Retro-Go: Emulator launcher with improved emulators

Nemo1984 · Post by **Nemo1984** » Tue May 12, 2020 12:25 am

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 · Post by **ducalex** » Tue May 12, 2020 4:14 am

Christian_Haitian wrote: ↑
Mon May 11, 2020 3:11 pm
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.

Nemo1984 wrote: ↑
Tue May 12, 2020 12:25 am
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 · Post by **pceslayer** » Tue May 12, 2020 2:27 pm

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.

lordhardware wrote: ↑
Sun Apr 05, 2020 7:58 am
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 · Post by **lordhardware** » Tue May 12, 2020 3:23 pm

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 · Post by **Christian_Haitian** » Wed May 13, 2020 5:12 am

ducalex wrote: ↑
Tue May 12, 2020 4:14 am

Christian_Haitian wrote: ↑
Mon May 11, 2020 3:11 pm
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.

Nemo1984 wrote: ↑
Tue May 12, 2020 12:25 am
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 · Post by **Christian_Haitian** » Wed May 13, 2020 6:35 am

ducalex wrote: ↑
Mon May 11, 2020 7:05 am
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 · Post by **ducalex** » Thu May 14, 2020 3:24 am

Christian_Haitian wrote: ↑
Wed May 13, 2020 5:12 am
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).

Christian_Haitian wrote: ↑
Wed May 13, 2020 6:35 am
New pce romart pack with more than 2.5 times the images in crc32 format. Enjoy!

Thanks a lot!

Christian_Haitian · Post by **Christian_Haitian** » Fri May 15, 2020 11:16 pm

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

ducalex · Post by **ducalex** » Sun May 17, 2020 9:04 am

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 · Post by **ducalex** » Sun May 17, 2020 9:38 am

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 · Post by **lordhardware** » Sun May 17, 2020 9:39 am

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

lordhardware · Post by **lordhardware** » Sun May 17, 2020 8:41 pm

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 · Post by **ducalex** » Mon May 18, 2020 2:48 am

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 · Post by **lordhardware** » Mon May 18, 2020 5:53 am

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

ducalex · Post by **ducalex** » Thu May 21, 2020 7:53 pm

Christian_Haitian wrote: ↑
Fri May 15, 2020 11:16 pm
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?

lordhardware wrote: ↑
Mon May 18, 2020 5:53 am
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 · Post by **lordhardware** » Thu May 21, 2020 8:27 pm

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 · Post by **lordhardware** » Thu May 21, 2020 8:32 pm

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 · Post by **ducalex** » Thu May 21, 2020 10:00 pm

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 · Post by **lordhardware** » Thu May 21, 2020 10:06 pm

ducalex wrote: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 · Post by **Ganjadorno** » Fri May 22, 2020 10:40 pm

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 · Post by **lordhardware** » Sat May 23, 2020 9:47 am

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 · Post by **Ganjadorno** » Sat May 23, 2020 11:50 pm

lordhardware wrote: ↑
Sat May 23, 2020 9:47 am
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 · Post by **Ganjadorno** » Sun May 24, 2020 4:30 pm

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 · Post by **ducalex** » Mon May 25, 2020 12:24 am

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 · Post by **ducalex** » Tue May 26, 2020 2:49 am

concreted wrote: ↑
Thu Mar 12, 2020 7:17 am
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 · Post by **Ganjadorno** » Tue May 26, 2020 10:39 pm

ducalex wrote: ↑
Mon May 25, 2020 12:24 am
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 · Post by **SPTLegend** » Thu May 28, 2020 6:35 am

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 · Post by **ducalex** » Thu May 28, 2020 7:55 am

