinaphex merged by fix for the mame2010 segementation error with Contra, NBA Jam and many others.

@maxbeanz I'd be grateful as always to you or anyone else has follow up reports on how those titles are working with the new patch in RetroPie after recompiling. It's working well on my desktop system at lest.

maxbeanz

@markwkidd I can confirm that all the games I listed above now boot correctly except for 'Pacman 25th Anniversary (25pacman.zip)', not sure why that doesn't work.

Also, I noticed that the '.hi' files are appearing in the 'hi' directory. Does that mean that I don't need to add a 'hiscore.dat' file ?

markwkidd

@maxbeanz said in new mame2010 folder structure:

@markwkidd I can confirm that all the games I listed above now boot correctly except for 'Pacman 25th Anniversary (25pacman.zip)', not sure why that doesn't work.

Woohoo!

I assume from the way you wrote this that 25pacman.zip was working before the recent updates. I'll take a look at that one. Possibly a different regression than the C++ to C conversion segfault which was fixed today.

Also, I noticed that the '.hi' files are appearing in the 'hi' directory. Does that mean that I don't need to add a 'hiscore.dat' file ?

That is correct. I have recently updated mame2003 and mame2010 so that they have a built-in hiscore.dat. If you want to use a traditional external file (for example if you are trying to fix or add new hiscore memory maps) there is a new core option for both cores that reads from an external hiscore rather than the internal.

maxbeanz

@markwkidd Thanks for all your updates on this. It seems the only thing that didn't work was the cheats but I suppose we can add lots of credits for most games as a substitute.

markwkidd

@maxbeanz said in new mame2010 folder structure:

@markwkidd Thanks for all your updates on this. It seems the only thing that didn't work was the cheats but I suppose we can add lots of credits for most games as a substitute.

I'd suggest that that enabling mame2010 cheats might be a good bounty. In addition to the mainline MAME 0.139 cheat system I think that MAME4Droid has cheat support so there would be a few sources to draw on.

I've got my personal financial and time resources committed to other libretro MAME issues at present and I'm starting to ramble on but I bet it wouldn't be hard to come up with a suitable $50-$100 bounty if someone would chip in the first little bit.

P.S. If anyone reading this thinks they might want a bounty for cheat support, please start a fresh, descriptive, new github issue like for the new mame2003 vector rendering bounty and attach the bounty to that: https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/issues/332