Playing roms directly from archive-which systems work?

Libretro Lakka
#1

Which systems can I directly play roms from archived? For example, I’m able to get GBA to work but not PS1

#2

basically any core that uses single-file games. It’s the bin/cue pair that breaks it.

#3

You can now use CHD compression on your PS1 games if you are using the Beetle core. That way you get a single compressed file that you can run without decompressing. Grab chdman.exe from MAME’s binary package on their site. Then create a text file and add this line inside it:

for /r %%i in (*.cue, *.gdi) do chdman createcd -i "%%i" -o "%%~ni.chd

Save the file as something like “Cue or GDI to CHD.bat”. Then put that file and chdman.exe inside your PS1 game folder and double click the bat file. It will convert all the games with cues (or gdis if you want to do Dreamcast) to CHD; even those in subfolders. CHD is also supported in Genesis Plus GX for Sega CD, Mednafen Saturn, SuperGrafx and PCE Fast cores.

You can also use PSX2PSP to convert bin/cue games to pbp format, which I think PSX Rearmed also supports. You don’t get quite as good compression that way though.

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#4

Thank you so much! This will be my project for the next few days since I now have to unarchive all my PS1 and Dreamcast games

#5

Do you have a link? I’m not sure if this is the right site since I can’t find it http://www.mamedev.org/index.php

#6

Yeah, just go to their latest release downloads section and grab the 32 or 64bit binary package. You can open the .exe with 7zip and extract chdman.exe from there. Or just run the package’s .exe to extract everything and grab chdman out of wherever you extract it to.

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#7

Can I change it to the following for cdi files? Would they work with lakka for dreamcast?

for /r %%i in (*.cue, *.cdi) do chdman createcd -i “%%i” -o "%%~ni.chd

#8

Im not sure if cdi work for that. I remeber converting 100’s of my DC games and i now have cdi and chd games.

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#9

You can try it, but I’m not sure it will work. CDI versions are crappy dumps generally though. Many had FMV or music quality downgraded or completely ripped out of the games to fit GDROM games on CDROMs. Redump GDI images are what you want.

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#10

Awesome info Awakened. Do you know if it works with those silly redump games with multiple bins? Been a pain converting them to single bin cue with cdmage one at a time… guess i could just try! heh

Edit: Seems to have worked on one that i tried. Will have to test the game works when i have more time.

#11

Yeah, chdman converts multi bin dumps no problem.

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#12

Do GDI dumps have a really small gdi file with multiple raw and bin files? I only started looking at GDI roms and I’m not sure if I’ve found the correct files. I tried testing the bat with one I found and it wouldn’t run.

#13

Yeah, the GDI files function just like CUEs from what I’ve read. I guess I converted my GDI’s to CHD one by one from the command prompt before I found the batch script, so I didn’t test those with it. I don’t see why they wouldn’t work with it though. If you know how to use the command prompt, the syntax is:

chdman createcd -i "filename.gdi" -o "filename.chd"

Even if it doesn’t work, you might get some error output that can help troubleshoot.

#14

Great :slight_smile: . Now only if i could figure out why they dont launch in LaunchBox :confused:

#15

I was an idiot, I forgot to put chdman.exe in the same directory.

#16

Which core specifically for the different sega systems and the psx? I’m using RC5 from http://static.kivutar.me/ and I can’t find the core

#17

In the updater they are called:

Playstation (Beetle PSX)
Sega MS/GG/MD/CD (Genesis Plus GX)

I think the HW variant of Beetle supports it too. I use Windows nightlies, so I’m not sure how getting the latest cores in Lakka works.

#18

Is there a core that can play chd dreamcast roms?

#19

Both Reicast and Redream support CHD. But only Redream supports the newer CHD format the latest chdman outputs. I’m not sure what version of chdman you’d have to use to get Reicast compatible CHDs. But Redream is probably going to replace Reicast and hopefully even Demul as it improves over time.

#20

Hello, everyone. I would like some information about the archive (zip) files that retroarch can use. I realised 2 things in particular: the first is that if the zip file contains a folder inside which there are files, retroarch does not see the folder the second is that if there is a large number of files inside the zip file, retroarch sees nothing. Well my questions are: is it possible to make retroarch see subdirectories in zip files? is it possible to make retroarch see a large number of files in the zip file? thank you