Latest RA | FireTV Stick | MAME core | Not working

RetroArch Android devices
#1

Latest retroarch in FireTV stick. Cores I use FBNeo, Mesen, Nestopia, Genesis DX and Mame. Everything else downloaded and run well except Mame core. It won’t even load, just downloads.

I think I have found the problem. I tried all three android cores- v8a, v7a and x86_64 but none works. Then I saw the log, which says not “64 bit not 32 bit”. I believe my FireTV stick is too old for latest MAME cores 64 bit. Any way to get a 32bit MAME android core? BTW, here’s the log-

A small list of Arcade games I need to run on MAME core. They all might run on mame-2003, mame-2003 plus, mame-2010 but these cores either don’t support cheat or they don’t support pugsy’s cheat.zip which actually contains all the cheats required for that small list of games. Except 1 game all the games are supported by FBNeo but to have all with cheats only viable option is MAME core. And I am stucked there

Quite specifically the games are-

Big Fight - Big Trouble In The Atlantic Ocean (Not supported FBNeo)
Denjin Makai I
Metamorphic Force
Night Slashers
Wild West C.O.W.-Boys Of Moo Mesa
Violent Storm
1 Like
#2

I don’t understand what you mean ?

#3

Current MAME does not have a 32-bit version. I’m not sure, but I think you can’t combine architectures, you can’t use RetroArch 32-Bits and a 64-Bits core. Try to use RetroArch 64-Bits, maybe it supports it and works better.

FBNeo has two ways to handle cheats, one from the updater and one manually, and it is also compatible with MAME cheats.

@BarbuDreadMon the cheats from the online updater .cht are 65 vs 3414 .ini that are downloaded. O_o
What’s the difference?

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#4

The official cheats are the ones i link from the documentation. I don’t know anything about the .cht ones neither recommend to use them.

1 Like
#6

I tried the Fbneo-cheats-master.zip but those cheats are missing. I tried the cheat.dat for MAME, also missing. Only available in Pugsy’s cheat0257.zip file, but they are in .xml format. So they won’t work as FBNeo’s regular .ini format. So, finally I need to play those games with MAME core for the cheats to work.

As for your suggestion for 64bit, I think if I can install 64bit RA then it will be able to use 64bit MAME core. I am just not sure if FireTV Stick 2017 supports 64bit or not. I will check and definitely update here.

#7

Again, what you mean is extremely unclear. Those 5 games all have cheats available in FBNeo. Looks to me like you didn’t follow the instructions.

#8

I don’t know them either, I don’t use tricks either, I was just curious, it looks like it has an editor to create or modify existing ones. How to create cheats in FBNeo?

I saw them, they are upstairs, I will see what tricks they have… Perhaps they can be converted or created in FBNeo. You can even try it, it’s simple.

This is the FBNeo .ini format:

cheat "Infinite Credits"
default 0
0 "Disabled"
1 "Enabled", 0, 0xFF0D59, 0x09

And this is Pugsy’s:

 <cheat desc="Infinite Credits">  
     <script state="run">  
       <action>maincpu.pb@FF0D59=09</action>  
     </script>
 </cheat>

The codes in bold are the same:
0, 0xFF0D59, 0x09 (fbneo.ini)
FF0D59=09" (pugsy)

Just open the .ini file of the game, duplicate the last trick (there are 5 lines). Change the name and put in the code, the same one that Pugsy has.

In order not to confuse you, I made you a high quality illustration…

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#10

Ok, i think i’m starting to get the general picture here. FYI the .ini format is deprecated.

The documentation tells to uncompress https://github.com/finalburnneo/FBNeo-cheats/archive/master.zip, it never tells to trim down its content.

Especially, that zip file includes a cheat.dat, which is our primary format, contains the most cheats, hence must be installed.

#11

I didn’t know anything about .dat. I thought you could edit the ini, to add one more trick.

Of the 5 games mentioned by @pi3.14 only 4 are on FBNeo.

“Big Fight - Big Trouble In The Atlantic Ocean” It is not in the current romset, but it does appear in the cheat.dat file (“Tatakae! Big Fighter” is another game ).

I opened Violent Storm and apparently it is missing two tricks that are in Pugsy, Infinite Time, Hit Anywhere.

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@pi3.14 You can’t open the cheats for these games or, you are missing cheats?

#12

Yes you can, and this is one of the reasons we keep this format around since it’s relatively easier to understand than cheat.dat. Nonetheless the cheat.dat we provide is the main cheat file where we regularily add new cheats.

5 out of 6, we indeed don’t support the tatsumi arcade board. That hardware is rather complex and not fully understood (only bigfight is partially emulated). Tbh i’m not entirely convinced it will run at full speed on the likes of a fire stick.

You can make requests for any missing cheat on our forum. I’ll try to add those 2 to our cheat.dat later today.

#13

wait wait wait wait … I am not doing it wrong, am I?

