Working Dreamcast games

Efriim

@George-Spiggott
I think Soul Reaver on reicast is best, the widescreen and high resolution gives it a remarkable placement. With frameskips at the lake of the dead with all the waterfalls, and maybe some other places with rain effects. Comparably I got slowdowns at the first pool of water in the PSX version. But I didn't have any controller problems, and the videos are worse I was thinking it was because of chd compression or downsizing.

In JGR in the area after it introduces the love shockers, theres a waterway and quite a few shadowed areas, the shadows were not rendered in the previous reicast version around retropie 4.4.1. Entering the shadows they look mostly fine but sometimes the shadow layer will disappear and it will suddenly be bright again, not to mention this game needs all the performance adjustments it can get. The same level there are the police that use tear gas and that was super slow.

To each their own.

BJRetro

@George-Spiggott thanks but real credit goes to @barbudreadmon And @mitu I just put it all on one post (I don’t know how to edit the reicast wiki page but if someone knows how maybe they can take my post and put the info on there for someone who wants to try lr-reicast until it makes its way back into the setup script by default). Barbudreadmon actually worked on lr-reicast and was the one who brought it to our attention it would run on rpi. Also I have a 3b+ overclocked so that may make a difference on performance too.

George Spiggott

@Efriim I don't doubt that there is a shadow problem, I just didn't see it.

The controller problem crops up in games where the D pad and the analogue stick are used for different commands. For example in Soul Reaver D pad up is used to open the Glyph menu. When you push directly up on the analogue stick it opens the Glyph menu instead of moving Raziel forward.

To solve my language problem I need to access the Dreamcast Bios menu mid game.

@BJRetro Thanks for the clarification. Thanks to @barbudreadmon for all of his hard work.

ninuzzu

@barbudreadmon I've tested the mame dumped rom mslug6.zip, with naomi.zip and awbios.zip.
It's the same as the .lst version that I have, I think it's an alpha channel issue with textures.
What are the settings for reicast_frame_skipping in the core options? I can't see any change ingame.
I've also checked Virtua Tennis, Virtua Tennis 2 ad Wacky Races

Virtua Tennis - Dreamcast .chd - works good on reicast, has texture issues in lr-reicast
Virtua Tennis - Naomi .zip - lr-reicast crashes after I put some coins and press start
Virtua Tennis - Naomi.lst - lr-reicast crashes, same as before

Virtua Tennis 2 - Dreamcast .chd - works good on reicast, has texture issuesin lr-reicast
Virtua Tennis 2 - Naomi .zip - texture issues, unplayable
Virtua Tennis 2 - Naomi.lst - texture issues, unplayable, same as before

Wacky Races - Dreamcast .chd - has rendering issues in reicast (unplayable) , rendering issues are fixed in lr-reicast, but performance is worse than reicast.

barbudreadmon

@ninuzzu last time i checked, most of those games were working properly, so maybe that's something related to the performance settings ? Could you try setting "div matching" to "auto" or "disabled" and tell me if it's solving some of your texture issues ? I confirm the issue with naomi version of virtua tennis 1, that's actually a known issue (https://github.com/libretro/reicast-emulator/issues?q=is%3Aissue+virtua+tennis+is%3Aopen).

ninuzzu

@barbudreadmon Thanks, setting it to auto has solved the black textures issues in MS6. What about performance? Almost any dreamcast game run way better in reicast than in lr-reicast, there must be something I'm missing with my settings....:

reicast_alpha_sorting = "per-strip (fast, least accurate)"
reicast_audio_buffer_size = "1024"
reicast_cpu_mode = "dynamic_recompiler"
reicast_custom_textures = "disabled"
reicast_digital_triggers = "disabled"
reicast_div_matching = "auto"
reicast_dump_textures = "disabled"
reicast_enable_dsp = "disabled"
reicast_enable_purupuru = "enabled"
reicast_enable_rtt = "enabled"
reicast_enable_rttb = "disabled"
reicast_frame_skipping = "1"
reicast_framerate = "normal"
reicast_gdrom_fast_loading = "enabled"
reicast_internal_resolution = "640x480"
reicast_mipmapping = "enabled"
reicast_render_to_texture_upscaling = "1x"
reicast_synchronous_rendering = "disabled"
reicast_texupscale = "off"
reicast_texupscale_max_filtered_texture_size = "256"
reicast_threaded_rendering = "enabled"
reicast_volume_modifier_enable = "disabled"
reicast_widescreen_hack = "disabled"

barbudreadmon

@ninuzzu said in Working Dreamcast games:

What about performance? Almost any dreamcast game run way better in reicast than in lr-reicast

Your settings seem fine, it is a fact that lr-reicast is slightly slower than standalone reicast, not by much though, many games i tried had the same playability than standalone, maybe not the ones you tried ?
Did you try rising frameskip above 1 ? Also, what's your raspberry model and overclock settings ?

ninuzzu

RPi3 B+ no overclock. I'll try to raise frameskip and report
Here more info about Wacky Races (they say it's fixed but maybe not on the Pi,going to test it on my phone) :

https://github.com/reicast/reicast-emulator/pull/1448

barbudreadmon

@ninuzzu said in Working Dreamcast games:

no overclock

That's an issue, if you intend to play 3D games on a raspberry you should really consider overclocking, the following values should be pretty safe and will improve 3D emulation dramatically :

arm_freq=1450
gpu_freq=500
core_freq=500
v3d_freq=500
sdram_freq=500
sdram_schmoo=0x02000020
over_voltage=6

You can read more about rpi3b+ overclocking in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/21138/overclocking-the-pi3b-gpu-results

ninuzzu

Wow thanks, let's do some test :D
Would you mind sharing with me you lr-reicast core ? Maybe mine is different.

shavecat

lr-reicast -
just going back to the emulation station after i pick a rom.
any idea why ?

ninuzzu

@shavecat said in Working Dreamcast games:

lr-reicast -
just going back to the emulation station after i pick a rom.
any idea why ?

Yes, see post by BJRetro (some posts above)

basically you have to edit /opt/retropie/configs/dreamcast/emulators.cfg and add
< /dev/null
at the very end of the line inside the last quotation mark in the line that says lr-reicast=

WarC0zes

@shavecat
in /config/dreamcast/emulators.cfg edit and add < /dev/null at the end.
lr-reicast = "/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-reicast/reicast_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/dreamcast/retroarch.cfg %ROM% </dev/null"

shavecat

No,
still not launching the games...
try to remove and install again couple of times.. didnt help :\

quicksilver

@ninuzzu ~~Looks like that fix was for GLES 3 devices. Pi is GlES 2 so that fix is not likely to work.~~

barbudreadmon

@quicksilver nope, this fix also works on raspberry, i had to do it on mine, however it seems it wasn't needed with earlier version of retroarch (i didn't have the issue with my previous RA from mid-december)

@shavecat did you follow all instructions, including bioses ?

@ninuzzu i destroyed my sd card last week so i can't send you a copy of my core

ninuzzu

@barbudreadmon Metal Slug 6 and Wacky Races (lr-reicast) run much better with your oveclock settings. Crazy taxi is now running almost perfect ^^
Thanks

quicksilver

@ninuzzu On a pi3b+ the bottleneck for dreamcast/N64 is the GPU. Specifically getting the core_freq as high as possible (and be stable!) will give you the best possible results (on your pi).

There was some recent discussion in regards to overclocking and stability testing here that may be helpful:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/21519/opinion-on-overclock-settings/4

shavecat

@barbudreadmon
Yes i did it did work ... and then stop working...
the reicast works fine.
any ideas ?

barbudreadmon

@shavecat said in Working Dreamcast games:

any ideas ?

If it just stopped working without any action from you, then you have a corrupt file somewhere, or maybe worse (corrupted sd).