lr-scummvm: request for comments and testing

marus

@hhromic Finally I'had time to test your patches: everything works fine! I was able to run all LucasArts games from gamelist root (thank to folder rename tip).
The select+start issue seems disappeared too.
Now this is the best option to play scumm games in Retropie IMHO.
Great work! thank you again.
Cheers

hhromic

@darknior said in lr-scummvm: request for comments and testing:

Now with your trick it works fine ;)
Thanks a lot

You are welcome! I'm glad it's working for you now.

@darknior said in lr-scummvm: request for comments and testing:

What do you mean about this ? Where can we read information ? It's the last stable official 2.0.0 if i read fine.
Will they update it like the official standalone version ? Because there are some avantage to use it :)

I meant that lr-scummvm is a fork of the official standalone scummvm but with libretro integration as a backend. Yes, the fork currently is based on scummvm 2.0.0, however it is not constantly being updated to the very latest official all the time. Also, because it is a fork, any changes in upstream official needs to be ported down to the libretro version, which depends on people from LibRetro to do. This is the very same with many other libretro cores. Fortunately the current lr-scummvm seems to be working very fine despite not being on the bleeding-edge with upstream.

@darknior said in lr-scummvm: request for comments and testing:

EDIT : I have change my old Nespi Case + by my new Megapi Case and now it works fine, near perfect.
As I had guessed it came from the bad power supply of the Nespi Case

Ah the infamous Nespi Case :). I also own one of the original non-plus versions and had the same power supply issues. I ended up fitting a PowerBlock (very recommended!) and also changed the internal wires for thicker ones. This completely made the case work as expected for me.

@darknior said in lr-scummvm: request for comments and testing:

Now i will try some other games with filter and overlay, but for my part it will replace the official release for all the games that works fine with it <3

Again I'm happy it is working great for you now. Please keep testing as much as you can, the more the better to spot scriptmodule bugs or think on enhancements. Cheers!

hhromic

@marus said in lr-scummvm: request for comments and testing:

@hhromic Finally I'had time to test your patches: everything works fine! I was able to run all LucasArts games from gamelist root (thank to folder rename tip).
The select+start issue seems disappeared too.
Now this is the best option to play scumm games in Retropie IMHO.
Great work! thank you again.
Cheers

I'm very happy to hear the hotfix patch for the HOTKEY+START quitting is also working for you! If more users report the problem gone then I think I will send a PR upstream to see if it's merged for good.

Thanks for all the testing!

hhromic

Update
The scriptmodule is now part of official RetroPie :) To install/uninstall lr-scummvm, just go to the experimental section of the package manager and you will find it there. Some documentation will be put in the official Wiki later.

Thanks to all the testers and if you find any issues just post it here and we can sort it out. Cheers!

EctoOne

@hhromic does that include your fix for the closing crash in the upstream core (or whatever the right term is)? For the android version in my case.

hhromic

@EctoOne yes, the scriptmodule includes the fix for the closing crash as a local patch, however I haven't send it yet to the upstream repository as I wanted to leave some time for players to test. At least for me is working fine so far, and others seem happy as well.

Maybe I will send it next week, however the upstream maintainers don't seem to be very active and I don't expect them to merge it too soon :(. Once submitted, fingers crossed.

EctoOne

@hhromic It's OK, I just bought a big SD card for my tablet and still have some games that I can play with the normal ScummVM version. But in the feature I probably need a better way to right click things, touch controls are awful for that. Or maybe I need to buy a Bluetooth mouse and see if that works on my tablet.

ParadoxGBB

This core is better I think than the standalone Scummvm. The cursor seems a bit easier to deal with and it's convenient to have the controller hotkeys. Some of the audio seems better but that might be because I hadn't updated ScummVM recently.

A few things I noticed:

Initially, the runcommand for the core seemed to not launch scummvm correctly (explicitly launched retroarch, passing in the romdir launcher shell file), but the "official" copy I got through the retropie script doesn't seem to do that anymore.
This is a minor thing, but when you gracefully exit out of a game (without utilizing the hotkey combo), you're left with a retroarch quick menu that just shows "no items", and to boot back into emulationstation you need to back out of there and select "quit retroarch" or do the combo there. It's a bit annoying to have that extra step.
A few of the games require specific settings (for example, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade appears to require a specific FM-TOWNS audio option to hear the music), but I haven't been able to figure out how to set per-game emulator overrides. The documentation says you should be able to drop a [SHORT_NAME].ini file but either I'm dropping in the wrong place or doing something else wrong. Anyone have one working? I'd also recommend turning off the speed hack for The 7th guest if you like the intro to stay in sync.
A random interesting thing for Shivers fans --- lr-scummvm has really bad video performance for its intro, but it works perfectly for the standalone emulator for some reason. I found this curious because I had assumed the cores were pretty much the same --- but it's rather moot since on the RPi there appears an access violation bug you hit right after the intro that makes the game unplayable (although I suppose you could try restoring a game outside of that area to start). I opened up a bug here but no takers yet (https://bugs.scummvm.org/ticket/10431). Oddly enough this doesn't get hit on a Windows ScummVm install, or launching the game through DosBox / Windows 3.1 on a RetroPie.

Thanks for this installer script, it really makes it easier to scrape the titles' metadata too as has been noted.

darknior

@ParadoxGBB said in lr-scummvm: request for comments and testing:

A few of the games require specific settings (for example, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade appears to require a specific FM-TOWNS audio option to hear the music), but I haven't been able to figure out how to set per-game emulator overrides. The documentation says you should be able to drop a [SHORT_NAME].ini file but either I'm dropping in the wrong place or doing something else wrong. Anyone have one working? I'd also recommend turning off the speed hack for The 7th guest if you like the intro to stay in sync.

