Sega Monaco GP 1979/1980 - My Remake

[hafoudha]

Thank you for this beautiful remake. I have it running already on a pc, and I wonder if there's a way to set a config. file as default, so it will boot straight to that config when I launch the game.

[neilsnonsense]

Thank you for this beautiful remake. I have it running already on a pc, and I wonder if there's a way to set a config. file as default, so it will boot straight to that config when I launch the game.

Pass the name of the .cfg file on the command line with '-cfg' e.g.

Code: [Select]

mgpr -cfg classic_arcade_1680x1050.cfg

[hafoudha]

Thank you for this beautiful remake. I have it running already on a pc, and I wonder if there's a way to set a config. file as default, so it will boot straight to that config when I launch the game.

Pass the name of the .cfg file on the command line with '-cfg' e.g.

Code: [Select]

mgpr -cfg classic_arcade_1680x1050.cfg

Thank you for the reply, somehow, I can't figure it out, every time I pass the .cfg file's name, it says "Numbers only, try again".

[Robbbert]

--- removed "sarcastic reply" ---

[hafoudha]

The answer appears obvious - it's right there in your screenshot.

and since I missed it, wouldn't be nice to point to it? instead of your sarcastic reply.

[neilsnonsense]

Please paste the entire command line you are using. I just verified that it works on both Windows 10 and Linux.

If you have the correct command line, you should not see the menu or prompt.

[hafoudha]

Please paste the entire command line you are using. I just verified that it works on both Windows 10 and Linux.

If you have the correct command line, you should not see the menu or prompt.

thank you so much for being patient. here's what I get for now, I hope I'm on the right way.

[neilsnonsense]

here's what I get for now, I hope I'm on the right way.

I think I see your problem. You are invoking the mgpr.exe executable from your your home directory root by passing an absolute path to it. The game needs your 'current working directory' to be the game directory, i.e. mgpr_v1_4_6
In other words, you need to invoke it like this (assuming your starting point is C:\Users\hefdh):

cd Desktop\mgpr_v1_4_6
mgpr.exe -cfg classic_8bit_1280x1024.cfg

Hope that helps.

[hafoudha]

here's what I get for now, I hope I'm on the right way.

I think I see your problem. You are invoking the mgpr.exe executable from your your home directory root by passing an absolute path to it. The game needs your 'current working directory' to be the game directory, i.e. mgpr_v1_4_6
In other words, you need to invoke it like this (assuming your starting point is C:\Users\hefdh):

cd Desktop\mgpr_v1_4_6
mgpr.exe -cfg classic_8bit_1280x1024.cfg

Thank you so much, my folder is in my Desktop, and when I followed your instructions, I get this screen, and the cfg starts the game by itself, I then play few seconds and exit the game, launch again and the full list of cfg is there to chose from, it's not defaulting yet.
Hope that helps.

[neilsnonsense]

Thank you so much, my folder is in my Desktop, and when I followed your instructions, I get this screen, and the cfg starts the game by itself, I then play few seconds and exit the game,

That message looks like a problem between the game and your sound card/driver. Unfortunately I can't help with that beyond recommending you try switching the audio output device from Windows' audio settings if you have more than one device available? When you played for a few seconds did you hear any audio output from the game?

launch again and the full list of cfg is there to chose from, it's not defaulting yet.

When you say launch again, did you use the exact same command line? Or are you expecting this setting to be 'sticky'? Because it isn't. Just to be clear, every time you launch mgpr.exe without the -cfg option, it will display the menu regardless of how you launched previously.

[hafoudha]

Thank you so much, my folder is in my Desktop, and when I followed your instructions, I get this screen, and the cfg starts the game by itself, I then play few seconds and exit the game,

That message looks like a problem between the game and your sound card/driver. Unfortunately I can't help with that beyond recommending you try switching the audio output device from Windows' audio settings if you have more than one device available? When you played for a few seconds did you hear any audio output from the game?

launch again and the full list of cfg is there to chose from, it's not defaulting yet.

When you say launch again, did you use the exact same command line? Or are you expecting this setting to be 'sticky'? Because it isn't. Just to be clear, every time you launch mgpr.exe without the -cfg option, it will display the menu regardless of how you launched previously.

