Sega CD Discs/M3U Failure?

AlphaBetaPie

UPDATE:

After some time away, I'm finally able to get back to working on my multi-disc Sega CD collection. However, I'm afraid I'm no further along than before. The issue was, I'm trying to find the best solution to incorporate Sega CD games that have multiple discs into my RetroPie setup (the same as I would with PlayStation, which works perfectly).

We've established above the same M3U setup for PSX won't work for Sega CD, as it's not supported (and no "Disc Control" option appears in the Sega CD quick menu either, like it does for PlayStation). The link to the doc above references the lr-picodrive being the go-to for multi-disc games, but it does not list M3U in the supported file formats.

I'm a bit confused at how people run multi-disc Sega CD games on their Pie right now. How would I assign a different emulator for each dual-disc game? And how would they display in my file list, if M3U is not supported? I assume I'm not the only one that wants a complete Sega CD collection represented in their menu, including the dual disc games. So I figure someone must have came up with a reasonable solution. Or am I wrong?

mitu

@alphabetapie said in Sega CD Discs/M3U Failure?:

The link to the doc above references the lr-picodrive being the go-to for multi-disc games, but it does not list M3U in the supported file formats.

.m3u should be supported by Picodrive, did you try to load a multi-disc game with PicoDrive ?

EDIT: actually, it seems it's not supported yet.

Kucono owo

@alphabetapie bro, i handle the multi disk swapping by .PBP format on PS1 games, its the same method used to put multi disk ps1 games unified on PSP

AlphaBetaPie

@mitu said in Sega CD Discs/M3U Failure?:

EDIT: actually, it seems it's not supported yet.

Thanks for checking. So is there just no way of loading Sega CD multi disc games on Pie? Do I have to remove them from my collection (which I would HATE to do). I'll also explore alternatives, or load them as separate games in the list if I have to.

@kucono-owo said in Sega CD Discs/M3U Failure?:

@alphabetapie bro, i handle the multi disk swapping by .PBP format on PS1 games, its the same method used to put multi disk ps1 games unified on PSP

But pico still does not support .PBP. So I'm not sure how this would help my Sega CD issue. However, does the format your talking about combine everything back into one file and the PlayStation emulator can still load between the two discs? And how would you swap discs if they are both archived?

mitu

@alphabetapie said in Sega CD Discs/M3U Failure?:

Thanks for checking. So is there just no way of loading Sega CD multi disc games on Pie? Do I have to remove them from my collection (which I would HATE to do).

Load the game from the 1st disc, then - when prompted - go to disc2.

AlphaBetaPie

@mitu said in Sega CD Discs/M3U Failure?:

@alphabetapie said in Sega CD Discs/M3U Failure?:

Thanks for checking. So is there just no way of loading Sega CD multi disc games on Pie? Do I have to remove them from my collection (which I would HATE to do).

Load the game from the 1st disc, then - when prompted - go to disc2.

Thanks, but this is the sticking point for me. When you say "go to disc2," how would you do that with no Disc Controller option like with the PlayStation? Far as I can tell, there is no way to eject disc 1 and load disc 2 in-game and continue on. Are you saying I should just have two discs in the game list menu of emulationstation, then back out o f the emulator first when I come to the end of disc one, and then just load the second disc? Will the game save continue like that? Bit confused on this part here. Again, my PlayStation setup works perfectly using m3u's and the disc controller menu. Just not sure how that translates here (meaning what method is used differently for Sega CD)?

mitu

@alphabetapie said in Sega CD Discs/M3U Failure?:

Thanks, but this is the sticking point for me. When you say "go to disc2," how would you do that with no Disc Controller option like with the PlayStation?

PicoDrive has Disc Control support - you can eject and add new disc images as needed.

G30FF

@alphabetapie said in Sega CD Discs/M3U Failure?:

@mitu said in Sega CD Discs/M3U Failure?:

@alphabetapie said in Sega CD Discs/M3U Failure?:

Thanks for checking. So is there just no way of loading Sega CD multi disc games on Pie? Do I have to remove them from my collection (which I would HATE to do).

Load the game from the 1st disc, then - when prompted - go to disc2.

Thanks, but this is the sticking point for me. When you say "go to disc2," how would you do that with no Disc Controller option like with the PlayStation? Far as I can tell, there is no way to eject disc 1 and load disc 2 in-game and continue on. Are you saying I should just have two discs in the game list menu of emulationstation, then back out o f the emulator first when I come to the end of disc one, and then just load the second disc? Will the game save continue like that? Bit confused on this part here. Again, my PlayStation setup works perfectly using m3u's and the disc controller menu. Just not sure how that translates here (meaning what method is used differently for Sega CD)?

