ARpiCADE_5 - for Pi4 or Pi5

[mappy24]

Hi, next problem is trying to get Donut Dodo working.

It's installed but the picture is really squished (https://imgur.com/a/49MeJx0) and the joystick controls aren't working properly - trying to remap them in the menus and it skips over every other control so it's impossible to set up, are there any pointers on how to get this working?

Thanks!!

[dee2eR]

You will need to run DonutDodo once without the hotkeys running to set up the inputs, once it's set right it should work with the hotkeys running too but they interfere with the input setup part. You can run it from the command line directly (not using the launcher script) to run the game without the hotkeys running. To run it from the console: <quote>
cd /boot/firmware/DonutDodo/gamedata
./DonutDodo.pi
</quote>

Unfortunately for the scaling at the moment there's only the workaround to press ctrl+win_key+right_arrow_key on a keyboard manually once the game is running to scale it horizontally. Pressing it multiple times will keep scaling further (5 times works for DD), ctrl+win_key+left_arrow_key can be used if you scale it too far. Much like the fullscreen scaling hack for the console I will be trying to automate these things in the future...

[Ccie38296]

Hi, just offering some feedback on ArPiCade 5 with the Pi 5 based on testing this weekend. I had a Pi4 set up with ArPiCade4 in my vertical shmup cabinet (with a standard res CRT) and it works very nicely, but the performance isn’t good enough for a few of the later Cave games. I ordered a Pi5 (4GB) to give it a shot with ArPiCade 5. I ran into a number of gameplay and usability issues. I’m not upset — I realize it’s a fairly new release, so I just decided to go back to my Pi4 setup. Just communicating what I ran into:

• ArPiCade splash screen was horizontal even when display was rotated (Clockwise for my setup), thus the lettering went down the screen from the top to bottom

• I noticed a mouse pointer that would show up in the middle of the “Now Loading” message during boot, but it was really stretched out and looked like a huge graphic glitch. Only present for a couple seconds, but definitely distracted from that “dedicated cabinet” feel and made it more apparent its an emulation machine

• With MAME 251/269, got the MAME warning dialogs on many games (I was generally using 0.230 ROMs as that’s what I was able to source). I am really looking for my cabinet to be pretty close to idiot-proof, so this is definitely undesireable

• With both of those MAME versions, I ran into an issue where many games would only launch on either the 3rd or 4th attempt. The first few tries, I would get the Now Loading screen, and briefly see an “Initializing” message appear, then it would cut back to the game list. If I tried again, it would do the same thing. Then on either the 3rd or 4th attempt, the game would load. This seemed consistent on some ROMs.

• Certain ROMs including the Strikers 1945 series, would load in a very odd video mode where the image was full height top to bottom (again, on a vertically mounted monitor) but the width was only, maybe the middle 1/3 of the screen so the image was squished badly. I could also see the game performance was also very slow on games being displayed this way, but obviously the games were unplayable due to the aspect ratio

• I tried running games using MAME 172 and the matching ROMs for that version, and still ran into a lot of ROMs that wouldn’t launch or wouldn’t launch on the first attempt, when those same ROMs loaded fine in 172 on the Pi4

• I was attempting to use the Vertical Sphere layout from Idaho Garagecade, which works great on the Pi4/ArPiCade4. The screen snaps loaded, but the game logos didn’t show for any game. The ArPiCade Opacity theme was very nice and very readable, so I could have lived with it, just pointing it out

• On at least a couple of the later Cave games, I ran into input mapping problems at some point where the games wouldn’t coin or the controls would be all wrong. When I went into MAME menu and input settings for the game and tried to remap them, the controls would show up as incorrect inputs. Like hitting P1 Up on the joystick would map as Joystick 1 Button 11 or something. Then I cancelled that remapping, rebooted the whole machine, went into the same game and the default controls were back and working.

Not sure if I did anything wrong in the setup, but in the end I found too many usability issues to offset the improved performance of the Pi5. Since I am looking for my cab to be “turn on and play” and want a very seamless experience where the cab doesn’t “feel” like a multicade with weird display stuff and frequent control mapping issues, etc., I went back to the Pi4/ArPiCade4 setup for now which meets those expectations.

