GroovyArcade live-CD 2022 (collaborative effort)

[Giddygoon]

Hi Substring, I am not trying to play two monitors at the same time.

I am just using the LCD screen for set up  i.e bios set to UEFI USB for full install but when it auto checks the video cards it can't find the VGA for the Sega Blast city CRT but it does find the HMDI for the LCD.

It did work for ATI 5450 card but that gave me the ATI freeze bug

Now I can't get past the auto detect stage also I bought two of these cards MD ASUS Radeon R7 240 Graphics Card 2GB DDR5 PCI-E VGA HDMI DVI - Low Profile  and Its the same result...

is there a way you can manually set the video outputs ie VGA only

[Substring]

At the part where the computer speaks, informing you of what it is doing, it will force analog outputs to ON if the OS doesn't report any connected screen to it

[hearttinker]

Hi Substring.
I have tested GA2021.8 iso on one of my systems, which composed with i3-9100F & Radeon HD 7750.
There were frequent soft or hard freezing when groovymame or retroarch playing with default frontend atractmode, but when I tested groovymame and retroarch using commandline without attractmode, both of them well worked. Especially Sonic 2 with retroarch shows really nice progressive-interlace mode change.

Radeon HD 7750 is one of GCN1 cards. I have seen your comment in other thread that a patch is applied for GCN1&2 from previous your GA iso. I think amdgpu driver might be applied for this HD 7750. is it right? I have other cards like Radeon r5 240 & HD 8490 & HD 5450. Is there any better alternative?

Anyway, this is not main problem. I'll try with other alternative frontend like advancemenu plus. I think advmenup is better for mame roms because of fast 2D rom navigation and easy clone roms selection.


Main question is below.
When I tested retroarch using GASetup installation, there was no core for FC-FX.
Moreover, I wanna use Mednafen core for Sega Saturn.

There are two (or more) options.
1. Use pacman, main package manager of Arch linux.
2. Retroarch internal core download system, hidden option.

I'll follow your recommendation.

Additionally, how can I turn off frequency change popup message during Retroarch playing?

[Substring]

Hi Substring.
I have tested GA2021.8 iso on one of my systems, which composed with i3-9100F & Radeon HD 7750.
There were frequent soft or hard freezing when groovymame or retroarch playing with default frontend atractmode, but when I tested groovymame and retroarch using commandline without attractmode, both of them well worked. Especially Sonic 2 with retroarch shows really nice progressive-interlace mode change.

Sonic2 is one of the best roms to test ingame modeswitching, as it genuinely switches to interlaced on 2 players games (if you enable the right option)
Can you give more details on those "soft and hard freezing" ? I don't see what you mean.

Radeon HD 7750 is one of GCN1 cards. I have seen your comment in other thread that a patch is applied for GCN1&2 from previous your GA iso. I think amdgpu driver might be applied for this HD 7750. is it right? I have other cards like Radeon r5 240 & HD 8490 & HD 5450. Is there any better alternative?

The patch is for some specific Vega chips. I can't recall any other GPU patch. There are a number of ways to list which driver you're using, the easiest being "lspci -k" then find the display adapter. You'll have 2 lines regarding the kernel : the possible drivers, and the current drivers. Some cards are handled in both amdgpu and radeon drivers.

Anyway, this is not main problem. I'll try with other alternative frontend like advancemenu plus. I think advmenup is better for mame roms because of fast 2D rom navigation and easy clone roms selection.

You can install pegasus if you want a modern FE, retroFE is also available. I find the others too ... ugly ... And I don't ship advmenuplus anymore with GA.

Main question is below.
When I tested retroarch using GASetup installation, there was no core for FC-FX.
Moreover, I wanna use Mednafen core for Sega Saturn.

There are two (or more) options.
1. Use pacman, main package manager of Arch linux.
2. Retroarch internal core download system, hidden option.

I'll follow your recommendation.

Additionally, how can I turn off frequency change popup message during Retroarch playing?

I don't have GA at hand right now but you can't select a core through gasetup if the system emulated has a simple core available. If there is a single core than can emulate a system, then it should be automagically set. If not, there is a bug I need to dig

Now, for updating cores it rather depends on your knowledge of RA, hence the normal/advanced mode when configuring RA :
  - the normal mode simply uses the libretro group from Arch, so it has a limited number of cores, and doesn't allow updating them from the RA GUI
  - the advanced mode leaves full control to the user, and enables the core downloader from the RA GUI. That's for people who have a good knowledge of RA. When you set the advanced mode from gasetup, GA downloads ALL available cores, sets default for single core systems. For systems that have several possible cores, there is a new menu entry when in advanced mode. Maybe that's what you need to use the mednafen core for Saturn ?
  - for the refresh rate change : it's somewhere in the RA notifications parameters. Some people asked me to remove this but ... Let's say that my philosophy is to ship ba bare emulator configuration with just what it takes to have CRT enabled, I leave the full configuration fun to users. GA cares about having a CRT working with any emulator, not to preconfigure too much for rookies.