If you don't have an m3u, you need to manually append all of the discs a game has through the Disc Control menu. This only works in lr-picodrive; lr-genesis-plus-gx does not support multi disc Sega CD games, and you will not be able to see the Disc Control menu there.

Load Disc 1 of your game with the CUE file (Picodrive does not support CHDs)
While still on the Sega CD BIOS, open the RetroArch menu (hotkey+X)
Scroll down to Disc Control
Select Load New Disc
Find Disc 2's CUE file in the file browser and select it with A
The Retroarch menu will close and you will see a message that Disc 2 has been appended.
Open the Retroarch menu again, and in Disc Control, change Current Disc Index to 1 (there should now be a 1 and 2 in Disc Index)
Select Insert Disc to close the virtual drive
When ready to change discs, open the Retroarch menu, go to Disc Control, and select Eject Disc. Reopen the Retroarch menu, change Disc Index to 2, and select Insert Disc to close the virtual drive.

Unfortunately you'll have to do this every time you load the game, it will not remember the disc append settings after you quit Retroarch. To my knowledge, m3u support is not a priority at all for the Picodrive devs, and multi disc support is not a priority at all for the Genesis Plus GX devs, because there are only a small handful of games that need it, the only games that have multiple discs on the Sega CD are FMV games, and they're not very good games at that.

AlphaBetaPie

Big thanks to both @g30ff and @mitu. This has definitely added some clarity to this issue. And while it sucks that I can't have a uniformed system to match the rest of my setup, I understand that we have to do the best we can in the world of emulation (with development being kind of all over the place). Just a few more quick questions, and I think I should be good.

Good tip on pico above. When I checked my emulators.cfg file, they both were apparently installed. But I had to change pico to the default for Sega CD (unlike 32x, which just works on its own). I notice that my Sega CD games seem to run load a lot faster on pico. And since it has the disc control option I like, are there any disadvantages to just letting pico handle all my Sega CD games from now on? Or is Genesis Plus GX just generally more compatible with the Sega CD library overall?

I posted a similar thread about disc swaping hotkeys here, but perhaps this is relatable as well. Since people will have to traverse a somewhat complicated menu system to load discs (complicated to the layperson anyway), and since disc control was always something in the menu I try to hide, are there any scripts or keyboard shorts that can be set up that will cut down on the amount of time needed scrolling through retroarch menus? I thought I read about that here or somewhere else that it was possible to a degree.

G30FF

@alphabetapie Personally I use lr-genesis-plus-gx for all my games unless it specifically won't work there, like multi disc Sega CD games, or 32X games. It's overall more accurate, but there are some things it doesn't support, or has problems with.

mitu posted about the hotkeys on the other thread you linked, but you still have to append all of the disc images manually for Sega CD games. The only other way around this is for the lr-picodrive devs to implement .m3u support, since appending discs from the Disc Control menu does not persist between game sessions. But requests for that feature have been around since 2018. So even if you have the hotkeys, you still need to access the retroarch menu to set up Disc Control every time you load the game. I do wish that weren't the case, but what can you do? You technically don't need to even do the disc append step until you're ready to swap discs, because when you append the disc, Retroarch automatically inserts it.

AlphaBetaPie

@g30ff said in Sega CD Discs/M3U Failure?:

@alphabetapie Personally I use lr-genesis-plus-gx for all my games unless it specifically won't work there, like multi disc Sega CD games, or 32X games. It's overall more accurate, but there are some things it doesn't support, or has problems with.

mitu posted about the hotkeys on the other thread you linked, but you still have to append all of the disc images manually for Sega CD games. The only other way around this is for the lr-picodrive devs to implement .m3u support, since appending discs from the Disc Control menu does not persist between game sessions. But requests for that feature have been around since 2018. So even if you have the hotkeys, you still need to access the retroarch menu to set up Disc Control every time you load the game. I do wish that weren't the case, but what can you do? You technically don't need to even do the disc append step until you're ready to swap discs, because when you append the disc, Retroarch automatically inserts it.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm a stickler for uniformity. But as you say, what can you do? Still better than just loading them from a desktop emulator without a front-end (like the old days). I'm sticking with pico for just Sega CD (because of the disc control) and leaving everything else default. Thanks as always!

Also, one quick note:

Speaking of loading Sega CD directories, I have this thread here asking about changing the default directory that disc control uses. In a nut shell, when I have to append the disc via the "Load Disc" option, it always defaults to the root of the rom folder. I have to navigate up a few other folders (because I can't keep the subfolder there, as it appears in the game list). Any way of changing what directory the disc control opens by default, or is it always in the root of the roms. Also, this can't be changed in the directory list, best I can tell.