Again, I’m very grateful for the entire ArPiCade/RaspberryJAMMA platform so I’m not complaining, just trying to offer some feedback. Hopefully some of these issues will be worked out in future releases and I can try the Pi5 again sometime.

[dee2eR]

Thanks for the feedback. It all helps. I will try to improve it in the next release.

[cool_factor]

OK, got newest version 5 installed adding .269 and also the default.cfg update. experiencing the arpicade logo on first boot (vertical machine) garbled/stretched horizontally and what looks like a stretched mouse cursor arrow. Also, when the default OPACITY theme comes up the image/games look/load normal, however when I installed sdarcade latest theme v3f from idahogarage/frizzlefried and changed settings to vertical it makes the image is upsidedown and backwards, not sure how to correct this, tried cw and ccw rotate using arpicade f4 and it didnt change results with the theme, it did make the arpicade system out of wack.

[dee2eR]

The issue with the vert sphere layout is probably file path related, ARpiCADE_5 uses /boot/firmware/[other files and folders] whereas all the earlier versions of ARpiCADE use /boot/[other files&folders] - I'm just theorizing though, haven't looked at it specifically.

@cool_factor I don't have FrizzleFrieds SD_arcade v3 but here's a modified version (auto rotating) of SD_arcade v2 for the Pi5 release: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vlGFim ... sp=sharing

Not seeing the issue with the splash and vertical at the moment... switching to vert shouldn't change anything about the splash as I haven't done that yet. It should stay horizontal and in 480i. I did see the splash glitch out (screen went wavy) just before a reboot (after changes from the service menu) but it only happened once and after the reboot was fine... [EDIT: I saw it happen again at a cold start, seems rare but randomly the 480i doesn't sync properly - maybe I am seeing the issue after all...]

There's already a cursor hiding plugin running but it takes a second to hide the cursor, hence it is breifly visible, maybe I can make the cursor a single black pixel or something to hide it more. The cursor appears stretched out due to the non standard pixel ratio (1920x240) but that should also be fixed if I can change the cursor icon.

Just loaded up Strikers 1945 on a vert setup in both MAME 0.251 and 0.269 and it was fine. 100% speed & picture looking right. @Ccie38296 which emulator were you using for Strikers 1945? EDIT: tried s1945ii and s1945iii and they were slow at 90%ish in 251 and 269 but the picture was good - prob better speed in an earlier MAME, maybe 172.

[cool_factor]

Ive got another issue. front line and wild western ROMs in 269 (correct roms) load fine but cannot config controls like i could on v4 arpicade advmame. moved them from 269 into 106 using correct roms (same on v4) and changed/edited romlist to point to advmame instead of mame269 on those 2 games. now it wont boot at all. should i have rescanned romlist first. ive always just used notepad++ with no issues. Sidenote, been using your stuff since 2018 so not a newbie..but still learning. thx for info above as well.

[cool_factor]

Ive got another issue. front line and wild western ROMs in 269 (correct roms) load fine but cannot config controls like i could on v4 arpicade advmame. moved them from 269 into 106 using correct roms (same on v4) and changed/edited romlist to point to advmame instead of mame269 on those 2 games. now it wont boot at all. should i have rescanned romlist first. ive always just used notepad++ with no issues. Sidenote, been using your stuff since 2018 so not a newbie..but still learning. thx for info above as well.

This control issue is fixed, I found old notes and it's 100% working correctly now. The other issue I believe was caused by sdarcade v3 incompatibility.

