Official hakchi2 - NES Mini very simple pimp tool

[pcm720]

What does this mean? (from 2.13 release notes):

"The main idea to separate hakchi2 from non-NES games failed, so it's optimized for 3rd path emulators now (i.e. RetroArch)."

Cluster wanted to separate Hakchi2 from games for other consoles and use it only for managing NES games, but people started submitting artwork for console-specific folders, so his idea failed.

 

[Maurobr76]

Version 2.13:
https://github.com/ClusterM/hakchi2/releases/tag/2.13

What's new

• Finally hakchi2 shows size of all selected games in main window. Why I have not done it before?
• One font to rule them all. New font contains HUGE amount of characters now. Including Latin supplement, Cyrillic, Hiragana, Katakana, etc. So NES Mini and Famicom Mini uses the same font now and you can create folders with very unusual characters (in Russian, for example).
• The main idea to separate hakchi2 from non-NES games failed, so it's optimized for 3rd path emulators now (i.e. RetroArch).
• Added presets for Sega 32x and Game Gear games, without images yet.
• "/bin/path-to-your-app" replaced by "/bin/ext" for unknown extensions.
• Compression support! Since RetroArch can run games directly from archives it's possible now to compress non-NES games using 7-Zip. This feature enabled by default but you can disable it in the settings menu. Also you can add the whole archive (required by MAME games).
• Fixed huge bug in folder manager when new folders were missed after first sync.
• Some minor bugfixes.

Some important news
RetroArch mod has separate repository: https://github.com/ClusterM/retroarch-clover
I created only buggy sketch of this mod and granted full access to pcm720. And he did a really great job with tuning, optimization and core modules. Please update to the latest version:
https://github.com/ClusterM/retroarch-clover/releases
And send bugreports to https://github.com/ClusterM/retroarch-clover/issues

And some other very good news. I discovered a way to access NES Mini's shell and memory directly without any soldering. It was the main problem: with current version of hakchi2 we can't read anything from NES Mini, we can only create script for writing and execute it. That's why hakchi2 has not any ability to check which games are installed, how many space left, backup save-states, upload only new games (without reuploading everything). It is surprising that we have not noticed this method before. So feature versions will be much better. But it requires a lot of work.

TODO List

• Translation tool
• Update FAQ
• Rewrite hakchi for using new methods

Totalt awesome dude

On your to do list i would like to Add "fix CRT settings" so they work with nestopia module.

 

[bitz81]

Just want to remind everyone that extra cores can be found here:
https://github.com/pcm720/retroarch-clover/releases/latest
RetroArch module and basic cores are the same between both versions.

Hello Pcm720, I would like to ask you what is the difference between Mame2000 and Mame2003 cores??
Do you know which one is better for running simple games like tetris,pacman etc??

 

[pcm720]

Hello Pcm720, I would like to ask you what is the difference between Mame2000 and Mame2003 cores??
Do you know which one is better for running simple games like tetris,pacman etc??

I honestly don't know. Better look at MAME compatibility lists for devices with similar architecture.

 

[Maurobr76]

If i install 2.13 do i then need to install retroarch and use_nestopia again too? Or does the program remeber it?

 

[bitz81]

I honestly don't know. Better look at MAME compatibility lists for devices with similar architecture.

Thank you for the link! I will check it out!

 

[asper]

Hello Pcm720, I would like to ask you what is the difference between Mame2000 and Mame2003 cores??
Do you know which one is better for running simple games like tetris,pacman etc??

Mame2000 is based on Mame 0.37b5 while Mame2003 is based on Mame 0.78 so Mame2003 is better in terms of compatibility. More recent mame builds are too big (more than 30Mbs) and cannot be included in NES Mini (at least for now). You need to use specific mame romset to make games working and Mame2000 romset is different from Mame2003 one; also, as pcm720 said, look at specific mame version compatibility list to know if a game is supported or not.

 

[BrettX1234]

I mean this procedure:

This is very interesting... I just added a Feature Request to support it on all systems. From what the guy is suggesting it should work and would practically double the storage space overnight by just removing the functionality of unzipping the files and expanding the detection method to run ZIP files for NES games by Retroarch.

Request: https://github.com/ClusterM/hakchi2/issues/160

Yesterday, I had created the question in the guide, but didn't know the answer. It sounds like for today the answer is no, but it's very easy that the answer could become a yes quickly!

EDIT: Release notes say it is fixed in version 2.13!

Guys this huge... I'm betting you will need to manually rebuild your library since the games were already unzipped in the games folder. But totally worth it as it will practically double the space.

 

[nesito]

Mame2000 is based on Mame 0.37b5 while Mame2003 is based on Mame 0.78 so Mame2003 is better in terms of compatibility. More recent mame builds are too big (more than 30Mbs) and cannot be included in NES Mini (at least for now). You need to use specific mame romset to make games working and Mame2000 romset is different from Mame2003 one; also, as pcm720 said, look at specific mame version compatibility list to know if a game is supported or not.

Incoming a Mame2003 with support for the best 300 arcade games of about 4MB size core being tested... But so many tests laterly.

Rgs.

 

[asper]

Incoming a Mame2003 with support for the best 300 arcade games of about 4MB size core being tested... But so many tests laterly.

