Adding other system roms to Arcade (Dragons Lair/Space Ace)

Marky161

Hi all,

Looking for guidance/clarification on possibilities on adding another systems rom into another ...

I have progressed quite far with my build and have installed Arcade as the single system which is loaded on boot up, which includes the top 200 arcade roms (in my opinion!) playable through all MAME variants (advmame/lr-mame/lr-mame2003).

The build is to be used in conjunction with the Microcenter Atari Fight Stick, and portable for use at parties etc, all self-contained and with custom screens for controls as a game loads etc.

In listing the games I realised that the top arcade games include laserdisc games which, I believe, aren’t playable through MAME, and can only be played via Daphne.

Is there a way I can add these games and hardcode Daphne to be booted from the Arcade system, or will I have to create a ‘favourites’ list to contain all games then ‘hide’ the Arcade and Daphne systems from the main menu?

Hopefully not unique in this ask!

Pi Model or other hardware: Pi4 2gig
Power Supply used: Official supply
RetroPie Version Used: 4.7.11
Built From: From scratch using Retro Pie Buster (4.7.1)
Emulation Station theme: Carbon

Thanks in advance,
Mark

roslof

@marky161 said in Adding other system roms to Arcade (Dragons Lair/Space Ace):

Is there a way I can add these games and hardcode Daphne to be booted from the Arcade system, or will I have to create a ‘favourites’ list to contain all games then ‘hide’ the Arcade and Daphne systems from the main menu?

I think there's a way to include daphne directories and files to run under arcade, and it'll probably take a little bit of effort.

My thoughts:

Backup everything you touch, so you could always revert. Even backup a microSD image if you want to be extra safe.
Add the .daphne extension to the arcade system of your active es_settings.cfg (by default is in /etc/emulationstation/ unless you overrode this). This will ensure the daphne games show up in the arcade system of EmulationStation. Restart EmulationStation so this change takes effect.
With a text editor, copy and add the daphne emulator launch setting line from the /opt/retropie/configs/daphne/emulators.cfg file to your arcade emulators file located at /opt/retropie/configs/arcade/emulators.cfg. So here, you're just adding a single line.
You may need to modify the path in the line from #3 above, and possibly the daphne.sh script to reference the arcade rom path of /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade instead of /hope/pi/RetroPie/roms/daphne (you might not have to do a thing here, but if you see anything referencing roms/daphne, you might need to change it to roms/arcade. Don't forget to backup. :)
Follow typical steps of setting up daphne structure for roms, framefiles, directory names, but use the arcade roms path.
For any game arcade game that is running daphne, you'll need to associate it with the newly added daphne emulator that you added in step #3 (easiest to run the game, interrupt its launch, set the emulator for that rom to daphne and you're good to go.
Move your daphne rom folders, roms, etc. to your arcade rom folder (be careful that the structure stays intact, and again, be sure you have a backup.

Step 7 suggests that you get a Daphne game to work in a typical Daphne setup first before trying this out. That way, you can rule out Daphne setup issues vs. the changes you'll be making to have this run out of the arcade roms folder.

Typing all of this from memory... I think this will work, since the directory paths are not hard coded in daphne. Refer to /dev/shm/runcommand.log for any game launch issues found during this process. The emulation.cfg and daphne.sh files might work as-is if they pull the directory names from EmulationStation... So possibly no work for step #4, but please look for the .../roms/daphne pattern and modify to .../roms/arcade accordingly.

Cheers!
-Ros

mitu

@marky161 said in Adding other system roms to Arcade (Dragons Lair/Space Ace):

Is there a way I can add these games and hardcode Daphne to be booted from the Arcade system, or will I have to create a ‘favourites’ list to contain all games then ‘hide’ the Arcade and Daphne systems from the main menu?

Why not use the 'All Games' collection instead ? Btw, you can't hide the original system(s) and still have games show in the the collections.

Marky161

@mitu @roslof Thank you both - First things first backup and will report back on the success!

Mark

Marky161

@marky161 said in Adding other system roms to Arcade (Dragons Lair/Space Ace):

@mitu @roslof

Success! Followed the above with slight edits (your memory served you well!):

Install Daphne from Binary (I tried from Source but compiled with lots of errors)
Navigate to /etc/emulationstation and edit "es_systems.cfg"
-- Within section “Arcade” add .daphne and .DAPHNE as an extensions
Navigate to /opt/retropie/configs/arcade/ and edit "emulators.cfg" in directory, adding:
daphne = "/opt/retropie/emulators/daphne/daphne.sh %ROM%"
Copied video folders "ace.daphne", "lair.daphne" & "lair2.daphne" into /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade
Copied Daphne rom files "ace.zip", "lair.zip" & lair2.zip into /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/Daphne/roms
Reboot

Everything perfect! Time to configure controller and button mappings!

Really grateful for the help.

Mark

roslof

@marky161 said in Adding other system roms to Arcade (Dragons Lair/Space Ace):

Everything perfect! Time to configure controller and button mappings!

Great news there. Glad everything worked out.