[contemplator]

Little tip for everyone experiencing Attract mode freeze bug - on my old GA2019 setup I had the same problem occasionally and I "unfreezed" it just by switching linux consoles Ctrl-Alt-F2, then back to Ctrl-Alt-F1.

No need to reboot the machine etc. You can of course manage the processes from the 2nd console.. Anyway, the bug seems to be gone (at least in my case) in GA 2021.08.

[hearttinker]

Hi Substring.
I have tested GA2021.8 iso on one of my systems, which composed with i3-9100F & Radeon HD 7750.
There were frequent soft or hard freezing when groovymame or retroarch playing with default frontend atractmode, but when I tested groovymame and retroarch using commandline without attractmode, both of them well worked. Especially Sonic 2 with retroarch shows really nice progressive-interlace mode change.

Sonic2 is one of the best roms to test ingame modeswitching, as it genuinely switches to interlaced on 2 players games (if you enable the right option)
Can you give more details on those "soft and hard freezing" ? I don't see what you mean.

Sorry to late response.
Currently, most of freezings are disappeared after hardware cleaning and updates.
I think some of hard freezings (no response of any key input and need to force 4 sec of powder botton push to powerdown then reboot) are due to a kind of hardware problem previously hidden.
One remained freezing type is below.
After escaping from some groovymame games like Tokimeki Memorial Taisen Puzzle-Dama Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (bootleg version), no screen & key response.
At this situation, pushing power button shows safe powerdown sequence.

Radeon HD 7750 is one of GCN1 cards. I have seen your comment in other thread that a patch is applied for GCN1&2 from previous your GA iso. I think amdgpu driver might be applied for this HD 7750. is it right? I have other cards like Radeon r5 240 & HD 8490 & HD 5450. Is there any better alternative?

The patch is for some specific Vega chips. I can't recall any other GPU patch. There are a number of ways to list which driver you're using, the easiest being "lspci -k" then find the display adapter. You'll have 2 lines regarding the kernel : the possible drivers, and the current drivers. Some cards are handled in both amdgpu and radeon drivers.

Drivers are easily checked following your comment.
HD 7750 worked with radeon driver, not amdgpu driver.
Currently, I'm using amdgpu driver with some configuration changes but it seems unstable for HD 7750 in some groovymame games.
I'll test with RX 460.

Anyway, this is not main problem. I'll try with other alternative frontend like advancemenu plus. I think advmenup is better for mame roms because of fast 2D rom navigation and easy clone roms selection.

You can install pegasus if you want a modern FE, retroFE is also available. I find the others too ... ugly ... And I don't ship advmenuplus anymore with GA.

I saw some sentenses about pegasus and retroFE in a shell script file so I'll wait their including in next (or next next...) GA version.
I installed advmenup in GA2021.8 and used alternately with AtractMenu.
After a few days testing, I agreed with your opinion about advmenup that no need to include GA further because it is somewhat old and it doesn't fit current GA system well.

Main question is below.
When I tested retroarch using GASetup installation, there was no core for FC-FX.
Moreover, I wanna use Mednafen core for Sega Saturn.

There are two (or more) options.
1. Use pacman, main package manager of Arch linux.
2. Retroarch internal core download system, hidden option.

I'll follow your recommendation.

Additionally, how can I turn off frequency change popup message during Retroarch playing?

I don't have GA at hand right now but you can't select a core through gasetup if the system emulated has a simple core available. If there is a single core than can emulate a system, then it should be automagically set. If not, there is a bug I need to dig

Now, for updating cores it rather depends on your knowledge of RA, hence the normal/advanced mode when configuring RA :
  - the normal mode simply uses the libretro group from Arch, so it has a limited number of cores, and doesn't allow updating them from the RA GUI
  - the advanced mode leaves full control to the user, and enables the core downloader from the RA GUI. That's for people who have a good knowledge of RA. When you set the advanced mode from gasetup, GA downloads ALL available cores, sets default for single core systems. For systems that have several possible cores, there is a new menu entry when in advanced mode. Maybe that's what you need to use the mednafen core for Saturn ?
  - for the refresh rate change : it's somewhere in the RA notifications parameters. Some people asked me to remove this but ... Let's say that my philosophy is to ship ba bare emulator configuration with just what it takes to have CRT enabled, I leave the full configuration fun to users. GA cares about having a CRT working with any emulator, not to preconfigure too much for rookies.

