Help with PCE Fast

RetroArch Nintendo consoles
#1

First of all, I want to express my gratitude to the developers of this great software, your efforts are fantastic.

That said, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, because not matter what, I can’t solve this problem. Whenever I load a Pc-Engine/TurboGrafx-16 game the only thing I get is a black screen. Nothing more. I tried with Syscard files, changing the games extension, and changed the game files several times in case they were bad dumps, etc.

But nothing happens. In fact, the only time I get anything more than a Black Screen is when I load Syscard1, which shows me the small OS that the original console has.

It’s the only core that gives me problems. Normal PC-Engine/TG16 games get black screen, and the CD games give me a code dump.

Could anyone give me at least a slight Idea of what could the problem be?

#2

Tried another syscard3.pce and roms from another romset?

#3

For the CD games giving you a code dump, make sure you are loading the .cue additionally open the .cue in a text editor and check that it’s pointing to the correct .iso/.bin

I’ve noticed at least for the CD games that they are scaled incorrectly even when switching to original resolution. It usually involves a colored bar at the top of the screen and cut-off pixels at the bottom. The separate release of WiiMednafen still has the bar atop the screen but displays all pixels. The Virtual Console displays everything right with no bar or cropped pixels.

Another issue with this core is that loading a second game will result in a reset for the first game.

Here’s a screenshot of the problem, you can see at the bottom of the image the yellow border gets cropped in RA but not in the VC version. RetroArch and Virtual Console respectively

#4

After trying several romsets, I finally found some games that PCE Fast loads. It’s curious that it only loads games that have a “fixed” ammount of memory, for example, Dungeon Explorer with 387 KB doesn’t load, but Dungeon Explorer with 512 KB it loads perfectly, although other homebrews like Hugo or Wiiengine load the 387kb just fine (Well, Hugo not that well, depending on the game).

Either way, I guess I just need to look for the version this core needs, so that’s mostly solved. Thank you for the tip, Charco.

By the way, which version of Syscard3 is the most recomended?

About the CD games, I’ve looked in the .cue and you where right SuperrSonic, the name inside the .cue was wrong. I still have to check if it works, but thanks a lot for that comment.

#5

Also there is no support for 6 button pads, so Street Fighter II Champion Edition (the best 16-bit version IMO) is unplayable. I reported it last year but it still seems to be unresolved.

#6

I never tried the Turbo Duo version of Street Fighter 2, I’m going to watch a video out of curiosity.

I finally solved the problem with the CD games too. After using five or six different syscard3 I got Dungeon Explorer 2 running perfectly and everything looks all right, sounds all right (Ok, the voice acting is not perfect, but it’s very amusing and the Soundtrack is incredible) and in general everything is nice.

Except me, because I got murdered by a caterpillar… of death. I’ve only tried that one, but I hope there is no more problems.

There is one thing that SuperrSonic said and I can confirm: When I go back to the menu with the Gamecube controller (L+R+Start+Z) the game i’m playing resets itself at the same time you enter the Retroarch Core Menu. Not all of them, but for a good amount of games, this is the case. This also happens to a few GBA games, like Spyro : Season of Flame/ice.

I think it’s a little annoying because if I want to create a save state/edit settings/take a screenshot it will screw everything and put me back at the Title screen. maybe losing my progress.

You can work around this by pressing the Reset button on the console instead of doing the button combination, but I wanted to tell here about this problem.

I want to thank you both again.

#7

Glad to hear it’s working for you! The Turbo had some excellent games and the soundtracks on a lot of the CD games are fantastic. I will send you a PM with a site where you can get the CD games in bin + cue format and are fully compatible.

SFII was only released on the Japanese PC Engine if you are looking for it. :slight_smile:

#8

Hey guys didn’t want to post a thread about something so trite, but since this is a PCE fast help thread, I wondered if the PCE-Fast core had support for compressed ISO/CUE with .ogg or mp3 files? Highly doubtful and would prefer OGG support but hey beggars can’t be choosers right :smiley:

#9

No, those would require bringing in external libraries. I believe bin/cue is the preferred format.

#10

Are there any updates on 6-button joypad support as found in standalone WiiMednafen?

#11

I looked through the source and it looks like the 6 buttons are hooked up okay. You apparently have to toggle 6-button mode using either L2 or R2 (not sure which) on other platforms. Have you tried that on Wii?

#12

Will try that out. Maybe could this be added to Core Options in this case? There is no way I would have known to press those :slight_smile:

#13

I’ll try to do that

#14

Thanks a million :slight_smile:

#15

It works in the latest version! You have to press ZL to toggle btween 2 and 6 button pad. Maybe this can be added to Core Options or Input Options in a future revision to make it easier to find.

Now I can play my favourite home console version of Street Fighter II in RA! Thanks very much =D

#16

Well to be honest nothing has changed so I guess it should have always worked… I’ll try to add is as a core option. Will add the current method to core information in the meantime

#17

Thanks, I had been asking about it since 0.9.9, so nobody knew about it until now if it was always there. I like the new core info and other added options in the latest release.