C64 games don´t work

camurso

Hi guys!
First of all, sorry for the "noobish" question...
I can´t play any c64 games.
I have a no-intro set and, whenever I try to play a game, the emulator shows it is loading the zip file I choose and all I get is a purple screen with bluish lines and some squares...

What am I doing wrong?

monstermadeofman

@camurso

You have to take them out of the .zip files buddy

camurso

I thought the emulator supported zip files...
Ok, thank you, I will unzip them later...

monstermadeofman

No none of them do I'm afraid they need the files as they are intended.

vbs

ZIPs are supposed to be supported for C64. If not then .ZIP should IMO be removed from list of supported extensions so that ZIPs don't show up in ES.

monstermadeofman

@vbs
https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Commodore-64

Check the Github my friend it says nothing off supporting .Zip files at all and it says all the accepted file extensions. And I believe it has never bin there.

vbs

Yes bro, I checked Github (even before I posted) :) It looks like the Wiki does not reflect the actual code which looks like this:

rp_module_id="vice"
rp_module_desc="C64 emulator VICE"
rp_module_help="ROM Extensions: .crt .d64 .g64 .prg .t64 .tap .x64 .zip .vsf\n\nCopy your Commodore 64 roms to $romdir/c64"

So ZIP is contained in the list of supported extensions (thats the reason why ZIP-files show up in EmulationStation). I still think ZIP should be removed from the list if it does not work actually.

monstermadeofman

Well man I would personally use the Wiki as go to. Considering that it clearly doesn't like opening them and the wiki says it doesn't. I'm sure one of the admin can shed some light as to why it's still in the code, even though the wiki specifies otherwise.

I've never tried to run anything from the .zip files personally as sometimes it can slow loading times.

To be fair looking through the forum briefly scanning for C64 related posts it seems that its a myriad of troubles anyway. Could be because VICE wasn't really designed for Linux based systems originally.

monstermadeofman

@monstermadeofman

Also while looking briefly at the Emulationstation wiki I came across this:

"Are your ROMs in a compressed format? Emulation Station does not search inside zip files, though some emulators (like MAME) will expect a zip file."

I would appear that it might just be an Emulation Station issue, something might be conflicting?

camurso

ES has a config file (I can´t remember it´s name , I know I already edited it before to prevent PSX roms to appear in double) where we can define which file extensions are "valid". That way, no zip file will appear on "valid"available games list.

vbs

ZIP seems just not supported by Vice. Removing ZIP from the code I quoted above will make ZIP disappear from the config file that @camurso mentioned. So ZIPs won't show up anymore in ES.

camurso

@monstermadeofman quoted from the wiki the configuration from the file I mentioned: ex_systems.cfg

edmaul69

@camurso its es_systems.cfg. You can run zip files from systems that support it. For me everything now is not a zip except for my mame and fba but i used to have others zipped as well. I have never tried to use zipped roms on vice so i say unzip them then try.

camurso

Like I said, later, when I get home, I will try that ;)
BTW: Some emulators other than mame accept zip files (megadrive, nes, snes, etc), since I can play roms without any problem...

mediamogul

@camurso said in C64 games don´t work:

BTW: Some emulators other than mame accept zip files

Very true. I keep everything zipped that is at all possible for space reasons, but I've never had any luck running zipped C64 titles. Everything I've read tends to imply that this is only a feature found in WinVICE and even there it seems to require the external application 'unzip.exe' being placed in the application's root directory and working in tandem at launch.

camurso

Ok, I unzipped all my files and got .crt files.
I choose to play one of them and now I get a blue/purple screen and nothing more...

camurso

Tryed a different game (robocop) and got the same purplish blue screen and a black square top front....

mediamogul

@camurso said in C64 games don´t work:

I choose to play one of them and now I get a blue/purple screen and nothing more...

It could be that it's working fine now, it just takes quite a while for the games to load. There's a built-in turbo mode that can be triggered to quickly get you past this. VICE can even be set to launch with turbo enabled and many times it will disable itself when the game fully loads.

ambaratur

@mediamogul I have the same problem with .crt files. ES seems to direct VICE to try to load them like disk images. If I enter the control system and load them directly with the emulator they start right up. .crt files are cartridges that have no real load time in the emulator when it works correctly.

mediamogul

@ambaratur

There may be more to it than this, but it seems like this could be remedied by adding an entry to specifically handle these files into /opt/retropie/configs/c64/emulators.cfg. Something like:

vice-x64-cart = "/opt/retropie/emulators/vice/bin/x64 -cartcrt %ROM%"

and then changing default emulator for the rom files to "vice-x64-cart" when you launch them the for the first time. Of course, even if that worked it would be constantly overwritten each time there was an update.