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

Folly

I added your edited code to my repository.
I also added it to my standalone scripts :
generate-systems-lr-mess_mame-1v8-alpha.sh
generate-systems-lr-mess_mame-2v0-alpha.sh
When running above script, the run_mess.sh script is always updated by the script.

https://github.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/tree/main/00-scriptmodules-00

This shows the difference betweem the original and yours :
https://github.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/commit/5f915ca6d2e05f3ff6f0dc7fe6b8ff21ca1d6677

Folly

@DTEAM @RussellB

I did one test.
Can you both do some tests too ?

I like to know if it still works ok.

DTEAM

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

@dteam
You should use the scroll-lock key to toggle between FULL and PARTIAL emulation.
With PARTIAL the UI should be enabled.
If this doesn't work we have to look further.

Fixed. It was a simple problem with my default.cfg file in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame/cfg
Not a real issue

Folly

@dteam

Indeed, I was thinking you knew about the scroll-lock part ,so indeed it had to be something else.
Nice to have that one fixed !

DTEAM

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

I did one test.
Can you both do some tests too ?
I like to know if it still works ok.

~~Nothing happens for me. Is It supposed to generate a .cmd (per game) file in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/cdimono1 when we load a game?~~

It works

Folly

@DTEAM

Nice to hear it works !
I think @RussellB will test it with some bezels, don't you think too ?

Folly

For those who are reading these posts and really don't know what the run_mess.sh does :

The run_mess.sh makes a temporary <game>.cmd file to start the game with lr-mess and adds all the necessary things in this .cmd file to start the game correctly .
The original version of run_mess.sh always made the same <game>.cmd named tmpmess.cmd .
After you have played the game, this tmpmess.cmd file is removed again.

The edited version of run_mess.sh now makes the <game>.cmd named after the game.
That way it's unique per rom/game.
This allows us to specify custom configs, including bezels and screen locations, etc. per rom/game that wasn't possible with the original run_mess.sh.

DTEAM

@folly
SOLVED : For Coleco_sgm, I'm trying set scroll-lock automaticly when we the system load.

~~Any idea~~ you need -ui_active

mame-system-adam-cart1-autoframeskip = "/opt/retropie/emulators/mame/mame -v -c -autoframeskip adam -ui_active -cart1 %ROM%"

Folly

@dteam

I tried this :

mame-system-adam-cart1-ui = "/opt/retropie/emulators/mame/mame -v -c adam -uimodekey TAB -cart1 %ROM%"

Now the TAB works as (SCRLOCK + UI) button at the same time.
Seems quite nice, you preserve FULL keyboard emulation until TAB is pressed.

Edit :
I will try that -ui_active too.
OK, that works too, nice finding !

It looks like you boot in PARTIAL keyboard emulation.
Don't know if that could be a problem.

We should do some more tests.
This would be nice function to add, it could make things much simpler..

DTEAM

@folly
It works also for Lr-Mess .

lr-mess-system-adam-cart1 = "/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/run_mess.sh /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-mess/mess_libretro.so /opt/retropie/configs/coleco_sgm/retroarch.cfg \adam /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame -autoframeskip -ui_active -cart1 %ROM%"

DTEAM

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

Could be nice to add one of these functions.

Absolutely

Folly

@dteam

Great to hear that this also works on lr-mess !
Did you try "-uimodekey TAB" too ?
What do you think?

DTEAM

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

Great to hear that this also works on lr-mess !
Did you try "-uimodekey TAB" too ?
What do you think?

It changes Scroll lock for TAB. Same problem if you don't have a keyboard.

-ui_active is the best option for me. I don't see problems. Most of the time, It's already activated.

RussellB

@folly I've tested this with mess running tic-80 games, Sega VMS, and CD-i and each game gets its own config file. I had config files already from the bezelproject for CD-i and they immediately came up as it was no longer reading tmpmess.cmd. Looks good from my testing.

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:

Great to hear that this also works on lr-mess !
Did you try "-uimodekey TAB" too ?
What do you think?

It changes Scroll lock for TAB. Same problem if you don't have a keyboard.

-ui_active is the best option for me. I don't see problems. Most of the time, It's already activated.

Ok, good to know.

I think it's in our best interest not to make separate lines for that.
I would want to add -ui_active to the normal lines, I think that's the best option, for now.

I also want to remove the separate line mame-system-xxxxxxx-autoframeskip= .
Using 1 string we can add all options to both mame and lr-mess :

mamedevcfgoptions="-v -c -autoframeskip -ui_active"

This way, I only have to edit above line and we reduce some starter lines making it a bit simpler.
Good idea ?

If we run into problems we can always revert it.

BTW.
Don't know if we should add this to the CMD and BASENAME lines, we could get into trouble, agreed ?

Folly

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

@folly I've tested this with mess running tic-80 games, Sega VMS, and CD-i and each game gets its own config file. I had config files already from the bezelproject for CD-i and they immediately came up as it was no longer reading tmpmess.cmd. Looks good from my testing.

Super, very nice what you made 👍

Thanks for testing.
I will add this information to the first^post .
You should upvote your own idea in post 1, then we improve our ranking.

😉

DTEAM

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

Ok, good to know.
I think it's in our best interest not to make separate lines for that.
I would want to add -ui_active to the normal lines, I think that's the best option, for now.
I also want to remove the separate line mame-system-xxxxxxx-autoframeskip= .
Using 1 string we can add all options to both mame and lr-mess :
mamedevcfgoptions="-v -c -autoframeskip -ui_active"

This way, I only have to edit above line and we reduce some starter lines making it a bit simpler.
Good idea ?
If we run into problems we can always revert it.
BTW.
Don't know if we should add this to the CMD and BASENAME lines, we could get into trouble, agreed ?

For -ui_active I agree, but for -autoframeskip, be aware that it slowed down some systems a bit with lr-mess and MAME, but most of the time it is beneficial.

So, yes, I agree with your approach.

mamedevcfgoptions="-v -c -autoframeskip -ui_active"

It's simpler for the user and he can always set buttons to set frameskip option if needed.

Folly

@dteam

I have had a few hours re-thinking it.
Now I think it's better to do small steps, so I didn't add that much.
Editing the files, it struck me, that the "string" isn't that handy after all, so I have removed it.
That way the options are right in the lines where they suppose to be and the scripts have less lines.
I left the mame-xxxx-autoframeskip line in there, I think you have a point, when you say it doesn't always help that it is on. So I kept both lines.
With lr-mess we already had -autoframeskip in the standard line, so I left it there.

https://github.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/commit/1843471347f30fe102b3690bb0652d1af77240e4

Folly

@russellb

Would you like to help more, in improving the scripts ?

Folly

@dteam

I found the answers to improve the front-end script !
As I told before I now use comma separate value's within the array's.
This worked from the beginning, but there was a problem with speed.
Al the things I used before were very slow for the 38000 entry's of mame.
I couldn't use cut that's why it took so long to find a better solution.
Now I use sed to convert the lines into csv and I use IFS to cut on delimiter and get the correct value's.
I also implemented a way of re-using the data of mame within the different menu choices. So it will read all in one time for 20 sec. and re-use this data which takes 4 sec.

It now works, only the generator_script part is still old.
For that i also have to fix some things, but those are not that difficult I think.

I worked from what I could accomplish, I hope it will match the direction of our ideas.

Here are some pictures :