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

Folly

Picture from the File Manager section :

Picture from the Slot Devices section :

hhtien1408

Super Acan Magazine
https://archive.org/details/acan-special-issue/page/84/mode/2up

NeoGeo CD Magazine
https://archive.org/details/013-neo-geo-cd

JimmyFromTheBay

Chaps, absolutely massive kudos on all this. I'm beyond thrilled to be able to play stuff like CD-i (Hotel Mario at last!) and Super Cassette Vision on my Pi, not to mention all the systems I was running in AdvMESS on my Pi3 which now don't work on the Pi4 but have been rescued by all these wonderful lr-mess forks.

(I'm currently working myself up to the daunting-looking task of setting up konamih and tigerh handhelds. The tutorial is tangling my brain.)

A quick couple of pleas for stuff that's currently got me stumped:

(1) Any chance of adding a coco3 fork? As far as I can tell nothing emulates it on the 4, and it's got a few cool games - it was the original home of Donkey Kong Remix.

(2) I can't for the life of me figure out what BIOS files lr-mess-archimedes wants. The current MAME ROMset has nothing called "archimedes.zip" in it and I've got various things with "risc" in their names in my BIOS folder but I still get the dreaded Box With Blurry Word In The Middle Crash. Any clues?

(3) Quite a few systems (most notably coco and dragon32, for me) are currently sort-of functional, which is to say that everything appears to work and games load, but then don't run properly. (eg The King/Donkey King, which keeps looping back to the menus when you try to choose the difficulty.)

I imagine this is a problem with lr-mess itself rather than the system-specific forks, but if lr-mess gets updated to fix it will we have to install all the individual systems again?

DTEAM

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

(1) Any chance of adding a coco3 fork? As far as I can tell nothing emulates it on the 4, and it's got a few cool games - it was the original home of Donkey Kong Remix.
(2) I can't for the life of me figure out what BIOS files lr-mess-archimedes wants. The current MAME ROMset has nothing called "archimedes.zip" in it and I've got various things with "risc" in their names in my BIOS folder but I still get the dreaded Box With Blurry Word In The Middle Crash. Any clues?
(3) Quite a few systems (most notably coco and dragon32, for me) are currently sort-of functional, which is to say that everything appears to work and games load, but then don't run properly. (eg The King/Donkey King, which keeps looping back to the menus when you try to choose the difficulty.)
I imagine this is a problem with lr-mess itself rather than the system-specific forks, but if lr-mess gets updated to fix it will we have to install all the individual systems again?

For (1) follow the instructions "How to install" (link below) and if you have any problems let us know.
https://github.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/tree/main/00-scripts-00

bash generate-desired-systems.sh only (and write the systems you want)

or try this
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29682/development-of-module-script-generator-for-lr-mess-and-mame-standalone/288

(2) For achimedes , some need BIOSes and some not. The only BIOSes you need are aa310, aa4000 and aa5000 (I think, but I'm not 100% sure)

(3) Maybe @Folly could help you on that one. You can also try with MAME standalone.

Folly

@jimmyfromthebay

Note about the locations where to put the bios files in the first place :

BIOS files for the Valerino module-scripts have to be in :
/home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS
BIOS files for the generated FollyMaddy module-scripts have to be in :
/home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame

Note about https://github.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/tree/main/00-scripts-00 :
I just updated important things of the readme.md of the above link, as it was a bit outdated.

(2)
I checked for you the bios part for Archimedes.
You can get all information out of "mame standalone".
This way we know what types can be generated by the script.

/opt/retropie/emulators/mame/mame -listdevices |grep Driver|grep Archimedes
Driver a7000 (Archimedes A7000):
Driver a7000p (Archimedes A7000+):
Driver aa305 (Archimedes 305):
Driver aa310 (Archimedes 310):
Driver aa4101 (Archimedes 410/1):
Driver aa4201 (Archimedes 420/1):
Driver aa440 (Archimedes 440):
Driver aa4401 (Archimedes 440/1):
Driver aa540 (Archimedes 540):

You said you had installed the Valerino module-script "lr-mess-archimedes".
This will install 'aa305' and 'aa310'.
If you want to check what bios files have to be inside the .zip package you simply do :
( that way you can check your .zip files )

/opt/retropie/emulators/mame/mame -listroms aa310

From the 'mame-0.231-merged' package there are indeed 3 bios files for Archimedes aa310, aa4000 and aa5000, as @DTEAM said. I think you should use those 3.

If anything fails after a run, check the /dev/shm/runcommand.log if there is still a missing bios file.
If something is missing you will see something like 'TRIED IN aa310"

(3)
Perhaps I will try for myself.
But indeed, lr-mess will sometimes quit for no obvious reason.
I had somewhat that same problem with supracan.
No idea why this actually happens.
It could be, that it has something to do with how we load lr-mess, and the rom, with the run_mess.sh script.
Mame standalone doesn't seem to have that problem.
So as @DTEAM said, you should try 'mame standalone' also.
To use 'mame standalone' this way, you have to generate and install a module-script that is generated by our script generator.
That way you get also mame lines to pick from when you load a rom.

Edit :
I played a bit with them, seems there are some issues indeed.
Not only in lr-mess but also in mame standalone.
Looking in the hash tables, they say, most games should work.
Not sure what is causing this.
Btw. I have more luck with dragon32.