Thank you, you are absolutely correct, I thought every time I launch mgpr.exe it will go straight to the default cfg, and therefore, if I have to put that commend every time to default to my cfg, I rather delete all unwanted cfg files, and my favorite cfg will be there waiting for me to hit OK.
Thank you again, I thought for some reason that I could just hit mgpr.exe and the game starts instantly. Not a big deal, I am really enjoying this game in my son's arcade.

[neilsnonsense]

The end result of my efforts to get this game working on a Raspberry Pi:

I converted an old broken Tomy 'Demon Driver' (a.k.a. 'Digital Derby' in USA) toy to play this fantastic game. Since they are were both released at around the same time (1978 for the Tomy, 1979 for MGP) I thought it would be interesting to juxtaspose the 'state-of-the-art' of the toy & arcade industries of the time.

[geecab]

The end result of my efforts to get this game working on a Raspberry Pi:

I converted an old broken Tomy 'Demon Driver' (a.k.a. 'Digital Derby' in USA) toy to play this fantastic game. Since they are were both released at around the same time (1978 for the Tomy, 1979 for MGP) I thought it would be interesting to juxtaspose the 'state-of-the-art' of the toy & arcade industries of the time.

Hi Neil! This is incredible, I used to have Demon Driver growing up and loved it! Can you imagine if back in the day it played/looked as good as you have made this, it would be every kid's dream! You have done an amazing job getting this working. I've been reading your previous posts and I'm sorry about all the hoops you've had to jump through to get to where you are. I'm thinking of doing a build using the latest version of Raspbian desktop, would that run on all issues of Pi ? I guess people wanting to run it would have to update their Pi OS... At the time when I did my last Unix builds, I wasn't sure what to do about the shared memory stuff (Allowing you to read score board / time information as you play the game). I'm sure I could do something about that now for unix and also have it also output speedo information. Anyways, going off on a bit of a tangent now, just wanted to say absolutely superb work!

PS. I've seen your other youtube projects too, your Tomy Turbo Dashboard playing OutRun with all its dash console display, excellent stuff!

[neilsnonsense]

Hi Neil!

Hey Ben! Welcome back, it's great to see you here again!

This is incredible, I used to have Demon Driver growing up and loved it! Can you imagine if back in the day it played/looked as good as you have made this, it would be every kid's dream! You have done an amazing job getting this working.

Thanks so much. That's why I do these projects. I like to imagine what the toy & game designers could have achieved back then if they had access to the kind of technology we have today. And yeah, to create the toys I wanted to see back then too!

I've been reading your previous posts and I'm sorry about all the hoops you've had to jump through to get to where you are.

No appologies necessary. You don't owe me or anyone else on here anything. We're all lucky to be able to play this game at all without an expensive original cab or FPGA remake! (OK, there are the Sega Ages versions but they have their own issues!) I went into this with eyes open knowing full well that a native version could likely become available at any time and invalidate all that work, and I still hope that happens!

I'm thinking of doing a build using the latest version of Raspbian desktop, would that run on all issues of Pi ? I guess people wanting to run it would have to update their Pi OS...

That would be amazing! Yeah, you'd probably want to target the latest Pi OS 'Bullseye' They've just moved over to the open MESA drivers for Linux native DRM/KMS GL rendering instead of the legacy proprietary VideoCore stuff they had since day one. I needed to build box86/box64 to have its wrapped GL libs use DRM/KMS to get any decent performance from the game.

You'll also probably want to make both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Only Pis made since the 3B have 64-bit SOCs but as my video shows it can run quite reasonably on a Pi 2B even under x86 user space emulation! Unfortunately - unlike Windows - a 32-bit executable will not run directly on a 64-bit OS. There is Debian multi-arch of course, but that's going to be a pain for users so better to just build both versions!

At the time when I did my last Unix builds, I wasn't sure what to do about the shared memory stuff (Allowing you to read score board / time information as you play the game). I'm sure I could do something about that now for unix and also have it also output speedo information.

