Hacking The Great Quest for Wiiflow Plugins™ - A call for adventurers!

[Taleweaver]

Just noticed something. Perhaps a bug, perhaps something else...

The FBA-PGM-libretro.ini file refers to the psikyo-dol instead of the pgm-doll

In more detail: the file wiiflow/plugins/Arcade/FBA_VM/FBA-PGM-libretro.ini has the following line:

dolfile=Arcade/FBA_VM/dols/fbalpha2012_psikyo_libretro_wii.dol

I guess that should be

dolfile=Arcade/FBA_VM/dols/fbalpha2012_pgm_libretro_wii.dol

as the .dol is on that location.

(note: I've got no idea what pgm or psikyo really are...I'm still questing to get penguin bros to work. I'll use any core possible ).

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

Specific plugin question: snes9x_next.dol (RA-HEXAECO)

Using pack v5, this plugin is not retaining button configuration or other settings changes (and always gives the Welcome popup on first pause). I tested the regular apps version of the current version of RA-HEXAECO (Feb 9, 2021) on the same Wii and it retained settings. No change to the plugin - it's not using the apps file's configuration. Is there a cfg file that needs to be made manually for the plugin dol, and if so, where do I put it?

All the Hexaeco cores in my pack were edited to save configuration in ROMS/0_HEXAECO_cfg/.
All my Hexaeco ini's were edited to look for configurations in ROMS/0_HEXAECO_cfg/.
If you don't have these folders, create them manually in the same partition where you have your roms.
The cfg file for snes is ROMS/0_HEXAECO_cfg/snes.cfg
If you have Wiiflow/plugins in the SD, you can also use my cfg files for HEXAECO that are included with rev5. The video settings are specific for people with 16:9 LCD displays.

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

Just noticed something. Perhaps a bug, perhaps something else...

The FBA-PGM-libretro.ini file refers to the psikyo-dol instead of the pgm-doll

In more detail: the file wiiflow/plugins/Arcade/FBA_VM/FBA-PGM-libretro.ini has the following line:

dolfile=Arcade/FBA_VM/dols/fbalpha2012_psikyo_libretro_wii.dol

I guess that should be

dolfile=Arcade/FBA_VM/dols/fbalpha2012_pgm_libretro_wii.dol

as the .dol is on that location.

(note: I've got no idea what pgm or psikyo really are...I'm still questing to get penguin bros to work. I'll use any core possible ).

Thanks for pointing this out. It will be fixed

 

[Exidous]

All the Hexaeco cores in my pack were edited to save configuration in ROMS/0_HEXAECO_cfg/.
If you don't have these folders, create them manually in the same partition where you have your roms.
The cfg file for snes is ROMS/0_HEXAECO_cfg/snes.cfg
If you have Wiiflow/plugins in the SD, you can also use my cfg files for HEXAECO that are included with rev5. The video settings are specific for people with 16:9 LCD displays.

Thanks! I improperly split up files between SD and USB when I added the pack.

I'm guessing the HEXAECO dols can't look for a settings file on a different partition than where they look for ROMS? Otherwise my recommendation would be to configure them to look for settings on the SD card, or more specifically wherever the DOL is located. Reason being Wiiflow never fails to mount the SD, but has occasionally failed to mount USB.

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

Thanks! I improperly split up files between SD and USB when I added the pack.

I'm guessing the HEXAECO dols can't look for a settings file on a different partition than where they look for ROMS? Otherwise my recommendation would be to configure them to look for settings on the SD card, or more specifically wherever the DOL is located. Reason being Wiiflow never fails to mount the SD, but has occasionally failed to mount USB.

Yes, the hexaeco cfg's must reside on the same partition of roms. If I try to configure it to look for settings on SD no matter what, they are not found for people with roms on USB (the majority).
You can try to use the original unmodified dol's by SuperrSonic.
The original Hexaeco dols are saving cfg's in the private folder on the SD, but I never liked how messy it becomes because of that (with tons of folders called oth## plus other cfg files scattered all around, it's impossible to tell which is which).
In my opinion, the private folder is not made for that, it contains other important things and I prefer to keep it clean.

