The Raspberry Pi and Retropie discussion thread

[Flojomojo]

Ordered a starter kit from Amazon, it just arrived. Was very easy to set up. Heading into town this evening, think I'll swing by MicroCenter and pick up some extra micrSD cards to experiment with. Any size limits on those?

 

Not to my knowledge. There are pre-built 128GB images posted by "Arcade Punks" ... a card of that size is almost forty bucks so I wouldn't go any bigger.

 

You can always use external storage, too.

[+Spriggy]

Very cool new Pi related project up on TESTED.

 

[+SpiceWare]

Ended up not going into town due to bad thunderstorms last night so I went ahead and ordered a 128 GB card from Amazon, should be here tomorrow.

Installed VLC and it was able to talk to my HDHomeRun tuners, but playback was extremely choppy (1 frame ever 5 seconds). Looks like I'll need to order the Pi's MPEG-2 license to unlock hardware decoding of MPEG2. If that works I'll need to see if there's software to let it work with my HDHomeRun DVR.

[Jess Ragan]

I'm more of a Recalbox guy myself. Easier to use, less having to futz with Linux.

[+SpiceWare]

Installed VLC and it was able to talk to my HDHomeRun tuners, but playback was extremely choppy (1 frame ever 5 seconds). Looks like I'll need to order the Pi's MPEG-2 license to unlock hardware decoding of MPEG2. If that works I'll need to see if there's software to let it work with my HDHomeRun DVR.

 

Bought the license, a whopping $2.65, but was surprised to discover the Pi version of VLC does not support hardware decoding. Found instructions online to roll-your-own, but that didn't pan out either as they were out of date. Installed Kodi and the HDHomeRun add-on. That supports the hardware decoding so the channels are watchable, though they don't consistently tune in. The SD channels come up more reliably, but all had trouble getting started at times.

 

[+SpiceWare]

My SD card's still not here yet, appears to have been lost in shipping as USPS shows a status of:

 

On Its Way to USPS

May 22, 2018 at 9:15 am

Departed Shipping Partner Facility, USPS Awaiting Item

DALLAS, TX 75261

 

So I decided to try installing RetroPie^* on top of Raspbian. After some trial and error I got it working.

 

The default 2600 emulator lr-stella doesn't work for ARM enhanced games, but Stella is an optional install and works fine. I'm not sure what lr-stella is, but it's more integrated with RetroPie than Stella is. Main difference is all the console switches can be controlled via my PS4 controller when using lr-stella, while a keyboard is required to control Stella. Might be able to configure Stella to use the controller buttons as well, haven't looked into it yet.

 

Did run into a weird issue after using Stella, when I exited RetroPie back to command line the keyboard wouldn't work, which made it impossible to type startx to get back to the desktop (unplugging/replugging did not help). Keyboard worked fine if lr-stella was used to run a game. Just a short-term issue though, once my SD card comes in I'll setup RetroPie on it and remove it from my Raspbian card.

 

Draconian, runs great

 

as does the latest developer build of Champ Games' Mappy

 

^*looks like their security certificate expired this evening, so you might have issues connecting to the site. I see this has been resolved since last night.

[+SpiceWare]

Took until Saturday for the SD card to arrive. Was surprised when UPS delivered it as the tracking number was for the post office.

Having done a test run on top of Raspbian, setup was much easier this go around; though I apparently mapped the Right-Trigger incorrectly (couldn't rotate the view in Spryo the Dragon) so I had to figure out how to remap the controller.

Was pleasantly surprised to find that my PSX rips done on my Mac for OpenEMU worked just fine, including the extension of .cdr, and also quite pleased that controller rumble worked (it doesn't in OpenEMU). I did have a couple minor issues:

• the ä in Einhänder confused it, game wouldn't load and displayed as Einh?nder, so I renamed it with an a
• one CUE file used all lowercase to reference the disk image, which was named using mixed case, and it couldn't find it. Didn't have a problem before as the Mac's file system is not case-sensitive.

Retropie itself has a few things I'd like to resolve:

• The use of A, B, X, and Y has no meaning for me (I think that's a Nintendo convention). Any way to show the Playstation glyphs instead?
• Likewise the position of A, B corresponded to O and X, which throw me off all the time as I'm used to hitting X for "accept" and O for "back".
• Being in the States the use of Megadrive also holds no meaning for me, just found the instructions on how to change that so will take care of that later on today.
• Its unclear how the keypad is mapped for the ColecoVision. The Default Core Controls for All Emulators is misnamed - it's missing ColecoVision and shows an Intellivision controller without the mapping info.
• Unable to access it via the Samba-Share on my Mac. I can see it, but the connection fails. I tried setting the samba password for user pi, but that didn't help. I can connect OK from Linux, but my ROMs aren't there so I ended up using the USB stick method to transfer them.