SPTLegend wrote: ↑
Thu May 28, 2020 6:35 am
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 · Post by **concreted** » Thu May 28, 2020 12:10 pm

ducalex wrote: ↑
Tue May 26, 2020 2:49 am
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 · Post by **SPTLegend** » Thu May 28, 2020 10:59 pm

ducalex wrote: ↑
Thu May 28, 2020 7:55 am

SPTLegend wrote: ↑
Thu May 28, 2020 6:35 am
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 · Post by **Nemo1984** » Fri May 29, 2020 1:16 am

ducalex wrote: ↑
Thu May 28, 2020 7:55 am
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 · Post by **Ganjadorno** » Sat May 30, 2020 1:56 am

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.

lordhardware · Post by **lordhardware** » Sat May 30, 2020 9:27 am

This used to not be as much of a problem but somewhere the default behaviour has gone back to autoreload the last time/save after a hard reboot. Where is this setting toggled?

ducalex · Post by **ducalex** » Sat May 30, 2020 2:35 pm

Ganjadorno wrote: ↑
Sat May 30, 2020 1:56 am
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.

If an emulator is stuck you can try holding one of up/down/left/right/menu while powering on, it will return to the launcher. I'm not sure why you had to reflash the multi-firmware but let me know if it happens again, I could maybe improve cleanup when switching apps.

PS: Coincidentally, the upcoming release now does atomic saves. Crashes/battery dying/SD errors(within reason) will no longer corrupt the save file.

lordhardware wrote: ↑
Sat May 30, 2020 9:27 am
This used to not be as much of a problem but somewhere the default behaviour has gone back to autoreload the last time/save after a hard reboot. Where is this setting toggled?

That was always the behaviour, same as Go-Play. If it didn't reload in a particular release then it was a bug. I certainly can add a setting to never resume and/or to remember if "resume" or "new game" was selected in the launcher.

Edit: I will add an option to select what happens on cold boot: last active app or always launcher.

Ganjadorno · Post by **Ganjadorno** » Sat May 30, 2020 5:09 pm

Really digging the additions you made to the options menu in 05.16 build. Cpu load, fps count and battery icon really make sense there

Ganjadorno · Post by **Ganjadorno** » Sat May 30, 2020 8:43 pm

ducalex wrote: ↑
Sat May 30, 2020 2:35 pm
If an emulator is stuck you can try holding one of up/down/left/right/menu while powering on, it will return to the launcher. I'm not sure why you had to reflash the multi-firmware but let me know if it happens again, I could maybe improve cleanup when switching apps.

Actually the problem reoccurred with some other random gbc Pokemon rom back, no chance with the solution you proposed.
Might have to reflash Multi-Firmware. Waiting for your new build which hopefully fixed my problems :/

lordhardware · Post by **lordhardware** » Sat May 30, 2020 8:51 pm

ducalex wrote:That was always the behaviour, same as Go-Play. If it didn't reload in a particular release then it was a bug.

I must have had this same discussion with Pelle in the past then haha.

ducalex · Post by **ducalex** » Sun May 31, 2020 3:18 am

A new release 2020-05-30 is available! Attached to the top post or available on github.

Changes since 2020-05-11 (test):

NES: New option to detect and crop the blank leftmost column in some games (eg SMB3)
NES: Implemented Mapper 193 (War in the Gulf)
NES: Fixed shadows in Aussie Rules Footy
NES: Fixed games relying on 32K banks
NES: Fixed more Chinese bootlegs
NES: Improved sound on PAL games (speed is still a bit off in some games)
NES: New save/load code that will soon be compatible with saves from popular emulators
GB: Fixed Donkey Kong statistics not showing (Game-specific hack)
GBC: Fixed Fushigi no Dungeon - Fuurai no Shiren GB2 text not showing (Game-specific hack)
PCE: Cover art updated
All: Saves are now atomic, an interruption while saving (crash/battery/sd error/etc) will no longer corrupt your save file
All: Battery and FPS indicators when you open in-game menu
All: Option to select startup app (always launcher vs last used game)
All: Firmware size is back to a mere 2.56MB (including PCE and Lynx!)

