MiSTer FPGA Forum

Calamity wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 7:25 pm

You can, but the correct way is to have the all the general MiSTer options in mame.ini, and use specific ini overrides when needed, and not using shortcuts with options, bats or whatever.

Makes perfect sense. I will do it the correct way. Thanks!

MiSTer Consoles wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 5:57 pm

I’m using a Windows PC. For a direct connection do I need to give the computer its own static IP address? I’ve already done that on my MiSTer setup and have that specified for GroovyMAME. I’d like to see if I can get better performance than connecting through my LAN.

Yes, static IP.

Calamity wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 7:25 pm

You can, but the correct way is to have the all the general MiSTer options in mame.ini, and use specific ini overrides when needed, and not using shortcuts with options, bats or whatever.

It could be useful to include a mame.ine for groovy_mister with the mame.exe (like the mednafen folder) in the same compressed file on psakhis' github page. Maybe put mister_ip "192.x.x.x" at the end to help. That way, if there´s a new feature that needs another argument the user only has to replace the .exe and the .ini.

Calamity wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 6:53 pm

zakk4223 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 6:50 am

If you happen to be running your groovymame instance on a linux host, I compiled a thing:

https://github.com/zakk4223/Mister_USBIP

I've just tested this. I measured input latency with usbip vs local usb. On my tests, added latency is only 0.33-0.50 ms.

That's honestly better than I thought it would come out to. Hopefully something on the windows side is usable

I'm having some trouble getting the flycast core to work with retroarch. Could anyone share working settings? Other cores are working working great. I've tested n64, pcfx, mame2003, etc.

I've updated to the test builds and set reicast_threaded_rendering = "disabled" in Flycast.opt. Someone mentioned you may also need to force it to 320x240p - how is this accomplished? The reicast_enable_naomi_15khz_dipswitch option didn't seem to help. I know for some DC games you can force the video mode by holding certain button combinations, this changed the preview window on my PC but didn't seem to help things on the MiSTer side.

Calamity wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 6:05 pm

Create a blank ini file with the name of the rom (starwars.ini?). Edit it and add "monitor ntsc". Put it inside mame's ini folder.

By doing this the game will run accelerated at 121%. To avoid this, try adding, in the same ini:

Code: Select all

monitor ntsc
throttle 1
syncrefresh 0

I'm not sure if this will cause issues, since the mister core is actually meant to be syncrefreshed.

It works!!! So far I haven't noticed any issues. Thank you very much for your help and for all you do.

EDIT: I spoke to soon. Sound is not working. I was testing with my big CRT TV which also sometimes has the sound coming from the PC going to it so I didn't notice the problem.

I switched Groovy MiSTer over to my arcade cabinet MiSTer and the sound is not working. Other cores and other Mame games have sound coming through but not Star Wars with the above settings in place. The Star Wars sound IS coming out of my PC speakers though so I can hear the sound across the room. Is there a way to make the sound work through the MiSTer with Star Wars with these settings in place?

Separately, is/will there be a way to kill the PC Mame sound when it is going to the MiSTer so there isn't double sound going on? I can turn the volume down on the PC speakers, but that is not ideal, although I can live with it. Thanks!

In Batocera, there was a CRT script and sizing application you could run that would generate all the video modes so they would fit on your CRT screen better. I had to modify things some things in the script by searching and replacing one of the monitor options with a better NTSC option because it wasn't designed for any extended NTSC options in the script but I got it working. Is there something similar for Groovy MiSTer on Windows? If I try moving things around with the Mame sliders, I start to get hiccups in the sound. The MiSTer menu adjustments don't really help either. I think it is just a matter of adjusting the video timings so when a video mode is selected, it will fit better and still have perfect timings and resolution. I think Groovy Mame has something similar like vmmaker, but I am not very familiar with it and I am not sure if it would work with this. Just wondering if there is something for Groovy MiSTer that I can use to adjust things. Usually the picture has a lot of overscan and I would like to fix that. In some cases, it is causing my screen to not be able to display it at all, like in Donkey Kong on the CRT in my arcade (but works on my big CRT), although the MiSTer Donkey Kong works fine. Thanks!

thorr wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2024 5:19 am

EDIT: I spoke to soon. Sound is not working. I was testing with my big CRT TV which also sometimes has the sound coming from the PC going to it so I didn't notice the problem.