I could also see something like this being very useful with the Raspberry Pi:

 

[Jess Ragan]

Stella doesn't seem to work too well on Raspberry Pi. I can't run Crystal Castles or Communist Mutants, and I suspect there are others.

[+SpiceWare]

Both work here on my fresh install, which defaults to using lr-stella.

[Jess Ragan]

LR Stella, you say? I need to look into that.

[Jess Ragan]

I'm using Recalbox, not Retropie. I get the feeling it's going to be hard, or nearly impossible, to add extra emulators to it.

[Osgeld]

well recall box is using all the same stuff, it might take some legwork but in the end its retroarch + emulationstation on a linux distro

[+Spriggy]

• Likewise the position of A, B corresponded to O and X, which throw me off all the time as I'm used to hitting X for "accept" and O for "back".

 

I'm at work and haven't fiddled with settings for a while. I'm guessing you could go back into the Emulation Station main menu, on the main ES emulator selection screen (Press START)

Then reconfigure your PS controller via CONFIGURE INPUT to suit your above button changes for the ES main menu.

Then go into the Retroarch Menu and remap your buttons for all your Core Emulators. https://retropie.org.uk/docs/RetroArch-Configuration/#core-input-remapping (CORE INPUT REMAPPING heading on right side Table of Contents)

The top listed 'Video Tutorial' on this link should assist from about the 13 minute mark, from what I can tell. @work and IT don't like us on youtube

Edited May 28, 2018 by spriggamortis

[mr_me]

...

[*]Its unclear how the keypad is mapped for the ColecoVision. The Default Core Controls for All Emulators is misnamed - it's missing ColecoVision and shows an Intellivision controller without the mapping info.

...

If you switch to the coolcv emulator, button mapping is more straightforward and complete.

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Colecovision

[+SpiceWare]

I'm making fewer A/B O/X mis-presses, so must be getting used to the button usage.

Thinking about setting up units for my nephews as well, will probably get 8Bitdo controllers for them so onscreen glyphs wouldn't be an issue. It looks like the SN30 Pro & SF30 Pro and the N30 Pro and F30 Pro all have the same buttons, just slightly rearranged. Should go well with a "console case" like this or this.

I did try the CoolCV emulator, I found it not supporting the standard way of quitting a game to be a minor hassle. While that's OK for me, when I set them up for the nephews I don't plan to include a keyboard or mouse.

Tried out a few arcade games last night with the recommended lr-mame2003, seems to work fine. Later on I ran across this page

MAME 0.78u5 'Lite' DAT File: mame2003-lr-lite - Working romsets only. Does not include: clones, NeoGeo, PlayChoice NES/multiplay, romsets with rotary/dial/trackball/lightgun controls, or romsets classified as casino/quiz/mahjong/fruit_machines/rhythm/mature.

lr-mame2003 Compatibility List feel free to contribute to the list.

The mame2003 catver.ini also contains data on games definitively known not to work, as well as sorting data for pornographic games and other less desirable romsets.

and went with regards to letting the kids play when they visit (as well as setting up units for the nephews). Guess I'll be reading up this page on how to use ClrMamePro with the DAT file to build the 'lite' ROM set.

That'll be later on though - currently browsing BringFido for lunch in Galveston with my folks and Spicey. We did the same for Mothers Day and had a blast.

 

Yes, we bring Spicey in a little cart - she quite old, has trouble walking, can barely see or hear, but has a great time when the kids run up to pet her.

[mr_me]

...

I did try the CoolCV emulator, I found it not supporting the standard way of quitting a game to be a minor hassle. While that's OK for me, when I set them up for the nephews I don't plan to include a keyboard or mouse.

 

...

Are mapping coolcv exit and reset to controller buttons not working?

 

If you are using the libretro colecovision emulator you can find the button mapping documentation here.

https://docs.libretro.com/library/bluemsx/

[+SpiceWare]

Haven't tried, still getting a handle on how this thing works.

 

Thanks, that helps a lot!

[+SpiceWare]

Guess I'll be reading up this page on how to use ClrMamePro with the DAT file to build the 'lite' ROM set.

