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Author Topic: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)  (Read 15388 times)

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javeryh

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Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« on: October 18, 2021, 10:12:21 am »
OK this has been a long time coming with all the recent discussion around single board solutions for arcade cabinets - I think the Raspberry Pi 4 is a great option running the current version of MAME with Attract Mode.  NO RETROPIE.  The idea was to create an easy and cheap way to set up the guts of an arcade cabinet without messing with a PC or Windows, etc.  This would be for cabinets running "classic" games only as this solution only works for (most) games up to about the mid-90s.

Over the past few weeks I was able to set everything up - I'm not great with this stuff so it took me a bit to figure it all out.  All credit goes to user bbegin - he created the image HERE and has been providing tech support but I suspect not a lot of people check out the Raspberry Pi message board so I wanted to bring attention to it here.

Here is a quick video showing it in action:



Everything is working as expected.  Boots directly to front end/game list -> after selecting a game it flashes to a black screen -> play the game -> press 'exit' and it flashes to a black screen -> back to the front end.  Repeat.  It seems very stable.  I've had it running for days and I've done a power cycle at least 30 times so far.

It is a very clean set up and feels almost like a commercial product with the way it behaves. I like a no frills approach although I'm sure people will be able to push this even further with more tweaking or a different theme or whatever.  If you are looking for something simple give it a shot!

javeryh

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #1 on: October 18, 2021, 10:13:30 am »
The changes I made to the image to get it to behave like this are as follows:

1.  I added the one button safe shutdown/power on script:

Edited "/boot/config.txt" by adding these two lines to the file at the end:

Code: [Select]
#shutdown button
dtoverlay=gpio-shutdown

Now bridging GPIO3 and Ground (pins 5 and 6) will shut the pi off.  Doing it again will turn it back on. 

2.  I removed the "MAME" logos that appear on boot-up, shutdown and when launching a game by deleting the .png files in the "/home/pi/splash" folder.  You could customize this however you want with other images I suppose.

3.  I downloaded "SDarcadeMod_v3f" from the Attract Mode forums (made by our own FrizzleFried) and set it to run in vertical orientation.  Unzip the file and put the entire folder in the "/attract/layouts/" folder.  This is meant to make the menu look like the ArcadeSD card. 

The way the image works is that once you boot up it is either in "Service Mode" or "Arcade Mode".  The detailed instructions are in bbegin's thread.  Once you have it set up to boot in Arcade Mode, you can select the front end by typing "frontend attract" at the command prompt (using Putty or something to SSH in).  When you reboot, Attract Mode will launch but the screen will just say "MAME 0/1" in the bottom right corner.  This is because the default name for the Game List is "MAME" and the "0/1" means you have no games in this list.  So hit TAB and the Attract Mode menu will come up and you can play around with the settings, including populating the game list, scraping for artwork, etc.  This wasn't clear at first.

4.  When exiting a game back to the front end, there was an issue with the snaps not lining up.  This was an easy fix: You just have to set the ResFix-Plugin.  Start Attract Mode > press TAB key > Plug-Ins > ResFix > Enabled : Yes > Specific Emulators : your_Display_Name (or leave this blank for it to apply to all of them).

5.  I changed "mame.ini" so that the screen rotated 90 degrees as well ("ror 1") so all of the games run in portrait mode as well.  I also remapped the controls in both Attract Mode and MAME so everything behaved like I wanted it to.  That part will be custom for each user but note the image is set to automatically shut down when you "Exit" Attract Mode.  The default is the same exit button as MAME ("ESC") so I had to delete/remap that function in Attract Mode because a double press of the Exit button was shutting the whole thing off - not ideal!

I also added the following to mame.ini:

Code: [Select]
skip_gameinfo 1
skip_disclaimer 1
skip_validitychecks 1

This is because the image is running standard MAME so all of the warnings were popping up for about 1/2 the games I was trying to play.  This fixed most of the issues.  If someone knows a better way short of compiling my own version of MAME for the pi4 which I have no idea how to do then I'm all ears.

That's most of it... although I'm sure there were other small tweaks I'm forgetting.   
« Last Edit: October 21, 2021, 02:40:41 pm by javeryh »

Beretta

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #2 on: October 18, 2021, 01:12:53 pm »
Pi's have come a long ways and are much more energy efficient.

But I never understood beyond space and power restrictions why someone wouldn't just use a PC when you can dig them out of the trash that will do the job.