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

@Exidous Uhmm, please ignore my previous message. I went to look again in my hexaeco dol's, so much time has passed and I was remembering it completely wrong. I've not modified the actual dols. I only edited the cfg files to look for things in wiiflow/plugins instead of apps/. Then in my plugin .ini files I've changed the third argument to load these cfg's from ROMS/0_HEXAECO_cfg/.
I'll try to better explain, this is the argument line:
arguments={device}:/{path}/|{name}|{device}:/path/to/your.cfg
the three arguments are separated by |.
The 1st one {device}:/{path}/ tells Wiiflow where the roms are stored.
The 2nd one {name} tells Wiiflow to load the selected game
The 3rd one {device}:/path/to/your.cfg tells Wiiflow where are your cfg files
it can be any path (in my case ROMS/0_HEXAECO_cfg), but it must fulfill two conditions:
1)the folder(s) must aready exist. They're not created automatically.
2)the folders must be in the same partition of your games. So if you have rompartition=1 you must create the config folders in USB.

So, you can point it to other folders, but the device must be the same of the roms. You can't for example write SD instead of {device}, at least I've tried but it didn't work.

 

[sion_zaphod]

@Tetsuo Shima How's it going? Been a while! I've recently got back into the Wii/WiiU scene and been updating all my Loaders/Homebrew/Emulation. I'm liking the simplicity of your plugins pack very much but as you know I like to tweak things just the way I like them. I'm having some real pulling my hair out moments with the RA-HEXAECO retroarch mod. No matter what I do it will not stop making the private folder on the root of my device. I see from your post earlier that you had similar woes. I've tried your approach of passing a config file to the core to setup correct paths and even tried Hex editing the dol/elf files to change the /private path to apps/RA-HEXAECO or even something shorter. Hex editing breaks the dol/elf and passing config files with the paths setup still result in the private folder being created with multiple iterations of redundant folders containing blank retroarch folders. The only thing that is consistent is the main.cfg file being saved inside /private/other. Am I the only one that finds this bloody irritating? I've tried running it from homebrew channel and passing the main.cfg file as a command line argument in meta.xml but it is still making those folders and the one file. Is there a solution? It refuses to use one path for system files/bios etc. I have to copy the entire system folder to every instance of system under /private to be able to run multiple cores. PC-FX refuses to load games even though the bios file is in every system folder. Attempting to do so returns to loader. Atari 800 will not boot any A5200 roms despite the bios and basic files being in system folder(s) too. The cannonball core has issues with control (I don't know if its an issue with motion plus controllers and I don't have a normal wiimote to test). Every motion plus wiimote I use will only allow me to turn left with motion controls. FreeIntv also has issues with control (but at least the bios is being recognised :0)) . What's going on in the emulation scene on the Wii these days? I don't remember it being this much of a pain in the arse! I downloaded the latest stable build of retroarch and scummvm and even they have issues. Retroarch is making random folders on the root as well and scummvm code dumps more often than not. If it wasn't for wiiflow/coverflow the whole scene would have moved to retropie with attract mode (not emulationstation).

Anyway rant over. Any help will be appreciated.

On a separate note I'm loving your theme. But also been tweaking it a little. I have altered the SNES/N64 box flow so that vertical Japanese covers can be displayed the correct way by pressing 1 or 2. Attached is ini file.

 

[Taleweaver]

A few findings from my end:

1) the DOSbox game skyroads works fine (incidentally, this is also one I played a lot in my youth ), but unless I'm mistaken, the keys to the other game (menace) doesn't work at all. Will have to check some more.

2) the bios file of neogeo.zip is...kind of strange. The archive comes with a convenient (empty) text file that states to put the bios and games in <device>/roms/fba/neogeo...but the bios file isn't necessarily the bios file.

