Shannon
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Posts posted by Shannon
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There is an sqlite3 database called games.db in 3.rootfs.img\usr\local\share\minigui\res\db\ that contains the game database. It also determines which emulators to run for each specified game. It looks like Atari 2600 paddle games are type "15" which calls a standalone build of stella that they have in the usr/bin folder. All other 2600 games look like they are type "5" which calls the retroarch version of stella ( Stella 2014 ).
There are 17 slots for the game type. Three are empty.. but here they are..
0) nothing
1) NES ( calls retroarch nestopia )
2) Genesis/SMS/GG ( calls retroarch genesisplusgx )
3) SNES ( calls retroarch Snes9x [current] )4) GB/GBC/GBA ( calls retroarch MGBA )
5) Atari 2600 ( calls retroarch stella2014 )
6) Atari 7800 ( calls retroarch prosystem )
7) nothing8 ) nothing
9) Arcade ( calls retroarch jungle2014 [ mame 2014? ] ) Quantum is the only game that uses this.
10) Arcade ( calls retroarch jungle2003 [ mame 2003? ] )
11) Arcade ( calls retroarch jungle2016 [ mame 2016? ] )12) Atari 5200 ( calls retroarch A5200 ). I noticed they have the Atari BIOS files on there in addition to the 5200 bios ( not sure if it is 2-port or 4-port version ). I don't know if they added that or they put it in but never figured out how to get A5200 to find the BIOS files.
I will add a link later to an A5200 source file that shows the CRC's of all the ROMS that it has in it's internal database. Should make it easier to get the right images that it knows how to deal with. They are definitely using the old A5200 cause in addition to my changes I significantly updated the internal database.
13) Atari 5200 ( calls a5200_libretro_new ). Looks like meebzork is the only one that uses this.14) Jaguar ( calls retroarch virtualjaguar ). However that core is NOT present on the images provided.
15) Atari 2600 ( calls standalone stella ). They seem to use this only for paddle games.
16) NEC PC-Engine/TG-16 ( calls retroarch Mednafen PCE Fast ) which should also be able to do CD games. Just a matter of figuring out how to activate it.17) Calls ( retroarch Vice Xpet ). A Commodore Pet emulator. I have no clue why they have this in there.
Definitely a candidate for swapping out with another core.
As for keyboard mappings.... I suspect they are using full retroarch configs with the keys setup a certain way. Stored in..
3.rootfs.img\usr\lib\libretro\retroarch\
They have standard config, 4:3 configs and 16:9 configs for each core.
More information as I find it...
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11 minutes ago, Domeshtan said:
Jaguar? I can't even get Jaguar to run decent on my laptop computer.
Yeah I'm sure they figured out REAL quick that Jaguar emulation is nigh unlikely. If the guy who did bigPemu made a retroarch version I bet they could get some decent speed.
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Just did a cursory glance over the IMG files in the update. I think most everything that will be needed to figure out everything is in there. I would not be surprised to see someone come up with something where things can be done more "customized" without affecting the underlying setup. Looks to me like they use an SQL database file to determine which retroarch cores to call depending on the game selected and what parameters to pass to it... etc.
It looks like at one point they were testing for lynx, jaguar and Atari 800 games. There is code in there but it is commented out. They also have code to call stella current. But I'm not sure what the deciding factor is. Likely something in the included SQL databse.
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5 minutes ago, fluxit said:
Which OS are you using? I'm just using gnome-disks on Linux.
Oh.. I didn't think about that. I'm not using any *nix variants. Just plain vanilla windows 10.
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1 hour ago, fluxit said:
There don't seem to be any .info files. There are many ascii .cfg files for the libretro cores in the retroarch directory.
The only references to the usable file extensions that I was able to find were in the cores' binaries. However, I didn't do an exhaustive search.
What tools can I use to extract the files out of the update they provided? I might be able to look at the retroarch structure to get a better idea of how they are utilizing it.