Have you try to configure the game with the scummVM ini general file ?

hhromic

@ParadoxGBB thanks for testing and sorry for the delay replying :)

Initially, the runcommand for the core seemed to not launch scummvm correctly (explicitly launched retroarch, passing in the romdir launcher shell file), but the "official" copy I got through the retropie script doesn't seem to do that anymore.

There were some enhancements to runcommand and the underlying addEmulator scriptmodule function to better support this script, so the preliminary patch probably stopped working once RP was updated with this. The official module in RP is now the preferred way to install/manage lr-scummvm.

This is a minor thing, but when you gracefully exit out of a game (without utilizing the hotkey combo), you're left with a retroarch quick menu that just shows "no items", and to boot back into emulationstation you need to back out of there and select "quit retroarch" or do the combo there. It's a bit annoying to have that extra step.

Yes this is "normal" behaviour. When you close the game in ScummVM's GUI, the core simply finishes and you are taken back to RA. AFAIIK there seems to be no way for a core to quit RA from within as this is not hot RA was designed. So unfortunately this won't change and better is to get used to the combo in-game.

A few of the games require specific settings (for example, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade appears to require a specific FM-TOWNS audio option to hear the music), but I haven't been able to figure out how to set per-game emulator overrides. The documentation says you should be able to drop a [SHORT_NAME].ini file but either I'm dropping in the wrong place or doing something else wrong. Anyone have one working? I'd also recommend turning off the speed hack for The 7th guest if you like the intro to stay in sync.

as @darknior mentioned, you need to add these settings into the general scummvm.ini file located in your $HOME/RetroPie/BIOS folder. When adding options to a game, you must use the game id as the section name, and make sure there is a path option pointing to the folder of the game.
I haven't had time recently to document this officially in the RetroPie Wiki, but will do as soon as I get the chance. Thanks for your patience.

A random interesting thing for Shivers fans --- lr-scummvm has really bad video performance for its intro, but it works perfectly for the standalone emulator for some reason. I found this curious because I had assumed the cores were pretty much the same --- but it's rather moot since on the RPi there appears an access violation bug you hit right after the intro that makes the game unplayable (although I suppose you could try restoring a game outside of that area to start). I opened up a bug here but no takers yet (https://bugs.scummvm.org/ticket/10431). Oddly enough this doesn't get hit on a Windows ScummVm install, or launching the game through DosBox / Windows 3.1 on a RetroPie.

The lr-scummvm core is currently based on ScummVM 2.0.0, however the upstream maintainers haven't synced the upstream changes recently into the core, so it's a bit behind the upstream progress. There is not much we can do regarding this, but to wait patiently for the core to be updated by libretro's folks.

Thanks a lot for testing and thanks for the good words on the script :) Hope you have fun playing ScummVM games!

Dipkid

Umm sorry guys, but how does one create a .svm file?

(Google just sends me all over the place, and just nameing txt file as .svm
dosent seem to work. Im very excited about a stable lr version of ScummVm. Great job guys! Now If I could just get it to work..)

marus

@Dipkid I've simply created a file from text editor typing the short name inside it ;-)

EctoOne

@Dipkid the original scummvm port was creating them when you added games in the gui. i dont't know if the lr core does the same. otherwise svm are just txt files and therefore it should work to rename them.

you could also try to download the default *.scummvm files from libretro here and rename them.

Dipkid

Ok, thanks guys! I did create a text file, saved as .svm. Games show up in ES, but i get kicked out after seeing the Run Command box.
Does it mather if the short-name is in capital letters?
(Mass) add and run the games with the org scummvm core works fine though. Going to thinker with it after work..

hhromic

@Dipkid I can't confirm right now, but I would suspect that it does matter to use capital letters for the game-id inside the text file. This is read by the core to know which engine to use for the game. Please use all-lowercases inside the file and try again. A simple text file should suffice.

As @EctoOne pointed out, you can download the files in the link he provided from libretro. Just make sure you only put one of these files for each game directory, and that the file is renamed to .svm.

Let us know how it went!

Dipkid

@hhromic will do! 👍(I'm still confused as of I should name the .svm file for example Full Throttle to ft.svm or Full Throttle.svm.. I understand that the text inside should be ft..)

hhromic

@Dipkid the name of the file itself doesn't matter, but for simplicity I recommend you to use the same shortid, e.g. ft.svm. The name of the game directory (that also has to have .svm at the end of the name) is what matters for emulationstation to show the game and scrape it.

hhromic

@Dipkid actually you don't "have" to name the directory with .svm, the core will still run fine, but you will have to "enter the directory" in ES. Naming the directory with .svmgives the convenience of direct launch from the directory itself in ES.

Dipkid

Well now i totally screwed it. I updated before bed last night and it probably generated new svm files etc, cause now i have double entries, some games send me to the scummvm gui, some kicks me out etc etc. Also got the "not a platform set warning " when scrapeing in ES.
Sorry to taken up your time, just gonna start over from scratch, and re-read this entire thread. I´ll let you know when i get it working..!

hhromic

@Dipkid sad to hear. I don't think you need to restart, but if you wish, you can go ahead. In this case, I recommend you to just read the first post of this thread, as it is updated for the current version. It has all the information you need to get going.

As an alternative to start from scratch, just delete all the game folders in the scummvm rom directory and add the games following the guide of the first post. To reset the scrapping, delete the scummvm folders that you will find in /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/ inside the gamelists and downloaded_images subfolders. This will make ES forget all about scummvm and you can start scrape again from a fresh rom directory.

Good luck!