The content ON MY END now looks like this:

...but there are bios files on the internet that have barely any or none of those uni-bios files. As such, most of my initial neogeo tests failed, but I had no idea this was the cause until I fabricated this with other files. And to be honest, I've got no idea if the above bios is complete, as the source on this info comes from some darkweb pages that usually link to "their" file as well (meaning: I can't even legally link to them here).
Does anyone know if this contains everything neogeo-related?

(note: I'm aware that larger games require some cache-generating procedure as well...but that's something for in the near future).

3) it's a personal gripe, but I find the Duke3D files kind of messy. Thus far I've altered the display names and the coverfolder location (Duke3D was initially released as a DOS game (that also ran under windows), so I put everything there), and I'm going to change the filetypes of the covers and if possible even the dolfile-location of the expansions (I like things a bit more ordered).
...but first I'm going to check some more on the vacation add-on. Starting DC switches the last DN3D episode with the DC one, the winter add-on changes the main menu...but for the vacation expansion I don't see how you actually start the episode yet.
EDIT: erm...rather than improving, now the winter and DC expansions also 'just' play the base game. Perhaps the atomic edition (from which I use the base .grp file) assumes things on the windows registry a bit too much? I'll need to check this one more...
EDIT2: still nothing...I'll strike out this part until I actually KNOW something rather than mess around...

4) a note to my past self: to get penguin bros to work, use the 0.2.97.39 romset of penbros.zip in combination with the FB_alpha core of hexaeco (I presume retroarch's just as good...haven't tested that). This means putting the rom in <device>/roms/fba/other directory by default.
Not that anyone but me cares about this "bubble bobble meets bomberman" arcade game, but to me it has emotional value. Very glad to finally get it working.

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

@Tetsuo Shima How's it going? Been a while! I've recently got back into the Wii/WiiU scene and been updating all my Loaders/Homebrew/Emulation. I'm liking the simplicity of your plugins pack very much but as you know I like to tweak things just the way I like them. I'm having some real pulling my hair out moments with the RA-HEXAECO retroarch mod. No matter what I do it will not stop making the private folder on the root of my device. I see from your post earlier that you had similar woes. I've tried your approach of passing a config file to the core to setup correct paths and even tried Hex editing the dol/elf files to change the /private path to apps/RA-HEXAECO or even something shorter. Hex editing breaks the dol/elf and passing config files with the paths setup still result in the private folder being created with multiple iterations of redundant folders containing blank retroarch folders. The only thing that is consistent is the main.cfg file being saved inside /private/other. Am I the only one that finds this bloody irritating? I've tried running it from homebrew channel and passing the main.cfg file as a command line argument in meta.xml but it is still making those folders and the one file. Is there a solution? It refuses to use one path for system files/bios etc. I have to copy the entire system folder to every instance of system under /private to be able to run multiple cores. PC-FX refuses to load games even though the bios file is in every system folder. Attempting to do so returns to loader. Atari 800 will not boot any A5200 roms despite the bios and basic files being in system folder(s) too. The cannonball core has issues with control (I don't know if its an issue with motion plus controllers and I don't have a normal wiimote to test). Every motion plus wiimote I use will only allow me to turn left with motion controls. FreeIntv also has issues with control (but at least the bios is being recognised :0)) . What's going on in the emulation scene on the Wii these days? I don't remember it being this much of a pain in the arse! I downloaded the latest stable build of retroarch and scummvm and even they have issues. Retroarch is making random folders on the root as well and scummvm code dumps more often than not. If it wasn't for wiiflow/coverflow the whole scene would have moved to retropie with attract mode (not emulationstation).

Anyway rant over. Any help will be appreciated.

On a separate note I'm loving your theme. But also been tweaking it a little. I have altered the SNES/N64 box flow so that vertical Japanese covers can be displayed the correct way by pressing 1 or 2. Attached is ini file.