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36 minutes ago, fluxit said:
Not having updated yet, but looking forward to it, I've been taking a peek at the 2 normal partitions in the Firmware.img.
One is a 78mb(compressed) squashfs containing the OS, Retroarch, Stella, and many of the Myarcade assets. The other is a 143mb(25mb free) ext2/3/4 writable partition containing the games, their associated menu images, and some retroarch related config files.
"Games/Atari_Games/Atari Arcade/cfg" seems to be the location for the MAME .cfgs, including default.cfg. It should be possible to generate the 'ultimate' default.cfg, and replacing the existing one should be very easy.
Here are the included libretro libraries(from the squashfs):
Well that is interesting. They have two A5200 cores. I wonder if the a5200_libretro_new.so core is the one with the many changes I made about 4 months ago.
Never heard of Jungle2003, 2014 and 2016. But I reckon those are the MAME cores.
They also have two snes9x cores. Snes9x2002 is an older core based on 2002 code ( basically performs better on lesser processors ). Snes9x should be snes9x current which would be based on the latest Snes9x code. Which in theory should be the more accurate but potentially slower core. Also may have more features and support more things.
Also interesting to see they have both Stella cores. 2014 is based on older code. Stella_libretro is the current core and should be able to handle all the current DPC games as well as read the .pro files. I've yet to check to see if Stella 2014 recognizes and reads .pro files.
Vice_xpet... that is an odd choice. Why would they have Commodore Pet emulation on there?
No pico cores which is odd cause I assumed there was one since they have pico games included with the gamestation pro? Or at least I thought they did. GenesisplusGX only supports genesis/mega drive... sms, game gear and sega CD. No 32x support. No pico support.
Now I guess the question is.. what extensions determine which emulators are called. In particular the mame, stella and snes9x cores. Also it should be possible to determine what extensions are used by looking at the ".info" files for each core.
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For a decent idea of SNES performance. Try the following chip based games.
Super Matio World 2 - Yoshi's Island. One of the later chip based games and usually takes a performance hit on lesser consoles.
Star Fox - Almost the same as SMW2.
Super Mario RPG - An earlier chip game. Likely will see occasional slow down but should be playable
I think someone already tried FF4. It has been know to have slowdown on lesser systems.
As for Nintendo DS. Forget it. 😛
Even an xbox series X sometimes needs frameskip of 1 to get full speed. And with no touch screen ability a lot of games will be unplayable.
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2 hours ago, Stephen said:
So, does anybody know why 12 games (the largest of which is 128kB but most are under 16kB) required an 11+ GB update?
The update takes place of the previous update. So most likely it is only 2gb plus whatever was in the initial uodate.
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Here is the game release list. Mostly 2600. 2 Homebrew. 2 Prototypes. 1 Lynx game.
(2600)
Adventure II (HB)
Return To Haunted House (HB)Aquaventure (Proto)
Save Mary (Proto)Bowling
Circus Atari
Double Dunk
Maze Craze
Miniature Golf
Moto Rodea
Super Football(Lynx)
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6 hours ago, Atari8264 said:
For the GameStation Pro, I came up with a method to run SD card arcade games in vertical mode without Mr Do's old artwork files. Some of the artwork files make the gameplay screen very small due to the top and bottom bezels/graphics. This method allows the gameplay screen to be the full height of your 16:9 TV/monitor while the width is narrow (4:3 vertical screen).
Running arcade games on GameStation Pro firmware V1.0 in Vertical Mode.
Use the GSPvertical.zip file to run a game in veritcal mode without any colorful bezels.
Save the GSPvertical.zip file below to your SD card's Games/artwork folder.
In Windows, right click the SD card's GSPvertical.zip file and select Extract All.
This will extract all 3 files to a new folder named "GSPvertical".
Rename the newly created folder to the arcade rom's name (example galaga88).
Rename the file "vertical.art" in the new folder to be the same as the folder's new name ( example galaga88.art ).When you start the game, it will be in vertical mode.
