Tutorial: Handheld and Plug & Play systems with MAME
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@Folly said in Tutorial: Handheld and Plug & Play systems with MAME:
I automatically recreated the ini files :
https://github.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/commit/fb76bee19eec9ffca8d808bbfdc52e1df946a1a9Can you check for me if we have all drivers ?
ktmntbb is missing in Konamih
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@DTEAM said in Tutorial: Handheld and Plug & Play systems with MAME:
@Folly said in Tutorial: Handheld and Plug & Play systems with MAME:
I automatically recreated the ini files :
https://github.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/commit/fb76bee19eec9ffca8d808bbfdc52e1df946a1a9Can you check for me if we have all drivers ?
ktmntbb is missing in Konamih
Thanks for checking.
I have added it manually.
Will have to see later why it wasn't added.To update the database just update the script again and it should get the new database.
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@Folly wow great adds thanks!
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@DTEAM i want to confirm the "nstarfox" game has no sound, correct? or am I supposed to enable it on this one?
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I confirm, no sound. It was a game on a watch. Maybe the watch didn't have speakers.
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Hi all. It has been forever since I chimed in here but I realized I hadn't updated my games in so long that a bunch more new ones were available. Then in messing around I think I discovered an error in the artwork for one of the Tiger handhelds, Robocop 2. The backdrop/overlay that is automatically downloaded (and available on google drive) is similar to the correct one but definitely isn't correct - you can see by comparing it to the main art of the handheld that it isn't matching the screen there. I found the correct one on Mr. Do's mameworld site here. I also attached the file in this post. It is a .jpg instead of a .png and out of laziness I just changed the .cfg file and that worked fine, but I assume it could be converted to a .png to make it consistent. Either way, I thought maybe it should be replaced in the google drive for the scripts to pull from too? Just thought I should share :).
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@DTEAM Thanks!
I actually found one more too if you are interested, kind of a weird one. I am playing these games on a pi4 and whenever I try to use the full mame artwork (the one with all the views options, animated button-presses, etc.). In general using that is just too taxing on the pi4 and leads to a lot of slowdown, so I always just use the screen background option you guys (wonderfully) set up in the script. But from what I understand of how the full MAME art works, the G&W game "Fire (Silver)" actually uses three different background images to combine into one background when you use the full mame artwork file (the ~20+ mb one). If I understood how to use transparencies I would combine the three into one image but I am not sure how. But the one image that the system has in there now is basically just blank - a slight grey tone. The other two images the mame art combines are 1) a "bubbles" effect, and 2) the leaning, on-fire building. So really that third one is the one that you need to make the screen make sense. I attached it here again - I have it renamed to be the background art image that the cfg file loads. So loading that one definitely makes it better than the current one, I think. But if someone more familiar with pngs than me (probably most everyone) was able to combine the three images in the mame artwork .zip, that would be the best of all worlds I think.
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Try to reduce the quality of the images first with https://www3.lunapic.com/editor/?action=info
Go in file/image size info -----> set file size option
or you can use a free software like Gimp
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@DTEAM Thanks for this idea, I will give it a try. Only thing is it seems to me it might not be about processing the large images - sometimes it works OK for larger files and terrible for smaller ones. I noticed the ones that don't have animated button-pushes seem to work better.
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Also thank you for the tip on gimp, here is a background file for the overlay with all three images combined if you want to replace the one that's there that's just a blank grey background - this one has the building and the bubbles layer so it is accurate to the full art.
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@DTEAM also, semi-related, but I have been spending a LOT of time revamping some of the gamelists here (classich, konamih, and gameandwatch) to include detailed descriptions of each game, just because I'm bothered by having the minimalist descriptions that just say the title/publisher. But in doing the research for how to describe the games I've discovered for a whole bunch of them - especially in classic handhelds - I didn't really understand how to play the them until I had the background info. So I think the extra info might really be helpful integrated into the gamelists that are downloaded in the script. When I'm done, would you be interested in me sharing them so you can consider whether to replace the ones that are there? Also, in the classic handhelds all the madrigal romset games were missing the image for the gamelist, so I've found and added those too. Just an offer, no worries if you think it's not worth it.
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@bbilford83 If you know.. What emulator plays the most handheld games as of today? Is it the latest MAME standalone? Is there a list of supported games as of today? Finally, did the casio watch games ever get emulated? The last emulated consoles i have on my pie are from 2020,around rpi 4.7.1 time. is lr-gw even used any longer?
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@bbilford83 I would be interested if you had a gamelist with nice descriptions and perhaps play instructions as well if you have one :)
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@duglor I'll try to succinctly explain it here because honestly it's all a bit overwhelming.
There is a list at the top of this thread kindly created by @DTEAM which he seems to be updating every time a new game gets added to current mame. I have the tigerh, konamih, classich, and gameandwatch sets he has listed there. The first two just use current mame roms. I use lr-mame but probably standalone would be faster. These roms run like typical mame roms where you can get to the mame menu (pre-set to escape on a keyboard) to do button mapping, etc. They won't display properly unless you at least have background art set up, which this (wonderful!) script does for you. You also have the option of copying over the full (~10mb) .zip of art that you can download in the script into the bios/mame/artwork folder, and then the game will load with all the art and display the entire handheld with the screen only taking up a small part of your actual screen. In the mame menu, you have the ability to change the view to just zoom into the screen, or various other partially-zoomed in views (it depends on the rom I think). When you change the view and exit the rom, mame remembers your choice of view and next time you load the game it will load in that view.
There are also games that work through the lr-gw emulator (you apparently already have), which is designed to run the madrigal romset. I won't link to it to be safe but it's very easy to find. Those run very differently from mame. They automatically load with full artwork showing the handheld itself, not just the screen. While each game has the option to zoom into the screen, you can't make it do that by default, so you always start with the game displayed in the teenier handheld screen displayed on your big screen. When yo hit start it will show you what all the different buttons do as mapped to a standard controller layout. Select moves around the cursor to choose non-gameplay buttons (like start, alarm, game a/b, etc.). This is different to mame where you have those buttons mapped to something on your controller.
Confusingly, the lr-gw emulator is NOT limited to gameandwatch roms. The madrigal set is partially game and watch roms and partially handhelds made by other companies, which is why @DTEAM has them split into the gameandwatch set and the classich set. This is undoubtedly correct, but people like you and me who used to have the lr-gw set (which pre-dated this mess script) likely had a single gameandwatch system set up with a bunch of non-gameandwatch games. It took me a while to figure this out. Even more confusing, there are some games that are "tabletop" and made by nintendo, some of which (like Mario's Cement Factory) have identical gameplay to the traditional gameandwatch handheld. But they weren't watches, and weren't labelled under the game and watch brand. So I think they make more sense considered as "Classic Handheld." I suppose none of the tabletops games are really "handheld" but that's me just being difficult.
I'm still working my way through the classich and tigerh gamelists but am done with gameandwatch and konamih. I'll share with DTeam or anyone else when I'm done but it is slow going :).
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@duglor Oh and I don't think the casio games are emulated?
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Very good summarise ;)
I think I should add it in the script somewhere for the new-by's.
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@Folly Thanks! Of course you are welcome to if you would like.
I told a friend we are all a very specific kind of weirdo that would work so hard to get such mediocre games working :).
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Haha !
Indeed, we are the happy few ;)
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