Hey Sion!! Long time no see, what a pleasure
Yes, HEXAECO has its pro and cons, but the Retroarch version in my pack is still my preferred choice. It was hard as hell to assemble all those cores from different RA nightly builds, and mod them to be sure they wouldn't conflict with each other, but it definitely paid off all the headaches, as everything is working good.
Hexaeco has better menu's and it's easier to use, but it's not without issues. The private folder mess is one of them, and I also found out that if you change the button mappings, with the CPS cores the 2nd player controller is not recognized anymore. The Genplus core is also struggling to run Virtua Racing at full speed, on RA it's perfect.
I couldn't avoid HEXAECO to create those private subfolders, but the benefit of passing different cfg's through the argument line, is that in case of updates I don't need to hex-edit all the cores again. With the regular RA I would still have to re-mod each core (but honestly I don't think I'll ever go again through this ordeal of updating RA).

With cannonball I had not this issue, it's playable with motion controls but it's not totally accurate. I prefer to steer with the analog stick of the Classic Controller. I still have to try with the motion plus wiimote.
As a general advice, stay away from the new Retroarch releases. They're not barely tested and full of issues!! I had better luck testing dozens nightly builds, but as I said I'll never do it again.

The old ScummVM was perfect, the latest stable build introduced many new engines (Blade Runner, Ultima 8, Ultima 6, Might & Magic among many others) but broke some other engines (I can't run some games anymore) and it sometimes randomly crashes.

I think the main problem with the Wii scene is that nobody is seriously testing the new releases any more. Even in this forum, with many active wii users, it's so rare to see someone that wants to contribute sharing its tests, apart from me, @RunningSnakes and a few others.

Finally, thanks for the Snes tweak with my theme. It's a great idea!!

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

A few findings from my end:

1) the DOSbox game skyroads works fine (incidentally, this is also one I played a lot in my youth ), but unless I'm mistaken, the keys to the other game (menace) doesn't work at all. Will have to check some more.

2) the bios file of neogeo.zip is...kind of strange. The archive comes with a convenient (empty) text file that states to put the bios and games in <device>/roms/fba/neogeo...but the bios file isn't necessarily the bios file.

The content ON MY END now looks like this:
View attachment 250936


...but there are bios files on the internet that have barely any or none of those uni-bios files. As such, most of my initial neogeo tests failed, but I had no idea this was the cause until I fabricated this with other files. And to be honest, I've got no idea if the above bios is complete, as the source on this info comes from some darkweb pages that usually link to "their" file as well (meaning: I can't even legally link to them here).
Does anyone know if this contains everything neogeo-related?

(note: I'm aware that larger games require some cache-generating procedure as well...but that's something for in the near future).

3) it's a personal gripe, but I find the Duke3D files kind of messy. Thus far I've altered the display names and the coverfolder location (Duke3D was initially released as a DOS game (that also ran under windows), so I put everything there), and I'm going to change the filetypes of the covers and if possible even the dolfile-location of the expansions (I like things a bit more ordered).
...but first I'm going to check some more on the vacation add-on. Starting DC switches the last DN3D episode with the DC one, the winter add-on changes the main menu...but for the vacation expansion I don't see how you actually start the episode yet.
EDIT: erm...rather than improving, now the winter and DC expansions also 'just' play the base game. Perhaps the atomic edition (from which I use the base .grp file) assumes things on the windows registry a bit too much? I'll need to check this one more...
EDIT2: still nothing...I'll strike out this part until I actually KNOW something rather than mess around...

4) a note to my past self: to get penguin bros to work, use the 0.2.97.39 romset of penbros.zip in combination with the FB_alpha core of hexaeco (I presume retroarch's just as good...haven't tested that). This means putting the rom in <device>/roms/fba/other directory by default.
Not that anyone but me cares about this "bubble bobble meets bomberman" arcade game, but to me it has emotional value. Very glad to finally get it working.

1) I don't know why. Bio Menace controls are working for me, both with Wiimote or Classic Controller.
2) Not sure, the first Bios files that I tried years ago worked out of the box.
3) Apart from the cover location, that you are free to change, you are forced to use the apps/eduke32 folder to store the game data. The app is hardcoded to work this way. I'm using the Atomic edition too, and everything is working (main game and all the expansions). The only issue is that savegames are shared, not an issue if you play the games one by one, otherwise you'll risk to overwrite some game saves and lose them. The elf files have to be separated for the expansion, I couldn't find no other way to make them work.
To alter the title names you can add the following lines to your custom_titles.ini file located in wiiflow/settings/. Remember that there must be a blank line at the top of the file before the [TITLES] section.

