Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone

DTEAM

@Folly @valerino
In the hash folder. We can found 5 .hsi files including two for MSX and MSX2. Do you know if they use It to integrate all computers related to MSX in one system, such as MSX2 or MSX?

Folly

@dteam said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

@Folly @valerino
In the hash folder. We can found 5 .hsi files including two for MSX and MSX2. Do you know if they use It to integrate all computers related to MSX in one system, such as MSX2 or MSX?

I opened it with a text editor.

It contains the <extrainfo> parameter which are the cartridge mapper types for some games to help the emulation.

I think the MSX2 type will also use the msx.hsi because I didn't find double games in both msx.hsi and msx2.hsi.

Folly

@DTEAM

But this will require a very smart part in the script.
And I have to take 2 things into account :

remember all entry's of 1 system until the last entry and then inject them in the script

join the media and cmd parts

I haven't had an idea on how to change this.

Perhaps I have a better idea.
Maybe I can create an empty dummy file for a system that comes along for the first time and then inject all commands one by one later in that dummy file, sort of speak, while checking if the file already exists or not.

I will check this solution later when I am in the flow of programming.

Folly

@DTEAM

I had a look again at the mame-basename lines from the generated-cmd module scripts.
I have doubts about it, can't see exactly what I am missing here,
but we should have a deeper look into this.

Perhaps we don't have to keep them in there.

valerino

hi guys!
here i am :)
i will look better later (i have first to improve further the crt/hdmi option in my fork).

2 things for now :

as far as i see, @Folly script can be surely included as something like a menu option in retropie configuration. something like "add mame/mess systems", selecting it will show the systems it may add, you select the ones you want, it will generate the needed lr-scripts.
i'm understanding you are supporting both mame and lr-mess. why not supporting mame only at this point, which is the 'main' project (afaik mess is discontinued) ? the command line interface anyway should be the same.

regards!
v.

Folly

@valerino

Welcome to our thread.

You are correct, it would be nice to have a menu part from within the Retropie-setup.
Do you have an idea on how to construct this ?
Though, I think we face a problem, how do we select the ones we want out of more that 7000 systems ?

For the mess part, perhaps you know more about that.
But as far as I know lr-mess is still alive within the mamedev source.
For example -cas support has been added for Philips P2000T which will also work if lr-mess is used.
Or is it also possible to load Philips P2000T in lr-mame ?
As far as I know it is still splitted :

lr-mame for arcade/console computers
lr-mess for regular computers

It would be nice if we can still use a libretro-core which have an advantage with joystick support and retroarch functions.

valerino

@folly i'm looking just now in the retropie sources if there's some readymade api to make something like a menu with sort-of-checkboxes (i would need it also for my hdmi/crt thing). that would be the ideal solution for your script too. anyway, if it's not there, we can make it.

about mame/mess.... afaik mess is discontinued and all is merged into mame (beware, i refer to mame/mess, without considering the retroarch core). so if mess have it, mame should too in the first place. maybe im wrong ?

v.

Folly

@valerino said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

@folly i'm looking just now in the retropie sources if there's some readymade api to make something like a menu with sort-of-checkboxes (i would need it also for my hdmi/crt thing). that would be the ideal solution for your script too. anyway, if it's not there, we can make it.

Nice, keep me posted.

about mame/mess.... afaik mess is discontinued and all is merged into mame (beware, i refer to mame/mess, without considering the retroarch core). so if mess have it, mame should too in the first place. maybe im wrong ?

I know it can be confusing, but I think it is still :

standalone mame does both arcade/console and regular
arcade/console and regular are splitted into lr-mame and lr-mess

We can do a test.
If lr-mame will do what lr-mess does, then we can drop lr-mess.
Edit :
How do we load, for example, a -cartfor Atari Jaguar with lr-mame, if we want to test ?

valerino

@folly never used mame/lr-mame for anything else than arcades, sincerely (since the non-arcade drivers are not comparable to standalone dedicated emulator or lr-cores). anyway, since mame and mess should be essentially the same thing, nothing should change in the command line interface, should be exactly the same.

Folly

@valerino

Ok, I did the test.
Normally I use your run_mess.sh script for running lr-mess and I have a cmd line that runs directly for, for example handhelds.

