ARpiCADE_5 - for Pi4 or Pi5

[FrizzleFried]

More observations...

I got .172 romlist installed and running....

Oddly... the system that runs Strikers II, Strikers III, and Gunbird II ... the same system that runs butt slow in .251 ... crashes .172 completely to where I have to power down. Black screen. Nothing more. This is odd as I've been running these games on my Pi3 perfectly fine (albeit through Advmame). I want to say .172 works on the Pi3 for these games though.

Thus far ...the only two systems that SHOULD work that aren't that I've come across are:

PGM

Psikyo SH2 hardware that covers:

Daraku Tenshi : The Fallen Angels
Dragon Blaze
GunBarich
Gunbird 2
Lode Runner : The Dig Fight
Sol Divide
Space Bomber
Strikers 1945 II
Strikers 1945 III / Strikers 1999
Tetris The Absolute : The Grand Master 2
Tetris The Absolute : The Grand Master 2 Plus

Also, I moved a copy of the font file to the root layouts folder plus I added the font line to the Opacity (new one) theme and it FIXED the fonts... for horizontal. As soon as I changed to vertical mode the font is worse than ever... ugg... back to looking at it.

[dee2eR]

• There are most assuredly some font issues. Opacity is not using the font it's supposed to and it's defaulting to a really crappy "pixel" type font. Where are the fonts located? Can I easily pull them from a Pi3 or Pi4 to add to the Pi5?

• The power-on "Arpicade" screen runs the horizontal version regardless if you run in horizontal or vertical mode.

• There are various MAME screens that show up when you load. Some requiring input. Some not. All should be hidden IMHO.

That's all I've come across in my short time playing around with it. I primarily wanted to confirm the suspicion there is a font issue. There is. The MAME intro screen isn't a big deal... I'm going to see what i can do about the PGM games... and do more testing. I did run A few Cave games... each loaded as it's supposed to (except for the one that I suspect is a PGM game as it's also from IGS...

What is the most strenuous (to the Pi) vertically oriented game out there?

EDIT: OK... been playing a bit more with it. Thus far I've encountered ONE TIME (other than with PGM games) that a game that should load didn't. I tried a 2nd time and it loaded (Cave game). I did notice that PGM2 games are working. I am ... THRILLED ... with the performance thus far.

I did notice than when I attempted to use one of my themes (Vertical Sphere) it was upside down and made everything (menus etc) upside down. It's been a long time since I played with the layouts... shouldn't be a big deal though. Fonts were missing still though.

EDIT #2: Welp... I'm making a new image... I came back to put .172 romlist on the card and every time I go in to the linux side it's like throwing dice as to whether the damn thing will load or not afterward. That's how it is with the Pi3... Pi4... and now Pi5 with me for some reason. HAS to be this linux/windows software. I've just gotten good at getting it all done in one shot thereby minimizing the chance of corruption. ANYWAY... I corrupted the first image (it loads the intro image quickly then the fan goes full on and it sits at black screen). SO... it's a long process to copy everything over... but I think this time I'll just go with snaps for now ... I can always add the vids later. That'll speed things up a bit.

• One thing of note Dee2er... I noticed that the font for my layouts are all in the folder. I'll go in to take a look when the image is done but I suspect there may be a hard path in the code for that font... and being these layouts used to all be on the linux side I think... right?

• Oddly... while 251 rocks Cave games with no issue... later Psikyo shooters (Strikers II, Strikers III, Gunbird II, etc) struggle bigtime. That is why I was looking for the 172 ROMlist...

EDIT #3: Dee2er... nope! Prior...in the layout.nut file there is this line:

fe.layout.font = "captain"

Of course captain.ttf is located in the layouts root file. That doesn't seem to be working any more...

OPACITY ARpiCADE (the version included) has the captain font disabled in the .nut script (I commented out the line in your edit#3). I prioritised readability at 240p over everything else....

The font path that could have changed is in the boot partition. While running the boot partition is mounted as /boot/firmware/ on ARpiCADE_5 whereas it used to just mount as /boot/ . This has caused some paths to change eg. /boot/romsArcade/ becomes /boot/firmware/romsArcade/ - unlesss you have full paths hardcoded in your layouts it may not effect a lot.

Not sure what the hardest to run vert game is but the CAVE CV1000 games in 172 are probably right up there.

