[mikeveli20]

@twitch0815: Any specific MAME games that you recall working better on the pi3 than pi2? Also, if you get a chance would you be able to test the golden tee games, specifically Golden Tee ’97? I’ve tested it on the pi2 but it was slow. I believe they’re compatible with AdvMame and lr-mame2003.

[mikeveli20]

@darkcushions: Which MAME games have better performance?

[mikeveli20]

Do I just do that from the RetroPie-Setup or is there a better way to get the latest version?

[mikeveli20]

This definitely appears to be the issue. I deleted a bunch of stuff and now it’s showing some available space. Is it bad to use the full size of the card?

[mikeveli20]

You’ll have to create the folder if you haven’t scraped any games yet. It should go in the /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation folder.

Once inside the xml, add an <image> tag to your game with the path to the image.

E.g. <image>/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/downloaded_images/snes/Super Mario World-image.jpg</image>

There’s also a symlink that will take you to the emulationstation folder which is a bit shorter to type: /home/pi/.emulationstation

[mikeveli20]

/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation

Then you’ll see a ‘downloaded_images’ folder and a ‘gamelists’ folder. Within each will be a folder for each system.

[mikeveli20]

I use mame4all for MK1 and it’s the best I’ve found. Sound is set to normal volume by default and it plays perfectly with no noticeable slow downs.

[mikeveli20]

Hopefully it’s back soon. This outage has been longer than any previous ones that I can remember.

Edit: Likely won’t be for awhile according to this latest update: https://www.facebook.com/thegamesdb/posts/1058742734182457

[mikeveli20]

Wait until it’s back up, or you can add them yourself by manually editing the xml file. I’ve had to do that for a few games where for whatever reason the scraper won’t pick up the game from thegamesdb. Mobygames.com is a good alternate source that I use for images and descriptions. If you have tons of games to scrape though I would just wait for thegamesdb to be up otherwise it will take forever.

[mikeveli20]

I can’t get this to work on fba-next. I’m able to get into the service menu by pressing R3 on the joystick. I then change my settings, save and exit the service menu at which point the game continues.

I can see that a .nv file has been created in the same folder where the rom is located. However, when I quit the game and relaunch, it doesn’t seem to load the .nv file and the settings have returned to default.

I tried checking the core-options but didn’t see anything about saving dip switches. I tried saving the game configuration file in the core options but that had no affect.

[mikeveli20]

Perfect. Thanks!

[mikeveli20]

@buzz: Would you mind providing a mini-tutorial on the best way to do that? Even though I’ve learned a lot in the past month since I’ve got my pi I’m still a semi-noob with some stuff.

[mikeveli20]

@nosedeath: They work with normal sound by default, meaning you don’t have to turn it up in the service menu? When I tried MK2 and MK3 on lr-mame4all the sound was low on both.

[mikeveli20]

@shoothere: Pi is already overclocked

@dankcushions: I noticed that hack in the RGUI menu as well. It was enabled by default for me.

@zerojay: This worked perfectly. Crackle is pretty much gone when volume is set to around 80% in the service menu. Now if only there was a way to get these volume settings to save so they don’t have to be adjusted each time…

Edit: So I’ve come up with a temporary solution to fix the low audio. I’ve added the line audio_volume = “25.000000” to the retroarch config for MK2 and MK3. This raises it to a level which is about equal to the default of most other games on my system.

Games are now fully playable. If/when support is added to libretro-mame to save nvram settings then the audio can just be adjusted there, but this works in the meantime and avoids having to adjust the audio manually each time.

[mikeveli20]

The problem with fba-next is that it doesn’t work with a lot of games I have. PiFBA works will all of them. I could have sworn I read somewhere that PiFBA supported nvram saving.

[mikeveli20]

According to clrmamepro they are.

[mikeveli20]

Will changing from OMX to SDL affect performance at all? What’s the difference between the two?

[mikeveli20]

I’m still getting nowhere with trying to solve this. It seems that n64 audio is set to 100% all the time no matter what. Even if I turn the System Volume in emulation station to 0 the n64 audio is unaffected.

[mikeveli20]

Just came here to post the same solution. Works perfectly. Thanks Gizmo.

[mikeveli20]

Thanks. Do you know if it’s possible to send the log somewhere else?

[mikeveli20]

I did what you suggested by adding the line to /etc/rc.local. Seems to work so far.

In regards to the Emulation Station fix, I guess there’s nothing I can do on my end to fix it in my current setup correct?

