[Roo]

Life is full of so many compromises :)

80s Namco never had to worry about this stuff – 4 way stick in a PacMan cabinet, 2 start buttons and they were all set.

But we want to play DK with the same control panel as MvsC, Carnevil, Tempest and Missile Command. And there’s no good solution for that. /Sigh

[Roo]

Yes, it will work with RetroPie. The X-Arcade’s not a bad choice, especially for the price. It looks like Happs joysticks and microswitch push buttons. http://suzohapp.com

IMO you do get what you pay for. If you’re willing to spend more, Ultimarc makes great products. The iPac is their keyboard encoder and they have controls that are a step up from the low end Happs controls. In the build-your-own-arcade-cabinet circles, I would say they are one of the go-to suppliers.

http://www.ultimarc.com

It just depends on what you’re looking for. Some people love microswitch pushbuttons, some people swear by leaf switch pushbuttons. Serious fighter guys go for true Japanese Sanwa sticks, others like the sticks that can be converted between 4 and 8 way. I think what drives most people is what they are used to. If you are a Donkey Kong nut and you try to play it using a Sanwa 8 way stick, it’s not going to feel right.

If none of that sounds like it matters to you, then I think you’re on the right track with the X-Arcade package.

[Roo]

RetroPie is relatively new, but there’s a community out there that have been doing this for many years – using HyperSpin or GameEx or many other front ends. I’m just leading up to the idea that here’s a lot of us that have been down this road :)

If you want to go further down this rabbit hole, you can remove all the games you can’t play with the controller setup you have. For example Centipede uses a trackball and Operation Wolf uses a light gun. You may want to play with this tool, which can build a list for you just based on the controls you have.

http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/

I’ve used all the tools, but in the end I just have a subset of ROMs I manually maintain. It took me a while to put together, but that’s just a one time deal. It’s all the best classics, my favorites, favorites of my friends that come over, and some good party games thrown in for fun. Once I took out the ones I can’t play on my RasPi (trackball, spinner and lightgun), my list is 263. Which to me is much more pleasant than trying to scroll through thousands of games no one has heard of.

I do the same for my NES, SNES, N64, GBA, GameCube, PS1, etc. This hobby can take up your free time if you let it :)

I know a lot of other guys just put every possible game in and boast that they have 10,000 games or whatever. I don’t get it – to me that’s just a giant mess but to each their own.

[Roo]

./mame -listfull -noclones

but then you’ll get other info. I believe you’ll just gonna have to clean up the list either way you go.

edit: buzz beat me to it :)

[Roo]

I don’t believe ES was programmed to have sound, probably to keep it light weight.

Sorry, Ignore my noob-ness. Now that I know it should work, I’m trying to figure it out too :)

[Roo]

Does this work for you?

cd /opt/retropie/emulators/mame4all
./mame -list -noclones

[Roo]

[quote=85548]Hi Everyone!

In the MAME game selection screen i see files with the name “.-pacman”, for example, that is not an actual game file. how can i delete this file or not see them on the menu? There are one of this for each ROM i put in the SD Card.

thanks for your help!
[/quote]

Seems like your rom set is kinda jacked. I would rebuild it with clrmamepro.

https://github.com/retropie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs

[Roo]

[quote=85547]
What version is retropie supposed to be using? From there I could verify that the files are correctly named based on hashes of the internal files then go through the renaming to get them to 1.47 for mamedb data and to 1.57 for the history.
[/quote]

RetroPie’s (v2.4x beta, not sure about earlier versions) default MAME emulator is MAME4ALL, which is a fork from MAME v0.37beta5. Which is [b]old[/b] :) Like circa 2000 old.

Not sure why this is where the magical spot they forked from, but in general the older version performs better on the Pi.

http://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/Previous_MAME_Versions

[Roo]

Try simplifying – just have one plugged in and if that doesn’t work reboot with just the other one plugged in. Also, remove any other USB devices you have plugged in for the test

[Roo]

[quote=82576]
if anyone can do a command line version of this please do i’m still sort of new to Linux command line. i’m learning fast :-).
[/quote]

excellent info yippyyay!

don’t be afraid of the command line :) sometimes it’s even easier than the gui

here for example, you can edit that file with this command

sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

I have an iPac mini, I’ll be using your examples tonight when I get home – Thanks!

[Roo]

Need more info… :)

Are you running the RetroPie SD card image? Which version?

Where have you copied your MAME roms to on the Pi?

Do you have MAME on the EmulationStation main menu? Do your games show up in the list when you select MAME from the main menu?

[Roo]

[quote=85489]
Tries this with both the ibuffalo snes usb controllers and a Xbox 360 controller.
[/quote]

I would stick with 2.42. I have the iBuffalo SNES controller – it is detected automatically by ES. Did you try booting your Pi with the controller attached?

The Xbox 360 controller requires you to download a driver and configure it. Here’s the wiki tutorial on that:

https://github.com/retropie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Setting-up-the-XBox360-controller

[Roo]

I’ll be honest even though I’m gonna look like a nut here… I couldn’t decide, so I ordered two :)

T-SLG v1.6 from http://godlikecontrols.com/
and this one http://www.beharbros.com/#!slr/c4j4

other choices I found in my research:
http://craftymech.com/mini-slg/
http://arcadeforge.net/SLG3000/Scanline-Generator-SLG3000::12.html
http://www.brunofreitas.com/?q=node/36

My setup is probably a bit obscure – I’m going from Pi B+ to [u]an HDMI to VGA adaper[/u] to a scanline generator to a 19 inch CRT computer monitor in my arcade cabinet.

