Discs of Tron - environmental, speech, and parent/child ROMS

mediamogul

@brimys said in Discs of Tron - environmental, speech, and parent/child ROMS:

I am unable to locate a 0.106 (advmame1.4 compatible) version of dotrone.zip.

You're not likely to find the individual ROM out in the wild. The set however, is easy to come by.

If I have a different/later version of the zip, is it possible to convert it to work with my 0.106 version of dotron.zip, to get speech in the game?
I know I’ve read a few things that seem to suggest yes, but I’m not 100% sure where to begin.

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Validating,-Rebuilding,-and-Filtering-ROM-Collections/

brimys

So... I was able to get a full 0.106 non-merged romset, and loaded dotrone.zip onto my pie. A few weird things...

When I run the game, it won’t let me play in 1-player mode. I press the coin button giving me one credit, and pressing p1start does not start the game... it does nothing. If I insert a second coin, and then press p1start, the game will run in 2-player mode. I have all my buttons mapped correctly. Any thoughts?

Second weird thing is that when the game plays, I do hear speech, but so far have only heard Sark’s laugh when I die, and “You’ll regret this!” a few times, as well. No other speech has been heard.

Can anyone tell me what other speech should exist, and when or where it should play?

Getting closer, but not there yet!

THANKS!

mediamogul

@brimys said in Discs of Tron - environmental, speech, and parent/child ROMS:

When I run the game, it won’t let me play in 1-player mode. I press the coin button giving me one credit, and pressing p1start does not start the game... it does nothing. If I insert a second coin, and then press p1start, the game will run in 2-player mode. I have all my buttons mapped correctly. Any thoughts?

It sounds like you simply have the 'player 2 start' mapped to the control device you're trying to use for player one. I would double and triple check that.

Second weird thing is that when the game plays, I do hear speech, but so far have only heard Sark’s laugh when I die, and “You’ll regret this!” a few times, as well. No other speech has been heard.

The game doesn't have much speech, or rather it has a lot by 1983 standards, depending on how you look at it. I believe Sark also has a yell and maybe one or two more lines of dialogue, but for the first several stages, he pretty much just laughs or says nothing at all.

brimys

@mediamogul said in Discs of Tron - environmental, speech, and parent/child ROMS:

It sounds like you simply have the 'player 2 start' mapped to the control device you're trying to use for player one. I would double and triple check that.

Hmmm... how would I check that? It seemed to work in the other games? If you could point me in the right direction, I’ll take a look

Thanks!

mediamogul

@brimys said in Discs of Tron - environmental, speech, and parent/child ROMS:

how would I check that?

By default, the 'Tab' key opens the configuration menu. From there, you have the option to set controls globally or just for 'this game'. I would double check both, but if all other games are working correctly, it may just be set incorrectly for dote.

brimys

@mediamogul So I double-checked my button mappings and looked in advmame-1.4.cfg, and DOTRONE is still behaving like that. 1 credit in, and none of the Start buttons work. Add a second coin, and pressing P1 Start OR P2 Start begins a 2-player game.

Any other thoughts, or things to check? Seems to only happen in this game, one of my all-time favs.

Thanks in advance!

mediamogul

@brimys said in Discs of Tron - environmental, speech, and parent/child ROMS:

Any other thoughts, or things to check?

Can you post the contents of your advmame.rc to pastebin.com?

brimys

First time using Pastebin, so hopefully this works! Here is my advmame-1.4.rc:

https://pastebin.com/V5GRXMMf

brimys

Was unable to launch Galaga, error log pointed out that I had a dupe of the following:

input_map[p1_dialx] mouse[0,x] mouse[1,x] mouse[2,x]
input_map[p1_dialy] mouse[0,y] mouse[1,y] mouse[2,y]

...but this was introduced AFTER and separately than the DOTRONE weirdness.

markwkidd

I'm sorry to ask it at this late stage, but have you tried dotrone with mame2003-plus, or even just mame2003? I know that dotrone at least boots and runs in mame2003-plus although I don't know about the speech.

Based on the driver history, the mame2003-plus does seem like it should have the speech.

brimys

@markwkidd i’m happy to try anything to get this running! Do I install maime 2003+ from the optional packages? I’m not at my pie at the moment… I can give it a shot. I know that it did not run in regular mame 2003, but I can try 2003- Plus

mitu

@brimys mame2003-plus is in the experimental packages section, you can install it from there.

brimys

@mitu great, will try tonight. Does mame2003-plus runnthe same 0.78 romset as regular mame2003?

brimys

@brimys Discs of Tron is one of those handful of Bally games that do not run on mame2003, I believe... I think Spy Hunter is also on that list.

brimys

I believe that Discs of Tron is one of the small handful of Bally games that do not run on mame2003 - Spy Hunter is another - so am wondering if they will run on mame2003-plus?

dankcushions

mame2003-plus has had several fixes for bally games, so my money is on it running. still, why not test and find out? :)

brimys

@dankcushions oh, definitely will!

markwkidd

@brimys for 95% of romsets it is the same for MAME 2003-Plus as MAME 2003. If you already have the 2003/0.78 dotrone romset then it's probably the same, go ahead and try it with 2003-plus.

If you're going to to download or rebuild from scratch, there are full collections out there already built for MAME 2003-Plus and there are instructions for rebuilding romsets manually.

Here's what a properly built mame2003-plus dotrone romset contains, for reference:
0_1541514959804_Screenshot 2018-11-06 06.33.50.png

brimys

@markwkidd Thank you for the picture! I’ll compare my dotrone romset to it tonight!

mediamogul

@brimys said in Discs of Tron - environmental, speech, and parent/child ROMS:

First time using Pastebin, so hopefully this works! Here is my advmame-1.4.rc:

It looks as though you never mapped anything for any of the player 'Start' functions. This would cause MAME to use the default 'auto', which can lead to issues with incorrect player control assignment. You can set this to whatever you want through the GUI 'Tab' menu under 'Other Controls', or you can add it to your advmame.rc directly. In the example below, I have player 1 set to the 'T' key and player 2 set to the '9' key.

input_map[start1] keyboard[0,t]
input_map[start2] keyboard[0,9]

'Discs of Tron' shouldn't really be a difficult game to get running on any of the emulators these days. As @dankcushions mentioned above, the Midway MCR titles have been fixed for some time in lr-mame2003-plus and I believe the fixes have even been rolled into lr-mame2003. It's usually one of the first games I create a custom mapping for so that I can control Tron's movement digitally with my left thumbstick and control the aiming mechanism more precisely with analog control from my right thumbstick.