(Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, etc.) Anyone interested in Daphne laserdisc system?

[herbfargus]

I’m working on documentation right now:

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Daphne

I haven’t tested dragons lair but I did get astron working. I don’t know how well it will work on a pi 1

[shmoopty]

I’m probably not the only other person interested in hearing how a Model B holds up. Thanks for taking the plunge!

What is the framefile named? If it’s in the directory “lair.daphne”, the launch script will assume that the framefile is named “lair.txt”. Same base name as the folder.

Let me know if that was the problem.

– Shmoopty

[cfx69]

I got it to launch finally. Had to edit the lair.txt framefile I copied from my arcade cabinet. Was two lines; first line ..\vldp\lair second line 151 lair.m2v and changed it to just 151 lair.m2v since it exists in the lair.daphne folder with the game files. Dunno that the 151 needs to be there or not as I’ve not played with daphne since setting up my cabinet ages ago.

Didn’t get far tho, no controls. Working on that issue now and I’ll see how it runs. I’ll set it up on one of the pi 2’s afterwards, this is just curiosity as I want to gift it to a friend and I’m pushing it to it’s limits to see just what it can and cannot emulate.

C..

[cfx69]

Ok .. way too choppy. I tried pushing the OC on this particular PI to Turbo, but it would just lock up. Reverted it back to High.

I might try moving the roms/video file to a USB stick or HDD and see if makes a difference as the scard isn’t the fastest and it’s a big video file. I doubt it’ll help much, but you never know. Also need to play with the daphne settings (resolution, buffers, etc) and see if any changes there make a difference.

I have to say it is pretty cool seeing that little B start it up tho!

C..

[shmoopty]

How did it look on the Pi B?

I just finished testing out the install produced by the official experimental emulators script. It seems to be playing everything I have. There’s one typo that I need to patch – the controls config file is ending up in the wrong location.

Move the file “/opt/retropie/configs/dapinput.ini” to “/opt/retropie/configs/daphne/dapinput.ini” — then it will affect the controls.

Edit that file to map your controller buttons. You’ll see my notes at the top of that file.

With luck, soon, I’ll get that config file to auto-update so it matches everyone’s emulationstation config.

[shmoopty]

[quote=117262]I’m working on documentation right now:

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Daphne

I haven’t tested dragons lair but I did get astron working. I don’t know how well it will work on a pi 1
[/quote]

Looks great so far. I’m now a respected ASCII artist! :)

I’ve tasked myself with getting a script to make the joystick controls match what emulationstation thinks is right.

I have now run Dragon’s Lair with success via the official setup script.

[iesposta]

I just built daphne with the Experimental install. Raspberry PI 2, launching from Emulation Station, not just the command line.
Plays lair just fine where I had placed the files and ROMs originally.

Complains about the rom’s crc errors because I used the method I posted previously to get the drawbridge back.

Thanks to everyone who worked on this.

Where is the command line text so I can add my switches, and -nocrccheck, -no[whatever], etc.?

BTW. Forcing it to a lower resolution, and then up-scaling and adding scan lines with XRGB-Mini is beautiful. No problems with control, still just using a USB keyboard. Back in the arcade we figured out when to die so we would get the highest score, now I can’t even get to the Princess anymore, and the scoring for Dragon’s Lair isn’t emulated I guess. I remember Lair 2 has computer video over the laser disc – also saw probably one of the last laser disc arcade games in a YouTube video. That has the laser disc footage buffered so it could be moved all around and sped up or slowed down along with computer graphics.

[herbfargus]

Command Line perametres are here:

/opt/retropie/emulators/daphne/daphne.sh

but as shown on the wiki https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Daphne you should in theory be able to specify command line perameters in a file called dle21.commands or equivalent

[shmoopty]

[quote=117270]Where is the command line text so I can add my switches, and -nocrccheck, -no[whatever], etc.?[/quote]

I noticed that the extra command-line options in the official experimental installer aren’t implemented correctly yet, so stay tuned! But to answer your question, for a particular engine like your desired “dle21”, you’ll want to put any extra command-line options that you want in a text file at “roms/daphne/dle21.daphne/dle21.commands”

If you want to manually fix it now, edit “/opt/retropie/emulators/daphne/daphne.sh” and at the end of the last line (after “-fullscreen”) add ” $params” without the quotes.

