Discs of Tron?

tap50

Has anyone gotten 'Discs of Tron' to work? If so, what MAME emulator did you use?

I'm using a Pi3 with the lastest Retropie.

Thank you,
Todd

caver01

@tap50 It works fine with AdvanceMAME 1.4, but the controls requirements are unjustifiable in my opinion. You can probably "make do" but it will be difficult to play unless you have all of the right hardware:

DOTRON requires a joystick with a trigger button and a thumb button for starters. The joystick moves your player around. The trigger throws the discs, and the thumb activates the shield. In addition, the game requires a PUSH-PULL spinner. This is a special spinner for aiming the discs that you can grip and lift up or push down. This raises and lowers the height of the throws.

Getting a trigger stick is relatively easy, but the push-pull spinner is expensive--if you can even find one. You could make one I guess, or just use a regular spinner and know that you probably won't survive into the her levels where you will need it!

You could also map a combination of buttons, analog stick and d-pad on a console controller I guess, but it comes down to too many buttons--not enough hands. The game is really hard to play without the right controls.

Oh, and AdvanceMAME is your best option if you go with the right controls, as you have the best possibility of making the spinner work.

mediamogul

A spinner is definitely optimal, but I have a tank control scheme for standard gamepads that I'm very fond of for this game. I map the left thumbstick to TRON's movements, while the right thumbstick aims up, down, left and right, leaving the disc and shield mapped to the left and right shoulder buttons. Seeing as how left and right aiming is normally handled at a variable speed by the spinner, I find it best to regulate the analog control slider to just slightly above the midpoint, leaving you with the ability to quickly aim without being so fast that precision is sacrificed. 'Discs of TRON' is one of my favorite arcade games and I've set my highest scores with these controls, but of course nothing beats the original control scheme if you're able to replicate it.

tap50

I've tried advmame.94, 1.4, and mame4all, I can't get any of them to work with Discs of Tron. I've tried the following ROMs as well, dotron, dotrona, dotrone. No luck.

Did you have to do anything special to get the roms to work?

Thank you,
Todd

caver01

@tap50 Yep. I have played DOTRON with AdvanceMAME 1.2 and 1.4 on the Pi. You have to have the correct rom. Are you using a .106 romset? What happens when you launch it?

@mediamogul I figured there would be a a way to map the spinner, but it is the shoulder buttons that really save the day with the controller config. That's fantastic. I'd love to try it, but I have arcade controls, not hand-held.

Imagine me trying to play DOTRON (or even TRON for that matter) with a joystick and spinner, but no trigger! I have to either use the same hand on the joystick and spinner or try to reach over with my pinky finger to hit a pushbutton. It's messy. Even if my spinner was push/pull, it still wouldn't help with the buttons. Your setup seems much better.

mediamogul

@caver01 said in Discs of Tron?:

Imagine me trying to play DOTRON (or even TRON for that matter) with a joystick and spinner, but no trigger!

I feel your pain. I love DoTRON, but I don't have an optimal setup for my arcade cabinet either. I've tried to adapt my tank control scheme by mapping both the P1 and P2 joysticks to the P1 MAME controls, but just as you have already imagined, I have to strain my pinkie finger for any possible disc and shield button setup. I'm always amazed at how flexible the control mapping options are for MAME, but ultimately you can only get so creative before you're limited by the physical controls at your disposal.

tap50

@caver01 , how do you tell if it's a .106 rom set?

caver01

@tap50 This is a loaded question because, depending on the level of technical detail you want to pursue, there are several answers.

Short answer: On the surface, you can't tell--that is, you can't look at a dotron.zip and know what romset it came from without some point of reference. You could unzip it and see what sub-files are actually in there, and if you had some reference, you might be able to tell whether the components are all there for a given version of the rom. Actually MAME itself does this as looks at checksum values of the component files to see if they match expectations. If not, the game will fail to launch.

This doesn't really help anyone who happens to have a ROM and wants to launch it with a given emulator. Random ROMs from various sources are a crap shoot. You really need to go about it a bit differently. Because the names don't change as ROMs get updated, you really need to establish a working frame of reference. That is, you need to get a ROM from a source that is documented as a known romset version. The easiest way to do that is to start with a complete set. That way, you know every ROM in the set is version .106, for example.

Another way to do it is to start with a known set and convert it to another set using a utility called CLRMAMEPRO. It is easier to rollback to previous versions than to roll forward. Sometimes, just the sub files within a given .zip file have been added, or re-arranged, but the most dramatic changes include replacement sub files--more complete scans of the original chips. So, to convert from one version to another perfectly and completely, you need a full set, and you need a supplemental set for the version changes/rollbacks. Otherwise, no matter how you try, you don't have data needed to rebuild the set you want. There is good documentation in the Wiki about CLRMAMEPRO, but it's complicated.

My advice is to find a source that is already of a known working version. I know that changes things around a bit. If you are using AdvanceMAME 1.4, then look for a .106 romset, or more specifically, look for the dotron.zip from a .106 set. Only then will you know that the ROM is correct (assuming the person who built the .106 set knew what they were doing).

tap50

@caver01, I got it working. I used clrmamepro to convert the rom to mame4all (advmame conversions didn't work) .

Thanks for your help.
Todd