[Roo]

I’m no programmer. That said, MAMEUI and other front ends and emulators use history.dat to provide info in the GUI. So it can’t be too hard.

It looks to me like the format is:

$info=romname,
$bio
blaa blaa blaa history here
$end

So search the file for the rom name and just grab the bio section, right? It may sound like I’m being a smart-ass but I promise you I’m not :) Just trying to be helpful

[Roo]

MAME’s history.dat is kind of the defacto standard for that information.

http://www.arcade-history.com/

Not sure where to get a older version, since some ROM names have changed…

[Roo]

Awesome! I’m going to give this a shot tonight, I’ll let you know how it goes :)

[Roo]

[quote=85467]It always been available it just that theperformance with the core is terrible compared to the standalone GPSP binary

[/quote]

Yeah I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s just too many compromises using software shaders on the Pi, I’m going to try a inline scanline generator and see how that does.

[Roo]

[quote=84800]Good luck. I went with a hardware solution and finally got it working just last night.

Pi b+ with a gert vga666 gpio adapter out to a T-SLG v1.6 scanline generator.
[/quote]

[quote=84803]so the circuitry to switch between them takes up almost all of my GPIO pins
[/quote]

In my humble opinion, you’re asking too much from the Pi.

I’m going with Pi B+ to [u]HDMI to VGA adaper[/u] to [u]T-SLG v1.6 scanline generator[/u] to [u]19 inch CRT[/u] in my arcade cabinet. All my GPIO pins are free.

p.s. – thank you michael! I was about to spend a lot more on a SLG3000 from Germany :)

I picked that HDMI to VGA because it has audio out and separate power in. From what I’ve read, you don’t want to be pulling 5VDC from the Pi’s HDMI port. I’m using [u]a separate 5VDC power supply[/u] just to power the adapter.

I have the HDMI to VGA working, but I just ordered the scanline generator. I’ll have to let you know how that works once it arrives.

[Roo]

This was very helpful for me, thank you!

[Roo]

Glad to hear it’s working! :)

[Roo]

So you get through configuring all the controls, all the way to OK at the bottom? And then you press “A” and it doesn’t work?

Whatever button you configured as “A” (I highly recommend you configure “A” as “A”) – it worked once to configure it – just press it again to accept.

[Roo]

I have that same gamepad, I’ll try to help.

When you first boot the Pi does it still go to the “configure your gamepad” screen? If there’s really no es_input.cfg it should. If it doesn’t I would recommend you re-image the SD card with the RetroPie image.

If it does go to the “configure your gamepad” screen, does it say “1 gamepad detected?” if it does, hold a button to start and then after you press up, down, left, right, a, b, start, select, l and r, the “ok” button should be highlighted. just press “a”

I feel like we’re playing Contra….

[Roo]

Good luck! :)

[Roo]

[quote=85444]
Is there a specific way to create the ROM from my cabinet that would work on R-pie? All I know about the machine is that it was built in 1982 and it is an upright
[/quote]

I’m sure there is – that’s how we got these ROM files in the first place, from the original machines :)

But the how… That’s not an area where I have any technical knowledge. I imagine that’s a whole new can of worms. Seeing how many different versions of these ROMs there have been over the years, there must be multiple ways of ripping these ROMs to your PC. So how to rip [b]your[/b] ROMs to the exact version MAME4ALL is expecting? Seems crazy complicated to me – and lots of wheel reinventing going on.

If I were in your shoes, I would just find it via google and download it.

If you are concerned about the legal gray area I would say that most people around here believe this would legal since you own the original machine.

[Roo]

[quote=84914]Mame4all is missing so many games. I know that its meant to be better performance by not emulating newer games but there are plenty of older games that are missing. Is there a better alternative? Or is there a way to add games to a custom compilation? [/quote]

You can uses a combination of MAME4ALL and PiFBA (Final Burn Alpha) which will give you a lot of the NeoGeo and Capcom CPS missing from MAME4ALL.

Other than that, what are you missing? The real new stuff? Most of that wont run well. And MAME games with CHDs are not going to run well, if at all.

[quote=85389]Use a rom manager like clrmamepro. Mame4all cones with the dat fike it needs to check your roms. It will tell u which ones work and whats missing[/quote]

I just added a tutorial

[u][url=http://github.com/petrockblog/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs]Managing ROMs[/url][/u]

[Roo]

Thanks :) Do you know if there are plans to include the libretro core version?

[Roo]

it’s weird – the link is there but it’s not underlining. I just used the button to insert a link… Let me try to fix it.

[Roo]

I commend you for obtaining your ROM from your own machine.

But if your Donkey Kong ROM works in current MAME it will not work with MAME4ALL that RetroPie uses. MAME4ALL is based on an older version of MAME and the ROMs are (sometimes) different. I know for sure Donkey Kong is one of the ROMs that is different.

I posted a new WIKI article on checking your ROMs, I would suggest you read through it.

[u][url=http://github.com/petrockblog/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs]Managing ROMs[/url][/u]

[Roo]

Sorry, the first tag didn’t work – I’ve updated the original post.

[Roo]

FYI, in the latest builds, there is no /opt/retropie/emulators/gpsp/raspberrypi. I just put the GBA BIOS in /opt/retropie/emulators/gpsp and it worked.

[Roo]

You just want to edit text files?

For that, I would use nano. There are other choices, but Nano is much more noobie friendly. It’s just a cli friendly text editor and the shortcut keys are all listed at the bottom of the screen. For example, use Ctrl-X to save the file when you are done making changes.

sudo nano /path/filename

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