GroovyArcade live-CD 2022 (collaborative effort)

[Sonny_Jim_Pin]

Yep that works great and a lot easier than recoding the progress bar so it goes up instead of sideways   Thanks.

[Sonny_Jim_Pin]

Ok so I've got a very strange problem and I'm pretty sure it's EFI / secure boot related.  I would just turn it off but apparently you can't turn off EFI on a Veriton X4620G.  I think what's happened is this:

Installed GA when 1 HDD was in the system
Added a 2nd drive to copy some ROMs across, then I think syslinux reinstalled/upgraded when the system had 2 drives attached.
Now it'll only boot if both drives are attached, if I remove the ROM drive it fails to boot, I get the GA progress bar but it seems to be trying to fsck the missing ROM drive and gives up booting when it can't find it.

Now I'm waiting for an SSD to turn up so I'll probably just copy my config off and reinstall GA again, but I'm wondering if there's some way I can reinstall/reconfigure syslinux so it'll boot with just the one drive attached.  Any ideas?

[Substring]

This scenario is hard to believe nor explain

[Sonny_Jim_Pin]

I think what's happened is that I installed GA with two HDDs attached to the system, when I remove one Groovyarcade fails to boot as it tries to fsck the missing disk.  The disk isn't in /etc/fstab, there must be another table syslinux uses.

I gave up trying to figure out what was going on and decided to just wait for the new drive to turn up.

[Substring]

It's just the root= parameter, it uses the drive GUID

[Sonny_Jim_Pin]

I've had a bit more time to investigate my booting issue and it seems to be overzealous EFI security on the particular motherboard I have.  I can boot a USB key and install GA just fine.  For some reason, as soon as my motherboard boots something else other than the drive that GA was installed to, it'll refuse to boot GA again.  I'm guessing it's some security feature to stop office people booting their own USB keys at work.

Right now I'm trying to figure out a way to make vertical games look good on a vertical 15kHz 9:16 monitor.  Setting 'aspect 16:9' in mame.ini seems to do the trick, as it'll display most games at the proper 3:4 resolution but with black bars at the top and bottom.  I am currently trying to create a layout file that will use the unused space (all 100 or so pixels of it), but I'm having a few difficulties with resolution.

So I boot up a game, lets say Time Pilot and go to machine information:



If I'm reading that right, it says the native res of Time Pilot is 224x256 and the current videomode is 224x344.  So I generate a 224x344 PNG to use as a bezel and the following layout file:

Code: [Select]

<!-- timeplt.lay -->
<mamelayout version="2">
  <element name="bezel">
    <image file="timeplt.png" />
  </element>
  <view name="Bezel Artwork">
    <bezel element="bezel">
      <bounds left="0" top="0" right="224" bottom="344" />
    </bezel>
    <screen index="0">
      <bounds left="0" top="0" right="224" bottom="256" />
    </screen>
  </view>
</mamelayout>

But when I load up MAME with the resulting files it decides to change the resolution from 224x344 to 244x464 and adds in another set of black bars:



My hunch is that the aspect 16:9 in mame.ini is forcing the black bars each time, but I'm not really sure how to fix it/make it work.

EDIT:  Yep, needed to set 'aspect 4:3' on the games I want to use bezel artwork with.

[edomatic]

Hi guys,

How does one adjust for overscan in games on groovyarcade 2022?

i dont want to fiddle with the Tv setup as its used for consoles too, but something i noticed is mame now have in video options something like zoom to screen area but its greyed out

[Substring]

Vertical overscan ? you can't.
Horizontal overscan -> https://gitlab.com/groovyarcade/support/-/wikis/4-Issues-and-Troubleshooting/4.7-Image-Centering

[edomatic]

thanks Substring after reading i understand that:

we cannot so the vertical ( unless hardware adjust with pots in TV or service menu of tv or video slider option in mame but causing artifacts in game)
It seems we can do horizontal centering ( also possible in mame video sliders without causing artifacts), but not horizontal width-adjustements of the screen without creating game artifacts  using those same video sliders in mame
 
The issue i always have is that we have games like awesome games like r-type that have a resolution as such that we end up with standard generic_15 with a huge overscan in comparison to other games

My current workaround for this issue is to adjust my overscan for a game like r-type (as it is often the biggest overscan of all games as for me at least) ,after that change, most arcade games that i play (15khz) will have no overscan after this change, but the game-screen will not fill the entire screen

Is there another way to do this properly, how are you guys dealing with this on your setups ? Do you have another aproach to have all games full screen with no overscan?