Confirmed, will include a fix in next release.

For sound on the PC, you can turn the volume off in MAME.

EDIT: Sorry, after checking this, Starwars video run at 41 Hz (vector), there's no way with can match this. GroovyMiSTer needs 1:1 frame match as it currently is.

Hi again!

I finally got it working. At first I tried it with my dlan connection. It worked but had video drops here and there. LAN is working fine though.

I noticed it can still be tricky to force mame into correct timings. I was fiddling around with the settings after "Shadow Dancer" got lots of tearing and "strange" sound. It turns out you definitely need "auto frame skip"?

I found a way to enter supermodel(Groovy MiSTer)
in my Astro city Nanao ms9-29

MiSTer 24KHz in NANAO MS9-29

Resolution: 496×384 60Hz

video_mode=496,8,48,56,384,1,3,10,14520

Of course, in the MiSTer.ini setting, in addition to the above values ​​for MENU and video_mode, vga_scaler=1 also needs to be set.

Starting ST-V games immediately crashes the groovy.rbf on the mister side...
Just some graphics garbage. The Mame emulation is running though.
As far as I can tell ST-V games are 15khz, so why the erratic behaviour?

RiotRat, it sounds like you're missing some configuration, specifically the synchronization options, please check this:

https://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index. ... msg1769511

Calamity wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2024 10:41 am

EDIT: Sorry, after checking this, Starwars video run at 41 Hz (vector), there's no way with can match this. GroovyMiSTer needs 1:1 frame match as it currently is.

Thanks for checking. So it sounds like my only option for Star Wars audio is to run a long audio cable or put a bluetooth receiver in my arcade cabinet and stream the sound from the PC. I can live with that.

Separate general question. Is it possible to use custom video modes with Groovy MiSTer and have it scale to them? I think that is what I am doing with Star Wars already, so probably yes using the same concept. I want to try getting Supermodel 3 Star Wars Trilogy Arcade to work on my 15KHz screen in 480i. I assume in this case I would also not have sound for the same reason as above, although it is not in Mame, so maybe sound doesn't work anyway.

Along those same lines, can we customize modelines that Groovy MiSTer uses with different porch values, etc. so that the games fit better on the screen? Sort of like what the Batocera CRT application does that generates all the modelines based on what fits after adjusting the size and positioning in the Batocera CRT application? I am not sure if Groovy MiSTer is essentially GroovyMame that can be customized or if it is set in stone with the all the predefined modelines.

Thanks again!

thorr wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2024 9:15 pm

Separate general question. Is it possible to use custom video modes with Groovy MiSTer and have it scale to them? I think that is what I am doing with Star Wars already, so probably yes using the same concept. I want to try getting Supermodel 3 Star Wars Trilogy Arcade to work on my 15KHz screen in 480i. I assume in this case I would also not have sound for the same reason as above, although it is not in Mame, so maybe sound doesn't work anyway.

Lack of sound is not caused by scaling but by disabling syncrefresh. GM's mister backend as it is needs syncrefresh to work properly.
Scaling is possible, of course. I don't know how the implementation in Supermodel is, though.

Along those same lines, can we customize modelines that Groovy MiSTer uses with different porch values, etc.

For emulators that implement Switchres (GroovyMAME, Mednafen, Retroarch), everything can be fully customized. Modelines are sent from the emulator to the mister at run time, based on your Switchres configuration. You have full control over geometry, except vsize that can't be adjusted by software.

Terrific! Thanks again! I am excited to get everything dialed in.

