Author Topic: Super Game Boy, and a weird bug  (Read 4762 times)

procyon

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Super Game Boy, and a weird bug
« on: October 05, 2017, 02:28:41 AM »
Hello!  I was trying to find the best way to go about and add Super Game Boy to RetroFE, but I've run into a few problems.  One is RetroFE specific, and another is sort of a Frontend/ROM set general problem.

RetroFE specific: What I did was to grep out those games in the GB and GBC No-Intro rom set that say "SGB Enhanced", and populated them into a "Nintendo Game Boy.sub" and a "Nintendo Game Boy Color.sub", and then I also specified in the settings.conf that I want to use a special "Nintendo Super Game Boy" launcher which specifies "mame64 supergb -cart...".  But I see now that by using a GB sub or a GBC sub, RetroFE wants to use the GB or GBC launchers respectively.  Is there anyway that I can get RetroFE to override the launcher in the case of SGB?  Maybe this would require another setting in settings.conf, like "Launcher override=(true/false)"

ROM set general: This is more a problem that I think would affect every frontend.  I'm using the No-Intro rom sets.  As mentioned above, No-Intro designates the SGB titles with a special "(SGB Enhanced)" tag.  At least it does these days, I don't know if that particularly new or not.  So the version of Donkey Kong I want to use is "Donkey Kong (World) (Rev A) (SGB Enhanced)".  However, it looks like that "(SGB Enhanced)" tag is not supported in any of Hyperspin's or EmuMovie's art files.  The boxes, screenshots, videos, HyperList XML, etc are all called "Donkey Kong (World) (Rev A)".  Is there any clever solution to this, or do I have to try and strip that tag from all my ROM's file names?

RetroFE bug: I notice that quite frequently, when I go into Arcade, I'm forced into my "Favorites" play list.  But I haven't designated any favorites, so it's just one game, A.D. 2083.  I know that I can press F1 or F2 to get back to "All Games," but I have no idea why RetroFE sends me to Favorites in the first place.  I think it has to do with moments when I accidentally launch RetroFE twice before it actually initializes, but I don't know for sure.  Just a pet peeve.

Thanks very much for any help you can provide with these matters.

Pieter Hulshoff

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Re: Super Game Boy, and a weird bug
« Reply #1 on: October 05, 2017, 06:57:52 AM »
RetroFE specific: What I did was to grep out those games in the GB and GBC No-Intro rom set that say "SGB Enhanced", and populated them into a "Nintendo Game Boy.sub" and a "Nintendo Game Boy Color.sub", and then I also specified in the settings.conf that I want to use a special "Nintendo Super Game Boy" launcher which specifies "mame64 supergb -cart...".  But I see now that by using a GB sub or a GBC sub, RetroFE wants to use the GB or GBC launchers respectively.  Is there anyway that I can get RetroFE to override the launcher in the case of SGB?  Maybe this would require another setting in settings.conf, like "Launcher override=(true/false)"

I need to update the documentation, for I couldn't find this feature, but a while ago I added the option of setting a launcher per game: https://bitbucket.org/phulshof/retrofe/commits/763744181f09522dccbe9e7cb0284f2a757b858f

Quote
ROM set general: This is more a problem that I think would affect every frontend.  I'm using the No-Intro rom sets.  As mentioned above, No-Intro designates the SGB titles with a special "(SGB Enhanced)" tag.  At least it does these days, I don't know if that particularly new or not.  So the version of Donkey Kong I want to use is "Donkey Kong (World) (Rev A) (SGB Enhanced)".  However, it looks like that "(SGB Enhanced)" tag is not supported in any of Hyperspin's or EmuMovie's art files.  The boxes, screenshots, videos, HyperList XML, etc are all called "Donkey Kong (World) (Rev A)".  Is there any clever solution to this, or do I have to try and strip that tag from all my ROM's file names?

Not at the moment. It's certainly possible to add a fuzzy matching algorithm to RetroFE, but that would have impact on the speed, so people prefer to get a matching rom set or rename the art in stead. I believe there are some tools to help in that regard though, but I've never used them.

Quote
RetroFE bug: I notice that quite frequently, when I go into Arcade, I'm forced into my "Favorites" play list.  But I haven't designated any favorites, so it's just one game, A.D. 2083.  I know that I can press F1 or F2 to get back to "All Games," but I have no idea why RetroFE sends me to Favorites in the first place.  I think it has to do with moments when I accidentally launch RetroFE twice before it actually initializes, but I don't know for sure.  Just a pet peeve.

http://www.retrofe.nl/wiki/doku.php?id=global_settings.conf
I think you have autoFavorites set to true/yes. In that case, RetroFE will switch to the Favorites playlist if it's available. You probably added A.D. 2083 by accident in the past, so you could also choose to simply remove that game from the Favorites playlist.

procyon

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Re: Super Game Boy, and a weird bug
« Reply #2 on: October 12, 2017, 02:28:44 AM »
Hi Pieter.  Thanks so much for your help.  I've made a ton of progress and have nearly everything I want up and running for the most part, largely thanks to your help.