So I installed lr-mame from the exp packages.
Renamed it like lr-mess and placed it in that directory.
Tried it just like lr-mess but that didn't work.
Also tried with one of the handhelds directly, it said it can't find the driver.

So I presume lr-mame has only arcade drivers.

valerino

@folly so you're right. weird. but i'm pretty sure for the standalone version is like i said, only mame is mantained.

George Spiggott

It would be a boon to Jaguar gamers to only have to install lr-mame to act as an additional emulator choice and also to use the same core for arcade.

Folly

@valerino

Sure you are correct about that.

Edit:
I Looked it up in the scripts :
The main branch in github is : https://github.com/mamedev/mame .
Above branch is forked in the libretro github : https://github.com/libretro/mame
Both branches are mainained.

lr-mame and lr-mess maintained in the libretro/mame source and mame from the mamedev source.

So these three are maintained

standalone mame ( containing basically mame / mess , compiled from mamedev)
lr-mame ( containing basically mame(arcade) , compiled from libretro/mame)
lr-mess ( containing basically mess(non-arcade) , compiled from libretro/mame)

Folly

@george-spiggott said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

It would be a boon to Jaguar gamers to only have to install lr-mame to act as an additional emulator choice and also to use the same core for arcade.

Yes, it would be.
But I think there is a reason that these packages are still splitted.

DTEAM

@folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

I know it can be confusing, but I think it is still :

standalone mame does both arcade/console and regular
arcade/console and regular are splitted into lr-mame and lr-mess

Exactly what It is. MAME standalone is the most « up to date » one.... suppose to be ...

We should keep both. Separately or not in the official Retropie package menu?.. I don’t know. If you do It separately, the user could install only one of those 2 emulators. It could be interesting.

valerino

ok, the menu thing can be implemented using the dialog api (its builtin in the shell, used throughout retropie menu but not with the checkboxes afaik).

dialog --title "title" \
--checklist "choose options" 0 0 4 \
1 option1 off \
2 option2 on \
3 option3 off \
4 option4 off

then after clicking a button you have the result in $INPUT.

i imagine the checklist could be populated with an array from built from mame output.

DTEAM

@valerino

Very nice!

Maybe it could be something like this :

I forgot + systems from my tutorial 😉

Or we could do 3 categories, Handheld, keyboardless (consoles) and computer? With a,b,c, d, ... classification?

Folly

@dteam said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

@folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

I know it can be confusing, but I think it is still :

standalone mame does both arcade/console and regular
arcade/console and regular are splitted into lr-mame and lr-mess

Exactly what It is. MAME standalone is the most « up to date » one.... suppose to be ...

We should keep both. Separately or not in the official Retropie package menu?.. I don’t know. If you do It separately, the user could install only one of those 2 emulators. It could be interesting.

I want to keep them both in, I assume they both will be maintained.
If something isn't maintained anymore in the future, we can just rename or remove easily.
If I split it up, more scripts can be generated, I think, that is not what we want.
Also, you have to go through the menu twice to install mame and lr-mess for 1 system, don't know if that is ideal.

Agree ?

An other solution can be, for example.
Select mame and/or lr-mess first and then select the system we want to install.
Perhaps we can use this idea.

BTW, Nice drawing 👍

Folly

@dteam said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

I forgot + systems from my tutorial 😉

Or we could do 3 categories, Handheld, keyboardless (consoles) and computer? With a,b,c, d, ... classification?

If we want this, we have to extract more information somewhere.
At the moment we have only 1 row(array) to use for the menu.
I suggest we try that first.

Agree ?

Folly

I have updated the first post.
Adding also the menu idea and adding some more points :
👉 open : By @valerino / participants @DTEAM , @folly :
Create a front-end module-script in RetroPie-setup for our scripts.

structure/plan ?
dependencies check
download the repository in /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/ext/RetroPie-Share or try to run the scripts online ?
add a menu in RetroPie-setup using the dialog api 120
try to keep multiple emulator/lr-cores in 1 generated script module 125
try to use 1 existing array for the menu 125
push the generated scripts in /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/ext/RetroPie-Share/scriptmodules/ ?

I have tried to structure the information.
We should decide/discuss if we want to add/change things.