Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?

mediamogul

Nice work! I've been thinking about finally setting up an AES system here recently and this should be a big help.

pjft

I had never really thought of setting up an AES system but now I will certainly look into it. :) I had tried it out in the past but the logistics of changing things on demand make it so that I only default to the arcade versions. Thanks!

Clyde

Wow, what a comprehensive wall of text. 😊 Many thanks! I keep my Neo Geo ROMs from gog.com in the Neo Geo directory with a Unibios and always wanted to put them in AES mode by default. Now thanks to your guide, I'm thinking about hard linking them to the fba directory and using your guide to have an MVS set as well as an AES set.

saccublenda

Hello,
I followed the steps that @thelostsoul presented, and I have a problem when trying to modify the emulator configuration using RetroArch gui.
Let's say I add by hand the lines

core_options_path = "/opt/retropie/configs/neogeo/neogeo-core-options.cfg"
system_directory = "/home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/neogeo"

on top of the file /opt/retropie/configs/neogeo/retroarch.cfg. Then I launch the emulator and everything works fine. Then I change something something in the configuration using the RetroArch gui (for example the key bindings), I save the configuration and exit the emulator.
If I examine the file /opt/retropie/configs/neogeo/retroarch.cfg I see that core_options_path and system_directory lines are still there, even if they are moved down somewhere.
Then I launch the emulator again, I try to change something else using the RetroArch gui, I save the configuration and exit the emulator.
Now the core_options_path and system_directory lines are not present anymore in /opt/retropie/configs/neogeo/retroarch.cfg and obviously the emulator fails to launch.
What am I doing wrong?

mitu

@saccublenda said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

What am I doing wrong?

Saving the configuration is what's doing it, most likely, since it overwrites the - minimal - config file in the neogeo folder. Note that any core options are automatically saved in the neogeo-core-options.cfg, so you don't have to explicitly save them.

saccublenda

@mitu This is weird, since in other emulators when I save the configuration from the RetroArch gui it does not overwrite retroarch.cfg with a minimal config file, but it actually saves the current configuration.
It looks like in this case I should leave retroarch.cfg alone and make all the changes in neogeo-core-options.cfg, am I right?

mitu

@saccublenda said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

It looks like in this case I should leave retroarch.cfg alone and make all the changes in neogeo-core-options.cfg, am I right?

Again, any core options done in the RGUI are automatically saved in that file, you don't need to edit it manually. For other configurations, use the system's retroarch.cfg file.

CapNinja

I know this topic is old, I just want to contribute with something new. It may be obvious but with the FBAlpha transition to FBNeo, you will need to change
fba-neogeo-mode = "AES"
to this
fbneo-neogeo-mode = "AES"
Thanks.

thelostsoul

@CapNinja Nice detail. Are you sure the FBNeo does not support this fba-neogeo-mode setting? I'll edit the tutorial to include this info, but before doing it need confirmation if it is required or optional.

CapNinja

@thelostsoul man, I've tried the original way in a few games (all fatal fury and kizuna encounter) and it failed. After some minutes thinking and reading the log, I've tried to change that part and it worked. But I can't say with 100% certain, because it was just a lucky guess.

thelostsoul

@CapNinja Maybe. I will edit the initial posting, thank you for the report.

thelostsoul

I have partly rewrote and updated this posting as an article in my new blog: https://thingsiplay.game.blog/2020/02/18/why-split-neo-geo-system-from-arcade-in-retropie/

Cook1e_mr

Hi @thelostsoul , this is a great guide and I have followed it to great success. however I am having one issue in AES mode that I hope you can help with. I assume it is BIOS related. My issue is within AES mode I cannot get the games to play in an English region, how have you gone about this? is there a specific BIOS you are using? or are you having Japanese text?

thelostsoul

@Cook1e_mr Okay, I have to admit that this part seems to be a problem and I didn't cover/think about it.

If you go to the FB Neo settings menu in RetroPie, then head over to the option "Force Neo Geo mode". You can change it to "DIPSWITCH" value (not sure if this was available before). When you scroll further down, there is an option "BIOS", which will affect only if you set the previous setting to DIPSWITCH mode. Here you can select the exact BIOS version you want to use. The problem is, I don't have an "AES" in English, like US or Europe.

