Retro-Go: Emulator launcher with improved emulators

[Nemo1984]

I have noticed a small graphical glitch in some NES games. It has a grey band at the botton. Opening and closing the menu fixes this.

[ducalex]

Just found that the Japanese version of Blazing Lazers (Gunhed) loads and runs fine on this firmware.

That was a great clue, it's now fixed. Test build here.

I have noticed a small graphical glitch in some NES games. It has a grey band at the botton. Opening and closing the menu fixes this.

That should also be fixed in this test build.

[pceslayer]

First I just want to thank @ducalex for all the excellent work you've done so far with Retro-Go. It is the best experience i've had with the GO to date.

Oh yeah for sure, smspower has some incredible new Master System games too!

And don't stress, I've had a migraine all weekend, so haven't gotten anything done.

I've set up another laptop as I didn't want to put all the programming environments on my work laptop, so once the eBay charger for that arrives I'm going to have a go at porting NeoPop

I see you are working on porting a NeoGeo emulator and was wondering if you were aware of the RACE NeoGeo Pocket Emulator. It was designed to run on less powerful hardware than neopop so it might be a better fit for the ESP32 and It was recently ported to libretro.

some links:
https://docs.libretro.com/library/race/

https://github.com/alekmaul/race

[lordhardware]

RACE is the version I'm working on.
It's not running yet, but I've at least got it building without error.

[Christian_Haitian]

Just found that the Japanese version of Blazing Lazers (Gunhed) loads and runs fine on this firmware.

That was a great clue, it's now fixed. Test build here.

I have noticed a small graphical glitch in some NES games. It has a grey band at the botton. Opening and closing the menu fixes this.

That should also be fixed in this test build.

I've done some limited testing on the following:

NES
Super Mario Bros. 2 - Runs well
Super Mario Bros. 3 - Runs well
Mike Tyson's Punch-out - Runs well
Double Dragon 2 - Runs well though there's some weird graphic glitches at the bottom of some screens. I think this may have been in the original game though.

PCE
Blazing Lazers - Runs well
Alien Crush - Runs well
Bonk's Adventure - Runs well but strange audio growl. Like a the emulator has an issue with replicating the bass notes?
Lode Runner (Japan) - Loads but won't start the game after showing Stage: 1

Coleco Vision
H.E.R.O - Runs well
Pac-Man - Runs well
Pitfall - Runs well
Pitfall 2 - Runs well

Game Boy
Balloon Kid - Runs well
BurgerTime Deluxe - Runs well
Donkey Kong - Runs well
Final Fantasy Adventure - Runs well

Game Boy Color
Mr. Diller - Runs well

SMS
Phantasy Star - Runs well

Game Gear
Mortal Kombat 3 - Runs well
Hailey Wars - Runs well
Devilish - Runs well

All in all, great progress on this emulator. This is by far my go to firmware for my OGO and the reason why I decided to resurrect my ogo and paint it and play it again. Thanks ducalex! And early thank you to lordhardware for working on porting the RACE emulator. Neo Geo Pocket has some great games I'd love to play on here.

[Christian_Haitian]

You were completely right, the missing padding is an artifact of pelle7's code; Go-Play does use padding indeed. I fixed retro-go and renamed the files in your pack and recompressed them with pngquant.

Test build and new romart pack can be downloaded here:
https://github.com/ducalex/retro-go/rel ... 2020-05-11

Thanks!

New pce romart pack with more than 2.5 times the images in crc32 format. Enjoy!

It was too big to attach to a post so I've shared it from Mega Cloud Drive. See the link below.
https://mega.nz/file/OZpxQKAD#S4Z14EQwf ... TD_NaWOryE

[ducalex]

Bonk's Adventure - Runs well but strange audio growl. Like a the emulator has an issue with replicating the bass notes?

I've noticed many games have quiet/somewhat distorted sound effects vs music. I don't know the cause but I should be able to improve it once I play on better hardware to learn what it's supposed to sound like. Either way the games were added to the list (now tracked in top post).