I have been doing more testing. I was able to fix Donkey Kong so it syncs to my arcade cabinet CRT TV now. I created dkong.ini in the ini folder with this line in it that makes it fit edge to edge on my CRT screen so it is nice and big with no overscan and it should be the right refresh rate. It ends in 605 and it is supposed to end in 606 but it jumps from 605 to 608 in what Mame says it is when increasing the clock, so Mame showing 605 is not what it actually is, I think. Anyway, Donkey Kong works great now, permanently. As an aside, I only want Donkey Kong working so I can provide feedback on the Donkey Kong MiSTer core development when I notice differences.

modeline "256x224" 5.45118 256 274 306 342 224 237 240 263 -hsync -vsync

I then started playing with Star Wars and Outrun and because there were no initial sync issues I was able to use the Sliders menu and adjust the CRT shift and size settings at the bottom of the menu and not have to manually come up with a modeline to get it to fit on the screen which was nice. However, upon exiting Star Wars, the main Mame menu was resized drastically, so I assume because I am using monitor ntsc for Star Wars that it is also affecting the main menu which is also ntsc. I quit and relaunched Mame, and the Mame menu was back to normal. However, the CRT slider adjustments went back to their defaults and were not saved. Can this be fixed? If not, is there a way to find out what modeline is being used after adjusting those sliders so I can manually put a modeline in the .ini file like I did for Donkey Kong? Having to come up with each game's modeline on my own takes a long time and it would be great to be able to save the CRT slider settings.

Also, I noticed that the PC audio is noticeably behind the MiSTer audio when listening to both at the same time. Is PC Mame really that laggy compared to the MiSTer? I got my audio working for Star Wars using the PC audio, but it is slightly behind. It's not that noticeable when playing Star Wars, and I am just using it for that game so far so it's fine.

Thanks!

Hi, I thought I'd share my patch to the stand alone dolphin emulator. My motivation for this was simply to play MM9 in 240p. Been wanting this a long time but not so bad that I have bought some downscaler hw. This groovy mister core let me do it for free . Today I fixed some bugs in my patch and played through the entire game without issues, so I thought I would share it here in case anyone else is interested.

Fork of dolphin: https://github.com/m-dahl/groovy-dolphin. You will have to build it for your platform. I only tested it on an arm mac so far (could share a build for that if someone wants). Start dolphin, open graphics configuration and put your mister ip there. That should be it (edit: don't forget to set 4:3 mode in dolphin). Right now only ntsc is supported via two hardcoded modelines, one for 480i and one for 240p. Would be cool to add more features but I am unsure how much time I will spend going forward since my own usecase is now working.

Edit: By request I added some binaries for windows 64bit and mac arm64 to the repo above.

Is there a way to run from the device itself?
Or is it just off the pc?
I already got my pc hooked up to the tv. No need for me to do all that. PC had groovy mame for more then a decade.

deltax0 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 11, 2024 9:08 pm

Is there a way to run from the device itself?
Or is it just off the pc?
I already got my pc hooked up to the tv. No need for me to do all that. PC had groovy mame for more then a decade.

From what I am seeing, the lag difference is significant, so yes, there is a reason I believe.

deltax0 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 11, 2024 9:08 pm

Is there a way to run from the device itself?
Or is it just off the pc?
I already got my pc hooked up to the tv. No need for me to do all that. PC had groovy mame for more then a decade.

I dont have a PC hooked to the CRT.. Last time i did that was in 1996 with a Ati 3D XPRESSION+ PC2TV

I have an AMD R9 280x laying over there.. but i dont want to mess with installing it.

I got GroovyMister running with a laptop in 10 mins

I tried Windows build of groovy_dolphin and it's pretty good!

https://github.com/m-dahl/groovy-dolphin/releases

480i is slow for me (on Mister side) but 240p is nice. Sound is a bit hitchy and some image glitches here and there but looks great and feels nice overall.

KennyL wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2024 9:06 am

I tried Windows build of groovy_dolphin and it's pretty good!

https://github.com/m-dahl/groovy-dolphin/releases

480i is slow for me (on Mister side) but 240p is nice. Sound is a bit hitchy and some image glitches here and there but looks great and feels nice overall.