G30FF

@alphabetapie If there is a way to change that, I'm not aware of it. Sorry!

stoo

@alphabetapie @G30FF @mitu

If I'm reading this correctly, multidisc and m3u support has finally been merged into lr-genesis-plus-gx!

https://github.com/libretro/Genesis-Plus-GX/pull/237

Will we see a RetroPie build soon?

Edit: I rebuilt from source to test it:

Appending discs (.cue files) manually works, and you can change disc index after ejecting a disc. If you append a new disc, the index automatically changes to the new disc, so if you load a title and immediately append a second disc, it'll probably ask for the first disc to be reinserted.

Loading a title from .m3u file works, and ejecting a disc and changing disc index seems to work fine.

m3u files with chd files also seem to be fine.

I haven't actually got a save game or save state at the point where a disc swap is required to test properly, but... so far so good. This is a big step forward for gen-plus-gx.

~~(oh yeah, remember to make your m3u files with Unix line endings not Windows ones, I thought it was broken at first :P)~~ <-- might not actually be necessary, just a typo in some of my m3u files

stoo

Of course, we'll still need to keep Picodrive around for Farenheit, since gx still doesn't do 32X games. Alternatively, just pretend that Farenheit 32X doesn't exist, because apart from a slight increase in visual quality, it's identical to the plain SegaCD version.

G30FF

@stoo Thanks for the news! It's about time they added that feature! I just tried it out and so far it works!

stoo

For anyone who wants to tidy up their game list, if you want just 1 entry per game for multidisc titles then put your multidiscs in a hidden subdirectory (one per game or all together, doesn't matter) and just reference them in the m3u file(s).

For example, this hidden directory (the dot at the start of the directory name makes it hidden so ES won't display it):

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/segacd/.Night Trap (U)/

Contains these two files:

Night Trap (CD 1 of 2) (U).chd
Night Trap (CD 2 of 2) (U).chd

Then this m3u file:

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/segacd/Night Trap (U).m3u

Contains the following text:

.Night Trap (U)/Night Trap (CD 1 of 2) (U).chd
.Night Trap (U)/Night Trap (CD 2 of 2) (U).chd

You'll also need to make sure the m3u extension is included in your es_systems.cfg file under the segacd system, like so:

<system>
  <name>segacd</name>
  <fullname>Mega CD</fullname>
  <path>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/segacd</path>
  <extension>.chd .CHD .cue .CUE .m3u .M3U</extension>
  <command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ segacd %ROM%</command>
  <platform>segacd</platform>
  <theme>segacd</theme>
</system>

AlphaBetaPie

@stoo said in Sega CD Discs/M3U Failure?:

@alphabetapie @G30FF @mitu

If I'm reading this correctly, multidisc and m3u support has finally been merged into lr-genesis-plus-gx!

Hi @stoo, and thanks for posting this! I just recently followed up with this post, as I had given up on disc control for Sega CD. But glad I saw they have included it now! However, I'm having issues.

Have you confirmed yourself that this works and tested it? I just did using the same m3u setup I use with PlayStation, but it's not loading. Here is what I have below, so you can confirm things should be all good in my setup. But when I load the m3u file, I just get a black screen.

Here are two multi disc games for Sega CD:

Dracula Unleashed (U).m3u

Dracula Unleashed (U) (Disc 1).CD1
Dracula Unleashed (U) (Disc 2).CD2

Ground Zero Texas (U).m3u

Ground Zero Texas (U) (Disc 1).CD1
Ground Zero Texas (U) (Disc 2).CD2

G30FF

@alphabetapie Have you tried with the .cue or .chd extension? Maybe it doesn't recognize the .CDX extension. It works for me with my .chd files in the m3u.

mitu

.cdX extension is specific to lr-pcsx-rearmed, it's not universally supported. As @G30FF said, use .chd or .cue files.

AlphaBetaPie

Looks like I needed to redo my entire Sega CD multi disc portion of my collection with CHDMAN. Once I did that and changed a few things around in the text (and added the hidden directory), everything is working now. Going to have to go back and do this for all my other systems as well (like PlayStation and maybe Saturn).

I am still curious about one thing. Why does the Sega CD section require a hidden directory? When I do the m3u setup in PlayStation, I can just dump the .bin and .CD files into the same rom directory as the m3u file, and they don't appear. It's always just one entry. Why does it hide the other files automatically?