MGL Files With the NeoGeo Core?

[galopin]

Hi,

I generate some MGL files to get the Neo Geo games into an organized folder like the arcades can be ( alphabetic, per year, etc ). I have all the MGL in the right place and shows in the menu as intended, but I can't get the actual MGL to load a game. The core launch and quickly end up on a `Z80 error` message.

Example of MGL:

Code: Select all

<mistergamedescription>
<rbf>_console/neogeo</rbf>
<file delay="1" type="f" index="1" path="games/neogeo/mslug.zip"/>
</mistergamedescription>

If I start the core manually and then load the rom there, the game run fine. What could be the problem ?

[KremlingKuthroat19]

What romset are you using? I use a darksoft set and in that case the MGL files load if you just include the folder name. Otherwise, I can't help you out there unfortunately. Check this out though: https://github.com/wizzomafizzo/mrext/b ... geo-mvsaes It says here that the extension should be .neo

[neogeo81]

Why no use this script to automatically create a games folder?

https://github.com/wizzomafizzo/MiSTer_GamesMenu

[aberu]

Try adding more delay.

[galopin]

Why no use this script to automatically create a games folder?

https://github.com/wizzomafizzo/MiSTer_GamesMenu

Because the script does not work somehow for me on neogeo games, it creates just a few weird entries.
It works for other platforms tho, but even so, it only replicates the physical folders, so i will also tackle that later to create that "organized" multi view

[galopin]

Ok I figured it out, I tried a few variation of path, and it appears the neo geo core load only and only if the path is in the form of ../../games/NEOGEO/rom.zip. I would have rather use absolute paths, but for now, I am happy. Path that did not work I tried first were /games/NEOGEO/rom.zip and /media/fat/games/NEOGEO/rom.zip. I have also not look at if it is a case issue, the sd-card uses exFat so should not matter.

Attached is a zip to inflate in your _Game folder if someone else want to give it a try. The next step will be a _All folder and symlink from there into the organized structure. I used the mame 0.249 XML DB found here https://www.progettosnaps.net/dats/MAME/ for the data generation since I did not know about the core having his own romsets.xml at first.

[wizzo]

The games menu script definitely won't work for this, it currently only supports game in the .neo format. The neogeo core's github has instructions for how to convert common packs to this format if you want to go that route: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=5672

But you're also right that it's not going to do quite what you want. It doesn't categorise the games, only mirrors their current folder layout. I've got some plans in the future to support both these things but it's pretty low priority so not for quite some time.

I think aberu is right, it's probably a matter of tweaking the mgl args either the delay or path. Mgls hook into mister's existing game loading stage, it should work with the right settings. If you want to try with an absolute path, the best way is to put "../../../../../" in front of it

[wizzo]

Tron303 on discord was also working on something to make proper game names and sort them by category. You can get a database with all the neogeo mgl files premade here: https://github.com/tron303/db

This can go in your downloader.ini:

Code: Select all

[tron303/db]
db_url = https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tron303/db/db/db.json.zip

For example: "_Games/_SNK Neo Geo MVS & AES/_Maze/Irritating Maze, The.mgl"

It currently relies on the .neo format files though. But could still save you a lot of time.

[galopin]

If I understand well, wizzo you are the one behind the game menu script ? Definitely not a fan of the "put a bunch of parent folder traversal to hit the root" suggestion

I got it working now as I said above, and I am fine with using my own. It is interesting to see people sharing such things with a json db for the downloader script, maybe I will deploy mine when I am satisfied with the result. The Mame XML did not have a genre field, but I am sure it is just a matter to find a proper source.

I will continue to work on it since I want to also extend it for SNES,GB(C|A) and Megadrive at least. I also want to add some rom validation by checking the SHA1 if possible

On a side note, Is there any benefit to the NeoSD file packing for neo geo roms compared to let say a zip ? It is not like the core stream data during execution, It is cold loaded. Is the compaction better ? Could Mame still load such a rom (I guess not) ? I would rather also skip having to handle a custom format to inspect the ROM SHA1 ( as I intend to do as well ), maybe it is not too bad anyway, but I have not see a file specification ( on a limited few google searches )

[wizzo]

You are describing a significant amount of work. I look forward to you publishing it

[galopin]

You are describing a significant amount of work. I look forward to you publishing it

It is fairly light work if I can find a DB with the right informations to mine from. Kind of no pressure coding compared to my daily work

It is to toy with the mister until I have actual time to dig into learning how to do actual stuff with a FGPA ecosystem.

[wizzo]

These are good:

https://github.com/OpenVGDB/OpenVGDB/releases

https://www.screenscraper.fr/

[neogeo81]

Yeah just use the .neo files

[aeronius]

A little late to the party but this works for me. My games are stored on my SD card, so you'll need to adjust the pathing if your structure is different.

Code: Select all

<mistergamedescription>
<rbf>_console/neogeo</rbf>
<file delay="1" type="f" index="1" path="../../../../media/fat/games/NeoGeo/mslug"/>
</mistergamedescription>

I can't recall which set I'm using, but my folders look like this:

structure.png (5.25 KiB) Viewed 5955 times

[neogeo81]

why not use the MVS Arcade version of the core?

https://github.com/blackwine/NeoGeo_MiSTer

[Malor]

If I understand well, wizzo you are the one behind the game menu script ? Definitely not a fan of the "put a bunch of parent folder traversal to hit the root" suggestion

Apparently this is part of the Mister framework; it won't use absolute paths, only relative ones. Multiple ".."s are a workaround of overall project limitations, not wizzo being somehow dumb.

(There used to be a problem with shortcuts on SMB3 shares, so I found out about the absolute path thing while trying to fix the generated files. He found the bug later, and fixed it, but I never learned what it actually was.)