JimmyFromTheBay

From the 'mame-0.231-merged' package there are indeed 3 bios files for Archimedes aa310, aa4000 and aa5000, as @DTEAM said. I think you should use those 3.

Yep, those seem to make it boot up. Many thanks to you both :)

Btw. I have more luck with dragon32.

Fingers crossed :)

JimmyFromTheBay

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

For (1) follow the instructions "How to install" (link below) and if you have any problems let us know.
https://github.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/tree/main/00-scripts-00

bash generate-desired-systems.sh only

I'm afraid that single sentence alone is beyond my grasp of Linux and gives me the absolute heebies :( I'd already looked at that thread but simply couldn't make any sense of it.

Folly

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

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

For (1) follow the instructions "How to install" (link below) and if you have any problems let us know.
https://github.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/tree/main/00-scripts-00

bash generate-desired-systems.sh only

I'm afraid that single sentence alone is beyond my grasp of Linux and gives me the absolute heebies :( I'd already looked at that thread but simply couldn't make any sense of it.

Are you able to paste a file into your /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary ?
Then you can use the front-end script.

Just do these few steps :

Download this file and extract it :
https://github.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
Copy 00-workdir-00/add-mamedev-systems-test6.sh to
/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/add-mamedev-systems-test6.sh
Run RetroPie-Setup and go to :
- Configuration / tools
- add-mamedev-systems

Now you can install the handhelds, other systems and download artwork and create overlays for running handhelds with lr-mess

Is this within your grasp ?

JimmyFromTheBay

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

Just do these few steps :

Download this file and extract it :
https://github.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

Copy 00-workdir-00/add-mamedev-systems-test6.sh to
/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/add-mamedev-systems-test6.sh

Run RetroPie-Setup and go to :

Configuration / tools
add-mamedev-systems

Now you can install the handhelds, other systems and download artwork and create overlays for running handhelds with lr-mess

This is EXACTLY the sort of simple instruction set for dim-witted Linuphobes that I need. Thank you :)

DTEAM

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

Then you can use the front-end script.
Just do these few steps :

Download this file and extract it :
https://github.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

Copy 00-workdir-00/add-mamedev-systems-test6.sh to
/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/add-mamedev-systems-test6.sh

Run RetroPie-Setup and go to :

Configuration / tools
add-mamedev-systems

Now you can install the handhelds, other systems and download artwork and create overlays for running handhelds with lr-mess

Hi @Folly, maybe you could add that post as an instruction in your first post and on GitHub.

Folly

@dteam

Yes I can do that.
Will look at it where I can put it in.

I also want somewhat the same description in the github readme.
I have to read that a few times and I will try to improve that also.

Folly

@jimmyfromthebay

This is EXACTLY the sort of simple instruction set for dim-witted Linuphobes that I need. Thank you :)

Haha, great to hear !

Btw :
Besides me and @DTEAM,
I think you will be the first one that will try the front end.

Please let us know how it goes ,so we can learn from your experience.

DTEAM

@folly
Honestly, if you are able to separate the arcade games from the rest, I think it could be on the official version of Retropie or at least tested by others to be added to it.

I retested It this morning (add-mamedev-systems-test6.sh), and It's awsome!

Folly

@dteam

Indeed it's amazing ;-)
Thanks for the compliment, again ^^.
BTW. I got an extra star again today on github !

Still not sure how to separate arcade from the rest.
Because of the beautiful weather a bit less busy with programming.
I have to dig into that later again.

Edit: added the front-end mini tutorial in the first post.

JimmyFromTheBay

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

For (1) follow the instructions "How to install" (link below) and if you have any problems let us know.
https://github.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/tree/main/00-scripts-00

I ran the installer and what a fantastic piece of work it is - all the handheld systems running smoothly and all the artwork downloaded and installed too. Incredible :)

Unfortunately, coco3 didn't go so well. It hit an error that was too fast for me to read and I'm not sure where to look for (all I know in terms of logs is dev/shm), and crashed straight back to EmulationStation :(

Folly

@jimmyfromthebay

Thanks for the compliment and letting us know how it went 😊

I will try that coco3, curious if it will work.

I tried "dkong.zip" from the "coco_flop" using runcommandline "mame-system-coco3-flop1"

I can play the game using the numpad keys ! (0 = coin and jump, 2=down,8=up,4=left,6=right)
Works also good with lr-mess. (advice: turn off the Retroarch hotkeys or use scroll-lock)
Just do : DIR -> will list the files.
Then do : LOAD"DONKEY.BAS" or LOAD"DONKEY" if the "." doesn't work !
Use these joystick settings for lr-mess : see link

JimmyFromTheBay

@folly I have very little idea what I'm doing here, but this is what happens if I try to install coco3 from the script.

hhtien1408

@DTEAM @dmmarti @Folly @valerino
Great news for Super Acan Funtech
The lastest official MAME 0.233 can emulate sound already.
Check the youtube video

Folly

@hhtien1408

That looks/sounds really good !

Folly

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

@folly I have very little idea what I'm doing here, but this is what happens if I try to install coco3 from the script.

It looks like you have a corrupted module-script inside your RetroPie-Setup.

Did you see it at the end of the install of coco3 ?

Do you also see this when starting the RetroPie-Setup ?

Can you see in the experimental packackages if coco3 is installed ?