With advanced mode, everything is very easily done.
PC-FX was opened with Mednafen PC-FX (Bettle PC-FX).
The mednafen core for Saturn (Beetle Saturn) shows great perfomance.
When i checked RA configuration options for notifications, it seems really easy so no need to preconfiguration also.

[psakhis]

With advanced mode, everything is very easily done.
PC-FX was opened with Mednafen PC-FX (Bettle PC-FX).
The mednafen core for Saturn (Beetle Saturn) shows great perfomance.
When i checked RA configuration options for notifications, it seems really easy so no need to preconfiguration also.

For PCEngine, PC-FX, PSX and Saturn, your bet is Mednafen every day.

[hearttinker]

Hi Substring.

I tried to center the screen of frontends and lxde but failed.
In Ves's old GA 2020.4, I modified modline in xorg.conf file, but your GA 2021.8 use different way.

I checked some files in iso.
Swichres seems to make modline for frontends and lxde also but I cannot fully understand.
Crt_range 0 in swichres.conf (linked in home folder), mame.ini, and swichres.ini (in /etc, related to Retroarch) was filled with custom values then all games are centered but frontends are not.

Let me know if there was helpful previous comment then I'll follow it.

[hearttinker]

With advanced mode, everything is very easily done.
PC-FX was opened with Mednafen PC-FX (Bettle PC-FX).
The mednafen core for Saturn (Beetle Saturn) shows great perfomance.
When i checked RA configuration options for notifications, it seems really easy so no need to preconfiguration also.

For PCEngine, PC-FX, PSX and Saturn, your bet is Mednafen every day.

Simply, I tested three cores for Sega Saturn with Galaxy Fraulein Yuna REMIX.
Yabause and Kronos shows poorly in opening movie but mednafen based Beetle Saturn shows good quality.
And no other choice for PC-FX.

For PCEngine, situation is somewhat different because I use MiSTer FPGA also...

[Substring]

Quite much to reply to ... I may miss some questions, just ask again!

GA freezing after some roms: known problem, caused by SDL2 + Xorg. As of today, 2 possible solution : increase th eminimum dotclock (6.0 should be enough), or rollback SDL2 to 2.0.14 (n which case you'll miss next updates, and as I'm starting to patch SDL2 for later purpose, I don't recommend that solution anymore). I can help you on how to set this up.

Frontends: despite I but all my hopes on PegasusFE, I just hate its roms indexing system, really. So I don't plan yet to make things "easier", even more when the FE is still alpha afte ryears of development. So yes, there are a few lines here and there to be ready for a different FE than AM, but I'm not adding anything more yet to ease life.

Screen centering: with all respect to VeS work, I just totally disagree with how he did things, even if it means less "flexibility" for the user. In other words: the days where you needed ot edit Xorg config files are way over for ages, and I don't want to add myself anymore burden with maintaining some code to play with X configuration files. No way. So it works as it should work : X gets the modelines from the kernel. And there is no other choice as to write these modelines in the stone, no way to patch them. A possible solutio is to write your own ocrt_range ad then ask switchres to generate the approriate EDID + install it in the initramfs and configure the kernel to use it.

RX460 + amdgpu: no one tried yet, can't tell how it will behave. Most chances that interlaced resolutions will be refused by the driver, not even talking about the fact the video card probably has no analog connector (VGA, DVI-I)

[hearttinker]

Quite much to reply to ... I may miss some questions, just ask again!

GA freezing after some roms: known problem, caused by SDL2 + Xorg. As of today, 2 possible solution : increase th eminimum dotclock (6.0 should be enough), or rollback SDL2 to 2.0.14 (n which case you'll miss next updates, and as I'm starting to patch SDL2 for later purpose, I don't recommend that solution anymore). I can help you on how to set this up.

I will try to make individual ini setup file of mame with minimun dotclock option.

Frontends: despite I but all my hopes on PegasusFE, I just hate its roms indexing system, really. So I don't plan yet to make things "easier", even more when the FE is still alpha afte ryears of development. So yes, there are a few lines here and there to be ready for a different FE than AM, but I'm not adding anything more yet to ease life.

Most of people use default frontend so it is no problem. Someone who wanna use other frontend should try himself or will be better to call to other friend.

Screen centering: with all respect to VeS work, I just totally disagree with how he did things, even if it means less "flexibility" for the user. In other words: the days where you needed ot edit Xorg config files are way over for ages, and I don't want to add myself anymore burden with maintaining some code to play with X configuration files. No way. So it works as it should work : X gets the modelines from the kernel. And there is no other choice as to write these modelines in the stone, no way to patch them. A possible solutio is to write your own ocrt_range ad then ask switchres to generate the approriate EDID + install it in the initramfs and configure the kernel to use it.