Note: If you already have an artwork zip file for your game in your artwork folder, rename it first to something else.GSPvertical.zip
Shouldn't it be possible to copy the left and right sides of the Mr Do's old artwork files over top the left/right images you created here.. just to at least have the bezels on the sides with the game art and instructions?
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23 minutes ago, xboxiso said:
Thank you so much for explaining this. It is amazing what you have been able to accomplish without even having a GSP to test your work on. I would like to try this on pc as you mentioned. Do you know what version of RetroArch is being used on the GSP? Thanks again.
The version of Retroarch you use does not matter. You just need to make sure you download the MAME 2003 core and use that to run any arcade ROM images you have. If it exits out saying "failed to load content" then it is likely the ROM image you have has the wrong sets. 2003 is based on the MAME .078 core sets which are pretty old. You can enable logging if you really want to and you can view the log to verify what it is looking for. If need be.
I think with MAME 2003 they have the right trigger assigned to bring up the MAME internal menu. From there you can go to "input ( this game )" to change things. You might be able to hit tab on your keyboard as well to bring up the MAME internal menu.
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5 hours ago, xboxiso said:
@Shannon as you are the GSP controls guru, I wanted to tell you that I have done some testing today with paddle games on the sdcard and verified that all of the paddle games included with the GSP also work with paddle controls when installed on the sdcard. I did have to rename Video Olympics to Pong to get that game to work with paddle controls. All of the others worked without any changes needed. I'm thinking there must be config files on the GSP that tell the system which games to use paddle controls for. I tried to trick the system by renaming Kaboom! to Breakout thinking that just the name alone would enable paddle controls but this unfortunately didn't work. Do you know of a way to set config files for games like Kaboom! and Astroblast installed on the sdcard to use the GSP paddle controls? Also, I'm interested in how you have been able to adjust controls for arcade games, (which you have done an awesome job on). When I open the default .cfg files with Notepad ++ I just see a bunch of symbols, no text. What program are you using to modify the controls? How is this done? Thanks for the great work you have done...
Well once it was determined that retroarch was the main emulator used on the Gamestation Pro it was a little easier to come up with these ideas. I've been using retroarch pretty consistently the last couple years on my Firestick Pro, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Nintendo Wii-U, etc. So I'm pretty familiar with how it works.
Once it was determined that MAME was being used for arcade games and that the normal MAME folders were looked for in the same folder as the ROM it was just a matter of determining which version of MAME was being used. Retroarch has several versions that are used on older less capable processors.
Anywho... I know that the retroarch and MAME cfg setups are pretty consistent from console to console. So I loaded the games on the same version of MAME on my xbox one and then I went into the MAME menu and configured the controls to match what was requested of me. I would then FTP the files from the xbox to my PC and upload here. In theory one could also set up retroarch on a PC and do the same. If you do set up on a PC I would recommend connecting an xbox controller when doing it for more consistency. It may also be possible to plug a GSP controller in the PC.. but I don't know if it will be recognized.
As for Stella I know from tinkering with retroarch, Stella current and DPC games that it will read .PRO file if it finds it in the same folder as the requested ROM. Most likely, though, they are using Stella 2013. Which I'm not sure about. One way to find out is to try the Mappy DPC demo game. I know for a fact that it does not work on Stella 2013.
If I had a GSP I'd probably be able to figure out more. But I told my sister to pass up on it for a Christmas gift. I might grab one later when they are on clearance. But I'm still a little undecided. I have all of the minis ( NES, SNES, Genesis, Playstation and a C64 mini ).. and I don't really use them..
I think once someone figures out how to dump the contents of the gamestation pro then it will easier to determine how they have things configured and how to take advantage of more customized setups.
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Apparently there is going to be an update on December 6th that adds 12 games. Two are rumored to be 2600 Basketball and steeplechase ( the horse racing game ).
Any speculation on what the other games will be? I'm thinking the m-network games. But who knows.
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Now that I think sbout it I could have made a joke about the dragon's always having a square meal each day.