Can the pi4 handle Killer Instinct & Narc? Those are 2 of the more demanding games 2d I've found in mame.
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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #3 on: October 18, 2021, 01:49:47 pm »
I seem to always run into play-crushing lag when I run games on any OS based on one with an "L" starting it's name.  If I can notice it, it's not acceptable.

How does this Pi solution fare with regard to that aspect?

javeryh

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #4 on: October 18, 2021, 02:45:03 pm »
I seem to always run into play-crushing lag when I run games on any OS based on one with an "L" starting it's name.  If I can notice it, it's not acceptable.

How does this Pi solution fare with regard to that aspect?

I guess I'll let you know unless others have tried and want to comment.  I haven't noticed any lag but I have only had a keyboard hooked up so far.  Once I finish the cabs I'm working on I will be able to playtest more.

Ond

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #5 on: October 18, 2021, 04:17:38 pm »
Pi's have come a long ways and are much more energy efficient.

But I never understood beyond space and power restrictions why someone wouldn't just use a PC when you can dig them out of the trash that will do the job.

Can the pi4 handle Killer Instinct & Narc? Those are 2 of the more demanding games 2d I've found in mame.

There's quite a few MAME based games that probably won't play well on the pi 4.  javeryh has mentioned the platform is better suited to a subset of working games, but that's plenty. I regularly use old trash PCs for arcade builds but I'd happily use this solution as a preference because of the reasons already stated:

Cheap - compared to new PC options, fast to deploy- the image is ready to go, no bloat in the FE or OS, small - can be used nicely in Bartops for instance...to name a few.  It's early days, pi tech will only improve.  bbegin's work on a better alternative to RetroPie is a great start.

javeryh

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #6 on: October 18, 2021, 04:41:12 pm »
Pi's have come a long ways and are much more energy efficient.

But I never understood beyond space and power restrictions why someone wouldn't just use a PC when you can dig them out of the trash that will do the job.

Can the pi4 handle Killer Instinct & Narc? Those are 2 of the more demanding games 2d I've found in mame.

There's quite a few MAME based games that probably won't play well on the pi 4.  javeryh has mentioned the platform is better suited to a subset of working games, but that's plenty. I regularly use old trash PCs for arcade builds but I'd happily use this solution as a preference because of the reasons already stated:

Cheap - compared to new PC options, fast to deploy- the image is ready to go, no bloat in the FE or OS, small - can be used nicely in Bartops for instance...to name a few.  It's early days, pi tech will only improve.  bbegin's work on a better alternative to RetroPie is a great start.

Exactly.  This is meant for a "classic" cabinet approach until the pi gets more powerful.  I've tried about 50 games so far with no issues except Astro Blaster is unplayable, which was surprising to me.  There is synthesized speech in the game so maybe that is causing the slow down but it's a really old game so I expected it to run.  Everything else I've tried appears to be working great.  Here is my list:

Code: [Select]
Amidar
Anteater
Armored Car
Astro Invader
Bagman
Burger Time
Carnival
Cavelon
Circus Charlie
Crush Roller
Dig Dug
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong II
Donkey Kong 3
Donkey Kong, Jr.
Eyes
Frogger
Galaga
Galaga '88
Galaxian
Gaplus
Gorf
Guzzler
Gyruss
Jr. Pac-Man
Jumping Jack
Kicker
King & Balloon
Lasso
Ladybug
Lock-n-Chase
Lunar Rescue
Mappy
Monster Bash
Moon Cresta
Ms. Pac-Man
Mr. Do!
Mr. Do!'s Castle
Nibbler
Pac-Man
Pac & Pal
Pac-Man Plus
Pandora's Palace
Pengo
Phoenix
Pioneer Balloon
Pleiads
Pooyan
Qix
Satan's Hallow
Space Invaders
Super Pac-Man
The End
The Tower of Druaga
Van-Van Car
Zzyzzyxx

Plus:

Code: [Select]
Tapper
Atari Tetris
Mr. Do!'s Wild Ride

yeah, yeah they are horizontal but I can't go with out these...  :cheers:

Gilrock

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #7 on: October 18, 2021, 04:44:03 pm »
That's a nice setup for what your goals were but I still like the RetroPie solution as well.  I was easily able to setup several emulators the first day including getting Dragon's Lair running in Daphne.  It was making things look pretty that took some extra time.  I made my own custom loading videos so mine looks quite snazzy now.