I'm guessing you used the native Win32 APIs (e.g. MapViewOfFile etc) for the Arduino work on the Windows version? Linux has similar capabilities, e.g. POSIX shared memory mapping If you're looking for a cross platform approach, then maybe boost::interprocess could help (assuming you're working in C++ with Allegro?)

Anyways, going off on a bit of a tangent now, just wanted to say absolutely superb work!

PS. I've seen your other youtube projects too, your Tomy Turbo Dashboard playing OutRun with all its dash console display, excellent stuff!

Thanks again for your kind comments and also for making this amazing remake in the first place. I'd be happy to help/contribute in any way I can to a native Pi version. If you don't want to open source the game (and I can understand why you might not want to) I would respect any NDA you wanted to apply to source sharing if you wanted to collaborate. Feel free to reach out. There's an email address on the 'About' page on my Youtube channel, or DM me on Instagram if you use that?

[LEM]

Hi all!

I'm trying redefine the keys so I can use it on my arcade cabinet, but I can't find a way to assign the left ctrl and alt keys.
Is that possible somehow?

Thanks.

[geecab]

Hi all!

I'm trying redefine the keys so I can use it on my arcade cabinet, but I can't find a way to assign the left ctrl and alt keys.
Is that possible somehow?

Thanks.

Hi! I'm sorry, it isn't possible with the current version. If using these keys are a must, maybe AutoHotKey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoHotkey can help? (Although I haven't tried it with Monaco GP but can't see why it wouldn't work).

...I've actually just recompiled the game so that I can choose lCtrl rCtrl lAlt and rAlt keys, but now I've found a small bug. These keys work when mapped to some controls (Accelerator, steer left, steer right), but not for others (Coin A/B, Gear toggle)). Out of interest, what controls are you trying to map to these keys?

[LEM]

Hi all!

I'm trying redefine the keys so I can use it on my arcade cabinet, but I can't find a way to assign the left ctrl and alt keys.
Is that possible somehow?

Thanks.

Hi! I'm sorry, it isn't possible with the current version. If using these keys are a must, maybe AutoHotKey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoHotkey can help? (Although I haven't tried it with Monaco GP but can't see why it wouldn't work).

...I've actually just recompiled the game so that I can choose lCtrl rCtrl lAlt and rAlt keys, but now I've found a small bug. These keys work when mapped to some controls (Accelerator, steer left, steer right), but not for others (Coin A/B, Gear toggle)). Out of interest, what controls are you trying to map to these keys?

Thanks for your reply. I have a JPAC on my arcade which uses left ctrl and alt for Player 1 buttons. In my case I was trying to map them to acel and gear box.
I ended up using Player 2 joystick and buttons that are mapped to normal keys so I can play it without any issues.

So since it's working just by using the Player 2 controls and you are running into some issues, it should be ok.
Thanks though. I really appreciate that you took the time to look at this!

[geecab]

Thanks for your reply. I have a JPAC on my arcade which uses left ctrl and alt for Player 1 buttons. In my case I was trying to map them to acel and gear box.
I ended up using Player 2 joystick and buttons that are mapped to normal keys so I can play it without any issues.

So since it's working just by using the Player 2 controls and you are running into some issues, it should be ok.
Thanks though. I really appreciate that you took the time to look at this!

Cool, no worries! I think it might be a bug in the Allegro library actually so I've wrote a post on their forum about it. Lets see what they say, would be nice to have this working though.

[LEM]

Thanks for your reply. I have a JPAC on my arcade which uses left ctrl and alt for Player 1 buttons. In my case I was trying to map them to acel and gear box.
I ended up using Player 2 joystick and buttons that are mapped to normal keys so I can play it without any issues.

So since it's working just by using the Player 2 controls and you are running into some issues, it should be ok.
Thanks though. I really appreciate that you took the time to look at this!

Cool, no worries! I think it might be a bug in the Allegro library actually so I've wrote a post on their forum about it. Lets see what they say, would be nice to have this working though.

Thanks a lot!! I really appreciate it.

[Erpa]

Greetings everyone!

First of all, congratulations for the great work done, I would like to know if it is possible to configure it for 2 monitors, I tried to drag the artwork and the leds to the second monitor and I couldn't, is there a way to do this?