You were correct about the favorites issue with my Arcade collection, that's been fixed now.  And yes, I agree that fuzzy matching would not be worth the performance hit, and would likely be error prone (not on your part, but simply due to the nature of fuzzy matching.)

The per-game launcher won't be a workable solution, as my Super Game Boy collection is around 154 titles.  At that size, I'm not opposed to repeating those specific GB and GBC ROMs and putting duplicates of them in a separate directory, and get around the problem that way.  It's just unfortunate that there isn't a per-system launcher override.  Something that says, "yes, these ROMs are a .sub of another collection, but I want to use _this_ launcher for them."  It's no problem though, I can work around it.

Thanks again for your help and your dedication to this project, it's everything I've been looking for.

Pieter Hulshoff

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Re: Super Game Boy, and a weird bug
« Reply #3 on: October 13, 2017, 07:53:09 AM »
I think you underestimate the flexibility of RetroFE. :)

There's several ways to tackle this:
1. You put everything in one collection, and add a launcher conf file for the games you want to use a different launcher for. With a few script lines that can be generated automatically.
2. You separate everything in separate collections, and just add a .sub file for one collection in the other. That way all files are pulled in from the other collection, and use that collection's launcher as well.
3. Same as 2, but you keep all files in one collection, simply set the paths for the media and roms to that collection from the other collection, and use an include.txt file to select the files for each collection.

As a simple example of 2, my MSX setup (reduced for the example):

collection msx_cart, containing
Gradius
Gradius 2
Gradius 3
Salamander

collection msx_disk, containing
Undeadline
Aleste 2
SD Snatcher

collection MSX, containing
msx_cart.sub (empty file; this will pull in all games from the msx_cart collection)
msx_disk.sub (empty file; this will pull in all games from the msx_disk collection)

msx_cart and msx_disk each have their own launcher, and by pulling them into the collection MSX, I get one collection containing games from both. As an alternative, I could also have put msx_cart.sub in the msx_disk collection; RetroFE allows mixtures of rom files and .sub files (and even menu.txt) in the same collection.

procyon

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Re: Super Game Boy, and a weird bug
« Reply #4 on: October 13, 2017, 01:15:43 PM »
That's all very cool, and I totally understand that.  However, my problem is a little different.  I'll try to use a similar example.

collection gameboy, containing
Donkey Kong (SGB)
Mega Man
Mega Man V (SGB)
Super Mario Land
Tetris

collection gameboy color, containing
Bionic Commando
Super Mario Bros. Deluxe
Tetris DX (SGB)
Zelda DX (SGB)

So far so good, the gameboy launcher runs mame64 gb -cart "%%" and the gameboy color launcher runs mame64 gbc -cart "%%"

However, for all those SGB titles, I want to actually launch mame64 supergb -cart "%%" to run MAME in Super Game Boy mode.  I can setup two subs:

gameboy.sub
Donkey Kong (SGB)
Mega Man V (SGB)

gameboy color.sub
Tetris DX (SGB)
Zelda DX (SGB)

and even if I set the Super Game Boy launcher to run the command above, running Donkey Kong still runs with gb, and Tetris DX runs with gbc.  At the moment, the only way I can get it to use the Super Game Boy launcher, is if I actually copy those roms from my gameboy and gameboy color sets into a separate Super Game Boy rom folder.  Then RetroFE will use the supergb flag specified in my Super Game Boy launcher. 

So the question is, can RetroFE be directed to use the Super Game Boy launcher just by using subs, and not by copying the roms into a new folder?  Ultimately, it's not a huge deal, I got it working by copying the roms, so I'm happy.  I'm just curious if I've missed something.  Thanks very much!
« Last Edit: October 13, 2017, 01:17:14 PM by procyon »

Pieter Hulshoff

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Re: Super Game Boy, and a weird bug
« Reply #5 on: October 13, 2017, 02:04:14 PM »
I understand; I'd just set it up differently:

collection SGB:
-----
Donkey Kong
Mega Man V
Tetrix DX
Zelda DX
-----

collection gameboy:
-----
Mega Man
Super Mario Land
Tetris
-----
with an SGB.sub file containing
Donkey Kong
Mega Man V
-----

collection gameboy color:
-----
Bionic Commando
Super Mario Bros. Deluxe
-----
with an SGB.sub file containing
Tetris DX
Zelda DX
-----

Well, that or keep it as you have it, and just add a launcher conf file for all the SGB games; I could script that in Linux without trouble.

Pieter Hulshoff

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Re: Super Game Boy, and a weird bug
« Reply #6 on: October 13, 2017, 02:11:19 PM »
Another alternative:

Keep all the files where they are, and create two new collections:

collection SGB:
- Point all the paths in settings.conf to the gameboy collection.
- Use an include.txt file containing
Donkey Kong
Mega Man V

collection SGBC:
- Point all the paths in settings.conf to the gameboy color collection.
- Use an include.txt file containing
Tetrix Dx
Zelda Dx

collection gameboy:
- Use an include.txt file containing
Mega Man
Super Mario Land
Tetris
- Use an empty SGB.sub file

collection gameboy color:
- Use an include.txt file containing
Bionic Commando
Super Mario Bros. Deluxe
- Use an empty SGBC.sub file