I have just downloaded https://github.com/finalburnneo/FBNeo-cheats/archive/master.zip

and re-checked. There’s no cheat for all the above 6 games I mentioned. Here’s a screenshot…

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If anyone of you have 5 game .in (i don’t know why I can’t see) … please share here for me to check.

@alexb3d thanks for the pic. I can now try to convert it to ini.

#14

Yes you do things wrong, read again what i wrote multiple times.

#15

@BarbuDreadMon I hate to annoy you but I really can’t see the required ini files inside FBNeo-master.zip. Aright, I saw “pce_violents.ini” which is for violent storm, but for the rest (except BigFight) honestly I couldn’t find any of those names inside. Can you please please point out where you found the inis for other games?

#16

For the 4th time, there is a cheat.dat in that zip file, this is the main cheats resource in FBNeo, and you must install it.

#17

I think you are getting confused and it’s my fault. I’ll summarize quickly.

The .ini are individual files and are in disuse, the support is kept for compatibility and because they are easier to understand.
The cheat.dat is the new FBNeo format, it is a single file with all the games listed. In this file the new ones are added and the old ones will be replaced.

Don’t edit anything, just unzip the cheat file master.zip and copy the cheat folder in the “…/RetroArch/system/fbneo” directory. And then you load the cheats from the " Quick Menu » Core Options » Cheat " menu, not from menu cheats…

I like the dat better. It looks better organized and it is easier to locate each trick line. I think I understood better how it works than the xml type lists.

5 out of 6 ? I counted 5. This is why I can’t be trusted to edit code. :sweat_smile:

Yes, you will see me more often in the FBNeo forum. 1st, I’m going to check the missing games that Pakka wants, if there are any tricks missing I’ll ask for them in the forum. Or report some details, like the parent “Violent Storm (see EAC)” has the cheat line “Select Starting Stage”, the clones do not. But it doesn’t work anyway.

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Also to experiment, I copied Pugsy’s “Infinite Time” trick to the .dat, from:

maincpu.pw@200C12=0959
to:
:viostorm:00000000:200C12:00000959:FFFFFFFF:Infinite Time TEST

And it worked, although I guessed that maincpu.pw was 00000000, because I saw no other references to it. Perhaps many tricks can be converted using a gedit “replace with”.

#18

@BarbuDreadMon my apologies. Somehow it completely skipped my attention. It’s there and perhaps it will solve the dumb cheat issues of mine.

@alexb3d thank you sir for understanding. I am new in cheat section so was struggling. Really looking forward to see what changes you will bring in terms of those 6 games. Wish there is some kind of tool to merge cheats from different source and formats. Like information from xml to ini or output for chat.dat’s format. That would be really helpful. Thank you again.

Now I need to see how can I make BigFight run or include the xml big fight cheat to cheat.dat (looking to you) and run wil mame-2003-plus core.

1 Like
#19

There are tools for conversion, but I have no idea.

MAME2003-Plus supports cheats, did you read the documentation? It is a file also called cheats.dat, and, it is not the same, nor compatible with FBNeo. They are activated from the internal menu of MAME, in a PC it is “the Tab key”. But, Big Figther doesn’t have cheats. I will try to port them, if not, they would have to be requested in the mame2003-plus github.

I don’t think they are going to include Big Figther in FBNeo anytime soon, for the reasons given by @BarbuDreadMon , he must know something, he is one of the main developers. :laughing:

It seems to me that current MAME doesn’t support cheats, or I’m not able to activate them, that emulator is unreasonably complicated.

#20

As annotated at the beginning of our cheat.dat, pw is supposed to be 00100000, while i think 00000000 is for pb

In MAME, mw (which i think is 00900000) would write a word, while pw writes 2 bytes, but i’m not entirely sure about the exact subtlety since one word should be 2 bytes. It might be something about endianness and the way the bytes are ordered.

Edit : updated viostorm cheats with https://github.com/finalburnneo/FBNeo-cheats/commit/ad2700a8e948883837ba58c3cf4e357f9320b7a9

#21

I can see that. I think if I can convert these remaining ones, even the 2003+. The only ones I find difficult to automate are the ones with multiple values like character selection. Anyway, I post them in the forum for correction.

The cheat.dat says “;Global Cheat Engine Commands - read the cheat.txt file if you want to change it!” I don’t get it, where is it?

#22

@alexb3d, thank you again for your help. I know mame2003plus supports cheat. But the cheat.dat link given in mame2003plus page is not same format as cheat.dat inside the FBNeo-master.zip file. Besides, mame2003plus cheat.dat don’t have cheat for all these 6 games. That’s where my confusion was, I was looking at mame2003plus cheat.dat entire time. current MAME core supports cheat and works well with pugsy’s cheat.7z.

64Bit RA doesn’t work with 2nd Gen (2017) firetv stick. So I have to stick with older mame cores, may be 2003 and 2003-plus. But, I noticed that these games have choppy sounds and sluggish gfx with those core. Not sure if it was like this always. I can’t remember. Need to find an work around.