new scriptmodules (lr-vice-xvic, gsplus, proper lr-mess integration!)
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That is absolutely awesome, thanks for the great work.
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added coco, works really well :)
if someone knows how to autoload cassettes (i.e. in bbcmicro it's shift+F12) tell me :)
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Boy, I spent the last several nights fighting with GSPlus, then perfecting an Apple IIGS gamelist.xml, directories, filenames, screenshots, .gsp files, etc. But now I know that I could probably use lr-mess? :)
Joystick controls don't work for me on GSPlus, so maybe I'll have better luck with lr-mess. Just dreading having to set-up each disk set all over again. :) But really cool that I have a choice now.
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glad someone will use it ehhe.
well, couple of weeks ago i decided to clean dust off my rpi4, so i reinstalled retropie and everything else as usual. i wanted to have a PERFECTLY CLEAN system this time, usually my retropies becomes a completely mess with roms scattered all-over, nonworking emus, etc.... this time it HAD TO WORK and BE CLEAN :)
so, i embarked in this 'journey' of having all working with retroarch.
first i practiced with the retropie script system for a couple of days (hence my first posts), but really i wanted to do this: integrate lr-mess, so i can use retroarch for everything (all the standalone cores + lr-mess for the rest).that's the story behind ehheheheh :)
of course everyone can extend my script, fix bugs, etc.... everything is on my github to be improved !!!!
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@roslof about .gsp files .... unfortunately, it seemed to not work for .gsp. it works with .2mg. i don't know if it's something about the command line, it could easily be.
just look at the script here:
usually it's 'flop1' in all the other scripts i made .... this instead didn't worked, i tried with -flop3 and it did. but maybe there's other options, just look into the mame command line docs!
v.
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Thanks @valerino ,
Not sure how this would work, but I'll eventually look into it (installing lr-mess now via your modified script). The thing is, the .gsp files are indeed specific to GSPlus -- just a configuration file that includes which disks are in which drives + is a hard drive being used, Apple II control panel settings, etc.
The GSP files simply point to the 2mg files (virtual floppies). So if lr-mess only loads 2mg files, it's missing out on all of the various configurations.
Example:
Bubble Ghost can launch straight out... Just add it as a floppy and it boots/plays
Dungeon Master needs the support of a System Disk prior to launching.So I don't think direct 2mg launches will work with 100% compatibility. There are a bunch of write-ups online about people using MESS for the GS. Will give it a go.
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@roslof i haven't tested it exaustively ... i tried a couple of games and they worked flawlessy.
anyway, to load 2 disks unfortunately (if lr-mess do not support .m3u, which i really doubt....) you don't have many chances i think. -
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@roslof i think i got the problem. if there's something like a 'dos' disk which you need always inserted in one drive, you can extend my script this way (i'm doing the same now for a script to support trs80, which has this problem aswell):
addEmulator 1 "$md_id" "$_system" "$_script $_retroarch_bin $_mess $_config trs80 $biosdir -flop1 %ROM%"
addEmulator 0 "$md_id-dos" "$_system" "$_script $_retroarch_bin $_mess $_config trs80 $biosdir -flop1 $biodir/trs80-dos.dsk -flop2 %ROM%"this way, by default it will use the plain version with just one drive. either, you can select (pressing A right in the runcommand.sh screen) the otjer version, which will boot with the DOS disk inserted + the game inserted in the other drive.
unfortunately, this won't solve the disk swapping problem ..... i don't know if it's solvable by some shortcut in lr-mess which allow to swap disks at runtime, i doubt.....
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Yes. You're reading my mind. From what I read, will just need to add more emulators.
Was exactly thinking to use default with "-flop3" (where flop3 and flop4 reference the Apple IIGS 3.5" disk drive, instead of the flop1 and flop2 5.25" drives which typically are for II/IIe/IIc).
As for the multi disc formats, the article I linked above describes how to set-up the right [complex] command-line. Definitely tricky. Hard drive images have to be converted to CHD format, which adds another layer of ugly.
Not a fast project to have each game properly configured -- and as for games with 3 or more floppies (there are several) -- thinking they might not be compatible with lr-mess. Probably can get ~80% full library compatibility if I had to guess.
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@roslof yep, my scripts have their limits :( of course they can be improved, but definitely multi-disk support must be implemented by the emulators .....
really, it's more of a problem of the frontend. my scripts can be changed in 2 minutes to support 2 or more disks, but someone needs to pass the parameters to the scripts .... and this is the frontend (emulationstation, in this case).
you can surely run apple2gs games from command line using -flop1, -flop2, etc... using run-mess.sh. but that won't work from emulationstation, since it passes one disk only to the script.anyway, from what i see i'm pretty confident i can make scripts for almost every lr-mess system with this technique, its somewhat generic :)
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Oh! @valerino don't get me wrong, man. Wasn't at all being critical. I don't think it's a script issue here, rather I think there are limitations in MESS. As it stands, I'm using GSPlus with very good success so far.