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Ignore... I wasn't thinking when I made up this one..
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9 minutes ago, Domeshtan said:
5200 Gorf! Oh, how they botched that game. Those controls to where you moved the stick and your ship would just "snap" to that position on the screen. That game was pretty unplayable right out of the box.
There is a hack someone made of Gorf that forces the stick into digital mode. It's worth tracking down.
I'd also recommend all of the Atari 800 conversions.. although they may be hit or miss on the Gamestation Pro.
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2 hours ago, Hydro Thunder said:
Some more 5200 testing with the Standard GSP controller:
River Raid rocks (best version of the game, maybe?), plays great
Castle Crisis, Gorf, Kaboom!, all fail as they're set to analog in a way that doesn't translate
Unplayable, basically
Mario Bros, Pengo, Mr Dos Castle, Montezuma's Revenge, Miner 2049er, Kangaroo, Jungle Hunt, Joust, Gremlins, Galaxian, Dig Dug, Countermeasure, Bounty Bob, and Berzerk all seemed to play just great, no issues at all that I could tell from brief trials.
Pac-Man / Ms Pac Man / Jr Pac Man play, but I again had trouble specifically with the verticals going where I wanted them to, kept missing turns etc. Maybe I'm old and really bad at this joystick.
Moon Patrol works great BUT you cannot Continue (need the #2 on the number pad to continue)
Return of the Jedi works BUT you have to be careful not to hit the C button / trigger, or it resets your game. I had major issues with this lol
Popeye would not load, just a blank screen and music, at least for me.
The issue with the Pac-man games on the 5200 is the self centering joystick. Each game would run some calibration code before each round ( each time after you die as well ). If you make it a point to move your character in all four directions as quickly as possible at the start of a round ( or after dying ) then it should be easier to play. But even doing that can be a real pain in the tush.
@big_guitar Glad you got something working. Maybe what I need to do is dig out my Psx mini controller and connect it to my xbox and see if retroarch recognizes it and set it. From what I understand all of the controls are "relative" so the actual button name is not important.
For some reason the retroarch author chose to use the Super Nintendo as his template for controllers. So we have the A and B buttons reversed and the X and Y buttons reversed. But essentially there are 10 possible buttons ( A, B, X, Y, L, R, Select, Start, L and R ). As well as the dpad which adds 4. Plus retroarch recognizes analog sticks so they count as well. Oh and L2, R2 and L3 and R3. But it was essentially built around the Super Nintendo Controller.
The tricky part will be figuring out how the Gamestation Pro controllers buttons are read by Retroarch. Once that is done then creating remaps should be easy.
So we have this
Sony PS1-5
X, O, Square, Triangle
Microsoft Xbox
A, B, X, Y
Nintendo
B, A, Y, X
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Wow.. no kidding about the Battlezone controllers being wonky.
Try this configuration..
As for 5200 games.. since they are using A5200... I might be able to help out. However sadly A5200 limits the assignments to 1, 3, 5, 7, #, *, Pause and Start. It can also show/hide an OSK ( On Screen Keyboard ).. so that might be the best option. Just tell me what to assign that to and we can try it. The only downside is I don't know if they have it set to look for remaps in the games folder. If I were to guess the file I create would go in "games\remaps" and hopefully it will be picked up. Hard to say.. MAME functions a bit differently. Then again it might go in just the "games" folder.
As for Space Rocks.. it works in Stella 2014 which is most likely the version that is being used on the Gamestation Pro. One way to know for sure is to try Mappy. If that does not work then they are definitely using Stella 2014. Now it may be possible to load Space Rocks in Stella on a PC set the controller type to gamepad and create a ".pro" file which could possibly be used to trick the Gamestation Pro into using that. Create a .pro file and dump it in the same folder as the ROM ( games ). I know this trick works with Retroarch Stella Current.
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I'm gonna take a crack at a Battle Zone configuration tonight.
