Zmachine not working when booted from EmulationStation

[herbfargus]

I want to have my Zmachine games open up through emulationstation rather than have to type it in the terminal every time.

I’ve modified my es_systems.cfg to look like this

<system>
    <name>zmachine</name>
    <fullname>zmachine</fullname>
    <path>~/RetroPie/roms/zmachine</path>
    <extension>.z3 .Z3 .dat .DAT</extension>
    <command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 "/usr/games/frotz %ROM%" "frotz"</command>
    <platform>arcade</platform>
    <theme>zmachine</theme>
  </system>

And it will open up into the game just fine but I can’t type anything an it won’t respond to any of my keystrokes (though I can press Ctrl+C to exit)

But if I run it from the terminal

frotz /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/zmachine/HITCHHIK.DAT

It works just fine- Is there something I missed in configuring the es_systems.cfg?

[gizmo98]

is zmachine using own sdl1/2 packages? We had some keyboard issues with mupen64plus and darkplaces because both packages used their own sdl libs.

[petrockblog]

try adding

 </dev/tty

to the end of the commandline.

[petrockblog]

you can leave out runcommand also for this one.

[herbfargus]

I’m probably doing it wrong, but anytime I put </dev/tty anywhere emulationstation throws a parsing error and wont load back up until i revert my change.

<system>
    <name>zmachine</name>
    <fullname>zmachine</fullname>
    <path>~/RetroPie/roms/zmachine</path>
    <extension>.z3 .Z3 .dat .DAT</extension>
    <command>/usr/games/frotz %ROM% </dev/tty</command>
    <platform>arcade</platform>
    <theme>zmachine</theme>
  </system>

[petrockblog]

aah yeh that will be because it’s xml – can use

& lt ;

(removing the spaces – the forum is converting it so I can’t type it correctly)

maybe. assuming the value will be decoded correctly. alternatively it might be possible to adjust the runcommand script – I’ll have a test and see.

[petrockblog]

just had a quick play and think I have a fix that also solves the keyboard input on retroarch being echoed to the screen. Will get back shortly.

[petrockblog]

ok updating runcommand should fix it.

sudo ./retropie_packages.sh runcommand install

[herbfargus]

Ok- I got it working Buzz, thanks so much!! You’re a genius.

To document my steps for others:

cd RetroPie-Setup
sudo ./retropie_setup.sh
Update Setup script
Reboot

cd RetroPie-Setup
sudo ./retropie_packages.sh runcommand install
sudo reboot

add in etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg:

<system>
    <name>zmachine</name>
    <fullname>zmachine</fullname>
    <path>~/RetroPie/roms/zmachine</path>
    <extension>.z3 .Z3 .dat .DAT</extension>
    <command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 "/usr/games/frotz %ROM%" "frotz"</command>
    <platform>c64</platform>
    <theme>zmachine</theme>
  </system>

save and reboot into emulationstation and you should be good to go

You really only need the .DAT file to play the game so you can move them all from

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/zmachine/zork1/DATA/ZORK1.DAT

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/zmachine/zork2/DATA/ZORK2.DAT

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/zmachine/zork3/DATA/ZORK3.DAT
 
to

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/zmachine/

You can delete the other files if you don’t want them to clutter up your system.

Also random question Buzz- how come Frotz is located in /usr/games instead of opt/retropie/emulators/frotz like all the other emulators?/ not part of the setup script

Is there a chance we could add frotz to be a part of the group/ setup script so it’s not so lonely?

[wlbwlb]

THANK YOU !!!!

Excellent addition to Emulation Station – Now enjoying Interactive Fiction again with GUI menu game selection.

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