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #8 on: October 18, 2021, 04:55:36 pm »
3ghz pentium 4 runs killer instinct full speed. dunno if a pi 4 can do that.?

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #9 on: October 18, 2021, 05:15:49 pm »
That's a nice setup for what your goals were but I still like the RetroPie solution as well.  I was easily able to setup several emulators the first day including getting Dragon's Lair running in Daphne.  It was making things look pretty that took some extra time.  I made my own custom loading videos so mine looks quite snazzy now.

yeah this isn't going to be for everyone.  I do not like Retropie at all for a bunch of reasons and was looking for a simple MAME-only solution with an easy to navigate GUI.  I don't like consoles, intro videos, game info, flyers, etc.  Whatever the opposite of snazzy is - that's me.  This image is dead simple - everything you see in the video is all you get.

I could never figure out how to remove the menus/settings layer and the version of MAME on Retropie is ancient.  So even if you boot to the MAME2003 gamelist (and it's your only list) there was still a layer to back out to that has all the Retropie settings and that's where things always went wrong eventually.  Even kiosk mode/kid mode or whatever it is didn't quite work how I wanted it to.  That locked down some settings but not all.  I've played around with it a lot and just never could get it to behave how I wanted it to.


3ghz pentium 4 runs killer instinct full speed. dunno if a pi 4 can do that.?

This isn't meant for that (I don't actually know if KI will run but there are a ton of youtube videos claiming it runs full speed on the pi4).  If you are building a cabinet to play the most amount of games, of course a PC is the way to go.

Gilrock

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #10 on: October 18, 2021, 05:43:12 pm »
Well I thought Mame was great back in 1999 so I don't need anything newer...lol.

Dude I've heard all your whining about RetroPie like 10 times so its fun to poke the bear.  But you should change the title "Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest unless you are running RetroPie"...haha.

Ond

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #11 on: October 18, 2021, 06:03:54 pm »
We have all have different tastes an ideas when it comes to multi-game machines.  I like the idea of moving away from front ends which feature a lot of 'extras'.  A few years back I would have thought differently.  Minimalism as a design choice vs LED lighting, fancy front-ends etc is the shift, influenced by a more purist thinking, which is fine by me.

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #12 on: October 18, 2021, 06:38:11 pm »
i'm honestly not sure what games came out past the mid 90's i'd want to play other than some of the CAVE games.
this is why an rpi is pretty much all i've needed.

javeryh

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #13 on: October 20, 2021, 10:47:58 am »
We have all have different tastes an ideas when it comes to multi-game machines.  I like the idea of moving away from front ends which feature a lot of 'extras'.  A few years back I would have thought differently.  Minimalism as a design choice vs LED lighting, fancy front-ends etc is the shift, influenced by a more purist thinking, which is fine by me.

Exactly.  This is meant to be an alternative to a MiSTer FPGA or ArcadeSD or Arpicade set up (which all seem great but more expensive).  It's a focused, arcade-only single board alternative to a PC.  I think a minimalist setup in both outward design and internal function makes for a better user experience but that's just me and part of the reason I love this hobby so much is because everyone has a different idea as to what works.   :cheers:

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #14 on: October 20, 2021, 11:26:31 am »
Personally I liked this solution and have followed along in bbegin's thread and your progress.  The cool thing about the Raspberry Pi solution is I can have both your solution and the RetroPie solution and swap between them in a couple minutes just by plugging in different SD cards.  I was just defending the RetroPie solution because I kinda liked it and thought it was easy but I don't consider it better than anything.  It does let me play Dragon's Lair on that setup which I like enough that its the main theme of my Mame cab.  I like a huge variety.  My bartop has the RetroPie but I also swap it out with a Mister.  I have a full sized Mame cabinet that runs with a PC if I ever want to see what that Killer Instinct game looks like...lol.  I have a Pacman cab that is going to be converted to use a BitKit, MisterCade, and original boards.  I have JROKs in Robotron and Joust scratch builds.  And I have a real Defender.

Gilrock

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #15 on: October 21, 2021, 09:04:26 am »
Cool...I talked about the lack of the ability to play Dragon's Lair in that solution and now bbegin worked tirelessly throughout the night and has Daphne running in his image.  :)

Going to get another SD card and check this out.  It's awesome news!

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #16 on: October 21, 2021, 09:19:33 am »
Cool...I talked about the lack of the ability to play Dragon's Lair in that solution and now bbegin worked tirelessly throughout the night and has Daphne running in his image.  :)

Going to get another SD card and check this out.  It's awesome news!