[Calamity]

Is there another way to do this properly, how are you guys dealing with this on your setups ? Do you have another aproach to have all games full screen with no overscan?

No. You need to adjust the hardware for correct vertical size.

[edomatic]

Hi Calamity,

thanks

So that means all games cannot run fullscreen, as you can only adjust vertical in hardware to match a certain resolution ( like R-type since big overscan there), but then the other games have black borders up and down the screen as their resolution is "smaller" as opposed to R-type's res.
It would make sense i guess, as in the arcades you never had all games on one monitor either

I just wanted to check how other are dealing with this when you do want to play f.i. all horizontal arcade games on one CRT TV.

The way i do it now, is i adjust both vertical and horizontal width in TV menu for playing games in groovymame, but i have to switch those values back to original when i play my original consoles games (saturn,snes,pc engine..)

[Substring]

You're using a TV, not an arcade monitor. Feel the limits of such a setup ... I'm not saying this in a punishing way, just that playing on a TV has its limitations regarding screen positionning, screen centering and size.

[edomatic]

Hi Substring,

Question:
If i change my graphics card in groovyarcade 2022 from hd5450 to an R9 270x, do i need to re-install for this change in hardware to take effect?

PS: I do own an astro city as well, and i have the same issue of overscan there, meaning i had to scale for one of the biggest overscan game ( R-type) to make all the games fit the screen more or less. That also means R-type is the only full screen game, the rest has some black bars top and bottom. You could also choose the opposite approach and scale overscan for some resolution "in between" but in the end you never get all horizontal games full screen due to this unless you manually change the vertical and horizontal pots on your arcade screen (like i can do but dont do on my astro) and like i do in geometry-menu on my TV.

I do realize that this seems to be the trade-off we got to live with, i was just wondering how the rest of us are handling this

Big eternal kudos to you and all who contribute to this! this distro really is a gamechanger!


 

[Substring]

Hi Substring,

Question:
If i change my graphics card in groovyarcade 2022 from hd5450 to an R9 270x, do i need to re-install for this change in hardware to take effect?

PS: I do own an astro city as well, and i have the same issue of overscan there, meaning i had to scale for one of the biggest overscan game ( R-type) to make all the games fit the screen more or less. That also means R-type is the only full screen game, the rest has some black bars top and bottom. You could also choose the opposite approach and scale overscan for some resolution "in between" but in the end you never get all horizontal games full screen due to this unless you manually change the vertical and horizontal pots on your arcade screen (like i can do but dont do on my astro) and like i do in geometry-menu on my TV.

I do realize that this seems to be the trade-off we got to live with, i was just wondering how the rest of us are handling this

Big eternal kudos to you and all who contribute to this! this distro really is a gamechanger!

no need to reinstall, but you may have to edit the kernel command line to fix the connector name

[edomatic]

Ok thanks, i will give that a try hoping i don’t have to go there 😉

[Sonny_Jim_Pin]

Would it be possible for the vertical setup option in gasetup to include the following line in .xinitrc (maybe another place might be more appropriate):

Code: [Select]

xrandr -o right

It means that the screen is orientated properly when the desktop environment is run.

EDIT:  Oops, just realised that this rotates attract mode as well, will have to find somewhere that gets run when the window manager starts
EDIT2:  Like in ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart

Code: [Select]

@lxpanel --profile LXDE
@pcmanfm --desktop --profile LXDE
@xscreensaver -no-splash
xrandr -o right


[Substring]

what do you need that line for ?

[Sonny_Jim_Pin]

Rotates the desktop environment (ie LXDE) so it's the right way round on a vertical monitor.  Sorry, probably forgot to make that part clear.

[Substring]

Doesn't adding it to .xinitrc cause conflict with the AM/GM rotation ?

[Sonny_Jim_Pin]

Exactly, which is why I updated my post to add it to ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart

[Silverwind]

Thanks for GroovyArcade, guys! 

Rejuvenated my cabinet from old hardware on windows xp.

Betson 27" CRT
radeon HD 4890
Ryzen 5600
GroovyArcade install!