[cool_factor]

Hi, just offering some feedback on ArPiCade 5 with the Pi 5 based on testing this weekend. I had a Pi4 set up with ArPiCade4 in my vertical shmup cabinet (with a standard res CRT) and it works very nicely, but the performance isn’t good enough for a few of the later Cave games. I ordered a Pi5 (4GB) to give it a shot with ArPiCade 5. I ran into a number of gameplay and usability issues. I’m not upset — I realize it’s a fairly new release, so I just decided to go back to my Pi4 setup. Just communicating what I ran into:

• ArPiCade splash screen was horizontal even when display was rotated (Clockwise for my setup), thus the lettering went down the screen from the top to bottom

• I noticed a mouse pointer that would show up in the middle of the “Now Loading” message during boot, but it was really stretched out and looked like a huge graphic glitch. Only present for a couple seconds, but definitely distracted from that “dedicated cabinet” feel and made it more apparent its an emulation machine

• With MAME 251/269, got the MAME warning dialogs on many games (I was generally using 0.230 ROMs as that’s what I was able to source). I am really looking for my cabinet to be pretty close to idiot-proof, so this is definitely undesireable

• With both of those MAME versions, I ran into an issue where many games would only launch on either the 3rd or 4th attempt. The first few tries, I would get the Now Loading screen, and briefly see an “Initializing” message appear, then it would cut back to the game list. If I tried again, it would do the same thing. Then on either the 3rd or 4th attempt, the game would load. This seemed consistent on some ROMs.

• Certain ROMs including the Strikers 1945 series, would load in a very odd video mode where the image was full height top to bottom (again, on a vertically mounted monitor) but the width was only, maybe the middle 1/3 of the screen so the image was squished badly. I could also see the game performance was also very slow on games being displayed this way, but obviously the games were unplayable due to the aspect ratio

• I tried running games using MAME 172 and the matching ROMs for that version, and still ran into a lot of ROMs that wouldn’t launch or wouldn’t launch on the first attempt, when those same ROMs loaded fine in 172 on the Pi4

• I was attempting to use the Vertical Sphere layout from Idaho Garagecade, which works great on the Pi4/ArPiCade4. The screen snaps loaded, but the game logos didn’t show for any game. The ArPiCade Opacity theme was very nice and very readable, so I could have lived with it, just pointing it out

• On at least a couple of the later Cave games, I ran into input mapping problems at some point where the games wouldn’t coin or the controls would be all wrong. When I went into MAME menu and input settings for the game and tried to remap them, the controls would show up as incorrect inputs. Like hitting P1 Up on the joystick would map as Joystick 1 Button 11 or something. Then I cancelled that remapping, rebooted the whole machine, went into the same game and the default controls were back and working.

Not sure if I did anything wrong in the setup, but in the end I found too many usability issues to offset the improved performance of the Pi5. Since I am looking for my cab to be “turn on and play” and want a very seamless experience where the cab doesn’t “feel” like a multicade with weird display stuff and frequent control mapping issues, etc., I went back to the Pi4/ArPiCade4 setup for now which meets those expectations.

Again, I’m very grateful for the entire ArPiCade/RaspberryJAMMA platform so I’m not complaining, just trying to offer some feedback. Hopefully some of these issues will be worked out in future releases and I can try the Pi5 again sometime.

Agree with alot youve mentioned. Ive decided to do the same, reinstalled my ArPiCade 4, love this product but V5 has been very challenging to say the least... It will end up being as great if not better than V4 I feel. Hopefully frizzlefried will also be able to update some of his themes as well. Not digging the Opacity theme at all. The modded sdarcadev2 Dee2er sent me is nice but the fonts become unreadable/hard to read. Opacity fonts and main menu fonts are nice and legible at least. Ive spent over a week messing with it and at this time its not worth the hassle and V4 still works great. Was mainly wanting for the performance boost of the pi5. Been an active member and user since 2017 and love this product so hoping to one day play around again with v5

[FrizzleFried]

From what I have read MAME does not save high scores like before, so what I did was enabled auto save in mame.ini what it does is (for the drivers that support it) if you exit the game properly - long press start / esc - it will save the game and autoload it when you come back that way the high scores remain intact added benefit of resuming the game.

To do this:

edit home/pi/.mame269/mame.ini

change autosave 0 to 1
#
# CORE STATE/PLAYBACK OPTIONS
#
state
autosave 1

Is this only in 269 or does 251 also not save high scores? If 251 also does not, at what point did things change as it's very important for my build to do so... and properly... without using save-states (as above).

Thanks!