LOL seriously?  Now I need to update!   :cheers:

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #17 on: October 21, 2021, 11:04:12 am »
I don't think he posted it yet.   He said he got it working and would post it soon.

Update:  Now its available
« Last Edit: October 21, 2021, 02:20:52 pm by Gilrock »

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #18 on: October 21, 2021, 01:13:28 pm »
Giving this a shot needs to get added to my project list.
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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #19 on: October 21, 2021, 02:37:36 pm »
In my opinion this is the better option than RetroPie for a dedicated cabinet. It's much closer to an "appliance" than RetroPie is which is awesome. If all you need is MAME, I'd say this is pretty darn awesome.

Anyone tried this image with a pi to jamma converter or anything? Make sure it works well with a CRT?

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #20 on: October 21, 2021, 08:34:51 pm »
I bought a MS Pacman 1Up Countercade V2 off HSN to play the odd game of ms pacman between calls.  I modded the ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- out of it.

The display and Pi3, the active marquee, pizero W and fans all run off 5v.  I don't get any lightning bolts due to power issues with this new PSU BAR/brick from Amazon.

I can play all the classics and laserdisc games with no problems now.  Volume and power issues are resolved with a new power cut off switch.

With no more home audits I can play whatever I want and the Pi3 runs about 90% of the three button classics.  Even my boss wants one.

Anything more GPU complicated the larger cabinets can play them.

The problem is price scalping and the lack of PI4 units be available.  Adafruit is completely sold out, as is Best Buy.  Even Pi3s are hard to come by.

Then you have cooling issues and finding the right heatsink in the case.  I found some Lenovo M73s for $40 off ebay and the PSU can be had for $10. 

Those i3 with 4 or 8GB and 60gb SSD runs circles around the Pi4 and you can play Wii and PSP games at full FPS with the HD4000 GPU. Install Retrobat and you are golden.

For an addition $20 for the SSD you can have an emulation powerhouse.

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #21 on: October 21, 2021, 10:48:19 pm »
We know. Most veterans here have been using Core duo,I3, and I5 PCs in their emulator based cabs for years.  It's missing the point of the thread. Apart from supply issues  (Plenty of Pi 4s are to be gotten where I am) this thread seeks to highlight a new alternative in emulation choices. A ready to go, dedicated current MAME based image, on an SD card, slotted into the Pi 4 and you ready to go.

On a price point, with a select set of games, the Pi4 solution is very affordable compared to any current PC hardware choices and considerably easier to implement now that the hard work has been done by bbegin (and javeryh).



 

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #22 on: October 22, 2021, 12:54:13 am »
I like what’s in the video, but it’s very close to what I’m doing on a 20 year old PC running DOS.

 :dunno

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #23 on: October 22, 2021, 12:58:41 am »
We know. Most veterans here have been using Core duo,I3, and I5 PCs in their emulator based cabs for years.  It's missing the point of the thread. Apart from supply issues  (Plenty of Pi 4s are to be gotten where I am) this thread seeks to highlight a new alternative in emulation choices. A ready to go, dedicated current MAME based image, on an SD card, slotted into the Pi 4 and you ready to go.

On a price point, with a select set of games, the Pi4 solution is very affordable compared to any current PC hardware choices and considerably easier to implement now that the hard work has been done by bbegin (and javeryh).

When you cannot buy a Pi4 (and if you can get them locally where you are please advise us) then you look to alternatives. 

Retropie   (How many versions exist for the Raspberry Pi and Arm?)
Batocera  (How many platforms are available for this software?

These are easy to set up and play on a host of SBCs.

Recreating the wheel doesn't mean it is the best. 

Maybe one of the best yet, until this thread appeared, I have never heard of it, and the video shows basic functionality.

It will never replace the current available distributions.  The developers have some way to go.
 

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #24 on: October 22, 2021, 01:07:22 am »
The changes I made to the image to get it to behave like this are as follows:

1.  I added the one button safe shutdown/power on script:

Edited "/boot/config.txt" by adding these two lines to the file at the end:

Code: [Select]
#shutdown button
dtoverlay=gpio-shutdown

Now bridging GPIO3 and Ground (pins 5 and 6) will shut the pi off.  Doing it again will turn it back on. 

2.  I removed the "MAME" logos that appear on boot-up, shutdown and when launching a game by deleting the .png files in the "/home/pi/splash" folder.  You could customize this however you want with other images I suppose.