[44554B45]
DUKE3D=Duke Nukem 3D

[444E4356]
vacation=Duke Nukem 3D - Duke Caribbean: Life's a Beach

[444E4443]
dukedc=Duke Nukem 3D - Duke it out in D.C.

[444E4E57]
nwinter=Duke Nukem 3D - Duke Nuclear Winter

4)That's great. I'm positive that it will work with regular RA too

 

[sion_zaphod]

@Tetsuo Shima Sorry if my message sounded like a dig. I recognize all your hard work in gathering all these plugins into one easy to use pack. In terms of testing I'm up for doing some of that myself and will gladly report back here with my findings. I will continue to play and tinker with my setup until I have it the way I like. My setup is kind of unique as I don't use SD cards at all (everything is on my 5tb usb drive; a recent acquisition). I'm not really moaning about the state of the wii scene and in truth it's kind of cool because now I'm on a mission to make the best setup I can. I'm digging that there is now a port of beebem for the wii as the BBC micro has a special place in my heart along with the Commodore VIC20 and ZX81. The BBC in particular as it was the first system I really programmed on and it still remains bloody difficult to setup and emulate on a Raspberry Pi (works pretty well on a RPi 400 through AdvMESS). Is there any active development with the Vice libretro cores for wii? I got hopeful when I saw those cores in the nightly builds. But having tested them all I quickly realized they don't work.

On a different note I've been doing some testing with some of the emulators and cores with these systems:-
Retroarch caprice with Amstrad - GX4000 roms in cpr format
Frodo with Commodore - 64 Games System roms in crt/prg format
Uae Wii with Commodore - Amiga CD32 and Amiga CDTV WHDLoad images in lha format

I know that these are just consolized versions of computer systems but I think they would look awesome added to the list of console systems on your theme.

I've also split the NGP/NGPC WS/WSC handhelds into separate systems (I just like it better with mono and colour games separate). Your theme is missing NGP mono image. Would love to see Watara Supervision and Megaduck added to the handheld section too but MESS/MAME is needed for both those systems and can't see it happening on the wii.

If I can get Atari 800 emulation working good I will be looking at making a XEGS section too as I made the complete cover collection for that system on @mastershoes forum.

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

Very interesting @sion_zaphod I'm so happy that you are on a Wii mission again
If you go through the pages of this thread, there are some very useful posts about the obscure computer emus. Some of them require a real keyboard to launch the games.
Sometime ago, a user (I don't remember who) posted a C64 and a Dosbox RA core. Unfortunately that C64 core wasn't working so good, at least Frodo Wii still seemed to perform better, except for missing scanlines. I was hoping for it to run crt games as well, but no. Too bad, I was hoping to test it with my easyflash crt games. I'll try to find that post for you.
Edit: here you are
At the moment there is no C64 emulator with .crt support. Until that, I fear that C64GS will not be possible on the Wii.
The Dosbox RA core on the other hand wasn't able to launch .conf files, so it's totally useless. Your dosbox plugin is still the best by far
I'm very interested in Amiga games. I'm not a UAE expert but I know whdload is possible on the Wii. I'd like to create separate virtual hard disks for each game, to avoid disk swappings, reduce loading times and to avoid to be forced to hide all the multiple disks after the 1st one. I don't know how to do it, but even then, I don't know if they can be launched from Wiiflow.
I agree with you to split mono and color handhelds, so if you want to go ahead I will prepare a NGP mono background and button.
Very excited to see your future accomplishments

 

[sion_zaphod]

Amstrad - GX4000 roms are working in cpr format in caprice32 retroarch I haven't tried on HEXAECO build but I imagine its the same setup for core settings:- Model 6128+; Autorun Yes; Adv RAM 576. If we can setup a retroarch config just for those roms it won't interfere with other cpc 464 setups. Being that there are only 27 ish games in the complete romset not difficult.