Note 1: I have left Lynx in this release but it isn't playable yet (no audio, no saves, sometimes glitches). It will be fully working in the next release (~2weeks).
Note 2: I recommended that you backup your save games. I don't anticipate issues, but I still did significant changes to the save code especially NES so we never know.

Please report any other issue!

Nemo1984 · Post by **Nemo1984** » Sun May 31, 2020 2:51 pm

I have found two bugs. One in Splatterhouse on PCE. It gets wonky sometimes, the screen switching horizontal positions. The other is in Xiao Ma Li on NES. Cropping auto seems to shift the picture too far left and generate garbage at the right. I'm testing further games.

This is a massive release, thanks!

sydarn2 · Post by **sydarn2** » Mon Jun 01, 2020 5:53 am

First of all thank you for this awesome firmware! This is the first build of retro-go I test. I tested quite a few games and found the following pc engine games with issues:

Magical Chase (U) - First time it froze after pressing start on initial screen, second time it actually ran (I could hear the sound/music) but only a single horizontal line was displayed in the bottom
Bikkuriman World (J) - works but has 2 horizontal black lines.
Legendary Axe II, The (U) - Works but certain frame "jumps" for example when you use your weapon (It seem that the vertical lines displayed start somewhere in the middle and then it wraps around so that the upper part is displayed in the bottom). It's also slow.

The following games didn't boot:
R-Type Complete (U)
Air Zonk (U)
Bonk 3 - Bonks big adventure (U)

Btw my existing romart png's were of type TrueColorAlpha, while retro-go wants them in Palette type (only white noise were displayed).
Using imagemagick one can check type with:
identify -verbose romart.png
and convert them with:
convert romart.png -type Palette -colors 255 romart.png

Christian_Haitian · Post by **Christian_Haitian** » Mon Jun 01, 2020 6:42 am

ducalex wrote: ↑
Thu May 21, 2020 7:53 pm

Christian_Haitian wrote: ↑
Fri May 15, 2020 11:16 pm
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?

I will assist with this if I can find an art pack for this like I did with the PCE that I can script the name change for. I'll let you know in a few days or weeks.

sydarn2 · Post by **sydarn2** » Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:01 am

Some more troublesome pc engine games:

Salamander (J) boots but only one horizontal line in the bottoms is displayed, similar to Magical Chase.

The following games doesn't boot:
Aero Blasters (U)
Blazing Lazers (U)
Legend of Hero Tonma (U)
Bloody Wolf (U)

ducalex · Post by **ducalex** » Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:31 am

Thanks everyone for testing! It seems that many broken PCE games were found. Since no changes were made to PCE lately I guess it's just increased interest in it

. I will verify every game that was reported.

sydarn2 wrote: ↑
Mon Jun 01, 2020 5:53 am
Btw my existing romart png's were of type TrueColorAlpha, while retro-go wants them in Palette type (only white noise were displayed).
Using imagemagick one can check type with:
identify -verbose romart.png
and convert them with:
convert romart.png -type Palette -colors 255 romart.png

Indeed, PNG support isn't complete in retro-go (it uses LuPng). I briefly describe the preferred format in the README but I could improve the wording for sure. Personally I process all artwork with pngquant which gives the correct format and makes files at least 60% smaller (faster loading).

ducalex · Post by **ducalex** » Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:52 am

Nemo1984 wrote: ↑
Sun May 31, 2020 2:51 pm
The other is in Xiao Ma Li on NES. Cropping auto seems to shift the picture too far left and generate garbage at the right. I'm testing further games.

Most games that have a blank leftmost column also have some level of garbage on the right (inherent to how the game works). I will change the option to Auto crop: None/Left/Both I think.

Note: I will still double check the specific game you reported. It's 100% possible that the garbage is created by retro-go rather than only made more evident by it.

sydarn2 · Post by **sydarn2** » Wed Jun 03, 2020 5:02 am

Did some tests on NES:

Gun-Nac (U) - Menu option text on title screen is unreadable, not rendered correctly. Sound is choppy at volume 5 or higher.
Zen Intergalactic Ninja (U) - In-game bottom status bar is vibrating kind-of.

