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MiSTer: the thread of cycle accuracy

Klatrymadon

Rei BENSER PLUS
(he/him)
Cheers! After doing a full wipe and reinstall, and hooking up an ethernet cable before running 'update_all', everything I want to play is working again!

Another minor issue has arisen, though. A save file from the last build - "Alundra (USA).sav" - won't load on the new one, even though it is mounted in memory card slot 1 and labelled correctly, etc. The game just freezes upon trying to load it. I think I'm using the same version of the BIOS and everything. Oh well, I love it enough to play through the first half again. :D

Thanks again for the advice, both!

Edit: oh, and one grave and terrible issue: I can't get Batrider working. A real shame, as this beta release already presents the best way to play the game at home! I have the .mra file for the USA version in '_Arcade' (and all the rest in the alts folder), the .rbf file in '_Arcade / _Cores', and basically every version of the game in 'games / mame'. No idea where I'm going wrong, but it just takes me back to the main Mister menu when I try to start it.

Edit: oh Christ, I'm a buffoon. There wasn't a problem with the saves at all - I just hadn't set up my controller properly after the reinstallation, and was missing a confirm button! (I realised this when I tried to load a Policenauts save couldn't get it to even attempt to read the card.)
 
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Phantoon

I cuss you bad
MSU-1 support is here for the MiSTer. For those who don't know it's a theoretical chip created by Near which basically gives the SNES the CD-ROM it never got. It gives CD audio and FMV capabilities. A surprisingly big number of SNES games have been hacked to give MSU-1 support with better soundtracks and video in some cases.

It works really well and is an insight into the other leg of the Trousers of Time.
 

MCBanjoMike

Sudden chomper
(He/him)
Just a reminder that the FPGA on the Pocket is less powerful than the DE-10 that powers the MiSTer, so don't expect every core to make the jump. I'm still pretty excited to see which ones do, however. If enough cores get ported to the Pocket, I could see myself eventually getting one for portable game times.

I actually just found a detailed reddit post that seems to clarify a lot of this stuff. Developers will apparently have access to the main FPGA in the Pocket, which has a little less than half the logic elements the DE-10 has. The majority of cores for MiSTer don't use nearly the full capacity of the chip, so a whole bunch of them could make it over if the programmers feel like doing the work. However, some of the more desirable cores are among those that might not make the leap: SNES, Genesis/Sega-CD, TG-16, NES and GBA (to say nothing of the recent PSX core and the in-development Saturn cores). Some of those might be workable with compromises - the SNES core, notably, supports a ton of expansion chips. By cutting features, you could probably get a core that runs 95% of SNES games to work. Again, that will depend on the level of motivation in the community.
 
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Klatrymadon

Rei BENSER PLUS
(he/him)
The Battle Garegga release candidate core has dropped! Kingdom Grandprix and Sorcer Striker also work with it. A manual install is required. (Just remember to right-click on 'Raw' to save the .mra files, or they won't work.)

Also, R-Type!

(Sadly, as with the Cave CV68000 cores, I can't get the Raizing ones to sync on CRT. Hope you have better luck!)
 
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MCBanjoMike

Sudden chomper
(He/him)
What kind of CRT are you using? If it's a PC CRT, you might need to wait until the develop adds scandoubler support to the core, which often happens after the initial release.

I'm looking forward to trying Battle Garegga soon! Its music has been used for a whole bunch of kaizo SMW hacks and I want to hear it in its original context. Between this and the new games that are being added to the Cave core, I might be due to set up a screen in TATE mode again soon...
 
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ASandoval

Old Man Gamer
(he/him)
I put in a pre-order at Terasic for a DE-10, seeing as they were scheduled for August 5th and I have a birthday coming up this week.

... it ended up arriving today. I don't have anything else for it, so I put in an order for a heat sink,, wi-fi and bluetooth dongle, I/O board, RAM and USB hub at MiSTER Add ons. Really excited to set one of these up soon!
 

Klatrymadon

Rei BENSER PLUS
(he/him)
Ah, my CRT's just a little 14" Aiwa VX-G143. I'm hooking it up with this RGB cable via the IO board. It's weird, because the TV can clearly handle all sorts of non-standard refresh rates (loads of other cores run at anywhere between 55 and 61hz), but it seems to lose sync as soon as the Cave or Raizing cores start up at 57hz. I've no idea if that's actually the issue but I can't find any other possible culprits, and even guys in the Mister development scene have been unable to help so far. (Is it even possible that the CRT would be fine with all other refresh rates except that one?)
 

MCBanjoMike

Sudden chomper
(He/him)
I put in a pre-order at Terasic for a DE-10, seeing as they were scheduled for August 5th and I have a birthday coming up this week.

... it ended up arriving today. I don't have anything else for it, so I put in an order for a heat sink,, wi-fi and bluetooth dongle, I/O board, RAM and USB hub at MiSTER Add ons. Really excited to set one of these up soon!
That's awesome! There are a number of cores you can run without any additional RAM, so you can dive it right away!