[Substring]

 

[Toonces]

Thanks for the great updates! I recently decided to upgrade my Namco Cyberlead setup from a P4 2.4Ghz w/AGP ArcadeVGA & JPAC running Windows XP/GameEx to a more modern system. I've been toying with the idea of GroovyMAME and GroovyArcade for a while and finally bit the bullet and grabbed a cheap IBM SFF p82 i5-3570 system with a Radeon R7 240 low profile card. I initially installed the 2022.01 ISO and went through setup just fine and I selected the Nano MS9 monitor to match the monitor I have. On reboot, it would always go to 25K or something other than 15Khz as the screen was just a mess and not doubled like it does with a 31Khz signal. I tried the pre-release ISO next and wasn't able to select anything other than generic 15Khz and it's perfect! In reflection, I assume the problem is that I selected the actual monitor I have and the system tried to use the maximum resolution and maybe the JPac's protection caused it to not sync? Not really sure but it works great with the Generic 15Khz profile and I am able to update my Cyberlead!

When I first built the Cyberlead, it took me 6+ months to get everything right. I added LED buttons (Original CP was already hacked for american buttons when I got it), GGG LED-WIZ and wired my cabinet to the ATX power supply so the entire cabinet could be turned on and shut down from a single button on the rear of the cabinet. I haven't gotten the new setup 100% yet but it didn't even take the weekend to get up and running with the excellent pre-release GA ISO. I'm taking the time to do some deconversions and removing the LED buttons since I was able to find an original control panel and will be decasing the system and mounting it in place of the old P4 mobo on the sliding wood panel in the cabinet. I'm hoping I can have the startup and shutdown wired up correctly where the power button will cause a proper shutdown of the system. AM+ was easy to find a nice theme and instead of having 6000+ mame titles on this, I am just going for my favorites and hopefully get Daphne (or whatever is current LD emulator) for DL/Space Ace.

Thanks for making it easy! 

[Substring]

After 1.5 month of work, a new ISO has been released ! There a numerous changes that looks like drops in the sea, but among changes, worth noting :
- New logo ! This was a nice collaborative effort of a few members on the discord channel
- faster HDD installation
- Time to leave X11 behind a make KMS default. Emulators that can't work on KMS can still be launched in X11 through the AM
- Imroved the transition time between the boot splash and the frontend. On newer configurations, it's almost instant
- AttractMode is living its last bits of life, now AttractMode+ is the default frontend
- DCN2 GPU support for interlaced has been added

Enjoy !

[b4nd1t0]

Always a great work, thansk Substring for your time. 

[gnrulez]

Anyone know if this version of mame has the option to "enable composite sync". bc I have a sony pvm and I would need that option. Now I am using windows groovymame + crt emudriver on my pvm enabling that option.  thank you

[ronbin]

After 1.5 month of work, a new ISO has been released ! There a numerous changes that looks like drops in the sea, but among changes, worth noting :
- New logo ! This was a nice collaborative effort of a few members on the discord channel
- faster HDD installation
- Time to leave X11 behind a make KMS default. Emulators that can't work on KMS can still be launched in X11 through the AM
- Imroved the transition time between the boot splash and the frontend. On newer configurations, it's almost instant
- AttractMode is living its last bits of life, now AttractMode+ is the default frontend
- DCN2 GPU support for interlaced has been added

Enjoy !

That's GREAT news!
I'm downloading the iso right now. Thank you!

[Substring]

Anyone know if this version of mame has the option to "enable composite sync". bc I have a sony pvm and I would need that option. Now I am using windows groovymame + crt emudriver on my pvm enabling that option.  thank you

We've experimented CSYNC on Linux with some kernel patching. It just doesn't work, and probably never will. You must use a hardware sync combiner if you go Linux sadly.

[insx]

Hi

Any ideas about these errors? I have an internet connection, tested by successfully pinging amazon.com in the shell.

Any attempts to update result in "Couldn't update the package database. Aborting."
System Settings, Front-End/Window Manager > "Couldn't update the pacman database, aborting"

Thanks in advance.

[Substring]

Can you give a full output of what sudo pacman -Syu returns ?

[insx]

Can you give a full output of what sudo pacman -Syu returns ?

To cut a long error message short, "certificate is not yet valid", which made me realise that my computer clock is wrong.

[insx]

After running the GroovyArcade specific update, my front end (attractplus) no longer runs. If I change the front end to GroovyMame it will run. Any idea what the update has broken?