New pce romart pack with more than 2.5 times the images in crc32 format. Enjoy!

Thanks a lot!

[Christian_Haitian]

Hey Ducalex, will you eventually be incorporating Pelle7's Atari Lynx emulator into this firmware?

[ducalex]

Maybe in the future. Lynx and NGP were the two remaining systems I considered adding. But for now I have enough work with the current emulators (porting would be quick, but getting a polished user experience and performance I'd consider worthy of retro-go isn't as easy).

In the mean time you could look at Retro-ESP32 that has all pelle7's emulators (and more) and is still maintained. It also has a nicer interface than Retro-Go!
Or you can use my multi-firmware to multiboot the standalone lynx emulator and retro-go (not as nice, I realize).

[ducalex]

If anyone has some spare time, I have a build here I would like tested. I had to extensively modify the NES emulator to support fancy mappers (which also affects games not using those mappers) and I probably broke a thing or two. The support for those mappers isn't in this build, for now I only want to see if my core changes affect other games.

So if you can, please install this build and play your favourite NES games and report any glitch or performance issue that wasn't there before!

Thanks!

Note: This is truly a test build with no new features, don't install unless you are ok with bugs!

[lordhardware]

I'll check this out tonight. Haven't had any time to play recently and I've been jonesing for it

[lordhardware]

Nobunga's Ambition II - game has severe tileset issues in this test version, all elements appear to be drawing correctly but done seem to be grabbing the tiles from the correct locations.

Bandit King's of Ancient China - Doesn't crash, takes about 90 seconds to load past the black screen, has similar tile issues to above.

Pirates! - no longer boots, grey screen on load.
This game had no problems last time it tested it (admittedly this would have been in April and there's been a lot of changes since)

Super Mario 3 Mix (Romhack) - this is the only game i get major slowdowns on (likely due to the increased sprites onscreen) however it actually appears to be a little slower in this build than it was even previously.

Mega Man 6 - seems a little slow but I'm not as familiar with it so may be just slower than previous games.

Aussie Rules Footy - now has a few issues with overlayed tiles (maybe tileset problems) 'shadows' now appear as large black boxes, fairly certain these are priority tiles in the actual rom.

[ducalex]

Thanks! The first two never worked (they are precisely the target of this work). In Aussie Rules Football I do see a rectangular shadow. I don't know when the bug was introduced yet but it is present as early as 2020-03-29 so unrelated to the test. I'll need to investigate. Pirates! is now fixed.

I'll check out Mega Man 6 and Super Mario 3 Mix, a sprite-heavy game certainly would be a good test.

[lordhardware]

For 3 Mix (fantastic game) you'll notice the slowdowns at the second group of enemies on the second level.

[ducalex]

Hey Ducalex, will you eventually be incorporating Pelle7's Atari Lynx emulator into this firmware?

I have reconsidered and I will be adding the Lynx emulator very soon. Not pelle7's port specifically but it's the same emulator. Do you think you could package cover art for this too?

For 3 Mix (fantastic game) you'll notice the slowdowns at the second group of enemies on the second level.

I think I have reached similar performance to the previous release, can you confirm with this test build? MMC5 (Koei) still not fully enabled in this build (performance issues) but Final Fantasy VII and other Nanjing games finally work correctly! (I can't read Chinese so I can't test very far though).

[lordhardware]

3 mix slowdowns occur at the same points and appear to be the same speed.

I believe it to be a mod issue however because I can't see the same speed issues in smb3 in any area with 5+ sprites on screen, nor do I notice it very often in other levels of 3 mix, so who knows.

Interestingly in the Final Fantasy Advent Children romhack (rebalance, art update, and english translation of the Chinese version of VII) the ROM seems to seize at the beginning of the first battle after the train, this doesn't happen on the Chinese version (so cool to see it actually running!) so I wonder if mapper changes occurred, can I send you the ROM to test?