[mikeveli20]

This is why I’d like to attempt to create the boot and main RetroPie partitions as read-only to avoid any chance of anything being written to them. Then have a 3rd partition that is used for writes (configs, save games, etc.) Just not sure how to go about configuring this for RetroPie. I’ve seen some very good guides (here and here) on how to do this for the Pi in general, but nothing specific to RetroPie. I’m sure most of the concepts would carry over but there may be some things that need to be altered.

I checked out the program that InsecureSpike linked to and while good for creating/backing up Pi images, I don’t see a way to set up the 3rd partition. The only way I’ve found is from one of the guides above, but again not sure how this works with RetroPie.

[mikeveli20]

I’m using dd in terminal to write the image and my SD card is a Samsung EVO+ 64GB. I can see the card on the mac and I wiped the partitions so it’s now empty. I found a program called f3 which supposedly checks the integrity of SD cards by writing data across the entire card and then attempting to read that data back. If those tests come back without errors I’ll probably then run it through First Aid in Disk Utility just for a sanity check.

I’ve been doing a bit of reading regarding the Pi and preventing SD card corruption and the most popular method seems to be using a read-only file system. Not really sure how this would work with RetroPie since it needs to write save game data and possibly other stuff too. Would it be possible to set up a 3rd partition that is used for writing the save game data and set the boot and retropie partitions to read-only? Once all the roms and what not have been copied over of course.

[mikeveli20]

In regards to my setup, I don’t have a power switch that shuts down the Pi, but I always shut it down by selecting ‘Shutdown’ in the ES menu. The Pi is plugged into a power bar as the only device, and I turn the power bar off after the Pi has finished its shutdown sequence. Then I just flip the power bar switch back on when I want to turn the Pi on again. There were a few instances however where the Pi froze where I wasn’t even able to SSH into it in order to execute a proper shutdown sequence so I was forced to flip the power switch. I’m guessing this is what caused it, but I don’t know of any other way to safely turn it off when this occurs as I don’t have a reset switch hooked up. Any other suggestions for a safe shutdown in this circumstances?

In regards to the currently corrupted SD card, is there any software (preferably on a mac) that I can use to check the integrity of the SD card after re-formatting, kind of like what you would do on a hard drive when checking for bad sectors?

[mikeveli20]

Is there any development happening to get these drivers on the Pi or is it something that can’t happen?

[mikeveli20]

That’s the setting I tried to change, the one Gonetz is referencing in the link. Didn’t do anything.

[mikeveli20]

Thanks for the reply. I checked the location you specified and there was a GlideN64.custom.ini file in there. I checked the contents but everything was related to custom game settings and there was nothing about aspect. In the mupen64plus.cfg file there’s a GlideN64 section which does have an aspect property, however, it’s already set to Force 4:3 which obviously isn’t working. I tried each one of the settings (0-3) but they all produced the same result.

[mikeveli20]

I’ve determined that I’m not actually connected to the internet. I’m getting an IP but there’s no gateway. I did a sudo trace -n and all that was showing for gateway was 0.0.0.0.

So now the question is, how do I get the pi to connect to my gateway?

[mikeveli20]

Probably placebo effect like I was saying. Definitely some still some lag though. I’m using an official snes controller connected through a 4-play bliss box. It seems fine in the menus but in game it’s much more noticeable. I tried the controller on my actual snes right after and could notice a difference in responsiveness so that rules out the controller on my end. Definitely seems to be a retroarch thing since it added that extra 7 frame delay in your tests.

[mikeveli20]

I’m getting some lag as well, but no way to measure exactly how much. When I first hooked it up it was really bad. I’m talking it was probably half a second bad (SMW on SNES). I then realized my TV was set to movie mode so I switched it to game and there was a huge improvement. However, still some noticeable lag. I had read somewhere that turning off threaded video and turning on hard gpu sync in the retroarch settings should help and it seems to although that could just be a placebo effect. I still notice a slight lag but it’s a lot better than it was.

[mikeveli20]

My plan was to compress all games that only have 1 track in the cue file, and then just leave the rest as is since I only have a handful of games with multi tracks. I guess it’s just a matter of trial and error to find the 1% that don’t work compressed. My main concern was a possible loss in performance. Thanks for verifying that’s not the case.

[mikeveli20]

Thanks for the reply. That makes me feel better about moving forward with what I’ve got.

[mikeveli20]

Does using a PBP file instead of the original BIN/CUE affect performance in any way? I would think since the PBP file is compressed that it would have to decompress itself while playing which would take up precious CPU cycles, no?

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