Really appreciate the work you have put in. Most NES games runs fine, although I didn't nearly test all in my collection so I might get back with some more feedback.

Btw, what does values after FPS actually mean, I assume the one without parenthesis is the actual FPS but what is the number within paranthesis?

Also I have seen the BUSY percentage at 236%. I guess that is a bug.

Nemo1984 · Post by **Nemo1984** » Wed Jun 03, 2020 12:01 pm

sydarn2 wrote: ↑
Mon Jun 01, 2020 5:53 am
The following games didn't boot:
Bonk 3 - Bonks big adventure (U)

Weird. I did test that game and haven't had any problem.

Nemo1984 · Post by **Nemo1984** » Wed Jun 03, 2020 3:25 pm

ducalex wrote: ↑
Tue Jun 02, 2020 3:31 am
Thanks everyone for testing! It seems that many broken PCE games were found. Since no changes were made to PCE lately I guess it's just increased interest in it . I will verify every game that was reported.

Guilty. The bug in Splatterhouse has been there at least from 2020-05-04. I just never moved fast enough in the game to trigger the bug.

ducalex · Post by **ducalex** » Thu Jun 04, 2020 12:17 am

sydarn2 wrote: Some more troublesome pc engine games:

I've tested some of the games you reported and I found the following to boot:
- Air Zonk (but it's glitchy and no sound)
- Blazing Lazers (seems to work fine)
- Bonk III (seems to work fine)

Can you test again or maybe try another rom dump?

sydarn2 wrote: ↑
Wed Jun 03, 2020 5:02 am
Btw, what does values after FPS actually mean, I assume the one without parenthesis is the actual FPS but what is the number within paranthesis?

Also I have seen the BUSY percentage at 236%. I guess that is a bug.

The numbers are:
- Emulated frames in the last second: The actual speed the emulation is running at, should typically be 50 or 60
- (Skipped frames in the last second): The frames that were skipped (emulated but not rendered/drawn)
- Busy %: This is a bit more nuanced, but it's basically CPU time spent in the emulation loop on core 0

All counters will take 1 second to "prime" + 1 more second of running emulation to be meaningful, so if you open/close the menu quickly you will see seemingly random numbers. It's not a bug per se but I'll try to improve it and hide misleading values.

ducalex · Post by **ducalex** » Thu Jun 04, 2020 12:26 am

sydarn2 wrote: ↑
Wed Jun 03, 2020 5:02 am
Sound is choppy at volume 5 or higher.

Yeah this is a problem on NES since almost the beginning. I never found out why because the volume resampling happens outside the emulator, so if there was a bug there it should affect all emulators... Anyway I'll have a look again.

sydarn2 · Post by **sydarn2** » Thu Jun 04, 2020 2:32 am

ducalex wrote: ↑
Thu Jun 04, 2020 12:17 am
I've tested some of the games you reported and I found the following to boot:
- Air Zonk (but it's glitchy and no sound)
- Blazing Lazers (seems to work fine)
- Bonk III (seems to work fine)

Can you test again or maybe try another rom dump?

I have tested all three again on retro-go and also with Temper emulator for another handheld, and there all three roms works fine. (I manually checked crc32 on each rom on both sd cards an verified they were the same.)

Air Zonk (U) - 0f62b9a0
Bonk 3 - Bonks big adventure (U) - 0f62b9a0
Blazing Lazers (U) - f0ed3094

Could there be multiple releases? For Bonk 3 Wikipedia tells me there were one release for turbografx-16 and one for TurboDuo.
It would be nice to figure out why they don't boot, to increase rom compatibility.

Additionally i found:
Gomola Speed (J) - b3630ab9
Which only display a horizontal line in the bottom.