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

bbilford83

@Folly I am going to be away from my computer for quite a while but yes there should be both a game list and art for VIS up there now. I can check again later but hopefully it is just a problem with pi5.

Edit: I'm still not near my pi but I did confirm on my gmail that the VIS stuff is all where it should be.

bbilford83

@Folly on an unrelated note, I have been adding a few more systems to my own build that don't really require a keyboard, namely the VTech Socrates, the Tomy Tutor (aka Pyuta in Japan), and the Umtech VideoBrain Family Computer. I finished the Socrates and it works well. The Tutor I have been adding now and it works well too, but I discovered that there is also a "consolized" version of the Japanese model - the "Pyuta Jr." See here for info.

I see that there is a pyutajr.zip bios file in MAME, and in your script there's an option to install pyutajr, but when I tried it kicked me back out without installing. As far as I can tell all three systems - Tutor, Pyuta, and Pyuta Jr. - should be the same romset (like with Zemmix and MSX). Is there any way to tell if Pyuta Jr. should be installable as a system? I would like to add the "console version" if it is possible to do so.

EDIT: I don't know what I did wrong last time but this time I tried again it installed fine. I will mess around with it now; I'd rather use the console version but I forgot that when you load a rom you have to select an option to load a cartridge (like in the computer menu), so if that is in Japanese I will stick with the Tutor anyway.

EDIT 2: So it is interesting, Pyuta Jr. loads correctly and it is in English (doesn't say "Pyuta" in the menu but doesn't say "Tutor" either, so I assume that is just how it worked). Game loads fine too. But I think there is an error in MAME, because even though you can properly map all the buttons on the console itself, and you can properly map the directional movements with the joystick, it is missing the mapping spots for the two joystick buttons. Obviously this has nothing to do with your script, but the games aren't playable without joystick buttons being available of course, so I guess I'll stick with emulating the Tutor for now. Shame though - it is fun being able to add the really unheard-of "consolized" versions.

Second, more practical question, do you want me to share my gamelists/art for these systems? The Tomy is kind of scrapable but the descriptions I found don't say anything but the year/developer etc. I have found better art and looked up specialty websites about the Socrates and Tutor to come up with better descriptions, so maybe they would be helpful.

Folly

@bbilford83

Nice tinkering.
Yea sure, share your gamelists.

bbilford83

@Folly OK, gamelists and matching art for Socrates and Tutor are up now. Take a look if you would like, Socrates is very small, Tutor is longer. For Tutor I have nice 3d box images for all the US games, but just 2D box covers for the Japanese ones (couldn't find 3D).

I started on VideoBrain tonight but have encountered a strange issue. When you go to map controls on the in-mame menu, by default it sets up the controllers as having an analog joystick, mapping them the way you would typically expect: analog x is Joy 1 LSX, analog y is Joy 1 LSY, and then analog inc./dec. lets you use the d-pad in the four directions. But when I actually tried to play my first game, the analog is totally wrong - it seems to register its entire range of motion only near the bottom, from like 4 to 8 o'clock (if you get what I mean). And I tried a bunch of stuff in the analog settings but nothing fixed it. Then I tried deleting the analog options entirely - i.e. I set "analog x" and "analog y" to undefined, hoping I could just use the dpad, but even with those still in the "analog increase/decrease" mapping nothing at all registers. I am inclined to just give up on the system because it is looking like many/most games will need the keyboard anyway, but if you have encountered anything similar/have ideas on how to fix this, please let me know.

Edit: I went back and tried again with mame standalone, same problem with the analog stick. I didn't think it would be different but realized I had only tried on libretro.

Folly

@bbilford83 @DTEAM

I added information to post 1807 and 1808.

Sadly I can't reproduce the error :

/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh: line 1319:  3449 Bus error

Will have a look later.

I added an issue regarding the gamelist downloads, see 1808.

Folly

@bbilford83 said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

Edit: I went back and tried again with mame standalone, same problem with the analog stick. I didn't think it would be different but realized I had only tried on libretro.

Looks indeed like it's a mame issue.

Folly

@bbilford83 said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

@Folly OK, gamelists and matching art for Socrates and Tutor are up now. Take a look if you would like, Socrates is very small, Tutor is longer. For Tutor I have nice 3d box images for all the US games, but just 2D box covers for the Japanese ones (couldn't find 3D).

I will probably see next week when I a free from work.
Hopefully the gdrivedl script is then also fixed.