3.  I downloaded "SDarcadeMod_v3f" from the Attract Mode forums (made by our own FrizzleFried) and set it to run in vertical orientation.  Unzip the file and put the entire folder in the "/attract/layouts/" folder.  This is meant to make the menu look like the ArcadeSD card. 

The way the image works is that once you boot up it is either in "Service Mode" or "Arcade Mode".  The detailed instructions are in bbegin's thread.  Once you have it set up to boot in Arcade Mode, you can select the front end by typing "frontend attract" at the command prompt (using Putty or something to SSH in).  When you reboot, Attract Mode will launch but the screen will just say "MAME 0/1" in the bottom right corner.  This is because the default name for the Game List is "MAME" and the "0/1" means you have no games in this list.  So hit TAB and the Attract Mode menu will come up and you can play around with the settings, including populating the game list, scraping for artwork, etc.  This wasn't clear at first.

4.  When exiting a game back to the front end, there was an issue with the snaps not lining up.  This was an easy fix: You just have to set the ResFix-Plugin.  Start Attract Mode > press TAB key > Plug-Ins > ResFix > Enabled : Yes > Specific Emulators : your_Display_Name (or leave this blank for it to apply to all of them).

5.  I changed "mame.ini" so that the screen rotated 90 degrees as well ("ror 1") so all of the games run in portrait mode as well.  I also remapped the controls in both Attract Mode and MAME so everything behaved like I wanted it to.  That part will be custom for each user but note the image is set to automatically shut down when you "Exit" Attract Mode.  The default is the same exit button as MAME ("ESC") so I had to delete/remap that function in Attract Mode because a double press of the Exit button was shutting the whole thing off - not ideal!

I also added the following to mame.ini:

Code: [Select]
skip_gameinfo 1
skip_disclaimer 1
skip_validitychecks 1

This is because the image is running standard MAME so all of the warnings were popping up for about 1/2 the games I was trying to play.  This fixed most of the issues.  If someone knows a better way short of compiling my own version of MAME for the pi4 which I have no idea how to do then I'm all ears.

That's most of it... although I'm sure there were other small tweaks I'm forgetting.

Credit should be given where it is due.

All of this sure sounds very familiar....

So let me get this straight.  This is an official mame version for the Pi4 and you didn't change anything?  Why is this different?

Quote
2.  I removed the "MAME" logos that appear on boot-up, shutdown and when launching a game by deleting the .png files in the "/home/pi/splash" folder.  You could customize this however you want with other images I suppose.

Are you supposed to be doing that for general release?
« Last Edit: October 22, 2021, 02:30:48 am by Vocalitus »

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #25 on: October 22, 2021, 01:13:29 am »
 :laugh2:

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #26 on: October 22, 2021, 02:18:11 am »
:laugh2:

So you cannot locate the Pi4s then...  Not to worry as the M73 is shaping up brilliantly.

OND you used to be the ultimate contributor here.  Your projects were legendary.

I think you are happier when you are creating something new.

Why don't you whittle out a new Nintendo case for your Pi 4 out of some kindling?

We would love to see that.  Seriously.

« Last Edit: October 22, 2021, 08:08:38 am by Vocalitus »

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #27 on: October 22, 2021, 09:41:39 am »
Retropie   (How many versions exist for the Raspberry Pi and Arm?)
Batocera  (How many platforms are available for this software?

These are easy to set up and play on a host of SBCs.

Recreating the wheel doesn't mean it is the best. 

Maybe one of the best yet, until this thread appeared, I have never heard of it, and the video shows basic functionality.

It will never replace the current available distributions.  The developers have some way to go.

First, I'm not a developer.  I can barely post on this forum without help.  Second, I really think you are misunderstanding the point of this.  I know Retropie and Batocera exist and I have tried them out many times with may different setups and they are fine but I will never ever play a console game on an arcade cabinet so these setups are bloated beyond belief for my needs.  I've tried and I don't get it - it's just not fun to me.  Console games were designed to be played with a controller in front of a TV... and Retropie setups work great in those scenarios (but still massively inferior to a what a PC can do). 

As far as I can tell, there is no "MAME only" Retropie setup.  There are tons of "arcade only" images but the way Retropie works is it expects multiple "consoles" so there is always a console menu to back out to (that also contains the "Retropie" menu where settings can be messed with).  There isn't an easy way to get rid of this.  Not to mention, current versions of Retropie are running MAME from 2003.