Atari - XEGS roms from the mame romset are working also. You can run them through WiiXL but they will not autoboot with wiiflow you have to go into the menu and do a hard reset. They run through retroarch with atari 800 core and I'm pretty sure you can autoboot straight from wiiflow.

I'll upload some plugin configs in next day or two.

In regards to C64 carts. It seems like a no go. Which is a major bummer but i'll keep looking into it. A lot of easyflash crt images were converts from D81 (disk image with bigger capacity which could fit multidisk games). With that in mind I tried some D81's renamed to D64 for frodo (works on the c64 mini and maxi; but so do crt's) but frodo's basic interpreter does not even recognize it as a disk. It's a shame because all those D81's and CRT's work fine in retroarch VICE. As do all the other commodore systems. I did read something about converting CRT to PRG/D64 on one of the commodore forums so maybe I'll look into it.

In terms of the Amiga unless I can get lha images booting with whdload I will try a different approach like hexing all refferences to the kick rom and replace with cdtv/cd32 kick. If that won't work either I'll hit the Amiga forums for hacked kickstart roms.

 

[sion_zaphod]

@Tetsuo Shima I've got a couple of plugins to add to your pack if your interested. Atari XEGS and Amstrad GX4000. Both plugins will auto load games straight from wiiflow. I've done a lot of research into Atari emulation in retropie and it's really helped me loads. It turns out you can auto load most roms for 5200, XEGS, and the rest of the 8 Bit family. The problem is most roms are distributed with the header data removed (data that tells the emulator how to use the rom image). Without that the emulator does not know how to load it so you have to manually config most games. The Atari 800 emulator and retroarch core allow you to rebuild those roms with the header data. Meaning we don't have to mess around with configs any more. This pretty much covers the entire Atari 8 bit series. So I foresee big updates with 5200 and the rest of the 8 bit sets.

These plugins are setup to work from wiiflow on sd card, but you can manually edit them for usb (my preferred setup). The rom paths point to the roms folder but it does not matter where you place the roms as long as you alter the paths in the plugins.

edit "I meant to include source flow pics for these plugins but I'm sure you've got that covered"
Also you will need to copy wiixl.dol to Atari - XEGS folder in plugins.

edit "Apologies to the tempers there was some copyrighted material in the zip which was not my intellectual property. Situation resolved"

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

Thanks @sion_zaphod for this excellent contribution!
Very happy to include these... hmm how to call them... Compsoles? Consoters? Ok, maybe "consolized" computers
I will try them soon, but I already know your work will be excellent as usual.
I will prepare buttons and backgrounds for my theme.
Thank you so much

 

[Taleweaver]

1) I don't know why. Bio Menace controls are working for me, both with Wiimote or Classic Controller.
2) Not sure, the first Bios files that I tried years ago worked out of the box.
3) Apart from the cover location, that you are free to change, you are forced to use the apps/eduke32 folder to store the game data. The app is hardcoded to work this way. I'm using the Atomic edition too, and everything is working (main game and all the expansions). The only issue is that savegames are shared, not an issue if you play the games one by one, otherwise you'll risk to overwrite some game saves and lose them. The elf files have to be separated for the expansion, I couldn't find no other way to make them work.
To alter the title names you can add the following lines to your custom_titles.ini file located in wiiflow/settings/. Remember that there must be a blank line at the top of the file before the [TITLES] section.

[44554B45]
DUKE3D=Duke Nukem 3D

[444E4356]
vacation=Duke Nukem 3D - Duke Caribbean: Life's a Beach

[444E4443]
dukedc=Duke Nukem 3D - Duke it out in D.C.

[444E4E57]
nwinter=Duke Nukem 3D - Duke Nuclear Winter

4)That's great. I'm positive that it will work with regular RA too

I guess an update's due here...