Been hoping for IIGS emulation on the Pi since I fist picked this up in 2017. Stoked that it's now a reality and actually running in my home.
Like you, I'm a huge fan of using RetroArch when possible (tons of benefits). So I'm hoping for ~80% compatibility there, and I'm all but certain the joystick will work. :)
Great work on giving us more things to play with. Enjoying.
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added TRS-80.
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added Emerson Arcadia 2001
btw .... would any of you mind to give me some feedback using my repo ? i had to cancel a pull request i made on the official github since a guy had problems running my run_mess.sh script (some problems with bash). i couldn't replicate it, so i'd really like to have some feedback to better investigate!
cheers!
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I'm using the latest Pi4 weekly build .. .but having issues getting lr-mess (and lr-mame as well) to compile.
I did use your lr-vice scripts and they worked great. All new RA cores successfully configured and working.
I'll keep working on my lr-mess issue and report back if I have success with the new lr-mess-xxx scripts.
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@dmmarti if you use my repo(its on par with upstream, at least until this afternoon) there's a fix for lr-mess, it didn't compile to me either. btw, it takes 2-3 hours on a decent pc :)
v.
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Are your scripts available on a Pi 3?
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@Zering sure just clone my repo and use it instead of the default RetroPie-Setup. rpi version shouldn't matter, its just that i'm using an rpi4, thats it.
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@valerino ... I was successful now in getting lr-mess installed.
I tested your lr-mess-arcadia.sh out. All good.
Games launch and I'm able to play them. I'll test out your others as well when I have time.
Good job!
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@valerino good news regarding GSPlus emulation on Pi. After using your script, I installed and tested all major IIGS games and managed to get all of them the run; however I strongly recommend you make one change to your script:
ROM Extensions should only be: .gsp .txt .GSP .TXT
Should remove the .2mg extension completely. Each .gsp (or .txt) file will reference the .2mg images.
My Rationale:
- .gsp and .txt are the default extensions for GSPlus configuration files.
- Each game needs its own unique configuration file to launch properly from ES.
- If you reference a writable .2mg file, and if GSPlus believes it's a configuration file, GSPlus will treat it as such and replace the contents with configuration information, effectively rendering the .2mg file useless.
- Use both upper/lower cases as described above, as typical with RetroPie standards. Will help people who don't mind (or don't notice) mixed case extensions.
My Setup:
- Tweaked es_settings.cfg with the ROM Extensions I mentioned above. Nothing else needed to be changed.
- I'm only using "ROM01". It's WAY more compatible with games. ROM03 has issues. Optionally, this could be noted in the script help information.
- For each game, I put one (1) .gsp file in ~/RetroPie/roms/apple2gs
- Created a GS/OS hard drive Image (required for many games) and put it in ~/RetroPie/roms/apple2gs
- All of the .2mg files were extracted from ZIPs and placed in ~/RetroPie/roms/apple2gs/games (could be renamed as anything)
- For safety, I duplicated all .2mb files, put them in ~/RetroPie/roms/apple2gs/[backups] and made them read-only. This is kind of like keeping your original disks tucked away, and recalling them if you need them. About a dozen times, I was glad I did this. These games don't take a lot of space, so probably a best practice here
- Each .gsp in step 2 was manually configured to point to the various disk images in ./games and in some cases, the hard drive image
- In each .gsp, there are BRAM setting that automatically update when you change Apple IIGS control panel settings. This is VERY important for certain floppy configurations to work:
The Three Major Floppy Configurations:
- Hard Drive bootable games: With the boot .2mg in slot S7D1 and optionally up to two more floppies in S5D1 and S5D2
- Floppy-drive boot required games: (the boot disk MUST be in S5D1. More disks can be added to S5D2)*
- GS/OS-required games (must boot hard disk in S7D1, and have non-bootable floppies in S5D1 & optionally S5D2
Item 2 above required extra patience -- For each one of these, I had to enter the IIGS control panel and change the boot drive from default/scan to "5" in order to boot the virtual floppies. The cool thing as that you only have to do this once, as the IIGS BRAM data is stored in each .gsp file! This means each .gsp can act as it's own GS!
Lastly, the joystick... My DualShock 4 wasn't responding. I learned that if you hit F4, go to "Joystick Configuration" and change Joystick Scale X and Joystick Scale Y to +10%, the joystick responds. Go figure. Unfortunately, there is no command-line argument to set Scale X and Y, so I had to edit all of the .gsp files to include this adjustment.
As of now, 232 Apple IIGS games are up and running and properly configured!
If desired, I can provide you with all of my .gsp files, since they're not ROMs -- rather they are the configuration files I spent the week working on. If somebody follows these instructions and uses these .gsp files, it will make the whole process A LOT easier. Otherwise, it's a lot of manual pain. :)
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