The Raspberry Pi and Retropie discussion thread

[John Stamos Mullet]

On 8/11/2019 at 7:34 AM, mr_me said:

Once someone starts building current versions of mame for RPi4, it becomes a good option for arcade games.

The number of Arcade games that don't run perfectly fine on a 3B or 3B+ is like under 10. I have a 3B+ in my Arcade1Up converted cab, and everything I've thrown at it runs perfectly.

[mr_me]

14 hours ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

The number of Arcade games that don't run perfectly fine on a 3B or 3B+ is like under 10. I have a 3B+ in my Arcade1Up converted cab, and everything I've thrown at it runs perfectly.

You're right most people are okay using old versions of mame.  I prefer using a more up to date version.

[John Stamos Mullet]

7 hours ago, mr_me said:

You're right most people are okay using old versions of mame.  I prefer using a more up to date version.

Who uses MAME? Final Burn Neo is where it's at. 

[mr_me]

Final burn neo is a fork of an old version of mame.

[John Stamos Mullet]

4 hours ago, mr_me said:

Final burn neo is a fork of an old version of mame.

Well, it is a fork of FBA, with minor elements of MAME 2014 in it.

 

To each their own, I suppose - but I was always under the impression that the current/latest versions of MAME don't necessarily provide better performance or even always better accuracy, so much as they do a heavier overhead/API and more historical documentation. The vast majority of known arcade games (outside of the gazillon offbrand clones/barcade/slot machine/creepy nudie games) have been fully dumped and emulated as accurately as possible for over a decade now with a very few exceptions.

[Osgeld]

Final burn neo happens to play about 25% of the games I like, with the last version I tried it couldnt load even basic games, and no capcom ... which is odd

 

that wasnt that long ago, like last winter, least on the X86 build which gets you right down the shit lined rabbit hole, X works great on platform Y but dennis quit and now tylor and jane are developing the arm version , but arron and bill are working on the new X86 version and no one documents anything so 50/50 shot, best review is from 2015

 

good luck with any of the prebuilt image distros for any platform, with very few exceptions (like retropi on pre 4 pi's) your going to spend less time setting it up yourself than hoping if you dare venture outside of 8-16 bit home consoles and some very popular computers 

 

random example ... yea a pi3B+ couldnt run starfox full frames per second, but loading up a full blown much heavier on ram desktop and loading a N64 emulator would run mario 64 in 720p with texture filtering 

Edited September 20, 2019 by Osgeld

[derFunkenstein]

Lakka 2.3 is out and it adds official RPi4 support. I got a kit as soon as they were available and it's mostly collected dust. Last night I fired it back up with a freshly-updated system and I was really pleased with the results. Wrote a blurb about it here:

 

https://hothardware.com/news/lakka-23-adds-support-for-raspberry-pi-4-and-lots-of-new-cores 

 

Obviously the fact it runs 16-bit systems fast enough to do RetroArch Run Ahead is a HUGE deal, but I was also surprised to see how well it played Crazy Taxi for the Dreamcast. The framerate isn't a rock-solid 60 like it is on a real system, but I had zero problems. I also tried out some MvC2 and it does pretty well, too (as it should since it's mostly a 2D game with some 3D in the background).

[Keatah]

Amusing to note that "cores" is becoming a term for systems supported in software emulation. "Cores" used to be FPGA only. But now that mame has cores, it should even more widely accepted and enjoyed.

 

Though I suppose the proper term for software emulation is "engine" - but I can't imagine that being adopted.

Edited September 20, 2019 by Keatah

[John Stamos Mullet]

37 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Amusing to note that "cores" is becoming a term for systems supported in software emulation. "Cores" used to be FPGA only. But now that mame has cores, it should even more widely accepted and enjoyed.

 

Though I suppose the proper term for software emulation is "engine" - but I can't imagine that being adopted.

MAME doesn't have "cores". These are references to RetroArch, EmulationStation, and Lakka, which are multi-emulator APIs that have cores, including MAME, FBNeo, Stella, Prosystem, QuickNES, etc. .

[Keatah]

MAME or Stella ain't cores. No two ways about it. No matter what. They don't run on FPGA and they are positively not VHDL bitstreams. So. In the context of RetroArch, Lakka, EmulationStation the various emulators or cores are properly called "plug-in modules" or just plain "modules". Using the term "core" is just a piss-poor attempt to be hip and appeal to the perceived greatness of FPGA. Or be plain stupid.

 

Software Emulation = Engine

Hardware FPGA = Core

..that according to the best minds in computer science.

 

 

Edited September 20, 2019 by Keatah

[John Stamos Mullet]

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

MAME or Stella ain't cores. No two ways about it. No matter what. They don't run on FPGA and they are positively not VHDL bitstreams. So. In the context of RetroArch, Lakka, EmulationStation the various emulators or cores are properly called "plug-in modules" or just plain "modules". Using the term "core" is just a piss-poor attempt to be hip and appeal to the perceived greatness of FPGA. Or be plain stupid.

 

Software Emulation = Engine

Hardware FPGA = Core

..that according to the best minds in computer science.

 

 

 

https://www.retroarch.com/?page=faq

 

The word core appears in their official documentation. The term "core" has nothing specific to do with FPGA. Intel Processors have used the term "core" referring to multiple CPU instances on a single chip for decades. It is merely a term to describe a part of a device or software architecture that has a central role in it's functioning.