Last weekend I tried screen centering based on your comment.
I followed arch wiki document of https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/kernel_mode_setting
EDID is much more elegant way than before. Easily done with switchres, intramfs, and kernel command line. Very satisfied because console and gasetup screen are also centered.

RX460 + amdgpu: no one tried yet, can't tell how it will behave. Most chances that interlaced resolutions will be refused by the driver, not even talking about the fact the video card probably has no analog connector (VGA, DVI-I)

Interlace resolution... bad new. I already ordered an active adaptor of HDMI to VGA but it seems useless now for GA. Currently I'm finding used R7 260X or 360.
But as time goes by, current HD 7750 seems not bad.

[Jimbo]

I've just installed the latest GA 2021.08, and having issues again with video snaps in attractmode.

I'm using the emumovies mame HQ videos, which I've had running on another virtually identical groovyarcade install just fine.

The videosnaps take almost 10 seconds to load before they play, and AM freezes until they're loaded.
Once loaded they play fine until they reach the end where they stop instead of looping.
Each time I change a game to a new one in the list, this happens.

I've got a fast Ryzen 3600 CPU, more than enough RAM, and a Radeon HD6450 card.

It's basically the exact same setup I'm running in my other cab with I believe 2020.06 version of GA.  Videos from same source.  Same AM theme except I am using the plugin to rotate the screen as this is for a vertically mounted monitor.

I am also getting an issue where I exit a game from mame, and I just get a black screen, it doesn't take me back to AM's gamelist.

Any ideas?

Thanks

UPDATE:   The video issue seems to be random... some times I boot GA and it's fine, videos loading immediately (still not looping though), and others it takes up to 10 seconds to load each video.    Also, in "General" settings of AM, I only have to choose from either blank or "software" as the video decoder.  Neither makes a difference.  The videos are the 640x480 mp4's from emumovies.

UPDATE 2:   After some more testing, I think the randomness of the video issue happening may be something to do with the timing of attractmode loading.  On a few occasions I have booted up into attractmode where the issue happens, then I quit attractmode into gasetup, then instantly run the frontend again from gasetup, and the issue is gone, videos load fine (however they still don't loop!).

UPDATE 3:   The rotationcontrol plugin has nothing to do with it, it still does this regardless of using this plugin.

[Substring]

First of all : update your system (can be done from the text menu). This will fix the freeze on mame exit for certain games.

For AM freezing, read https://gitlab.com/groovyarcade/support/-/wikis/4-Issues-and-Troubleshooting/4.2-Known-Issues#attract-mode-frontend-freezes + the item before the one linked (which requires you to compile on your own)

[Jimbo]

Thanks mate, I fixed it in the end by choosing the correct sound card.

For convenience (I thought!) I am using a J-PAC into a supergun to set this up before I put it in my cab.  I didn't get time to solder the pc stereo to mono cable for jamma so I was testing without sound.  Turns out the GA install defaulted it to HDA-ATI, and this seems to be what was causing all the pausing, non-looping videos, and crashing in AM.  After changing it to HD-Audio-Generic, it worked perfectly.

Thanks again.

[MK3FANATIC]

I'm trying to use an xbox one control in groovyarcade and I'm not getting it, in retroarch I get the following message: "microsoft xbox one S pad (1118/746) not configured", the control vibrates, but it is not possible to configure the buttons and neither even the directional pad works. Are there any settings or drivers I need to install to make it work?

[Substring]

With you keyboard, navigate through the RA menus to download the joypad configurations. It should be in the online updater. If that menu is not available, you should switch to Advanced mode in retroarch setup in gasetup

[MK3FANATIC]

I updated the control and now I get the message "microsoft xbox one S pad configured in port #1". But the control still doesn't work. I noticed something, the central control light is not on. And connecting this same control, on the same PC and on the same USB port, but using another hd with windows 10 the control light is on and it works normally. Would there be any other settings on the system that I could try?

[Substring]

Sounds like the device is technically recognised, but no inputs come. You should try using evtest to check if Linux does register the controls or not. If you need any help, join the GA discord and ping me

[Tithis]

Just can't win with this machine.

So I had some video issues with Win7 + Attractmode + Groovymame I posted about here http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,166012.0.html

So i switched to GroovyArcade (the old release before yours) and everyone worked 100% video and gameplay wise, only issue was attract mode would freeze in videos, threads here said it was some issue with the interlaced modes and solution was to force attract mode to a progressive mode or wait for a fix in the future.