Forgive my ignorance ....but....what's exactly the point for groovy-dolphin? As far as I know neither the gamecube nor the WII had exotic timings (NTSC/PAL) that should be reproduceable and displayable by all modern TVs/monitors. And you even get the benefit of upscaling...

For playing GC/Wii games on crt without real consoles.

I want to try it so that I can use a flight stick with Rogue Squadron II.

RiotRay wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2024 9:50 pm

Forgive my ignorance ....but....what's exactly the point for groovy-dolphin? As far as I know neither the gamecube nor the WII had exotic timings (NTSC/PAL) that should be reproduceable and displayable by all modern TVs/monitors. And you even get the benefit of upscaling...

For me, GC's Resident Evil remake and Resident Evil 0 are amongst the most beautiful games ever made. They shine on CRTs and I couldn't bear displaying them on a modern panel (the full-3D 480i games I can live with).

This way you can also try to use 240p for 2D games with arguably better look.

Ruleset made GroovyPWM. This is great for people using analogue IO VGA.

GroovyPWM running grooby dolphin mario sunshine on analgue VGA to active Y/C composite. You can see the sky is smoother compared to regular groovy below

Regular groovy

RiotRay wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2024 9:50 pm

KennyL wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2024 9:06 am

I tried Windows build of groovy_dolphin and it's pretty good!

https://github.com/m-dahl/groovy-dolphin/releases

480i is slow for me (on Mister side) but 240p is nice. Sound is a bit hitchy and some image glitches here and there but looks great and feels nice overall.

Forgive my ignorance ....but....what's exactly the point for groovy-dolphin? As far as I know neither the gamecube nor the WII had exotic timings (NTSC/PAL) that should be reproduceable and displayable by all modern TVs/monitors. And you even get the benefit of upscaling...

My modern TV doesn't have a SCART connection, the GameCube doesn't have HDMI. I can still connect my GameCube to a CRT TV or monitor with RGB SCART, but it is nice to have alternatives to aging consoles.

RiotRay wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2024 9:50 pm

KennyL wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2024 9:06 am

I tried Windows build of groovy_dolphin and it's pretty good!

https://github.com/m-dahl/groovy-dolphin/releases

480i is slow for me (on Mister side) but 240p is nice. Sound is a bit hitchy and some image glitches here and there but looks great and feels nice overall.

Forgive my ignorance ....but....what's exactly the point for groovy-dolphin? As far as I know neither the gamecube nor the WII had exotic timings (NTSC/PAL) that should be reproduceable and displayable by all modern TVs/monitors. And you even get the benefit of upscaling...

My motivation for groovy-dolphin was to be able to play megaman 9 in 240p on my crt

I believe that a good use case for Groovy MiSTer would be for Fightcade. Plenty of FGC hardcores would love to play these games from their CRTs and if you told them that it could have better latency than their PC monitors they'd jump at the chance to test it. It'd definitely get some more eyes on it.

Currently Fightcade mainly uses 3 forked emulators: FBNeo, SNES9X, and Flycast (called Flycast Dojo).

https://github.com/fightcadeorg/fightcade-fbneo
https://github.com/fightcadeorg/fightcade-snes9x
https://github.com/blueminder/flycast-dojo

If these emulators could be modified for Groovy MiSTer that would be great, just picturing readying up a match and having the CRT switch over to your game would be incredible. There are some interesting things to consider, like how the Fightcade-specific HUD elements would show, but even if those were missing that'd probably be fine for most people.

Is anyone else having issues with the Mortal Kombat games appearing stretched vertically and quite a bit of the bottom being cut off? It's not just my CRT's regular overscan because other games display fine.

scott64 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2024 1:59 am

Is anyone else having issues with the Mortal Kombat games appearing stretched vertically and quite a bit of the bottom being cut off? It's not just my CRT's regular overscan because other games display fine.

Mortal Kombat Arcade uses non standard 254p resolution so it's normal CRT set to 240p (224p) cuts bottom part of the screen. I can adjust some of my CRTs to fit the screen using service menu but it's bothering to set it just for MK series and then revert the service menu settings back. I'm wondering how to handle (scale) it using the software.