Or wait until someone here says it’s fixed and install daphne again.

I can confirm that I’ve run it with your settings, so GOOD LUCK and let me know if you’re still stuck.

[herbfargus]

Controller configs and commandline params should be sorted now:

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/commit/09599867d1476e89465426e8f9adbb52ccf7feac

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/commit/c32f9cd8f7f5b54dde2f4ea482372afaeabe3439

[meneerjansen]

[quote=117266]Ok .. way too choppy. I tried pushing the OC on this particular PI to Turbo, but it would just lock up. Reverted it back to High.

I might try moving the roms/video file to a USB stick or HDD and see if makes a difference as the scard isn’t the fastest and it’s a big video file. I doubt it’ll help much, but you never know. Also need to play with the daphne settings (resolution, buffers, etc) and see if any changes there make a difference.

I have to say it is pretty cool seeing that little B start it up tho!

C..

[/quote]
I see that the video files from this game have the extension “m2v”. If I am not mistaken that means “mpeg2 video”. You’ll probably need the mpeg2 licence key for the Raspberry Pi for it to play these Mpeg2 files (see http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/). Do you have said key?

Thank you all for experimenting w/ this. I’m looking forward to reading the Retropie Wiki on this! :)

[cfx69]

[quote=117293]
I see that the video files from this game have the extension “m2v” if I am not mistaken that means mpeg2 video. You’ll probably need the mpeg2 licence key for the Raspberry Pi for it to play Mpeg2 (see http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/). Do you have said key?

Thank you all for experimenting w/ this. I’m looking forward to reading the Retropie Wiki on this!

[/quote]

You know, I didn’t even think about that. I’ve got licenses for all my old Pi’s from back when they were used as XBMC boxes. I’ll have to dig thru some old emails and pull the keys and see if it makes a difference.

[shmoopty]

[quote=117295]You know, I didn’t even think about that. I’ve got licenses for all my old Pi’s from back when they were used as XBMC boxes. I’ll have to dig thru some old emails and pull the keys and see if it makes a difference.[/quote]

For what it’s worth, I did not have to purchase an mpeg license to get good performance. I didn’t even know such a process existed.

I think your first two suspicions are sound. It’s the speed of the SD card or the Speed of the Model 1 hardware, I’d bet.

Do you know if your SD card is class 10 or 6 or less?

I wonder what you’d see if you replaced that m2v with a heavily downsampled version of the same video.

If it turns out to be the hardware, herbfargus’ early link in this thread may be the answer: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=57721 but that would require code rewrites.

[petrockblog]

Purchasing the mpeg2 licence key is not going to help, as the decoding is done in software and the licence key relates to the GPU assisted decoding which is not used by the mpeg2 library included in daphne.

[petrockblog]

(the mentioned thread from the author suggests he was using the hardware decoding features in his currently unreleased version)

[cfx69]

[quote=117302]
For what it’s worth, I did not have to purchase an mpeg license to get good performance. I didn’t even know such a process existed.

I think your first two suspicions are sound. It’s the speed of the SD card or the Speed of the Model 1 hardware, I’d bet.

Do you know if your SD card is class 10 or 6 or less?

I wonder what you’d see if you replaced that m2v with a heavily downsampled version of the same video.

If it turns out to be the hardware, herbfargus’ early link in this thread may be the answer: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=57721 but that would require code rewrites.

[/quote]

I’m at work, but brought a B with me and a 2. I’m going to do a new image on a class 10 on the B as time permits and see what happens.

I’m more inclined to think it’s going to be the hardware on the B just isn’t up to the task of running the emulator without hardware decoding, but I’m willing to test it out.

I’ll post back once I’ve got this B up and running.

C..

[labelwhore]

Wow guys, great work! I definitely want to try this out to get Dragon’s Lair on my Pi. There’s definitely a gaping hole where that game should be on my pi. lol

[cfx69]

[quote=117308]
I’m at work, but brought a B with me and a 2. I’m going to do a new image on a class 10 on the B as time permits and see what happens.