But if people can tell me how the Gamestation Pro buttons map up compared to either an Xbox One controller or a Playstation controller.. either one. That will make it easier.
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ok.. Finally got around to trying this set like a whole year later.
I really like it and pretty much everyone's comments here reflect my thoughts.
A few odd thoughts.
The historical timeline is pretty well fleshed out but it does get a little thin in the post 2600 years. Could use some improvement. No doubt a licensing thing. Sadly some great Atari classics missing as well due to lost licenses. Not much can be done with that.
The byproduct of the Jag Emu making it to the PC is worth it alone.
I like how they let you select the game difficulty level ( with full description ) without having to worry about some "game matrix". Also the game manual is easily accessible for quick perusing.
The reimagined games are quite good. I actually like them better than the Re-Charged series. Which most I consider to be lacking. As far as Re-Charged goes. I may post on that later. But Gravitar and Tempest 4000 are the only ones that stuck out for me. I had issues with the other ones that they all seemed to have in common.
Some games like Star Raiders they mapped the buttons to make it easier on you. That was nice. You can really tell they put a lot of thought into those aspects. They also have options like adjustable scanlines and other goodies which is also nice.
The navigation system isn't the best. Sometimes it can be a little hard to find what you are looking for.
This is probably the best Atari compilation I've seen since the Atari Anthology set for the OG XBOX. It was good and had a confusion navigation system as well.
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On 11/14/2022 at 10:57 AM, DrVenkman said:
I’m actually enjoying the “Reimagined” games quite a bit, especially VCTR SCTR and whatever the Haunted House game is called. I also quite enjoy the trippy version of YARS’ with the funky music - it would be even more fun after a couple beers or whatever. I wonder: does anyone know if the new version incudes the HSWWSH easter egg? I hit the Qotile several times but couldn’t trigger an easter egg but that might be because it’s not there.
I just want to know if the neutral zone in the middle is the actual code from the game.
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49 minutes ago, roots.genoa said:
Wow, thanks to you, I just realized that 7800-2600=5200. I feel very dumb. 🤦♂️
Yeah Atari system numbering wasn't by accident.
2600 + 2600 = 5200
5200 + 2600 = 7800
Then there is the computer series..
400, 800,
400 + 800 (XL) = 1200 XL
65 XE..
65 (XE) + 65 (XE) = 130XE.
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2 hours ago, Mocotechprfl said:
Anyone get the "In The Hunt" arcade game to work with sound on their GSP? I downloaded/tried both the MAME 2003 and MAME 2003 Plus file (inthunt.zip) but neither play sound. I have a feeling it needs a corresponding samples file like Donkey Kong or Zaxxon needs, but unlike those games, I can't find the sample sound file anywhere! The Zaxxon and Donkey Kong sample sound files were extremely easy to find.
If anyone has the sample sound zip file for In The Hunt or can tell me where to get it, or can tell me how to get it to work with full blown sound, let me know! I exhausted my Google Fu skills!
It doesn't look like it requires sound samples. Runs slow as crap on my firestick. Crashes on my xbox one.
So scratch this one up as a head scratcher.
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3 hours ago, xboxiso said:
This is really cool. How are you editing these .cfg files?
I've been going into the Mame 2003 for retroarch core on my Xbox One and creating them from there. However they can also be created on a PC. So if you grab Retroarch and download the Mame 2003 core you can do the same. However I recommend having a controller connected to your PC to make it easier. Then you go into the MAME built in menu and change input ( this game ) for the current game.. figure out which button is assigned to the ones you want to change and then change them. You can find the resulting .cfg file in the retroarch "saves/mame20003 (0.78)/cfg" folder.
This should also be great for titles like defender which back in the day used mostly buttons and a joystick that only moved up and down.
Definitely a candidate for swapping out with another core.
Unplayable, basically
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Gamestation Pro
in Atari General
Posted
Correction on type 1.. it actually calls retroarch FCEUmm and not Nestopia.
1) NES ( calls retroarch FCEUmm )