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NEED HELP ON A FEW MAME/SOFTLIST PLATFORMS


PiperCalls

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I have several of the obscure platforms working via the RetroArch-Mame Softlist method. One has me stumped though...Bally Astrocade. I have it set up exactly like the others, with confirmed working BIOS & ROM. I can launch into Bally Astrocade with no problem...but whenI do then it is only showing the 4 built-in games and not the game/rom that I actually launched. They way it is supposed to work is when you first boot in, it shows the 4 built-in games AND the game you launched and you select what you want to play. I have the exact same setup on my PC and it works like it is supposed to. Anyone that has this setup and working, help would be appreciated.

Thanks...Piper

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So finally had a chance to have a look. All my roms are zipped up in a folder named “astrocde” in my system folder in retro arch, if I unzip the roms they are in bin format. In my bios directory I have both an astrocde.zip and a astro.bin, not sure which one actually does the trick but I can confirm Astrocade is up and running on the shield tv. After trying some of these old systems out today it seems as if something has changed with the controller support, buttons no longer seem to be configured correctly 

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Hi rambo32, thanks for offering assistance.

How you have it setup is interesting. The way I have all the other softlist systems setup is to have a softlist rom folder (in this case astrocde) in my roms folder with all the game roms and the bios rom zipped in it.

So I have [roms folder]/astrocde/

with all my game roms and the astrocde.zip bios file

but I only get the 4 built-in games when I launch any game rom.

So I tried what you have and changed my setup to...

[retroarch system folder]/astrocde/

and put a game rom (in this case astrobat.zip) in there

and then in [retroarch bios folder] I put astrocde.zip and astro.bin in it

but, I get the same results...only list the 4 built-in games when I launch the game rom.

I know the astrocde.zip bios and the astrobat.zip game rom are correct (I've unzipped and checked them vs what the xml says they should be and the game launches fine on my PC with this bios and game rom.

I'm thinking it might be some setting in retroarch on my shield tv that is causing the issue, it is like it is not seeing the actual game rom but just launching the bios every time since I only see the 4 built-in games no matter what game rom I launch.

Would you might taking a look at for retroarch settings and see what you have?

Also, what version of retroarch are you using? Since the new playstore version of retroarch has the auto-detect and switches to 64-bit on my shield tv, I can't get the mame git core so I went and got the retroarch 32 from git and am using that on my shield tv for softlist systems.

Thanks for any help...Piper

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Have you got boot to bios option on?

Quick Menu->Core Options.

I dont have astrocade setup anymore but iirc it booted to games from Hyperspin. To access the in-built games i had to duplicate some games as additional entries and set a game option override with boot to bios turned on. Something like that anyway

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Hi thatman84, I checked and boot to bios option was turned off in core options. I turned it on and launched the game but got the same results (4 built-in games). I enabled verbose logging and got this...

Starting game:/storage/EC34609334606316/NVIDIA_SHIELD/Bally Astrocade/astrocde/astrobat.zip
Path extraction result: File name=/storage/EC34609334606316/NVIDIA_SHIELD/Bally Astrocade/astrocde/astrobat.zip
Path extraction result: Game name=astrobat
Path extraction result: System name=astrocde
Path extraction result: Game path=/storage/EC34609334606316/NVIDIA_SHIELD/Bally Astrocade/astrocde
Path extraction result: Parent path=/storage/EC34609334606316/NVIDIA_SHIELD/Bally Astrocade
Searching for driver astrobat
Driver astrobat not found -1
Driver not found astrobat
Searching for driver astrocde
System type: CONSOLE
Game name: astrocde, Game description: Bally Professional Arcade
Creating frontend for game: astrobat
Softlists: 1

I'm not a mame/retroarch expert but it almost looks like it is trying to run astrobat.zip and then says "I don't know what to do with this" and then it falls back and runs astrocde.zip (bios file) which would expain why it only shows the 4 built-in games...this one is frustrating.

Thanks for any help...Piper

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It does def sounds like it’s trying to launch astrobat. I have not done much logging on software list consoles.

just to confirm the basics,

Roms match hash file and hash file and romset are from similar versions?

romset and hash file are working with mame on RA I believe you said?

your Hyperspin xml matches your romset?

 

 

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Did a little testing on my phone and all seems to be working correctly when launching games direct in RA.

I can only suggest you make sure the hash xml is in retroarch/system/mame/hash

you have no overrides or game-option-overrides messing it up

Or no mame or astrocde.ini/mame.ini files confusing things if read configurations option is turned on

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  • 3 weeks later...

I had tons of problems with Bally Astrocade, but finally got it working. My only real advice is to make sure the astrocde.xml file is correct. Mine was corrupted. I cleaned out the hash directory completely and pulled the latest from github and that resolved the issue. The mame core is so frustrating. Some systems work immediately... and it seems like they work even with questionable rom names... others you fight and fight with. I'm trying to get the Archimedes emulation to work now. It seems to ignore the hash file.

 

Good luck.

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16 hours ago, rambo32 said:

Great news, these mame systems can be challenging.Update to my posts earlier, i do now have RCA studio 2 and Bandai 8000 running, just a bit if tinkering 

How is the Studio 2 working for you? I got it to run, but the games were distorted. I'm looking at Emma 02 now for them.

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I havent tried studio2 but I got many many mess systems up and running...the hardest were the old russian computers and basically I had to either watch videos on the actual games on a real pc or try 2 download instruction  manuals for the games...basically did that to configure the buttons ...that's basically  what u gotta do unless u already know the keys 

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