I’m more inclined to think it’s going to be the hardware on the B just isn’t up to the task of running the emulator without hardware decoding, but I’m willing to test it out.

I’ll post back once I’ve got this B up and running.

C..

[/quote]

Same issue after creating a new system on the class 10 sdcard, it’s just chop central. Looks like the B just isn’t up to the task as things stand now. Was definitely worth a shot! I’ll play with settings and with moving the data to an external source when I get home just to be thorough, but I’m not expecting much.

Going to build a 2 up and get it going so I can see Daphne on a Pi!

C..

[caver01]

This is exciting. Question/Feedback:

Does this setup allow for customization of the run command switches per Daphne ROM?

There has been some mention of DIP switch settings, but they are ROM specific, even among titles that share the same framefile.

For exmaple, I might specify the rom “dle21” to play Dragon’s Lair Enhanced 2.1 using the “lair” framefile and using the following DIP switches: -bank 0 11011000 -bank 1 01110111

but these DIP switches won’t be the same for the “lair_f” ROM that uses the same framefile. The DIPs definitely won’t be the same for another title like space ace.

It definitely makes launching daphne a bit more complicated–something the Daphne Loader front end solves with preferences per game. On another Pi image I worked around this by writing a launch script to parse ROM input parameters and add switches as needed/desired. This is adequate with so few titles to worry about, but necessary given the questions that most people have (i.e. “can I enable the drawbridge scene?”).

Thoughts?

EDIT: Sorry, some of this is redundant to previous posts– by the time I finished writing, questions are being asked and answered! Great work so far.

[shmoopty]

Yes, this should be accounted for if I did everything right!

The directory “roms/daphne/lair_f.daphne” would appear as a emulationstation entry and would have a framefile “lair_f.txt” that’s either a copy or a symlink to your Dragon’s Lair frame file.

The separate directory “roms/daphne/dle21.daphne” would appear as a different emulationstation entry. It would have a framefile “dle21.txt” that’s either a copy or a symlink to your Dragon’s Lair frame file, and a text file “dle21.commands” that contains the text -bank 0 11011000 -bank 1 01110111.

[caver01]

Fantastic. This method is both flexible and complete. Great work!

[iesposta]

[quote=117313]

cfx69 wrote:

…

I’m more inclined to think it’s going to be the hardware on the B just isn’t up to the task of running the emulator without hardware decoding, but I’m willing to test it out.

I’ll post back once I’ve got this B up and running.

C..

Same issue after creating a new system on the class 10 sdcard, it’s just chop central. Looks like the B just isn’t up to the task as things stand now. Was definitely worth a shot! I’ll play with settings and with moving the data to an external source when I get home just to be thorough, but I’m not expecting much.

Going to build a 2 up and get it going so I can see Daphne on a Pi!

C..

[/quote]

The Pi2 software decoding gets compiled with neon, something the others don’t have (if I remember correctly, it’s been over a year since I used my Pi2). The experts here will have to explain how neon is a sign create speedup.

For this to work with brute CPU force on a Pi B, I would guess a video file that is easily software decoded (as the daphne developer used mjpeg but still needed some kind of acceleration on the orig Pi), or added code to use the Pi B’s Hardware Mpeg2 purchased codec.

[cfx69]

Setup the pi2 and got DLE21 running using dle21.command with -bank 0 11011000 -bank 1 01110111 . Got the drawbridge scene working and game is playing great!

Not had time to get the gamepad (usb ibuffalo snes) setup with it yet since I’m working on this between logging into servers and doing my job lol, but it’s cool to see this running so well on the pi2!

Great work!

[shmoopty]

That’s great news! It’s a relief to see it working for others – that means no detail was overlooked.

I still promised to write a script so that your emulationstation controller assignments just magically carry over to daphne. I’ll have time soon for that. In the meantime, you can edit /opt/retropie/configs/daphne/dapinput.ini … I left some notes in that file.