That was easy, just took a long time to run. Interface is out of place, then I realized it's the Windows build wrapped up Wineskin so you get Windows controls in a Mac window. There were a handful of missing games which I was able to rectify. Only issue remaining per ClrMamePro are all the CHD files, they're all version 3 but the 'lite' set specifies version 5.

 

I tried the first CHD game, Biofreak, and while it started up (the screen showed a boot pattern) it didn't go further than that. Possibly it takes a while to load up CHD files on the Pi and I didn't give it enough time before aborting back to the menu. I'll try letting it go for a longer time tonight.

 

I wondered which version of Bosconian they included in the lite collection, and was surprised to discover none of them were I know it's a working romset as I played a round before deleting all MAME roms due to the potential for accidently leaving mature content in there - don't need a call from my brother or sister asking "what the hell were you thinking?!?!" I'll add both the Midway and Namco versions of Bosconian tonight as they have different sector arrangements.

 

Centipede was not included, which makes sense as the 'lite' set excludes trackball, lightgun, etc. games, though I do wonder if it can be configured to use an analog stick. Will try that out tonight.

 

Puck Man was used for Pac Man, which is fine but it wouldn't launch and didn't leave anything in the log to say why. So I tried launching with Verbose, it now shows "Failed to load content" but I didn't see anything specifying what content that was. I'll try swapping it out for Pac-Man tonight.

 

 

 

[+SpiceWare]

All the CHD games did boot if given long enough. They were extremely sluggish though, so I ended up deleting them. vcircle and wargods were almost there, suspect those 2 will run OK on a future Pi.

 

Besides Bosconian, I noticed the 'lite' set was missing Donkey Kong and DK Jr. Not very impressive.

 

Pac-Man ran just fine.

 

Centipede does as well. I didn't see a way to use the analog stick as anything other than as "digital" for it, though haven't spent much time on that yet, just added that to my To Do list.

[+SpiceWare]

the 'lite' set was also missing Galaga ?!?!?!

 

Satan's Hollow and Tapper ran, but for some reason could not be controlled - even hitting TAB failed to bring up MAME's interface. Was able to get them working after I found this thread. Apparently it has something to do with lr-mame2003 not working correctly for Bally Midway MCR System titles; and using another emulator, like lr-mame2010, for the effected games is the workaround.

[youxia]

I don't trust the lite set. Best build your own. Here's an alternative to clrmamepro: Simple Arcade Multifilter

It's much, well, simpler. Needs proper catver.ini file though.

[Flojomojo]

Holy crap, Spiceware, you don't do anything halfway, do you??

 

There's a lot here, too much for me to read, but I have a feeling there are some interesting ideas I am going to want to steal/copy.

 

Thanks for writing so many detailed notes.

[+SpiceWare]

I've learned to document things with links as I'd often need to go back to something but couldn't remember where I got the info from.

[+SpiceWare]

Copied over galaga.zip from the "full set". Turns out the MAME 078.DAT file for the full set was missing file 5c.bin for Galaga, so I suspect whoever made the lite set removed it as an unworking game.

 

I tracked down the missing file and was able to then run Galaga, but MAME displayed the "Video emulation isn't 100%" warning every time.

 

So I switched Galaga to use lr-mame2010, but that wouldn't run it due to missing ROMs. The filenames listed matched the filenames from the zip I'd fetched 5c.bin from (where it was called prom-2.5c). So I just put that version of galaga.zip in place and it now runs fine with lr-mame2010, without the warning.

 

 

Did have a strange boot process this morning. It ran chkdsk, but had some other issues (possibly due to how long it takes to run chkdsk on a 128 GB card). I also had plugged in the USB stick before powering up, so that may have been a factor. I hit return which proceeded to launch RetroPie. I shut down the system, removed the USB stick, and started it back up. It did the chkdsk again, but finished the second time. Reboot a third time, and chkdsk did not run.

[NE146]

I've learned to document things with links as I'd often need to go back to something but couldn't remember where I got the info from.

 

Dude.. I'm laughing because I set up a Rpi3 a couple years ago and I really struggled with the process.. but eventually got it to work great.

 

But point is.. after all that effort, as time has passed I completely forgot all the knowledge I struggled to learn, and now I have no idea how to even start working on the thing... I should have wrote shit down. Heck I forgot I had to SSH into there to get roms going until just remembering now.

Edited June 2, 2018 by NE146