Ah, my CRT's just a little 14" Aiwa VX-G143. I'm hooking it up with this RGB cable via the IO board. It's weird, because the TV can clearly handle all sorts of non-standard refresh rates (loads of other cores run at anywhere between 55 and 61hz), but it seems to lose sync as soon as the Cave or Raizing cores start up at 57hz. I've no idea if that's actually the issue but I can't find any other possible culprits, and even guys in the Mister development scene have been unable to help so far. (Is it even possible that the CRT would be fine with all other refresh rates except that one?)
Ah, sadly my knowledge of CRT compatibility is pretty limited. I don't think I've tried the Cave core on my Toshiba CRT, come to think of it, although DoDonPachi works fine scandoubled on my PC CRT.
 

ASandoval

Old Man Gamer
(he/him)
That's awesome! There are a number of cores you can run without any additional RAM, so you can dive it right away!

Well, I would, except I currently don't have a way to connect a keyboard to properly update it. I did find a micro usb to usb bridge, but it seems to be broken so I'm going to have to wait for that USB bridge first.
 

Yimothy

Red Plane
(he/him)
This is pretty niche but there’s a way to have pseudo-seperate Master System and Game Gear cores now: you make a .mgl file pointing to the SMS core using the setname tag and it runs the core as if its internal name were whatever you set it to in the tag. This requires putting the GG games in a different folder (with the same name as what you’ve set the tag to), and it results in settings being saved separately, so you can put in appropriate scaling/filters for the GG’s LCD without messing up the SMS picture.

This is the file I’m using:

Code:
<mistergamedescription>
    <rbf>_console/sms</rbf>
    <setname>GameGear</setname>
</mistergamedescription>

Copy/paste that into a file named “Game Gear.mgl” in your _console directory and, make a games/GameGear directory for the game files, and you’re away.
 

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Oh, that's super cool. I can see where swapping options depending on whether you're playing SMS or GG would be incredibly annoying. Will look at setting mine up this way as well.
 

ASandoval

Old Man Gamer
(he/him)
Have now had my mister set up going for a couple days now. I've got it fairly loaded up and most things are working just fine from the time I've had to tinker with it, and most of the things that aren't working I know how to fix, like missing/incorrectly named bios and things like that.

The one thing I haven't been able to get work that's stumping me is save game transfers. Specifically I'm trying to transfer my save of Shining in the Darkness for Sega Genesis from my Steam Deck to the mister. I found the save file, renamed the extension and put it in the correct folder with the same name as the ROM file (literally used the same rom file I put on the Steam Deck on the mister), but the game loads up and reads the game as if there's no save at all. I even put the original Steam Deck/Retroarch save file through a save file converter to transfer it to a mister ready file with the exact same results.

This isn't a huge deal as I still have the original save on the Steam Deck and it works just fine, I was just hoping to continue the game from the mister for the visual clarity and that hooking up the Mister to the TV is slightly less of a hassle than the Steam Deck, it just bothers me because I feel like it should work and it just... doesn't.
 

Yimothy

Red Plane
(he/him)
Do other Mega Drive saves work for you? The MiSTer core I think still doesn’t support EEPROM saving, which some MD games use instead of SRAM (which is supported). I can’t find anything online that says that SitD uses EEPROM, but I know that it’s one of the few cartridges whose save files work on my knock-off handheld mega drive so I suspect it’s doing something different to other carts.
 

muteKi

Geno Cidecity
Usually "accurate" sram will have each byte be interleaved with FF bytes. There are save patches that will manually convert from one to the other. I think if you search krikzz 8to16 and 16to8 you can find them. Load up the save in a hex editor and if the values are alternately FF use 16to8 to convert; if the values aren't use 8to16. I haven't had to touch save data in a while so can't remember which one mister needs but I think it's 8to16
 

muteKi

Geno Cidecity
The update they did a while back to fix 32X timings has made Chaotix work. However, since the core doesn't have SRAM save support yet, you'll either have to play the game in a single setting or wait. That was, of course, back in June, which shows how little I've touched this thing in a while.

Super Game Boy core is, indisputably, the best way to play Donkey Kong Land, as it doesn't produce the graphical glitches seen on the normal GB (really, GBC) core.
 

MCBanjoMike

Sudden chomper
(He/him)
Man, Robert is doing some incredible work with that core. So far, I’ve used it to play two (extremely 2D) games: Mega Man 8 and SotN. It seems to work great, and the save states are a really nice touch. Having used states in both the PSX and GBA cores recently, I’m starting to be pretty sad that they still aren’t in the SNES core…
 

ASandoval

Old Man Gamer
(he/him)
I bought a capture card recently, which I'm intending to use for streaming at some point. Until then, I've been amusing myself with recording footage from my mister. Finding good settings and getting everything as I like it may be a work in progress. Anyway, I used my new found powers to make a twitter thread on the surprisingly excellent Jetsons SNES game.

EDIT: For something a bit less twitter compressed, here's some Einhander footage:


Note that this was recorded before the latest PSX core with the new features.
 
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Phantoon

I cuss you bad
I've run Update All a few times with Downloader active and it's not given me Update All 2.0. Any ideas? My version becomes unsupported next year
 

MCBanjoMike

Sudden chomper
(He/him)
God damn, that man moves fast. Between this and the Saturn core, it's so cool to see things that were formerly considered impossible being realized on the DE-10.

On a different note, Jotego just put out a Simpsons (arcade) core! That's super cool, but I just played through that game in an arcade over my vacation, so I might not check it out myself just yet.
 
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