lr-scummvm: request for comments and 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!

Dipkid

@hhromic Thanks alot, thats pretty much what im doing now .
Im starting to think this is a bad-roms kind of problems, cause some games starts the lr-scummvm core from ES, and some dont. the girlfriend wanna watch Home Alone, but that will probably not gonna happen tonight..

DarishZone

Porting work like a charm, thanks, but i have a problem with scraping following author tips for installing.
If i scrape game directory renamed ".svm" ES crash, so basically i can't scrape games and so i not have boxarts, metadata and videos. There's a way to resolve this?

hhromic

@DarishZone thanks for testing. Can you be more specific on what exactly is happening? Can you paste the error log of the crash? Renaming the folder shouldn't crash ES (it doesn't on my side).

Maybe is better if you start from scratch by removing the scummvm folder from the subfolders downloaded_images and gamelists inside /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation. This will wipe any currently downloaded images/videos and the metadata for scummvm games. Then you can scrape again and test.