ARpiCADE 3.84 is now available

Latest on ARpiCADE new releases, release notes, and history of previous versions.

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ARpiCADE 3.84 is now available

Post by dee2eR » Thu Apr 11, 2019 1:21 am

ARpiCADE 3.84 catchy name edition is finally out.

It features:
Much faster rom scanning with more game details too, huge thanks to ozfalcon for overhauling my old script & replacing the old AdvMenu lst format reference lists with the new aml (Attract-Mode list) format reference files. ozfalcon also wrote scripts to generate aml files but they're not included in this distro (see here: https://www.aussiearcade.com/showthread ... PI/page187 and next few pages for more info and to find said scripts) - this is the first release with this scanner so please let me know if you find bugs, please do not bug ozfalcon about ARpiCADE related bugs as he doesn't use ARpiCADE. Again, massive thanks to ozfalcon for working on this. As an idea of the speed improvement, a scan of approx 5000 roms used to take about 2.5 minutes - now under 20 seconds.

Slight changes to rom folders - arcade (MAME, Daphne and FBA) and consoles now have there own folders /boot/romsArcade/ & /boot/romsConsoles/

Retroarch and cores updated

MAME 0.078 changed to mame2003-plus Retroarch core replacing mame2003 Retroarch core (same rom folder used)

Shaders enabled (not activated but enabled) for all Retroarch cores (can be used for mirrorred cocktail cab mode)

Daphne onscreen scoreboard enabled for the few games that use it

Donkey Kong hacks added to high score file for MAME0.203 (thanks Tapper)

Button orders and names should be more consistant accross both 2 player and 4 player modes

Tweaks I forgot to note too...

Minor updates to the instructions found in /boot/USER_GUIDE/


https://mega.nz/#!A0kRUCLB!CCejG2JA1A_G ... _IWNt33V6o

EDIT:
a bug has been found with the joystick shortcuts in MAME 078 / MAME 2003 plus. Neither the credit shortcut or MAME menu shortcut work. Here's how to fix it. The fix requires you plug in a USB keyboard before powering up the machine.

First step:
Boot a game in 078, open the menu (p1 start + b6, or f1 on the keyboard). Navigate the menu with joystick, b1 selects, b2 backs out.
Retroarch menu (will open in the quick menu press b2 to get to the root menu)> settings > drivers > input - change to udev using joystick right/left to cycle through the options
back out of the menus again select the quick menu and resume game.
Exit the game with the long hold p1 start shortcut.

Second step:
Relaunch the game. Re-enter the Retroarch menu.
Retroarch menu > settings > input > user 1 binds
scroll to user 1 select button, press b1 to set an input then press '5' on the keyboard (no quotes)
now scroll to user 1 L3 button and set it to 'tab' in the same way
back out to the settings menu and re-enter drivers and change input back to linux raw
back out of the menus again select the quick menu and resume game.
Exit the game with 'esc' on the keyboard (the joystick shortcuts won't be working at this point but will next time it's launched)

It should now be fixed but test it to be sure. Don't unplug the keyboard until you have powered off the cab. To be safe and make sure the changes get written to the SD card properly once you have tested to make sure it works exit the game select menu with 'service' (cab) or 'f4' (keyboard) and select either the reboot or power off option based on if you will keep playing. Back up the SD card or risk doing it again...

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Re: ARpiCADE 3.84 is now available

Post by FrizzleFried » Thu Apr 11, 2019 5:08 pm

I've not had much time to "play"... but I can confirm the new expanded ROMLISTS created is "mostly" compatible with my current front end layouts that use the "controller, button, category, and players" information... I say "mostly" simply because it appears there is a higher percentage of "unknown" categories showing up in my front ends ... meaning the front end doesn't recognize the category name or it's missing. Once I have a chance to take a gander, i'm sure it's just a matter of adding a couple of new/changed categories in the front end to enable Attract Mode to recognize the category names that are being generated.

Now... I big question for ME... what makes it worth it for ME to upgrade from 3.83 to 3.84? I'm already creating my own custom ROMFILES... so I will really likely never use the stock ARpiCADE ROM generation method... I see that you upgraded the MAME2003 core... does that make any kind of significant difference in your opinion? Will I be able to play more games ... or play the games I currently have going on 3.83 better?

I am just trying to come up with a "reason" to upgrade my four ARpiCADEs... unless I can get a decent one, I'll probably stick with 3.83 for 3 of 4 cabs... I'll upgrade my general MAME cabinet (128GB card) just "because".

:D

Now, for those who aren't already manipulating their ROMFILES themselves, this is a major improvement in that regard and WELL WORTH the upgrade... well worth it... and will enable the additional functions of some of my layouts to be used (again, category, number of players, controller type and number of buttons)...
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Re: ARpiCADE 3.84 is now available

Post by dee2eR » Fri Apr 12, 2019 2:01 am

No reason to update if you don't want to. 2003-plus has some extra games added (compared to regular 2003) but I'm not sure if there's anything that wasn't already good in another version of MAME, I updated it mainly for the improved input handling. The next release will probably get some extra emulators, C64 and Amiga keep being requested...