All this is trying to accomplish is a simple MAME setup for an arcade cabinet running classic games without needing a PC or Windows.  That's it.  Of course there are other ways to do this.

Credit should be given where it is due.

All of this sure sounds very familiar....

So let me get this straight.  This is an official mame version for the Pi4 and you didn't change anything?  Why is this different?

I'm not sure what you mean.  This isn't an official image released by the MAME devs.  bbegin figured out a way to get the current version of MAME running on the pi4 and all credit goes to him.  I wanted more people to see what it could do which is why I posted here.

Are you supposed to be doing that for general release?

Those MAME logos were added to bbegin's image by bbegin so something would appear at start up and shutdown instead of a blank screen.  I prefer the blank screen.  They have nothing to do with the official MAME release as far as I can tell.  Either way, who cares? We all tweak MAME to suit our needs (getting rid of no nag screens, high score saves, samples, etc.).

I guess I thought people here would find this setup pretty neat but maybe not based on the comments.   :cheers:

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #28 on: October 22, 2021, 11:47:15 am »
I guess I thought people here would find this setup pretty neat but maybe not based on the comments.   :cheers:

I simply think that some people tend to forget one thing with an arcade cabinet: it's all about the games themselves. We basically build these nice cabinets for the games, let's not forget this.

I think that with a sugar-coated feature-packed and a bloated setup like RetroPie, we loose the sight of the games themselves: it's becoming more and more about the look and less about a good and faithful emulation of arcade classics (in this case).

Sorry for my english, that was my 2 cents.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2021, 11:50:15 am by bbegin »
Personal project:
How to make a dedicated MAME Appliance on a Raspberry Pi 4/Pi 400
https://gist.github.com/sonicprod/f5a7bb10fb9ed1cc5124766831e120c4

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #29 on: October 22, 2021, 01:03:50 pm »

I simply think that some people tend to forget one thing with an arcade cabinet: it's all about the games themselves. We basically build these nice cabinets for the games, let's not forget this.

I think that with a sugar-coated feature-packed and a bloated setup like RetroPie, we loose the sight of the games themselves: it's becoming more and more about the look and less about a good and faithful emulation of arcade classics (in this case).

Sorry for my english, that was my 2 cents.

Well said, I will continue to promote what is a nice alternative to other emulation solutions.  :applaud:

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #30 on: October 22, 2021, 06:50:21 pm »
Retropie   (How many versions exist for the Raspberry Pi and Arm?)
Batocera  (How many platforms are available for this software?

These are easy to set up and play on a host of SBCs.

Recreating the wheel doesn't mean it is the best. 

Maybe one of the best yet, until this thread appeared, I have never heard of it, and the video shows basic functionality.

It will never replace the current available distributions.  The developers have some way to go.

First, I'm not a developer.  I can barely post on this forum without help.  Second, I really think you are misunderstanding the point of this.  I know Retropie and Batocera exist and I have tried them out many times with may different setups and they are fine but I will never ever play a console game on an arcade cabinet so these setups are bloated beyond belief for my needs.  I've tried and I don't get it - it's just not fun to me.  Console games were designed to be played with a controller in front of a TV... and Retropie setups work great in those scenarios (but still massively inferior to a what a PC can do). 

As far as I can tell, there is no "MAME only" Retropie setup.  There are tons of "arcade only" images but the way Retropie works is it expects multiple "consoles" so there is always a console menu to back out to (that also contains the "Retropie" menu where settings can be messed with).  There isn't an easy way to get rid of this.  Not to mention, current versions of Retropie are running MAME from 2003.

All this is trying to accomplish is a simple MAME setup for an arcade cabinet running classic games without needing a PC or Windows.  That's it.  Of course there are other ways to do this.

Credit should be given where it is due.

All of this sure sounds very familiar....

So let me get this straight.  This is an official mame version for the Pi4 and you didn't change anything?  Why is this different?

I'm not sure what you mean.  This isn't an official image released by the MAME devs.  bbegin figured out a way to get the current version of MAME running on the pi4 and all credit goes to him.  I wanted more people to see what it could do which is why I posted here.

Are you supposed to be doing that for general release?

Those MAME logos were added to bbegin's image by bbegin so something would appear at start up and shutdown instead of a blank screen.  I prefer the blank screen.  They have nothing to do with the official MAME release as far as I can tell.  Either way, who cares? We all tweak MAME to suit our needs (getting rid of no nag screens, high score saves, samples, etc.).