 

 

[derFunkenstein]

RetroArch's front end has been talking about cores (and downloading core updates) since before I knew what RetroArch was. It's the official name. Getting bent out of shape over it now that it's been out there for years is kind of silly.

 

edit: kind of cool to see something I wrote get published on Slashdot. https://games.slashdot.org/story/19/09/21/007200/latest-lakka-release-on-raspberry-pi-4-showcases-great-retro-gaming

Edited September 21, 2019 by derFunkenstein

[Keatah]

Perhaps. But I'm feeling silly. So!

 

Anyhow it's grand to see this little $100 computer taking center stage. And even more grand to see whole emulation packages written, configured, and optimized for it.

 

I wonder what the most popular emulated system is on the Pi. It certainly isn't like Astrocade or Vectrex, but more like Genesis or Nintendo or SuperNintendo. On the arcade front seems to be those bastard fighting games again.

 

[mr_me]

On 9/20/2019 at 5:26 PM, John Stamos Mullet said:

 

 

https://www.retroarch.com/?page=faq

 

The word core appears in their official documentation. The term "core" has nothing specific to do with FPGA. Intel Processors have used the term "core" referring to multiple CPU instances on a single chip for decades. It is merely a term to describe a part of a device or software architecture that has a central role in it's functioning.

 

 

Of course single core processors still have a processing core.  Traditional central processing units are integrated circuits and FPGA is a different type of integrated circuit technology that can also have processor cores.  The difference is with FPGA you can change the core.  So the use of the term core in fpga and intel processors is the same.

[Keatah]

4 hours ago, mr_me said:

Of course single core processors still have a processing core.  Traditional central processing units are integrated circuits and FPGA is a different type of integrated circuit technology that can also have processor cores.  The difference is with FPGA you can change the core.  So the use of the term core in fpga and intel processors is the same.

 

Exactly how is the technology different from "standard" integrated circuits. Because FPGA is no more than a large number basic logic gates, they are just wired differently.

[VectorGamer]

A friend of mine told me that a 32-GB SD card would be sufficient for Retropie. He was wrong. I upgraded to 128-GB SD card and because I didn't format the previous SD card FAT32 I couldn't just create an image and copy that to the new SD card. However copying the Retropie image is pretty quick it's just copying the ROMs back over which takes long. I started a file copy of the ROMs overnight via FTP and then for some reason the 5-GHz WiFi crapped out in the middle of the night and I had to reboot the router the next morning. So I restarted the file copy and Retropie was back up and running by the time I came home from work.

 

Right now I'm emulating Atari 2600, 7800 & Lynx, Game Gear, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color, MAME (two different ROM collections), Master System, Genesis, N64, NES, PC Engine, Playstation, SG-1000, SNES and Vectrex. I think I'm up to like 10,000 games or some shit. This thing is awesome.

 

I haven't been out of the house in 3 days and haven't showered or brushed my teeth either. I've just been playing video games with occassional breaks to get on AtariAge.

 

[NE146]

39 minutes ago, VectorGamer said:

A friend of mine told me that a 32-GB SD card would be sufficient for Retropie. He was wrong. I upgraded to 128-GB SD card

If you decide to pimp it out by scraping screenshots/videos/box art/etc., even a 256 gig card is sketchy depending on what you have on there. 

[MrBeefy]

If you are choosy with what PSX and N64 roms you put on there a 32gb is enough.

 

Full rom sets sound great but if you don't intend to play them all what's the point?

[NE146]

11 hours ago, MrBeefy said:

Full rom sets sound great but if you don't intend to play them all what's the point?

Well you DO intend to play them I think is the point. Maybe someday

 

Anyway with the price of SD cards today you're talking about price differences of 2 bucks or whatever when you're talking less than 128 gigs.. which itself goes for around $15. Why bother limiting yourself

[VectorGamer]

12 hours ago, MrBeefy said:

If you are choosy with what PSX and N64 roms you put on there a 32gb is enough.

 

Full rom sets sound great but if you don't intend to play them all what's the point?

Because they're there.

[VectorGamer]

Is there a solution to playing some of Champ's games on RetroPie? Off the top of my head Mappy and Wizard of Wor do not work. And now that I think of it Spiceware's Draconian doesn't work either.

[Shannon]

If you have access to a nightly build of the stella retroarch emulators for the Raspberry PI then you should be able to use that.

 

[VectorGamer]

9 minutes ago, Shannon said:

If you have access to a nightly build of the stella retroarch emulators for the Raspberry PI then you should be able to use that.

 

How?

[Shannon]

I don't know.  I have no idea if or where nightly builds would be available for Retropie or how to replace the one on it with them.  Being that it is retroarch.  Replacing cores is fairly easy to do if you are familiar with the directory structure of Retroarch.

 

[mr_me]

9 hours ago, VectorGamer said:

Is there a solution to playing some of Champ's games on RetroPie? Off the top of my head Mappy and Wizard of Wor do not work. And now that I think of it Spiceware's Draconian doesn't work either.

According to this it required Stella v6.0.1 or later.  

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/291235-champ-games-galaga-2600/page/10/?tab=comments#comment-4322179

 

What version of retropie are you using?  Try the regular (non-retroarch) version of Stella; it might be more current.  Verify the version of Stella you have.