new scriptmodules (lr-vice-xvic, gsplus, proper lr-mess integration!)

Zering

Are your scripts available on a Pi 3?

valerino

@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.

dmmarti

@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!

roslof

@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. :)

valerino

hi man! thanks for the feedback first for all! are you talking about the standalone gsplus or the lr-mess one? i'd prefer to continue work on retroarch emulators, thats why....
can you try lr-mess-apple2gs too ?
for sure i know that doesn't support .gsp, but you will have all the benefits from retroarch .....

roslof

That's solely for GSPlus. I'll play around with lr-mess next. :)

valerino

@roslof done, just committed your changes about extensions :) i haven't checked, but i think you know more than me about apple2gs :)

btw ... i also added Dragon 32 :)

roslof

@valerino I see that! Awesome, man. Anxious to try a bunch of these out. After getting used to RetroArch, the stand-alone Coco/Dragon32 emulation left me wanting more. Will be a fun weekend.

EDIT: The changes to the GSPlus script look good!

roslof

Just tried Arcadia.
...wow!
Installed the script, copied over the roms, restarted ES. Boom! Worked!
Very slick.

valerino

added Coleco Adam

i really hope all this gets added to the retropie distribution ..... i'll add a bunch of other emulators (and try to fix bbcmicro), then i'll retry to submit a pull request :)

roslof

That would be nice.

One thing about BBCMicro, the script is not adding ROM Extensions to es_systems. Looks like it's just a single space. I manually added .ssd .zip .SSD .ZIP.

So now I can get to BBC BASIC, but Shift-F12 results in "File not found". I'll spend time trying to figure out why. Never worked with MESS before today.

valerino

@roslof again, its about the standalone or the lr-mess-bbcmicro ? i'm fixing it, since it doesnt work on me. running it via runcommand.sh leads to crash, instead it runs when running run_mess.sh from commandline.
wait for a new version, i should have it shortly .... or if you happen to fix it, feel free to commit the code!!!!

roslof

Yes, lr-mess-bbcmicro. Knew you were having issues per the comments above, so was giving my input to help you out.
Will commit fixes if I find them FWIW: Not crashing here. Just yielding a"File Not Found" after hitting Shift-F12.

valerino

@roslof try to run this

/opt/retropie/configs/bbcmicro/run_mess.sh /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-mess/mess_libretro.so /opt/retropie/configs/bbcmicro/retroarch.cfg bbcb /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS -flop1 /path/to/your/rom

it should work. its an issue with runcommand.sh, i'm trying to override runcommand.sh for now....

valerino

@roslof there you go, bbcmicro fixed .... try it :)

EDIT: i think i got why runcommand.sh crashes.... runcommand.sh tries to set the video mode, while the bbcmicro driver in lr-mess switch video mode multiple times during running (i.e. try games like jetpack and you will see what i mean). this (at least on my setup) makes it crashing. probably it can be fixed passing a correct option to runcommand.sh, anyway i overridden it calling my run_mess.sh directly from emulationstation, that's all.

btw, configuring joystick for lr-mess-microbbc is really a MESS ! :)

roslof

Thanks @valerino

The script initially freezes on "Press a button to configure". After I hit enter several times, I can break out of it.
Tried uninstalling/ re-installing -- same behavior.

Enters BBC-Micro BASIC as before.
Pressing Shift-F12 doesn't auto-load. The word "BASIC" and the ">" just blink out for a moment, then return.

Basically, the in-BASIC results are the same here. It's possible things were working fine before, since I was not having issues with runcommand like you were. I just haven't seen a game render yet.

I've tried .zip and expanded .ssd extensions.

I think user-error at this point. Will keep looking into why I can get this one to fire. Arcadia and CreatiVision were fine.

roslof

Crap, yeah, false alarm. I rebooted the Pi and the odd behavior(s) went away. I can now see the game running correctly.

valerino

@roslof

Enters BBC-Micro BASIC as before.
Pressing Shift-F12 doesn't auto-load. The word "BASIC" and the ">" just blink out for a moment, then >return.

uhm ..... so it crash ? it exits back from emulationstation ? that's what exactly happened to me.
have you tried with the version i pushed few minutes ago ?
if so, after installing that, check if the bbcmicro entry in /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg looks like this:

  <system>
    <name>bbcmicro</name>
    <fullname>BBC-Micro</fullname>
    <path>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/bbcmicro</path>
    <extension>.zip .ssd</extension>
    <command>/opt/retropie/configs/bbcmicro/run_mess.sh /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-mess/mess_libretro.so /opt/retropie/configs/bbcmicro/retroarch.cfg bbcb /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS -flop1 %ROM%</command>
    <platform>bbcmicro</platform>
    <theme>bbcmicro</theme>
  </system>

if not, delete the entry and try to reinstall. the retropie setup script doesn't overwrite it automatically so.
if instead its the same, well..... we must check what happens on your setup :(

valerino

@roslof oh amazing :) can you confirm you're using my last version (the one not using runcommand.sh) ?

roslof

@valerino Interesting here:

After the restart, I tried both scripts. They both work. Like I mentioned earlier, running lr-mess-bbcmicro never crashed. The game just didn't load when pressing Shift-F12. But now (after restart) everything is fine and I can run both scripts.

Of course, the older script (that uses runcommand) breaks the ROM Extensions in es_settings.cfg, but after I manually add .ssd .zip .SSD .ZIP it works fine, and outputs to /dev/shm/runcommand.log appropriately.