Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?

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!

thelostsoul

Ah, now I get it.
@pjft said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

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)".

Yes, i am aware of that, it is English in my case too using this BIOS. Seems like everything with "Asia" is in English. The problem with this is, it is MVS, not AES. I try to setup a default behavior, so that every Neo Geo game starts in HOME version and in ENGLISH.

Setting to Use BIOS from DIPSWITCH and then using the "AES Asia" below will result in English language Home version. But this setting is game based, not system wide. How can we turn this setting to be used as default for all games, played or not played yet?

pjft

@thelostsoul Apologies - my bad. I mix up MVS and AES.

My AES system - NEOGEO folder, with those settings I specified - actually have NEOGEO mode as "Use AES BIOS", and then uses "MVS Asia/Europe" as the BIOS setting there.

It opens unplayed games in English. Is that not what happens in your case?

I can dig into further config files on my end if it helps, but it does start as the home version in English. There are no coins, there are practice modes, options, etc.

thelostsoul

@pjft If you set Force Neo Geo mode to "AES", then it does not matter what you set the setting below at "BIOS". The "MVS Asia/Europe" will be ignored. Can you check fatfury2 - Fatal Fury 2? It is Jap. in this case. Wait for the text ingame tutorial. Menus and names are in English, but tutorial text is Japanese. Also at the beginning where the Level Select (Easy, Normal, Hard, MVS), look at right bottom game title. Its Japanese title.

pjft

Got it - giving me a specific game helped, I was trying Metal Slug 1 and 4.

Indeed you're right, I need to set use BIOS in dipswitch, and then make it use AES Asia. The alternative would be UNIBIOS, but I imagine that's not what you'd want.

I imagine that getting it to use the dipswitch BIOS and just keeping the AES Asia one could help, but see how it goes.

Cook1e_mr

@barbudreadmon I had your suggested solution in mind, however haven't been able to get it to work. My logic was to place a neogeo.zip with only neo-epo.bin within the archive in the neogeo folder (and then a full Neogeo.zip with all BIOS in the FBA folder). This in theory should give the emulator access to the AES Asia BIOS only when a rom is launched from the neogeo folder and then allow the fbneo-neogeo-mode = "AES" solution to work on a system basis.

However for some reason when I go to retroarch menu within the dipswitch i still see the full BIOS's AES Japan, AES Asia etc. I have removed all other neogeo.zip as interim to see if it was accessing a BIOS from elsewhere but still, see all the BIOS in retroarch menu.

Is there a way of finding where the BIOS is being sourced from?

pjft

@Cook1e_mr The directories option in RGUI should show you where it's sourcing the BIOS from. It might be that it's getting it from RetroPie/BIOS.

barbudreadmon

@Cook1e_mr said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

I go to retroarch menu within the dipswitch i still see the full BIOS's AES Japan, AES Asia etc

That's perfectly normal, dipswitches are hardcoded and don't care about the file actually present in your neogeo.zip

@Cook1e_mr said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

My logic was to place a neogeo.zip with only neo-epo.bin

Don't do that, there are other required files in neogeo.zip, i suggest removing only neo-po.bin instead.

@Cook1e_mr said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

Is there a way of finding where the BIOS is being sourced from?

The bios/parent are sourced from rom folder, then BIOS/fbneo folder, then BIOS folder, it'll stop after finding one romset by the right name, meaning if a neogeo.zip is present in your rom folder it won't even look at the other folders, even if the first neogeo.zip found is missing files.

Clyde

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

The bios/parent are sourced from rom folder, then BIOS/fbneo folder, then BIOS folder, it'll stop after finding one romset by the right name, meaning if a neogeo.zip is present in your rom folder it won't even look at the other folders, even if the first neogeo.zip found is missing files.

Is it the same with integrated bios files when built by Clrmamepro with the option "Separate BIOS Sets" unchecked? (I suspect so.)

Just curious, as I recently built a new FBNeo set in this form.

barbudreadmon

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

Is it the same with integrated bios files when built by Clrmamepro with the option "Separate BIOS Sets" unchecked

Yes, it won't even look at neogeo.zip if it can find the bios files in the game romset

Cook1e_mr

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

Don't do that, there are other required files in neogeo.zip, i suggest removing only neo-po.bin instead.

I did this originally but the emulator was still loading in Japanese. I therefore think something else is at play. so i was trying to rule out as many variables as i possibly could.

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

Yes, it won't even look at neogeo.zip if it can find the bios files in the game romset

hadn't considered that, will have to check my archives

Cook1e_mr

@Cook1e_mr said in Why separate Neo Geo system from Arcade?:

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

Yes, it won't even look at neogeo.zip if it can find the bios files in the game romset

hadn't considered that, will have to check my archives

OK checked and this is my problem, the BIOS is within the ROM archive, need to work out how to remove that easily now.

thanks for the help