[lordhardware]

Oh, spearately: finally got a 'rom is unsupported' error today when testing games I'd not played: 'War in the Gulf' which is a Brazil unlicenced.

[ducalex]

I've made a mistake, performance is terrible in the attached build (may not be super apparent because of auto frameskip). I'll send a new one soon.

Is it this patch that freezes https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1657/ ? If so I'll add it to the list and look into it, and thanks for confirming that the chinese version works!

Edit: I should be able to add support for War in the Gulf, the mapper seems simple enough.

[lordhardware]

I've made a mistake, performance is terrible in the attached build (may not be super apparent because of auto frameskip). I'll send a new one soon.

Is it this patch that freezes https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1657/ ? If so I'll add it to the list and look into it, and thanks for confirming that the chinese version works!

Edit: I should be able to add support for War in the Gulf, the mapper seems simple enough.

Yep that's the one

And no problem, as this plays more games well it's given me a good excuse to test games in the back catalogue I wouldn't have otherwise.

There's some bangers in there

[Ganjadorno]

Great to see so much development still going on, your firmware is dope af! Am totally up to any test build you throw at me. I actually checked your github page twice a day to see if theres a new (test)release, so i am glad to have looked into this forum finally


Edit: Btw, it feels like even the lowest volume level is a bit too loud. Also sound quality seems to be decreasing with every step down in volume. (I am on latest github test build atm)

[lordhardware]

The volume control works by reducing the signal that goes to the speaker so you are getting a worse signal at each step.

Only way to resolve that is to solder some bits in between to reduce the loudness of the signal, or hunt around for a quieter speaker I guess.

[Ganjadorno]

The volume control works by reducing the signal that goes to the speaker so you are getting a worse signal at each step.

Only way to resolve that is to solder some bits in between to reduce the loudness of the signal, or hunt around for a quieter speaker I guess.

Hmm.. but aren't there already go-play-quiet firmwares which have reduced sound? Probably retro-go is based on the normal (loud) sound firmware. Isnt there a way to merge the quiet firmware changes into the normal firmware? Or maybe it might be possible to make 2 versions, retro-go and retro-go-quiet?

Edit: In the commit seen here it looks rather easy to at least reduce the volume steps https://github.com/mattkj/super-go-play ... 6f52992149 , though i don't know if the sound quality is going to suffer or better with this implemented.
Btw on the latest github test build Tetris for NES isnt working.

[Ganjadorno]

NES Tetris is working on Retro ESP32, which might help you.
The speaker problem is a lot better with some tape over the speaker.

Edit: Pokemon Prism (pokemon crystal rom hack, GBC) sometimes gets a bit slowed down (choppy sound) in areas with many sprites (dream world connected to haunted mansion for example).

[ducalex]

Retro-Go offers similar sound levels and lower levels also sound pretty bad on Super Go-Play and Go-Play Triforce indeed. Right now the only way to lower the volume without quality loss is to add a resistor in series with the speaker like lordhardware said. It can be done without soldering even.

I'm not sure about the last test release but Tetris 1 and 2 work just fine on my local tree so it should be OK in the next release (by the end of the month)!

[ducalex]

Unrelated to filtering, I found an issue with "Fushigi no Dungeon - Fuurai no Shiren GB2" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiren_th ... the_Desert) - the cutscene dialogue is not rendered (only shows black background) and the submenus show a vertical stripe pattern on the bottom instead of the text

Can you let me know if you're using a translation patch? I have tracked down the problem in both Fushigi no Dungeon - Fuurai no Shiren GB2 and Donkey Kong but I'm struggling a bit finding the exact cause so I might do a game-specific hack and patches would influence how I detect the rom.

[Ganjadorno]

I'm not sure about the last test release but Tetris 1 and 2 work just fine on my local tree so it should be OK in the next release (by the end of the month)!

