Acorn BBC Micro Emulator (current?)

Folly

Ok, seems you run just a normal RetroPie image.
Nice to hear that you have it running quite good.
Quitting b-em-allegro version can also be done from the menu if ctrl+c is not an option.

Enjoy and be well !

pgamble

@Folly Hi Folly. Just joined the forum having got my self a RP4 and installed Retropie. I had a BBC B as a teenager and really keen to get the latest emulation working. I've tried to follow the thread - but it's very very long. Has anyone put together a complete list of steps? I think if I tried to put together steps for the two instruction sets, I'd get things very wrong :-( Many thanks in advance. Paul

Folly

@pgamble said in Acorn BBC Micro Emulator (current?):

@Folly Hi Folly. Just joined the forum having got my self a RP4 and installed Retropie.

Welcome ;-)

I had a BBC B as a teenager and really keen to get the latest emulation working.

That is great !
BBC B / or other types aren't working out of the box in RetroPie.
Simply because there aren't emulators that really fit well into RetroPie and so no module-scripts have been made for it.

A module-script is a bash script that is part of the retropie-setup script and enables the steps to install and configure an emulator within RetroPie.

Therefor I did an attempt to find some emulators that would work and make a module-script for it.
We call these 3rd-party module-scripts.
The emulators I used are not the latest except for mame but with mame the driver is ok but not extremely good.
If you really want the latest then the best way is to find and use one of the latest BBC emulators and use it on a regular PC without RetroPie.

I've tried to follow the thread - but it's very very long. Has anyone put together a complete list of steps? I think if I tried to put together steps for the two instruction sets, I'd get things very wrong :-( Many thanks in advance. Paul

What you need to do is add my module-scripts to your RetroPie-Setup folder.
There are many ways of doing this.
I assume you have a original RetroPie image then you need to copy the selected module-scripts to your image just like you do with bios roms or game roms.
The basic folder for emulators is :
~/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/emulators
That will work but then you put 3rd party module-script between the original ones.
A better way is to use the ext folder and create the subfolders like this :
~/RetroPie-Setup/ext/RetroPie-Share/scriptmodules/emulators
Now they are separated from the originals.
RetroPie-Share is my repository name but basically this can be anything so you can use more names.
When you look for them from the experimental packages in the retropie-setup you will also notice that it is separated and you will see the name.
Then check the posts of @Lord-Vek and me from here :
Acorn BBC Micro Emulator (current?)
You can try to use my ~~add-ext-repos.sh~~ (don't use this anymore) but if that doesn't work then just copy b-em_allegro and b-em-pico-pi.
Then you start retropie-setup and you can install these ones.
Look also at the HELP for the special keys though they are also discussed in the last posts I mentioned.

If you want to use mame or lr-mess then you can go this route :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29682/development-of-module-script-generator-for-lr-mess-lr-mame-and-mame-standalone
Be aware that the latest version mame0256 and mostly lr-mess0256 have issues that are discussed lately.

pgamble

@Folly Many thanks :-)

MrNoHolster

Finally got this to work! Sorry to ask but is there an easy way to exit from each game back to the menu? The regular START/SELECT hotkey doesn't work in this case. Also, how would I map keyboard key controls to a gamepad? I'm running this inside a PiBoy DMG case so having the buttons as controller would be amazing. Huge thanks for your work on this! :D

Folly

@MrNoHolster said in Acorn BBC Micro Emulator (current?):

Finally got this to work! Sorry to ask but is there an easy way to exit from each game back to the menu? The regular START/SELECT hotkey doesn't work in this case.

No there isn't.
Both packages are created from programs made for "windows" use.
So controlling the emulator with the keyboard is the default here.
Using the START/SELECT button from the joystick would mean changing the source code which is not inside.
I am not able to do that.
So you need to find a joy2key solution in order to achieve this.
There is a joy2key.py script inside retropie but I am not sure if it's even possible to use that.

Also, how would I map keyboard key controls to a gamepad? I'm running this inside a PiBoy DMG case so having the buttons as controller would be amazing. Huge thanks for your work on this! :D

Edited :
Perhaps there are better and other ways but what you could try to do is make a button on your gpio and use ydotool to simultate a keypress.
You can read this post to find more about that solution.
Pehaps I forgot something but I think the only thing you need to do is alter the keypress "5" into (F11-> <alt>+f -> e for b-em) (ctrl + c b-em-pico-pi) for in the commandline.

Probably xdotool can also be used as this works within matchbox-window-manager.
It's also a better choice when working.
The code could probably be added in the b-em-allegro4-multiload.sh script.
For b-em-pico-pi probably in xbeeb.sh xmaster.sh.

