Hard Drivin, Race Drivin' & Starblade MAME emulation

aidy80's

Pi Model or other hardware: B+
Power Supply used: Original Pi PSU
RetroPie Version Used: 4.5.1
Built From: retropie-4.5.1 -rpi2_rpi3.img.gz
USB Devices connected: PS3 controller & usb keyboard
Controller used: PS3 controller
Error messages received: no errors logged, just stuttering/slow

Hi! I've done a fair bit of reading about 3d arcade games struggling on the Pi but I was just wondering if anyone has managed to get the above games running at a playable level on the Pi 3b+ and if they are any tips for improving the performance? Hard Drivin' is a particular favourite of mine, I've tried the ROMs for mame2003 and mame2010 (0.39 romset) but they are both the same and don't run to an acceptable speed. They all judder, graphics and sound that is. It's so very close though! Which is making me wonder if I'm missing something or need a different ROM set perhaps? Maybe it's a case of waiting for Retropie for the Pi 4. I greatly appreciate any input on this. Cheers.😃

sirhenrythe5th

Just to add another Emulator: with AdvanceMame you also would have no luck to get those games playable at a satisfying speed.
AFAIK there is no way to get them playable with the Raspberry Pi.
I also doubt that this will change with the Raspberry Pi4, as MAME usually does not benfit from GPUs, it needs pure CPU-Power.

I play the amiga-conversions of Race- & Hard-Drivin atm as i know them from my childhood with my real amiga.
Of course the perfomance is not as good as on the real arcade-machines, but it is ok ;)

aidy80's

@sirhenrythe5th Thanks for the feedback. I grew up playing the Amiga so I'm fond of those conversions too. I'm wondering if there was a good conversion of Starblade at all. Maybe the PSX Starblade Alpha? 🤔

quicksilver

Hard drivin seems to run full speed for me on my overclocked pi 4 (CPU is 2050mhz, havent tested at stock 1500mhz frequency) in mame2003. However I cant seem to figure out how to shift gears or release the parking brake (if there is such a thing, the tires are constantly squealing and I cant get over 40mph).

notthesame

Hard driven is full speed on stock pi4 ,pi3 and b+ is just a waste of time, yes same here I don't know how to shift the gears

quicksilver

Found these instructions for calibrating and they work (I added a few of my own notes in bold):

If you are having trouble controlling vehicle or the brake is always on, calibration must be done!
First off, Delete any .NV (NVRAM) file for this game contained in your NVRAM directory, called harddriv.nv or racedriv.nv or the same as the setname you intend to use (for me was located at /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/mame2003/nvram/). You need to understand how the controls are mapped in MAME. It's not very intuitive, so pay attention:

Controls:
Steering wheel: Player 1 Paddle control, by default maps to the mouse and the left/right arrow keys
Gas pedal: Pedal 1 control, by default maps to the Left Control key. Pressing the key will quickly depress the analog control; releasing the key will release it.
Brake pedal: Pedal 2 control, by default maps to the Left Alt key. Operates the same way as the gas pedal.
Clutch pedal: Pedal 3 control, by default maps to the Space key. Operates the same way as the gas and brake pedals.
Analog Shifter: (found in the non-compact versions only) Maps to the Player 2 analog joystick X/Y axes, which are mapped by default to the keys R, F, D, G.
Digital Shifter: (found in the compact versions only) Maps to Player 1 buttons 2, 3, 4 and 5. First gear is button 2 (default: Left Alt). Second gear is button 3 (default: Space). Third gear is button 4 (default: Left Shift). Fourth gear is button 5 (default: Z key).
Key: Maps to Player 1 start button (default: 1 key).
Abort: Maps to Player 2 start button (default: 2 key).
Finally, here is a step-by-step tour through the calibration process. Note that even if you have an analog control connected to any of the analog controls in the game, it is much easier to do calibration with the keyboard.

Calibration Instructions:
Take your hands and feet off all controls then turn key. Make absolutely sure you haven't touched any of the controls up to this point, then press the 1 key.

Turn wheel counterclockwise as far as it will go then turn key. At this point, press and hold the Left key for about 5 seconds. After 5 seconds, press the 1 key while still holding down the left arrow. It should say New min 256. (I had to use the left analog stick on my controller, arrow key didnt work)

Turn wheel clockwise as far as it will go then turn key. At this point, press and hold the Right key for about 10 seconds. After 10 seconds, press the 1 key while still holding down the right arrow. It should say Max 3840. (I had to use the left analog stick on my controller, arrow key didnt work)

Put transmission in first then turn key and release. Since first gear is in the upper-left corner, press and hold the D and R keys for 5 seconds. After 5 seconds, press the 1 key while still holding down the D and R keys.

Put transmission in fourth then turn key again. Since fourth gear is in the lower-right corner, press and hold the F and G keys for 10 seconds. After 10 seconds, press the 1 key while still holding down the F and G keys.

Move seat full forward then turn key and release. Since the seat feedback isn't implemented in the MAME driver, just go ahead and press the 1 key here.

Move fully back and to side then turn key again. Just press the 1 key here again to move on.

Take your foot off the brake turn key to abort. Now this is the tricky part. When you see this screen do nothing. Wait for a couple of seconds until it displays New max 4064. Do NOT press the 1 key prematurely here or you will screw up the calibration!

Now step on brake firmly and release. Do this by pressing and holding the Left Alt key for 3 seconds, and then letting go. If all is well, it should display Range 4064 and move on to the game. (Left Alt didnt work for me, had to use "a" key)

aidy80's

@quicksilver So it's sounds like an overclocked Pi4 is the way to go for Hard Drivin' then. What about Race Drivin'?

quicksilver

@aidy80-s Probably dont need overclock as @notthesame noted. I havent tested Race Drivin' or Starblade yet.

quicksilver

Starblade seems to be full speed but didnt play for more than a few minutes. Race Drivin' was around 50-60fps on average, so while not consistently full speed it was certainly playable.

aidy80's

@quicksilver Hey thanks for the update! Maybe once I've finished my Pi3b+ build I can look at a Pi4 and move everything over to there . Because it isn't officially supported yet, I've been a bit put off until now. I do find the arcade emulation a bit hit and miss at times but at the minute I'm working on getting a basic amount of games running that I'm happy with, mainly ones I remember playing back in the day (he says, with a 2000+ mame romset! 😂).

KMFDManic

@quicksilver Awesome job on the fairly grueling calibration of Hard Drivin. Can you, by chance..please share your nvram for this or any other similarly minded games! That would be absolutely awesome! I am hoping to do as many of the more complicated Racing Game calibrations, as feasibly possible. And, these calibrations, we can make permanent, code wise, too! That way, noone will have to calibrate them in future revisions of our MAME code base:) Already have many done, such as Carnevil, Terminator 2, Revolution X, etc, etc.