Edit :
Just had a look in github and the gdrivedl.py script should be fixed again ;-)

bbilford83

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

Just had a look in github and the gdrivedl.py script should be fixed again ;-)

Glad to hear it. Bummer about VideoBrain but c'est la vie. Do you know if there's somewhere I could report it/they might fix it?

I was looking for all the last systems I might be able to add to avoid going back to the big task of testing all the Atari 8-Bit for XEGS and MSX for Zemmix but I am back to that now finally, so I won't have anything else to show you for a while I expect.

Folly

@bbilford83 said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

Glad to hear it. Bummer about VideoBrain but c'est la vie. Do you know if there's somewhere I could report it/they might fix it?

I will have a look now on how it will react on my VM.

You could ask over here if someone knows how to deal with it, it even has a search option.
Btw. you need an account first and don't talk about RetroPie they all seem to dislike it, really not sure why.
Here you also can search for issues, pull-requests and commits regarding that driver.
If notting helps, and if it really seems to be an issues than it can be added from within github, if you have a github account over here.

Edit :
Driver is incomplete so could be due to that reason

bbilford83

@Folly Thank you! I will look into it there.

Folly

@bbilford83

I would try to delete the Mouse X and Mouse Y assignment of player 1 and see if that helps.
I can't test it right now as my Apple keyboard hasn't a delete key or I have to find the shortcut.

Edit :
Needed to use "backspace" but it did't help.
Shorcut for delete is "FN + backspace" on Apple keyboard.

Edit 1 :
I see what you mean, very problematic and nothing helps.
Player 1 just goes to the left and up, noting can be controlled.

Edit 2 :
Only sound should be incomplete the say nothing about controls

Folly

@bbilford83

What you also can do is revert back a very old mame binary like for example 0245.
If that works then you know changes to mame has broken something.

Folly

@bbilford83 said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone:

@Folly OK, gamelists and matching art for Socrates and Tutor are up now. Take a look if you would like, Socrates is very small, Tutor is longer. For Tutor I have nice 3d box images for all the US games, but just 2D box covers for the Japanese ones (couldn't find 3D).

Ok, had a little bit of time over to check your gamelists.
Found that for both tutor and socrates the paths in the gamelist.xml's are wrong.
If you edit that then all should be good.

bbilford83

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

Found that for both tutor and socrates the paths in the gamelist.xml's are wrong.
If you edit that then all should be good.

Thank you for catching that, no idea why - could've sworn I fixed them. Anyway they are fixed now and I also realized I had one link that went to the art for the console in the theme for Socrates (for the internal games it had with no cartridge) so I copied that png to the main folder and changed the file path. Should be all good now.

bbilford83

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

I see what you mean, very problematic and nothing helps.
Player 1 just goes to the left and up, noting can be controlled.

Thank you for testing too, at least now I know it's not just me doing something wrong.

Folly

The issue with not showing a bezel in RetroArch has been solved in my script for the realistic overlays.
Next needs to be added in the overlay configs to get it working again :

input_overlay_enable = true

For the script it has been fixed in 261.04 , see commit.

Folly

@DTEAM

Seems the bezel syncing problem is sorted out now too.

By testing more bezels I found that most if not all bezels for retroarch/lr-messare are still in sync with the games so that is a really good thing.
Seems astrocmd is the only one up until now.
Could be that perhaps the syncing problem, for that driver, was there from the beginning.
So I changed the artwork file to improve the bezel for mame standalone and also added a bezel picture specifically for lr-mess and added the file over here.
Btw don't use the other files. They were experiments and still backups, I think.
Hope you like what I did.
Can you add it to your artwork folder ?

I am planning on changing where the background and bezel overlays are stored now.
I want to move them from :
/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/overlay
to :
~/RetroPie/roms/<system>/media/retroarch/<overlays_or_bezels)

Then the overlays are just as gamelists easier to backup and if needed in the future we can share hem via gdrive just like the gameslist.
Good idea ?

DTEAM

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

Good idea ?

yes sure !

Folly

@DTEAM

Ok, good to know.
Will have a look at it.
Found also that the cheat url also has a https link now.
The old http link still works but I will move to the newer one when I can.
In the proces I will refine the way some variables are handled.

Did you paste the astrocmd.zip in your gdrive ?

bbilford83

Hi @Folly. Just FYI as an update, I'm still working on the XEGS (no keyboard) gamelist as I go through the TOSEC Atari 8-Bit romset, and yesterday I finished through all the "B" games. It was 252 games when I finished testing/adding the MAME romsets for XEGS and Atari800, and now just through the TOSEC B games it's grown to 449. So it's going to take forever, but there are a lot of great games I've added and I'm glad I'm doing it.