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

[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:

[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.

[brimys]

@mediamogul hmmm, Doytrone did not seem to run on my mame2003... just kept showing garbleygook on the screen. How do I make sure my mame2003is up to date?

[dankcushions]

@brimys https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Updating-RetroPie#updatinginstalling-individual-packages - update by source to be sure.

if you've installed mame2003plus, just try it in that. it will be up to date.

[mediamogul]

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

How do I make sure my mame2003is up to date?

If you've just installed RetroPie, chances are lr-mame2003 is at least past the point where I believed the changes to have been added. The fixes may indeed only exist in lr-mame2003-plus. You can update any of the installed packages using the RetroPie Setup. All that said, dote works perfectly fine in AdvanceMAME as well. You're likely just having issues because your configuration is incomplete and MAME is having to use automatic assignment for the missing inputs.

[markwkidd]

This forum is very determined to make this project succeed, hehe.

[mediamogul]

@brimys

I just have noticed that you're using AdvanceMAME 1.4. To my knowledge, there's really no reason for you to be using such an old version. By installing advmame from the RetroPie Setup, which is currently at v3.8 on RetroPie, you can make use of the same .106 ROM set and take advantage of the more recent Raspberry Pi-specific optimizations. Not to mention all the other additions that come with having the most up to date version available.

[brimys]

@mediamogul Based on my reading of the forums and docs (...by no means complete!...), I had landed on using mame2003 as my default system, while leveraging advmame1.4 for all my vector-based games (Asteroids, Star Castle, etc.), as I understood that to be the best system for vector graphics.

I also understood (mentioned above) that that group of Bally games (DOT, Spy Hunter, etc.) did not run on mame2003 (and some of those are why I built my cab!), so I was running them on advmame1.4.

Based on conversations above, I'll definitely check out mame2003-plus, and see what runs.

Is advmame1.4 still tops for vector graphics, or has that ability carried over to advmame3.8?

Any advice is appreciated - I've learned a ton from all the helpful folks here, but am still discovering things all the time!

[mediamogul]

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

Is advmame1.4 still tops for vector graphics, or has that ability carried over to advmame3.8?

AdvanceMAME in general has traditionally been the best way to display vector games, as it was the only solution to output in HD. However, lr-mame-2003 and lr-mame2003-plus have both recently gained this ability as well. If this was your only reason for employing AdvanceMAME, you now have other options. However, if you wanted to take advantage of AdvanceMAME for any of its other features, there's no reason not to be using the latest version with your RPi3B+.