1) Bio menace now works fine here as well. Could be a PEBKAC issue from my end (e.g. the wiimote simply not being on or something). Now trying inserting some older DOS games I had lying around, combined with the pack of plugins & covers by...also by a certain @Tetsuo Shima (my respect for you grows ). I might get back at this, but then it'll be in the dosbox-thread.

2) I'e since installed a mame emulator on my pc, which pointed out that I missed even more files (uni_bios_3_3.rom being the more prevalent one). Compatibility has increased even more since I tracked all that down and put it into neogeo.zip.
I was a bit unsure on how to get the larger games to work (garou, king of fighters, 1945 and a couple others), but though I had to piece a bit of information together, it wasn't that hard.
@ others: a quick rundown:

a) obtain the rom(s) and the neogeo.zip file containing all the stuff (hint: make sure it works on PC first) through...erm...a legal means for your arcade cabinet you've purchased legally
b) use the cache converter (it's in the pack under /COPY TO SD OR USB/wiiflow/plugins/Arcade/FBA-VM/romcnv_R2.zip) and point it to the folder containing these large roms. It'll generate a bunch of folders with stuff in it (eg. if you've got garou.zip, it'll generate a garou_cache folder for it).
c) put the roms and the neogeo.zip file in the /neogeo folder, and the cache folders in one of two folders:
sd:/private/other/system/cache/ when you plan to use the hexaeco core
OR sd:/retroarch/system/cache/ when you plan to use the libretro core.
(so sd:/private/other/system/cache/garou_cache or sd:/retroarch/system/cache/shocktro_cache, basically)
d) start wiiflow, select the neogeo hexaeco or neogeo libretro plugin, reload cache, start the game...and wait a bit (it can take about a minute to load...but then it works without notable slowdowns)



I'd grumble a bit on the strange location of the cache files in point c), but I better shut up because

3) ...I was wrong on this all along. Once I put everything back in the original folders and used .grp as game files, everything went fine. Still have to rename things a bit in the custom_titles.ini file, though (which I'll probably use to rename all my mame games because these abbreviated names aren't exactly great ).


4) kind of unrelated, but I was sort of wondering why nobody ever mentioned it (a RL friend advised it to me once). Then I got to search for the cover, and...I sort of understood.

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

@Taleweaver Hey Yagami! Thanks for sharing your little tutorial for the Neo-Geo Virtual Machine. It's very clear and it could be useful to others, so I'd like to include it in the pack as a readme.txt, if you agree.
Regarding my RA Neogeo.zip, here is mine:

Spoiler: Neogeo.zip

It's similar to yours but it's missing uni-bios_3. I didn't play many neo-geo games, but all of the 30 games I have are working good.
Which games are giving you issues? Are you having these issues on regular RA or Hexaeco?

Regarding games titles: I forgot to tell you, you're not forced to use custom_tiles.ini. You can use titles from Wiimpathy's Database. If you have it installed, you can go to Settings (page 12) --> Use Plugin Database Titles. A blessing for arcade games.
After you've set it to Yes, next time you enter your coverflow it will reload the cache and it will show the database titles

 

[Taleweaver]

@Taleweaver Hey Yagami! Thanks for sharing your little tutorial for the Neo-Geo Virtual Machine. It's very clear and it could be useful to others, so I'd like to include it in the pack as a readme.txt, if you agree.

Absolutely. I just edited it slightly to showcase the zip file containing the program you'll need.

Regarding my RA Neogeo.zip, here is mine:

Spoiler: Neogeo.zip

View attachment 251761

It's similar to yours but it's missing uni-bios_3. I didn't play many neo-geo games, but all of the 30 games I have are working good.
Which games are giving you issues? Are you having these issues on regular RA or Hexaeco?

Rats. I had a good handful of them a couple days ago, but I merged them with the 'working' ones after updating my own file. Well...it was a handful, but many probably just failed because they needed conversion.
I do remember one clearly, though, as it was only like 5 or 6 megabytes: baseball stars 2 (bstars2.zip). It failed at first, but when I tried it on mame on my pc it said it needed this one. After I added it, it worked...though come to think of it, I ran it with a different core as well (initially RA-HEXAECO/fba_neogeo.dol, afterward the RA-HEXAECO/vm_fba2012_neogeo.dol). If you want, I'll check if it's really the uni-bios making it work, or that the other core has other compatibility as well.