I guess I thought people here would find this setup pretty neat but maybe not based on the comments.   :cheers:

You just remove the cores or roms from Retropie it is that simple.  Then find a theme that matches your requirements.

I cannot believe you have to recreate the wheel to make it so dumb down.

Next you are going to whine about the interface is not up to scratch.  :lol

Here is the video for the lazy:




I simply think that some people tend to forget one thing with an arcade cabinet: it's all about the games themselves. We basically build these nice cabinets for the games, let's not forget this.

I think that with a sugar-coated feature-packed and a bloated setup like RetroPie, we loose the sight of the games themselves: it's becoming more and more about the look and less about a good and faithful emulation of arcade classics (in this case).

Sorry for my english, that was my 2 cents.

Well said, I will continue to promote what is a nice alternative to other emulation solutions.  :applaud:

Words escape me.   ::)

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #31 on: October 22, 2021, 07:34:32 pm »
You just remove the cores or roms from Retropie it is that simple.  Then find a theme that matches your requirements.

I cannot believe you have to recreate the wheel to make it so dumb down.

Next you are going to whine about the interface is not up to scratch.  :lol

Here is the video for the lazy:




That is not helpful at all.  If you have ever played around with Retropie, obviously deleting the roms removes that emulator from the main menu.  But this does not remove the "Retropie" menu.  If you delete everything except for the "arcade" roms folder you will still have a top menu with "Arcade" and "Retropie Settings". 

Even if you remove the Retropie Settings menu (in setup -> core packages) you will still have a top menu that just says "Arcade" and I haven't found a way to remove it.  I also don't want to ever see the Start and Select menus in Retropie where you can scrape or search for a game or whatever - I do not want anything visible to the user except for one gamelist for MAME.  So yes, the interface is not up to scratch for me.  Plus, it runs a 20 year old version of MAME. 

This is not dumbing anything down - it is simplifying things for people who just want to play classic arcade games and nothing else.

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #32 on: October 23, 2021, 03:37:57 am »
You just remove the cores or roms from Retropie it is that simple.  Then find a theme that matches your requirements.

I cannot believe you have to recreate the wheel to make it so dumb down.

Next you are going to whine about the interface is not up to scratch.  :lol

Here is the video for the lazy:




That is not helpful at all.  If you have ever played around with Retropie, obviously deleting the roms removes that emulator from the main menu.  But this does not remove the "Retropie" menu.  If you delete everything except for the "arcade" roms folder you will still have a top menu with "Arcade" and "Retropie Settings". 

Even if you remove the Retropie Settings menu (in setup -> core packages) you will still have a top menu that just says "Arcade" and I haven't found a way to remove it.  I also don't want to ever see the Start and Select menus in Retropie where you can scrape or search for a game or whatever - I do not want anything visible to the user except for one gamelist for MAME.  So yes, the interface is not up to scratch for me.  Plus, it runs a 20 year old version of MAME. 

This is not dumbing anything down - it is simplifying things for people who just want to play classic arcade games and nothing else.

You need to learn some of those communication skills your parents and teachers might have mentioned when you were younger.  Ask and you might be enlightened.

Want the Retropie menu to be gone?  I have found a utility that was supposed to to add a music jukebox player for Retropie and it comes with an editor to modify the Retropie Menu, which has a nasty side effect of removing the whole bloody thing.  Which is problematic as you cannot get it back.  I am sure you can put the utility to some other good use in your project like the Arcade folder.

It works as a music player for those who want to add that functionality into their cabinets.

https://installtekz.com/how-to-add-music-to-retropie-on-a-raspberry-pi/

You are welcome.  8)


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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #33 on: October 23, 2021, 09:14:30 am »
You are still not getting it and now you’re just insulting me for no reason so let’s stop talking about Retropie here and start focusing on bbegin’s awesome Raspberry Pi 4 image.

Anyone have any idea why it would have trouble with Astro Blaster?  Is it the synthesized speech?  The game is from 1981 so I was surprised it was struggling so hard to run.

It’s been over a week now and everything else I have tested on it is still working great.  The most recent games I’ve tried are Namco Collection Vol. 1 &2 (1995/1996) and they work but each produce a nag screen that I can’t get rid of so I’m going to leave them out of my build.

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #34 on: October 23, 2021, 11:30:00 am »
You need to learn some of those communication skills your parents and teachers might have mentioned when you were younger.  Ask and you might be enlightened.

Tone down the snark please. Rule #1.

