Shock Troopers (shocktro.zip) not loading using FBA:

robertvb83

@mitu do I understand this correctly that the latest lr-fbalpha emulator that is active in retropie if you update from source requires an updated romset v0.2.97.43???

this would be strange because the wiki still says v0.2.97.42. see also wiki here

mitu

@robertvb83 said in Shock Troopers (shocktro.zip) not loading using FBA::

this would be strange because the wiki still says v0.2.97.42. see also wiki here

It's not strange. If you install from binary you get v0.2.97.42, if you install from source it's v0.2.97.43. Since v0.2.97.43 has been released recently, the wiki hasn't been yet updated.

Loggahead

@mitu said in Shock Troopers (shocktro.zip) not loading using FBA::

f you install from binary you get v0.2.97.42, if you install from source it's v0.2.97.43. Since v0.2.97.43 has been released recently, the wiki hasn't been yet updated.

I definitely think you are right mitu. I reinstalled fba from binary to just get back .42 and Shock Troopers is working again. I won't update fba from source again until I get a chance to use clrmame to update my set to .43. I have never used clrmame before so I will do some research into how to do that. Is it feasible to take a merged .42 set and convert it to a non-merged .43? I like non-merged sets so that I can put us region games when possible.

mitu

@loggahead If you haven't used ClrMamePro before, then you can as I do - use Romcenter. It's relatively easy to use, but I only use it for individual ROMs , so I can't say how it will work for the whole ROM set.
What I did was to use a full (non-merged) set for .42, then add the the MAME diff ROM sets, picking the MAME releases according to the FBAlpha's changelog (https://www.fbalpha.com/view/240/). I'm sure it's not the correct way and you can probably use a full MAME ROM set in conjunction with the .42 non-merged set, but since I only use it sparingly it gets the job done.
Maybe a full .43 non-merged ROM set will emerge at some point so you don't have to rebuild/validate starting from the .42 ROM set (gee, a lot of sets in these paragraphs!).

Loggahead

@mitu said in Shock Troopers (shocktro.zip) not loading using FBA::

Maybe a full .43 non-merged ROM set will emerge at some point so you don't have to rebuild/validate starting from the .42 ROM se

Do you think it is possible to convert my .42 merged set to a non-merged .42 set using romcenter before trying to convert any of it to .43?

mitu

@loggahead said in Shock Troopers (shocktro.zip) not loading using FBA::

Do you think it is possible to convert my .42 merged set to a non-merged .42 set using romcenter before trying to convert any of it to .43?

Honestly, I don't know, since I'm just a casual user I haven't yet performed any bulk operations. Maybe someone more versed with the ROM sets operations can weigh in on this matter.

robertvb83

@loggahead i would recommend to use clrmamepro to convert your split set into a full non-merged set. it is very easy to do even if you never used clrmamepro before!
you can find a very good step by step tutorial here

you can then use the same Tutorial to rebuild the ...43 version of fba using the latest fba dat file from github. as a rom source you can start with ...42 the scanner will tell you what roms are missing so that you can add those as a source in the second path of rebuilding (you could also try a recent full mame romset as source)

Loggahead

@robertvb83 said in Shock Troopers (shocktro.zip) not loading using FBA::

(you could also try a recent full mame romset as source)

= Excellent

I found some guides including one by Herb here that i will give a shot tonight!

barbudreadmon

@robertvb83 said in Shock Troopers (shocktro.zip) not loading using FBA::

@mitu do I understand this correctly that the latest lr-fbalpha emulator that is active in retropie if you update from source requires an updated romset v0.2.97.43???

this would be strange because the wiki still says v0.2.97.42. see also wiki here

This is seriously depressing when people prefer trusting a web page instead of what the emulator is showing in its menu. The fbalpha2012 version shown in the wiki page is also wrong, it has been known for almost 3 years that it was not 0.2.97.30, and the emulator menu has been showing 0.2.97.29 for almost 2 years.
Trust the emulator, not a web page, web page can be outdated while the emulator generally know its own version.

And please stop asking if you need to update your romset every time there is a new release of fba : YES YOU DO

robertvb83

@barbudreadmon I find it a little depressing that people loose perspective and take all those things as common sense.

the whole mame, fba, roms vs. emulator versions is really not so easy to understand if you begin your retro gaming journey. It took me an insane amount of reading and brain confusion until i finally got the principle.