So, my guess is that the neogeo.zip bios file we have do not have this particular version (maybe). So sorry to say you that, but I have no solution for now. That is probably why the Unibios is so useful, but that is not the solution I was seeking for, as it is per game based and I have no experience with it. Unless someone else comes up with an idea, we are stuck in Japanese versions, guess. I think that I've accepted this long time ago?

(If nothing comes out of this, I would update the article with a warning/note about this problem.)

barbudreadmon

@Cook1e_mr @thelostsoul The name is misleading but "AES Asia" is in english (probably for Taiwan or Hong Kong ?)

thelostsoul

@barbudreadmon Oh, okay that is at least something! Thanks for pointing that out.
Unfortunately one of the problems remains. This AES Asia is only available, if "Force Neo Geo mode" is set to "DIPSWITCH", which is a game based setting. Do you know a way of using this specific BIOS, whenever Force Neo Geo is set to AES? Which is the point of this article.

barbudreadmon

@thelostsoul said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

Do you know a way of using this specific BIOS, whenever Force Neo Geo is set to AES?

Not a huge fan of this solution but it might fallback to the AES asia bios if you remove the AES japan bios from neogeo.zip, otherwise idk

pjft

So, I have this set up and NEOGEO mode is indeed set to "Use BIOS specified in BIOS dipswitch below", and then indeed BIOS is set to "MVS Asia/Europe ver. 6 (1 slot)".

My text is in English.

I don't have this as a game-based setting as far as I'm aware.

In my /opt/retropie/config/neogeo/retroarch.cfg file I have core_options_path = "/opt/retropie/configs/neogeo/neogeo-core-options.cfg"set, and then in that file I have

fbneo-neogeo-mode = "AES"

I don't do anything else in specific, but it does seem to default to MVS Asia/Europe when I start any unplayed game.

On my BIOS folder I have

7e1b8ba354b23999d5f993671c6fa980  neogeo.zip

with the following:

  Length      Date    Time    Name
---------  ---------- -----   ----
    65536  1996-12-24 23:32   000-lo.lo
   131072  1996-12-24 23:32   asia-s3.rom
   131072  1996-12-24 23:32   sfix.sfx
   131072  1996-12-24 23:32   sm1.sm1
   131072  1996-12-24 23:32   sp-e.sp1
   131072  1996-12-24 23:32   sp-j2.rom
   131072  1996-12-24 23:32   sp-s.sp1
   131072  1996-12-24 23:32   sp-s2.sp1
   131072  1996-12-24 23:32   usa_2slt.bin
   131072  1996-12-24 23:32   vs-bios.rom
---------                     -------
  1245184                     10 files

And on my NeoGeo folder I have this:

956c189b0ac0dd12c1d1f8014a516734  neogeo.zip

with 32 files, but I imagine it's using the former.

thelostsoul

@barbudreadmon This is indeed a possible solution. Need to test this out, before I can say anything about this. Nice idea.
@pjft You can set which folder should be used as BIOS folder. You can check which one is currently active, if you look it up through running emulators RetroPie settings (Hotkey+X). Maybe it depends on the games as well. And I suppose the checksum for the neogeo.zip is MD5 format. Mine is

93adcaa22d652417cbc3927d46b11806  neogeo.zip

And I looked up, in my neogeo.zip is no usa_2slt.bin, but you have it in the 10 files zip. So maybe we are missing this file?
Just a note, the file "retroarch-core-options.cfg" in configs / all contain a lot of dipswitch settings, specific to games. Here are some of the lines from that file:

fba-dipswitch-aof2-BIOS = "(Default) MVS Asia/Europe ver. 6 (1 slot)"

pjft

@thelostsoul Correct, it was MD5.

True, I'm aware of the common core-options file. That line on my system's retroarch.cfg file is to deliberately use a different core-options file, so that I can have separate core options between AES and MVS versions should I want to.

I explicitly tried out a new game that had never been played, to test things out (gamelist showed as never played and I didn't really remember playing it, just in case)

The BIOS it's using is /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS indeed - good call on checking the folders. :)

Hope these help!