Oh, and: I used the just mentioned HEXAECO cores for everything. From testing mame games, I had the impression these were the same core and just used a different GUI. Some still fail, but all in all I really can't complain. Just an hour ago, I had 9 positive tests and 5 negatives (the majority of whom had crashed earlier). Could just be that I'm using a wrong romset on those.
(in case you really want to know: preisl2n, mslugX, shocktro2, pbobbl2n and zupapa crashed. Of those, puzzle bobble 2 is kind of the weirdest one as it's neither a large nor demanding game).


Can I make one suggestion/question on the pack, though? As it is, the current "neogeo VM" files have rom directories of "roms/neogeo_vm". However, all other neogeo stuff (the regular cores, the CPS'es, PGM and PSIKYO) all have "roms/fba/<name> folders. Wouldn't it make more sense to sort these in "roms/fba/neogeo_vm" folder?

Regarding games titles: I forgot to tell you, you're not forced to use custom_tiles.ini. You can use titles from Wiimpathy's Database. If you have it installed, you can go to Settings (page 12) --> Use Plugin Database Titles. A blessing for arcade games.
After you've set it to Yes, next time you enter your coverflow it will reload the cache and it will show the database titles

Interesting. I've just installed it. I can't test right now, but if I'm reading it correctly, it'll do a whole lot more than 'just' making sure the names are set correctly.

 

[Wiimpathy]

Rats. I had a good handful of them a couple days ago, but I merged them with the 'working' ones after updating my own file. Well...it was a handful, but many probably just failed because they needed conversion.
I do remember one clearly, though, as it was only like 5 or 6 megabytes: baseball stars 2 (bstars2.zip). It failed at first, but when I tried it on mame on my pc it said it needed this one. After I added it, it worked...though come to think of it, I ran it with a different core as well (initially RA-HEXAECO/fba_neogeo.dol, afterward the RA-HEXAECO/vm_fba2012_neogeo.dol). If you want, I'll check if it's really the uni-bios making it work, or that the other core has other compatibility as well.

Oh, and: I used the just mentioned HEXAECO cores for everything. From testing mame games, I had the impression these were the same core and just used a different GUI. Some still fail, but all in all I really can't complain. Just an hour ago, I had 9 positive tests and 5 negatives (the majority of whom had crashed earlier). Could just be that I'm using a wrong romset on those.
(in case you really want to know: preisl2n, mslugX, shocktro2, pbobbl2n and zupapa crashed. Of those, puzzle bobble 2 is kind of the weirdest one as it's neither a large nor demanding game).

Maybe it's already your testing method but be sure to launch the games through Homebrew channel first. It's just to confirm it's only a compatibility bug or only retroarch related.
Having the right romset version is crucial. It should be 0.2.97.30 roms or close.
Off course you must convert the large games(mslugx etc.) and use the correct core too.
By the way, I don't get why there are 2 neogeo cores. Why not using the VM core only?

HEXAECO is based on old Retroarch version with a lot of modifications, some features removed/added, some backports and a simplified menu.

There are 2 parts linked together: Retroarch handling input/audio/video/menu and the core taking care of the pure emulation, cpu, chips etc.

The HEXAECO cores should be the same. But, the problem is that the author uploads no source or partial source code. So we don't know what's inside those cores!

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

@Wiimpathy sorry I thought that NeogeoVM was only for the bigger games and that it had a different compatibility. No reason to leave the standard NeoGeo core, then. I'll remove it

@Taleweaver You are right about the NeoGeo VM rom folder. I'll remove the non-VM core and set NeogeoVM rompath to just roms/fba/neogeo
Regarding Hexaeco, I find that the arcade core are not always on par with the regular RA cores. If a game isn't working with Hexaeco give it a try with RA, chances are it could work