I have PGM games in 251 (may not be the best place though...) and they do in fact need the bios file pgm.zip

Later Psikyo stuff I'm not totally sure about yet. 172 either has an issue with gunbird2 or takes an ungodly amount of time to load (and I didn't wait long enough), either way it's not good enough - nobody will watch a black screen for minutes patiently thinking everything is ok. It's the same in 174 (lr-MAME2016). They're full speed in AdvMAME if you adjust the video to 320x240 and turn off vsync in the video menu (for whatever reason they run 50% speed with vsync on, it shouldn't tear without it anyway), dont forget to save the settings for this game or for this game size/freq. (tested with Gunbird 2)

the ARpiCADE bootsplash not rotating is currently the expected behaviour. It is an easy fix but will make the process of switching hori/vertical take a lot longer due to the bootsplash needing to be baked into the initramfs (this takes a few minutes and doesn't have much feedback so could easily lead to users thinking something broke, if the process is interupted something will definately break...). I may just add another option to the sevice menu to update the splash seperately so as anyone regularly swapping hori/vert won't need to wait the longer time.

EDIT: PGM in 251 is at 101% speed, the refresh rate is a tiny bit faster than PGM original. Tested with Bee Storm (DDP2). It's posible I can find a perfect refresh rate for it in the future but that would take some investigation/testing.

[FrizzleFried]

Ah... thats it... it's lower res than what I built it at and as a result the font looks like crap (vertically...looks fine horizontally)... bummer... that font works great typically.

[dee2eR]

Also, I moved a copy of the font file to the root layouts folder plus I added the font line to the Opacity (new one) theme and it FIXED the fonts... for horizontal. As soon as I changed to vertical mode the font is worse than ever... ugg... back to looking at it.

Probably something I did when I merged the 2 versions of Opacity. It more or less contains both the hori and vert versions in the one nut script. I may have accidentally broken the font setting somehow for vert and missed it due to not using the font.

EDIT: or the lower res as you mentioned.

[FrizzleFried]

I wonder if increasing the font size slightly and adjusting the leading a little so each game listing is a little closer together to accommodate the larger font would help.

Looks so good at 640x480 interlaced...

[FrizzleFried]

Your EDIT#2 is why I quit messing around with v5/Pi5. It's like you better put everything you want on the sd card on the first build because you're rolling the dice on if it'll reboot if you've got to add/change something. My vertical cab v3.x and my horizontal cable v4.3 I can mess with all day and they'll both start every time.

I see it as a challenge. It's no where near of a mess than I was expecting to be honest. Yeah... it's annoying as all hell you can't go back in to do what you need without it corrupting (it's happen twice thus far and I have no reason to believe it won't happen again). A little patience and persistence pays off though. I also image my created image BEFORE I test each time so if I do jack up the image (I will) I can always go back to the last image created.

It's time consuming... and I have no idea WHY just TOUCHING the linux side more than once (once is OK) corrupts the thing but it seems to... but it's workable... especially since the damn Pi5 has so much more horsepower. I'm actually... quite impressed by the bump in speed from the Pi3 and Pi4...

[FrizzleFried]

High Score observations:

• High scores save for .172 and .106 (AdvMAME)
• High scores do not save for .251

Contrary to what I read somewhere in this forum, highscore.dat has been updated past .174... though they did change the formatting a little...

https://highscore.mameworld.info/download.htm

If high scores can't be saved for .251 I'm a gunna run primarily .172 except for the games that it can't run... though it's a little too early to tell.

Can anyone tell me any good reason to search for and get .269 vs .251? Any killer game that works on .269 that doesn't work on .251?

Another small thing I noticed... there is a red text that comes up just before NO LOADING... it says something to the effect of "loading rom files" or something... it appears upside down and squished... then Now Loading appears right after but the correct orientation and not squished. I'd be OK with just removing the prior loading roms image... might even poke around to see if I can do that. Not a huge deal though... about on par with the ARpiCADE intro being sideways (which isn't a big deal either)...



Figured I'd mention it at least.

[FrizzleFried]

Another very odd ... but pretty minor on the big scheme of things ... issue I've been able to repeat over and over on different SD cards is that the PREVIEWS/SNAPS folder will NOT allow two files of the same name (but different extensions)... but not all the time... just most of the time. Huh?!?

Yeah, when I attempt to load movies in to a folder that already has PNG snaps... it gives me an odd error... when I do the opposite, it'll load up the PNG files that there are no movie files of but when it gets to the ones of the same name... error.

As a result, many of my layouts are useless (SDArcade one for example)... any that use screen shots ... then switch to movies. Of course the option to remove all movies and stick with just snaps is there and that would make the layout at least usable... but I figured it was something to point out. --- Please disregard. This issue somehow resolved itself.

Also, I am now 100% sure that after I re-added the font line to the layout.nut file, the ugly font I am looking at is the CAPTAIN font at 1/2 the resolution it was at before. I'm gunna have to find a better font for sure... this one just ain't gunna cut it now with the 240x320 restriction.

[cool_factor]

Believe me I get it, it has HUGE potential, I just don't know enough of Linux to be of use. I have been learning where I can though...

[FrizzleFried]

Oddity discovered:

Centipede saves high scores in MAME .251... (verified it was .251)

...but thus far, that's the ONLY game I've found that saves high scores.

>huh?<