So finally decided today to install your latest version and while my attract mode issue is  finally fixed, I'm now having video issues :/ Game that works fine is Pacman, one that isn't working is Burger Time.

Screen turns into a total mess and with very thin looking scanlines and a squashed horizontal size. Audio is super sped up and the logs say its running at over 10x normal speed.

edit: After messing with switchres I saw when I told it to make a 240 x 240 @ 57hz mode it switched to 1920 x 240 @ 57. I went into the mame.ini  file and added a minimum dotclock of 25, just cause I've seen that used for cards that need super resolutions and now the game is working fine and generating 1920 x 240 when starting burgertime.

[Substring]

Need a little more information about your hardware

[Tithis]

Need a little more information about your hardware

The graphics card is a Sapphire Radeon HD 7770

Although like I said the issue is seemingly fixed by putting in a minimum dotclock in mame.ini.

[Substring]

you may try to lower the dotclock to 8.0, some GPUs do have a hardware limit, no need to go to 25.0 to solve the issue

[Tithis]

That was just my starting point, I ended up lowering 7 I think. Figured if its an issue for 240 wide games but not 256 wide games than the minimum still had to be fairly low.

[Substring]

New 2022.01 ISO out !

I can't say there are THAT big changes. A few here and there of course, but there is only 1 thing to remember : KMS modeswitching is available for GroovyMAME and Retroarch. And that, dear fellows, was a challenging move !

Calamity has already talked about KMS modeswitching on the GM topic. RA can also modeswitch on KMS but it's not as efficient sadly. The reason is that RA internals are not really suited for modeswithing, and having a better optimized KMS modeswithing would require much work for all video backends (gl, glcore, vulkan etc ...). But at least it's possible !

[makya]

Looks great
Thanks a lot!

[b4nd1t0]

great work, thanks Substring 

[cornerstone]

Have there been any options to allow mouse control in mame with Groovyarcade? I’ve got an older version and tried to find a spot to configure mame to allow for the USB spinner. No luck. It should be able to be accessed in mame.ini, but I know nothing about Linux.

[Substring]

It's just confiuring the mame.ini. You can edit it through network shares

[toastboy]

I know groovyarcade isn't designed for this, but I've managed to get it working on an HP ProBook 4720S laptop's VGA output.

The trick was to perform the livecd tests, select LVDS as display, then install to hard disk as normal.
Once installed, reboot into groovyarcade, exit to shell or desktop and change /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg kernel arguments.
video=LVDS-1:640x480iS
to
video=VGA-1:640x480iS

This worked perfectly on a 14"CRT via scart for testing. The LCD shows low-res and only part of the game's playfield, but that's OK, it's CRT output we care about.

BUT - When connected to a Hantarex Polo2 arcade CRT, there was no picture on the CRT and the LCD reverted to native res.
To fix this I modified the video parameter like this :-
video=VGA-1:640x480ieS
To force the VGA port to be enabled when no monitor is detected.

Now it works, and I can replace the old windows XP PC guts of my cab with a small quiet laptop that has 15khz support. 

I've since tried this on an older Dell XPS too, and it works exactly the same.

Groovyarcade really is excellent, thanks so much to the guys working on it.

[Substring]

Great experience! Glad you like it

[liva123]

Hello. Substring.
This is my first visit to this forum.
My system is Asrock Deskmini x300+2400g+pvm-14m2.
I installed GroovyArcade 2022.01 version, but I have a problem.
In Attractmode UI & LXDE desktop, the screen is split into two.
However, in-game and gasetup screens are displayed normally.
What's the problem?
How can I fix this?

[Substring]

Hi,

What do you mean with "split in 2" ?

[liva123]

Hello.
I can see the same screen on the left and right.

[donluca]

I think he's at 640x480 (31khz) when on Desktop, that's why he's seeing the image split and repeated side by side.

[Substring]

Hello.
I can see the same screen on the left and right.

Can you go to gasetup, then run menu 4 "Troubleshoot" ans send me the resulting link by PM ? You must be connected to internet to do that. I suspect you've missed when installing.

[liva123]

I'm on a business trip, but I'll do it as soon as I get back. thank you.

[Substring]

You may need to plug a LCD though

[Calamity]

The Deskmini needs to force 15 kHz edid in boot line, otherwise you get a default 31 kHz mode that dumb soft will pick.

[liva123]

Hello Substring.
I sent PM. Thank you.

[liva123]

Hello Calamity. Thank you for your reply.
How can I force 15khz edid in boot line?
Please let me know or I would appreciate if you could let me know a post that I can refer to.
Thank you.