[shmoopty]

[quote=117216]If it was done as a input configuration script as we do for retroarch etc that would help – see https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/tree/master/scriptmodules/supplementary/emulationstation [/quote]

Hi again, buzz.

Bash scripting is not my proudest skill, but I did a few dry runs with this controller config and it seemed to do the job right. Since daphne has no in-game interface for controllers, it also allows for input tweaking for those who might be inclined.

daphne.sh (pastebin)

The “onstart” function will create three self-documented files in $configdir/daphne/ if and only if they don’t already exist.

dapinput.ini will store default input configuration.

dapinput-forcekey.ini will store entirely optional keyboard mappings that won’t be overwritten by future input configs.

dapinput-forcejoy.ini will store entirely optional joystick mappings that won’t be overwritten by future input configs.

The “map” function will map the joystick buttons unless those controls have been manually added to the “forcejoy” file. End result – controls work normally the first run and you can still tweak them later.

I’ve seen retropie emulators map either “insert coin” or “exit” to the select button. Since Daphne uses both and can’t map button combos, I’ve somewhat arbitrarily mapped select to “exit”; A B X to the three gameplay buttons; and Y to “insert coin”. If something makes more sense to you, your call.

Cheers,

– Shmoopty

[petrockblog]

Thanks very much – looks good. I will have a test and include it.

[shmoopty]

Daphne is now live in RetroPie’s “expermental” menu:.

Here’s a rundown for visitors that don’t want to sift through 60+ comments.

It’s available now. From “retropie-setup”, choose “Update RetroPie-Setup script”. Then “daphne” will be available under “Experimental packages”.

Here’s the wiki:
https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Daphne

Supported themes currently include carbon, simple, simple-dark, clean-canela, and clean-canela-dark. If you’re currently using one of those, be sure to update it! More themes to come.

Supported gametypes are listed here. Some of the more obscure ones are a real trip! Please share your discoveries!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hy2VpPXgs4a9imeu0_w3SpehKEkhUNOLzD1jhcgwS3o/edit?usp=sharing

Controller mapping will be automatic soon, but meanwhile you can manually add the not-yet-official auto-mapping module (click!) /opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation/scripts/configscripts/daphne.sh
or you can just manually edit the file /opt/retropie/configs/daphne/dapinput.ini.
It works well on Raspberry Pi 2. Currently too slow on Raspberry Pi 1.

[caver01]

Installed on Pi2. Setup was smooth and simple.

I did run into one odd parsing issue that hasn’t happened to me before, so for anyone else out there, this may help:

My Space Ace framefile lists the .m2v files in lower case. However, almost all of the video files themselves are named with upper case characters. Daphne would not parse the files because it could not find them (framefile references appear to be case-sensitive), so. . . inside the ace.daphne video file folder:

rename ‘y/A-Z/a-z/’ *

That took care of the video files easily enough. I tried launching Ace again and this time parsing completed just fine and the game ran smoothly.

[cfx69]

[quote=117520]Installed on Pi2. Setup was smooth and simple.

I did run into one odd parsing issue that hasn’t happened to me before, so for anyone else out there, this may help:

My Space Ace framefile lists the .m2v files in lower case. However, almost all of the video files themselves are named with upper case characters. Daphne would not parse the files because it could not find them (framefile references appear to be case-sensitive), so. . . inside the ace.daphne video file folder:

rename ‘y/A-Z/a-z/’ *

That took care of the video files easily enough. I tried launching Ace again and this time parsing completed just fine and the game ran smoothly.

[/quote]

I should have mentioned the case issue before in my testing. I had the same issue with rom names and had to change the case on all of them. Not a big deal, but it’s good to let others know so they are prepared in advance.

I’ve tested DLE21/Lair and Space Ace, not been able to get Cobra Command to run yet as it’s using conversion roms, but still playing around with it when I have time. I’ve got a full collection of Laser Disc games on my cabinet I need to copy off and stick on the 2 to see how they run.

Very cool to see this happening on the PI platform.

C..