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Re: ARpiCADE 3.84 is now available

Post by FrizzleFried » Sun Apr 14, 2019 5:17 pm

OK... I've now had some time to play...

I installed 3.84 on a 128GB SD memory card. I then moved over all my assets and set things up to mimic my prior setup EXCEPT that I used a MAME2003 PLUS romset I found at archive.org in place of the standard .078 set. What I've noticed thus far is that as promised, the ROMSCAN is IMMENSELY faster... I mean, NIGHT & DAY faster. I have this 128GB card pretty filled up... Complete FBA, MAME2003+, and MAME106 sets... plus a spattering of MAME172 ROMs...plus of course Daphne. We're talking 5 figures... a lot. Prior, it took probably a good 10... 12 minutes or more to scan the whole thing. Now? It's done in about a minute... if that... 40 seconds? Anyways. It's fast.

I also noticed that for some reason it seems to BOOT faster?! Noticeably... like 40-50% faster.

The new tags on the romlist created work ALMOST great as I mentioned above. Unfortunately the controller incompatibility is more prevalent than I thought. It appears most/all joystick fields aren't working... trackball/spinner come up, as do lightgun...I'll have to look in to it.
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Re: ARpiCADE 3.84 is now available

Post by dee2eR » Tue Apr 16, 2019 2:07 am

FrizzleFried wrote:
Thu Apr 11, 2019 5:08 pm
I see that you upgraded the MAME2003 core... does that make any kind of significant difference in your opinion? Will I be able to play more games ...
Maybe Konami Run and Gun? Seems full speed in MAME2003-plus, not sure if it worked well in anything else already.

Maybe Virtua Fighter would be fullspeed with a good overclock, I got pretty close before hitting stability issues (around 1550 mhz with overvolt 4) but I don't have much experience with overclocks and don't have a heatsink on the Pi.

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Re: ARpiCADE 3.84 is now available

Post by Tapper » Tue Apr 16, 2019 5:27 pm

Thanks for the update! I'm a bit late, but will try it soon.

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Re: ARpiCADE 3.84 is now available

Post by FastyMcNasty » Tue Apr 23, 2019 3:39 pm

Any update to the in-game Mame menu? I could never get the small font to work.

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Re: ARpiCADE 3.84 is now available

Post by dee2eR » Wed Apr 24, 2019 12:45 am

The smaller font fix was included but results still seem to vary game to game, I could be wrong but I think the current issue with the menus in some games using 172 is related to colours or colour depth. There are some games where it doesn't show the highlighted letters in the menu but you can read the rest, in some games the menus seem dull yet somehow too colourful (readable with effort but harder than normal and doesn't look right) and in other games still it works perfectly like intended, just to make it extra confusing.

The small font fix fixed up the worst of the 172 menu text issues. I have to figure out what's actually going wrong to have a go at the rest.

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Re: ARpiCADE 3.84 is now available

Post by FrizzleFried » Fri Apr 26, 2019 3:32 pm

Any way to get a quick upgrade (or tell me how to upgrade) to MAME .209 ?? Akka Arrh has (finally) been emulated and I'd love to play it on one of my cabinets.
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Re: ARpiCADE 3.84 is now available

Post by dee2eR » Fri Apr 26, 2019 4:32 pm

I haven't heard good things about the performance of the latest builds. Up until the previous release ChoccyHobNob was releasing binarys but he has stopped. ( https://choccyhobnob.com/ ) 203 is the last version I've built and I thought performance on Pi was getting better again but his blog makes it sound like it has slowed down again.

You will have to compile it yourself if you cannot find a binary for RPi. I'd recommend doing any patches first because the compile will take a very very long time, you don't want to do it again if you decide you want a box removed or something if you can avoid it. The actual compile was as easy as typing 'make -j5' last I did it. Avoid overclocking unless you're very confident it's stable for a long period under heavy load, you don't want it to fail. You will also need to turn on the swap file (normally off to preserve the SD card) to use as extra RAM during the compiling. You may want to build it with subtarget=arcade (but check the command, it's late) to avoid all the MESS bits.

Once you have a binary, you can probably just stick it in the MAME203 folder and use the launcher etc as is. If it has had major changes since 203 and that doesn't work or you want to set it up on it's own you'll need to make a launcher (start form an existing one) or set it up in Attract-Mode however you want. I'd run the game you're after from the command line as soon as you've compiled it (or after you've given the Pi a cool down break) to make sure it's worth continuing as the performance may not be up to snuff.

Good luck if you decide to proceed. Nice work on the new Attract layout theme too.

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