Here's the output of my attract.log:


Attract-Mode Plus v2.6.2 (Build 0) (Linux, SFML 2.6.0 +FontConfig +7z +Curl)
avcodec 59.37.100 / avformat 59.27.100 / swscale 6.7.100 / avutil 57.28.100 / swresample 4.7.100

Config: /home/arcade/shared/frontends/attract/attract.cfg

*** Initializing display: 'MAME'
 - Loaded master romlist 'MAME' in 8 ms (24 entries kept, 0 discarded)
 - Constructed 2 filters in 0 ms (48 comparisons)
[ALSOFT] (EE) Could not query RTKit: No such file or directory (2)
[ALSOFT] (EE) Could not query RTKit: No such file or directory (2)
Sound file not found: sloop.mp3
Sound file not found: sstart.mp3
 - Loaded layout: /home/arcade/shared/frontends/attract/layouts/Basic/ (layout.nut)
Attract-Mode Plus v2.6.2 (Build 0) (Linux, SFML 2.6.0 +FontConfig +7z +Curl)
avcodec 59.37.100 / avformat 59.27.100 / swscale 6.7.100 / avutil 57.28.100 / swresample 4.7.100

Config: /home/arcade/shared/frontends/attract/attract.cfg

*** Initializing display: 'MAME'
 - Loaded master romlist 'MAME' in 0 ms (24 entries kept, 0 discarded)
 - Constructed 2 filters in 0 ms (48 comparisons)
[ALSOFT] (EE) Could not query RTKit: No such file or directory (2)
[ALSOFT] (EE) Could not query RTKit: No such file or directory (2)
Sound file not found: sloop.mp3
Sound file not found: sstart.mp3
 - Loaded layout: /home/arcade/shared/frontends/attract/layouts/Basic/ (layout.nut)
attractplus-kms: error while loading shared libraries: libavformat.so.60: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
attractplus-kms: error while loading shared libraries: libavformat.so.60: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
attractplus-kms: error while loading shared libraries: libavformat.so.60: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

[Substring]

looks like ffmpeg wasn't updated. Try updating again but FULL OS update. Specific updates are hardly worth

[insx]

Thanks, Substring.

If I upgrade my motherboard/processor, do I need to change anything or will it just sort itself out (going from AMD to Intel, graphics card will not change)?

[Substring]

should work with no change

[Deathblow81]

Hi All,

If I am starting out with a fresh ROM set, what number should I start with to then update to 256, keeping in mind this version of groovyarcade comes with 256.

Should I D/L 0.255 and then update to 256, or go back further?

Any help much appreciated, I've coming at this from all angles and literally wish to play 5 games on a naomi cab

Thank you for the effort that has gone into making this possible 

[PL1]

If I am starting out with a fresh ROM set, what number should I start with to then update to 256, keeping in mind this version of groovyarcade comes with 256.

Should I D/L 0.255 and then update to 256, or go back further?

Any help much appreciated, I've coming at this from all angles and literally wish to play 5 games on a naomi cab

If you can find a v0.256 ROMset, use that.

If not, try the nearest version that you can find.
- MAME will run fine just fine if the ROMs/BIOSes/device files for the five games you want to play haven't been redumped, renamed, or otherwise updated between the two versions.  The more games you want to play and further apart the versions are, the more likely something you need in the ROMset will have changed.
- If MAME doesn't run all of the games you want you'll need to find an incremental update (?) ROMset that has just the new files for each version of MAME.  For example, if you start with a v0.254 ROMset, you would copy over the new files for v0.255 then the new files for v0.256.
- The other approach is to look for the individual files that MAME complains about.  You can see what files have changed on http://adb.arcadeitalia.net.  For example, if you scroll down to the "Files" section of the Naomi BIOS entry, you'll see that these files haven't been updated between v0.250 and v0.257.  It also has the CRC value for the individual ROMset files so you can tell if you have the right version.   


Scott

[Deathblow81]

Awesome thank you Scott!!!

Has helped me finally understand how CLRmame etc works

(I did write a long winded response, which has disappeared)

Thanks again!

[spedinfargo]

Thank you for putting this note in here - I was installing to a computer that hadn't been turned on in a few years and the CMOS battery had died.  Once I got the date and time entered in the BIOS things started working much better all around...

Can you give a full output of what sudo pacman -Syu returns ?

To cut a long error message short, "certificate is not yet valid", which made me realise that my computer clock is wrong.

[Deathblow81]

Just wanted to say thank you to all involved!

Got everything working and its amazing 

Everything looks amazing and plays super well (apart from Soul calibur, bit slow/choppy)

Gonna throw an arcade party at some point with friends.

Again, thank you for the time and effort this has taken, I can't code for toffee!