[shmoopty]

cfx69, since you’re testing the more obscure titles I’ve put together a compatibility list to make it easier to share notes with everyone.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hy2VpPXgs4a9imeu0_w3SpehKEkhUNOLzD1jhcgwS3o/edit?usp=sharing

Also, if there’s an outstanding issue that can be fixed this may help zero down on the issue.

[cfx69]

[quote=117542]cfx69, since you’re testing the more obscure titles I’ve put together a compatibility list to make it easier to share notes with everyone.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hy2VpPXgs4a9imeu0_w3SpehKEkhUNOLzD1jhcgwS3o/edit?usp=sharing

Also, if there’s an outstanding issue that can be fixed this may help zero down on the issue.

[/quote]

Awesome. I’ll fill things in as I test and post up anything in particular I had to do.

Great work!

C..

[iesposta]

Last I built/checked it was still throwing “latency” not working.

Latency is not really necessary, but helps the program come closer to the arcade. Just thought I would mention it. ( I don’t even know how/where to post an official request/issue. )

The scenes ending a bit too soon, in my case, might not even be latency. It could be my video files or frame files.

Thanks again for this.

[shmoopty]

Are you referring specifically to Dragon’s Lair?

As I understand it, the arcade ROM intentionally ended scenes too soon to account for laserdisc seek latency. The dle11 and dle21 ROMs fix this scene cropping, but as a result makes it less like the arcade experience.

How are you adding the latency parameter?

[iesposta]

[quote=117648]Are you referring specifically to Dragon’s Lair?

As I understand it, the arcade ROM intentionally ended scenes too soon to account for laserdisc seek latency. The dle11 and dle21 ROMs fix this scene cropping, but as a result makes it less like the arcade experience.

How are you adding the latency parameter?

[/quote]
Yes, Dragon’s Lair.
See this log text. The 6th line is in the command line (also “-latency 950” is on the wiki) and the 16th line sets latency to 950 milliseconds, then at the bottom there are warnings that latency isn’t working .

[iesposta]

If that isn’t clickable:

[attachment file=”lairlog.txt]

ls: cannot access /proc/kcore: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:7843:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occurred
–DAPHNE version 1.0.13
–Command line is: /opt/retropie/emulators/daphne/daphne.bin lair vldp -nohwaccel -framefile /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/daphne/lair.daphne/lair.txt -homedir /opt/retropie/emulators/daphne -fullscreen -nocrc -noissues -noserversend -latency 950 -x 640 -y 480 -bank 1 00110111 -bank 0 10011000
–CPU : UnknownCPU 0 MHz || Mem : 0 megs
–OS : Linux 4.1 || Video : Unknown video
–OpenGL: Compiled In
–RGB2YUV Function: C
–Line Blending Function: C
–Audio Mixing Function: C
Setting alternate home dir:
/opt/retropie/emulators/daphne
Disabling ROM CRC check…
Setting Search Latency to 950 milliseconds
Setting screen width to 640
Setting screen height to 480
Set 640×480 at 16 bpp with flags: 20
Initializing sound system …
GI Sound chip initialized at 2000000 Hz
Joystick #0 was successfully opened
Remapping input …
Loading compressed ROM image dl_f2_u1.bin…8192 bytes read.
Loading compressed ROM image dl_f2_u2.bin…8192 bytes read.
Loading compressed ROM image dl_f2_u3.bin…8192 bytes read.
Loading compressed ROM image dl_f2_u4.bin…8192 bytes read.
Framefile parse succeeded. Video/Audio directory is: /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/daphne/lair.daphne/./
YUV overlay is done in software (ie unaccelerated).
Booting ROM …
Play
LDP : disc is already playing, play command ignored
Play
Display disable received
Search to 323 received – [25] Attract Mode, Sequence 0 Attract Mode
WARNING : search latency needs to be redesigned, it is currently disabled
search succeeded d0
Play
Display disable received
Search to 300 received – [25] Attract Mode, Sequence 7 Attract Mode
WARNING : search latency needs to be redesigned, it is currently disabled
search succeeded d0
Display disable received
Search to 303 received – [25] Attract Mode, Sequence 9 Attract Mode
WARNING : search latency needs to be redesigned, it is currently disabled
search succeeded d0

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