Rgs.

Well it should be done with mame2010, mame2014 or mame2016 which are too big... anyway it will save some other MBs for Mini flash

 

[Supermario130]

Damn, no luck with remapping the buttons in RA nestopia. No way to save the settings. After restart I have always the default settings. Seems I have to use the original NES mini Gamepad to NOT break my fingers in hard Supermariobros actions.

Dear Mr. @pcm720 ,do you have any idea what's wrong with my config and why I can't save my own controller mappings?

Greetings, Mario

 

[pcm720]

Damn, no luck with remapping the buttons in RA nestopia. No way to save the settings. After restart I have always the default settings. Seems I have to use the original NES mini Gamepad to NOT break my fingers in hard Supermariobros actions.

Dear Mr. @pcm720 ,do you have any idea what's wrong with my config and why I can't save my own controller mappings?

Greetings, Mario

Have you seen this?

 

[BrettX1234]

Damn, no luck with remapping the buttons in RA nestopia. No way to save the settings. After restart I have always the default settings. Seems I have to use the original NES mini Gamepad to NOT break my fingers in hard Supermariobros actions.

Dear Mr. @pcm720 ,do you have any idea what's wrong with my config and why I can't save my own controller mappings?

Greetings, Mario

You may have changed a different setting without realizing it that prevents the saving. Try uninstalling and reinstalling the hmod files. It's pretty quick and should default things back to the original configuration assuming you are following all the other steps correctly. I believe there is also some way to make game specific configuration that may be overriding this, but I don't know those details.

 

[darkgaizat]

I've been testing MAME2003 and I got to a point (after adding TMNT 1 and 2, Captain America, Simpsons, Moon Patrol, Frogger and Q-Bert) I'm running into an issue where I can't add any more, not because of space issues, but hakchi doesn't process the NES Mini correctly after adding any other arcade roms. Doing this several dozen times, it take 4-5 processes to finish correctly, but when adding more, it tries to finish the first round of processing and it then just restarts the system to the menu instead of turning off the system. If I turn it off and start the 2nd processing, several games are missing by the end. I have tried adding very small MAME games after that, but it WILL NOT process correctly. Anyone else having this issue?
**Edit: So I put a Z_ in the title of Bag Man (small MAME game) and it put it at the bottom of the rom list and now it seems to sync. So it has something to do with the order in which it is syncing.

 

[Supermario130]

Damn, no luck with remapping the buttons in RA nestopia. No way to save the settings. After restart I have always the default settings. Seems I have to use the original NES mini Gamepad to NOT break my fingers in hard Supermariobros actions.

Dear Mr. @pcm720 ,do you have any idea what's wrong with my config and why I can't save my own controller mappings?

Greetings, Mario

Problem solved.... I need to save remap-file in the control area, not the config file.
Sorry for the trouble.

 

[ArcNoculus]

Great work as usual to Cluster. Just one question about 2.13:

If I created save states using an unzipped game, if I delete and then re-add that game as a .zip file, will my save state be lost?

 

[kcsims]

Have you seen this?

PCM, is it possible to use the stock emulator to play FDS games with the same functionality as the Famicom mini disk changing so I could still use my regular controller that came with the system?

 

[pcm720]

PCM, is it possible to use the stock emulator to play FDS games with the same functionality as the Famicom mini disk changing so I could still use my regular controller that came with the system?

If you don't have '--retroarch' flag in the game's command line options, it will use stock emulator (kachikachi) for FDS games.
If you want to use Nestopia for FDS games with original controller, you can remap "change disk side" button to one of the existing buttons on the controller.

 

[asper]

I've been testing MAME2003 and I got to a point (after adding TMNT 1 and 2, Captain America, Simpsons, Moon Patrol, Frogger and Q-Bert) I'm running into an issue where I can't add any more, not because of space issues, but hakchi doesn't process the NES Mini correctly after adding any other arcade roms. Doing this several dozen times, it take 4-5 processes to finish correctly, but when adding more, it tries to finish the first round of processing and it then just restarts the system to the menu instead of turning off the system. If I turn it off and start the 2nd processing, several games are missing by the end. I have tried adding very small MAME games after that, but it WILL NOT process correctly. Anyone else having this issue?
**Edit: So I put a Z_ in the title of Bag Man (small MAME game) and it put it at the bottom of the rom list and now it seems to sync. So it has something to do with the order in which it is syncing.

I got your exact same problem: i think it is related to files "splitted" in the passage from an upload session and the other: i solved removing 2 big files(8MBs each) leaving only small ones and the problem was gone. I reported it to @Cluster, I hope he will find what the exact problem is.

 

[bitz81]

Mame2000 is based on Mame 0.37b5 while Mame2003 is based on Mame 0.78 so Mame2003 is better in terms of compatibility. More recent mame builds are too big (more than 30Mbs) and cannot be included in NES Mini (at least for now). You need to use specific mame romset to make games working and Mame2000 romset is different from Mame2003 one; also, as pcm720 said, look at specific mame version compatibility list to know if a game is supported or not.

Thank you very much for your reply! I guess I have to check the compatibility lists, although the games I want are really basic (tetris, wonder boy, bubble bobble etc.) so I think there should be no problem with either core...