Lord Vek

@Folly Hello,

May I ask, is there a way to get B-em to begin in fullscreen? Something to write to the config for example?

Folly

@Lord-Vek said in Acorn BBC Micro Emulator (current?):

@Folly Hello,

May I ask, is there a way to get B-em to begin in fullscreen? Something to write to the config for example?

In the past I tried to edit the source but could not get it working.
( for elkulator I could however )
xdotool could be a solution to simulate the key-presses at start.
I think I experimented with that before.
I certainly have implemented xdotool to autoload the `roms.

Lord Vek

@Folly Yes, but how exactly can I do that? What should I edit, what commands...?

Folly

@Lord-Vek

Have a look at :
/opt/retropie/emulators/b-em-allegro4/b-em-allegro4-multiload.sh

You would only have to add "alt+enter" before loading the software.
( https://gitlab.com/cunidev/gestures/-/wikis/xdotool-list-of-key-codes )

When quitting however you would probably have to do it manually.

The code would probably be something like this :

xdotool sleep 1.5 keydown Alt+Return sleep 1 keyup Alt+Return

(code is working !)

For example you can test it by editing line 12 in b-em-allegro4-multiload.sh for the disc load commandline into this :

/opt/retropie/emulators/b-em-allegro4/b-em $1 -disc "$2" | xdotool sleep 1.5 keydown Alt+Return sleep 1 keyup Alt+Return sleep 1.5 keydown Shift_L+F12 sleep 1 keyup Shift_L+F12

(tested and it looks like it's working ok)

Lord Vek

Yep! It worked! Thanks again, my friend!

Folly

@Lord-Vek @MrNoHolster

For quitting the emulator from fullscreen and with keyboard or joystick I will have a look later if I have the time.
Just to see if I can extract key-presses and joystick-presses while the emulator is running and break the script so the emulator will stop and exit.

I think the "Alt+Return" fix has to be implemented in the module-script together with an exit fix once I found that.

Lord Vek

@Folly It would be nice if the B-em was to be even better!

MrNoHolster

@Folly Thanks for your hard work on this! So much love for this emulator that it'd be a superb addition to Retropie gaming.

Lord Vek

@Folly said in Acorn BBC Micro Emulator (current?):

For example you can test it by editing line 12 in b-em-allegro4-multiload.sh for the disc load commandline into this :

/opt/retropie/emulators/b-em-allegro4/b-em $1 -disc "$2" | xdotool sleep 1.5 keydown Alt+Return sleep 1 keyup Alt+Return sleep 1.5 keydown Shift_L+F12 sleep 1 keyup Shift_L+F12
(tested and it looks like it's working ok)

Hello,

I discovered that, when I make this change, it is changing back, probably after an update. What I should do to make this change permanent?

Folly

@Lord-Vek

Hmmm...
If you update my scripts than yes it's overwritten.

Perhaps I can add it to my module-script, though I have to add a message on how to quit before the emulator is loading.
Will have to think about it.

mitu

@Folly said in Acorn BBC Micro Emulator (current?):

If you update my scripts than yes it's overwritten.

Own/user 'emulator' lines in emulators.cfg won't be overwritten by updates.

Folly

@Lord-Vek

As @mitu said the own/user 'emulator' lines in emulators.cfg won't be overwritten by updates unless you install it again.
Did you do that too ?

Lord Vek

@mitu No, I didn't. So, should I edit \retropie\root\opt\retropie\configs\bbcmicro\emulators.cfg? And what lines should I change into what?

mitu

@Lord-Vek You should duplicate the line that was overwritten by the update/upgrade and save it with a custom name. I.e. if the emulator start looks like:

..
emulator1=/opt/retropie/emulators/b-em-allegro4/b-em $1 -disc "$2" | xdotool sleep 1.5 keydown Alt+Return sleep 1 keyup Alt+Return sleep 1.5 keydown Shift_L+F12 sleep 1 keyup Shift_L+F12
..

just add a similar line, but name the emulator entry differently:

...
emulator1-custom=/opt/retropie/emulators/b-em-allegro4/b-em $1 -disc "$2" | xdotool sleep 1.5 keydown Alt+Return sleep 1 keyup Alt+Return sleep 1.5 keydown Shift_L+F12 sleep 1 keyup Shift_L+F12
...

You can then use the runcommand launch menu to choose this custom emulator to run games.
Since this is a custom emulator (using @Folly's scripts) I don't know what the defaults are and what is the emulators.cfg looks like.