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #35 on: October 23, 2021, 11:35:41 am »
Vocalitus,

I wouldn't want to disrespect you, but why are you trying so desperately to convince the people around you that RetroPie is the answer to all needs? It is not, as no solution is.

What's wrong with someone creating their own solution that perfectly meets their needs, when they find that no solution already available is suitable?

It seems to me that in a given market, there are products for all tastes and types of needs ... right? If all vehicle manufacturers had confined themselves to saying that there was already the sedan automobile that meets the travel needs of people, trucks, SUVs, tractors and motorcycles, to name a few. , would never have seen the light of day on the market ...

You should let people express themselves freely without intimidating them and making them feel guilty just because they dare to explore other solutions than the one you cherish.

This forum is full of really great people, but I see that there are unfortunately some actors (they are not many) who try to make their law reign, THEIR way of seeing things by crushing others by different bullying tactics.

Unless I'm mistaken, we're on a discussion board that's open to everyone and deals with how people who enjoyed the arcade era and have an interest or desire to do them relive, in their own way, according to their personality, their tastes and their interests.

No hard feelings
Personal project:
How to make a dedicated MAME Appliance on a Raspberry Pi 4/Pi 400
https://gist.github.com/sonicprod/f5a7bb10fb9ed1cc5124766831e120c4

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #36 on: October 23, 2021, 11:49:14 am »
It's great that you're getting some assistance on this project from a Hypseus developer now bbegin! I love seeing new things like this take off and get some momentum.  If anyone else has begun to play with the Pi 4 image (get it over in the Raspberry Pi & Dev Board) let us know your thoughts.   :cheers:

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #37 on: October 23, 2021, 11:55:07 am »
You are still not getting it and now you’re just insulting me for no reason so let’s stop talking about Retropie here and start focusing on bbegin’s awesome Raspberry Pi 4 image.

Anyone have any idea why it would have trouble with Astro Blaster?  Is it the synthesized speech?  The game is from 1981 so I was surprised it was struggling so hard to run.

It’s been over a week now and everything else I have tested on it is still working great.  The most recent games I’ve tried are Namco Collection Vol. 1 &2 (1995/1996) and they work but each produce a nag screen that I can’t get rid of so I’m going to leave them out of my build.

About the poor performance of Astro Blaster, I can think of the high cost (in terms of processing) for up-to-date MAME to emulate one or some of the specific devices that are part of Astro Blaster original system. Personnaly, I don't think that it is the synthesized speech. Older versions of MAME (the ones from 2003, for example) are less complex and may sometimes emulate faster, but with less accuracy or quality.
Personal project:
How to make a dedicated MAME Appliance on a Raspberry Pi 4/Pi 400
https://gist.github.com/sonicprod/f5a7bb10fb9ed1cc5124766831e120c4

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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #38 on: October 23, 2021, 01:19:36 pm »
Anyone have any idea why it would have trouble with Astro Blaster?  Is it the synthesized speech?  The game is from 1981 so I was surprised it was struggling so hard to run.
From the Astro Blaster history.dat entry:
Quote
Sega G80 Raster hardware

Main CPU : Z80 (@ 3.867 Mhz), I8035 (@ 208 Khz)
Sound Chips : Discrete circuitry, SP0250 (@ 3.12 Mhz)
I agree with bbegin that it's probably not the synthesized speech.

The far more likely culprit is the analog audio "discrete circuitry".

Digital audio circuits like the SP0250 Orator speech synthesis chip take far less processing power to emulate/simulate than analog audio circuits.

The analog sound simulations in newer versions of MAME have very high system requirements compared to the sound sample system used in older versions of MAME.

If Astro Blaster is a must-have game, you may want to consider running it on a version of MAME between v0.143 and v0.223.

From the Astro Blaster info.dat entry:
Quote
- 0.224: Added netlist-based sound to Astro Blaster [Aaron Giles]. Added 'Astro Blaster Sound Board' and 'Netlist Sound Device'. Removed Samples.
. . .
- 0.142u1: Added 'Sega Speech Sound Board'.


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Re: Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 4 LOVE Fest ;)
« Reply #39 on: October 23, 2021, 05:20:41 pm »
I very much like Retropie but that is because it is what I used when I first started with lower cost solutions. I also liked the Pi because I could use the GPIO pins for buttons and joysticks. That being said, I would love to try this build because I like the newer versions of Mame for some games. I just need to find a Pi4. Thanks for doing all that work. I hope to try it soon.

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