If you then find an official tutorial and matching table describing what romset you need for what emulator this can be like the holy grail. If those wikis are not kept up to date only insiders will keep on track. But keep in mind there are people coming into this hobby daily.

barbudreadmon

@robertvb83 Everything you need to know about lr-fbalpha is in the lr-fbalpha github repository, which is linked in the wiki page, up-to-date dats included.

robertvb83

@barbudreadmon fully understood. the thing is that the most difficult part for beginners is to get to know what you need to know.
maybe instead of describing such things in the wiki, only a link to the respective github repo should be provided

barbudreadmon

@robertvb83 i guess i could improve the readme in the repository with a Q&A section, direct links to the dats, and information about the command line optional argument to load non-arcade games (fba is actually an awesome emulator for gamegear, mastersystem, sg-1000, megadrive, pceengine, turbografx-16, supergrafx, and msx; it is known to run properly some games that won't on genplus_gx/picodrive).
Perhaps alternate dats (neogeo only, no-clones) would be nice too.

robertvb83

@barbudreadmon when trying to rebuilt the fba...43 romset i get missing roms for 1000s of games... could this be a problem of the dat file? they dont seem to exist anywhere.

missing BIOS rom: sp1-j3.bin
missing BIOS rom: sp1-u3.bin

barbudreadmon

@robertvb83 You shouldn't mind about those 2, see comments in https://github.com/libretro/fbalpha/commit/d14bd8b99cfc8b405eaebbd836fefb85060edae8

will

I was able to find a full fba .43 romset last week online. Took a while to download, but it's perfect and I didn't have to bust out clrmamepro. (Though I am well versed in how to use it)
Obviously I can't mention where to get roms at here, but it only took me about 6 minutes of searching to find it.

dankcushions

@robertvb83 said in Shock Troopers (shocktro.zip) not loading using FBA::

@mitu do I understand this correctly that the latest lr-fbalpha emulator that is active in retropie if you update from source requires an updated romset v0.2.97.43???

this would be strange because the wiki still says v0.2.97.42. see also wiki here

not strange - updating the wiki properly to reflect the new romset involves updating various links to datfiles, the compatibility lists (this alone takes HOURS), and quite a bit of text referring to the previous version in both the wiki and the script. i've done this myself the last couple of FBA versions, but have zero motivation to do it right now.

dankcushions

@barbudreadmon said in Shock Troopers (shocktro.zip) not loading using FBA::

This is seriously depressing when people prefer trusting a web page instead of what the emulator is showing in its menu. The fbalpha2012 version shown in the wiki page is also wrong, it has been known for almost 3 years that it was not 0.2.97.30, and the emulator menu has been showing 0.2.97.29 for almost 2 years.

be fair - the github for 2012 says 0.2.97.24! also, i was going to update it ages ago but then we had this conversation: https://github.com/libretro/fbalpha2012/issues/53 - i thought it was .24 with some backports from .29/.30? who knows what the right romset is to use with that thing...

barbudreadmon

@dankcushions said in Shock Troopers (shocktro.zip) not loading using FBA::

@barbudreadmon said in Shock Troopers (shocktro.zip) not loading using FBA::

This is seriously depressing when people prefer trusting a web page instead of what the emulator is showing in its menu. The fbalpha2012 version shown in the wiki page is also wrong, it has been known for almost 3 years that it was not 0.2.97.30, and the emulator menu has been showing 0.2.97.29 for almost 2 years.

be fair - the github for 2012 says 0.2.97.24! also, i was going to update it ages ago but then we had this conversation: https://github.com/libretro/fbalpha2012/issues/53 - i thought it was .24 with some backports from .29/.30? who knows what the right romset is to use with that thing...

I was just stating the fact people shouldn't blindly trust a wiki page. Imho, at least for lr-fbalpha, you should just link the repository for information about the last release and the dats.

robertvb83

@dankcushions i fully understand that. Also your leck of motivation. For mame and fba related emulation it is nearly impossible to keep everything up to date. For me it was for long time not easy to understand what this is all about. Why the heck do i need to sort ALL roms new in case of an update and not only put some new roms in the set. (i know better now, as i understand the concept more clearly)

i did not really get the point when commenting that one. I thought more in the direction that there are different types of emulators but they are pretty much fixed. and thus there is a fixed corresponding romset... so i was just confused that there would be a different fba emulator as retropie standard with a new romset that is not described anywhere

I think mame will never be a plug and play thing. If you want it working nice you have to deal with it and learn. But that is ok for me considering the insane benefit and historical meaning of this project.