Thanks, looking forward to it!

[SPTLegend]

Finally got my ODroid Go sprayed up last week and tried out Retro ESP32 and Retro-Go and as much as I like the fact Retro ESP32 has those extra emulators, trying some of the same games emulating under your firmware and you can see how polished the emulation is, particularly on the sound. Superb job. I am definitely looking forward to trying out the Lynx and NeoGeo Pocket emulators.

Are there any plans to include the Atari 2600 and 7800 in the future?

[ducalex]

Finally got my ODroid Go sprayed up last week and tried out Retro ESP32 and Retro-Go and as much as I like the fact Retro ESP32 has those extra emulators, trying some of the same games emulating under your firmware and you can see how polished the emulation is, particularly on the sound. Superb job. I am definitely looking forward to trying out the Lynx and NeoGeo Pocket emulators.

Are there any plans to include the Atari 2600 and 7800 in the future?

Once I'm happy with the Lynx performance I was thinking of working on netplay again. But after that I can let the community decide and I'm not against more emulators. I just don't want retro-go to become one of those big firmwares that use all the flash space and half the emulators are disappointing or broken, you know?

Side-note: I think both retro-esp32 and retro-go could fit at the same time if you use my multi-firmware.

[concreted]

Can you let me know if you're using a translation patch? I have tracked down the problem in both Fushigi no Dungeon - Fuurai no Shiren GB2 and Donkey Kong but I'm struggling a bit finding the exact cause so I might do a game-specific hack and patches would influence how I detect the rom.

Nope, not using any translation patch. Thanks for digging into this one!

[SPTLegend]

Finally got my ODroid Go sprayed up last week and tried out Retro ESP32 and Retro-Go and as much as I like the fact Retro ESP32 has those extra emulators, trying some of the same games emulating under your firmware and you can see how polished the emulation is, particularly on the sound. Superb job. I am definitely looking forward to trying out the Lynx and NeoGeo Pocket emulators.

Are there any plans to include the Atari 2600 and 7800 in the future?

Once I'm happy with the Lynx performance I was thinking of working on netplay again. But after that I can let the community decide and I'm not against more emulators. I just don't want retro-go to become one of those big firmwares that use all the flash space and half the emulators are disappointing or broken, you know?

Side-note: I think both retro-esp32 and retro-go could fit at the same time if you use my multi-firmware.

I would rather stick to Retro-Go due to how well the emulators run, particularly the sound. I think if you add Lynx, NeoGeo pocket, Atari 2600 & 7800 over time you've pretty much covered all of the well known 8 bit consoles and it rounds things off nicely. The fact you have got most PC Engine stuff running so smoothly is excellent. Thanks

[Nemo1984]

Once I'm happy with the Lynx performance I was thinking of working on netplay again. But after that I can let the community decide and I'm not against more emulators. I just don't want retro-go to become one of those big firmwares that use all the flash space and half the emulators are disappointing or broken, you know?

Side-note: I think both retro-esp32 and retro-go could fit at the same time if you use my multi-firmware.

I have to agree with you there. I'm running this firmware, fmsx, IRCAM, DOOM, Wolfenstein and C64 at the same time. I like to have everything installed at once.

[Ganjadorno]

Just now i played some Mario Bros 3 on NES. When i saved, it gave me "The Application crashed!". but if you hit "ok", it just shows over and over again. Even after turning off and on again, it still shows me that message. Tried upgrading to a later test version of yours after that (from 05.11 to 05.15), but no luck, still stuck in that error message. So basically, after saving failed on nes, my whole retro-go became unusable. Other firmwares still work though, but i really prefer retro-go. Erasing all apps didnt help (in multi-firmware bootloader). Any other suggestions?

Edit: Got it running again by re-flashing the multi-firmware bootloader via the esp flash tool. I guess only by that way everything gets properly cleaned. But the savestate is gone. Glad this didnt happen to some pokemon game.