MiSTer

o1s1n

Before getting one I was a bit concerned about the return versus cost but it really is 100% worth every penny.

So much so in fact that I'm aiming to pick up another DE10 soon to stick in my Pony - I have a DE10 to Jamma adapter thingy that I got from Cathaldubin so have everything I need bar the DE10.

Have actually been quite taken aback by the amount of vertical games available in the arcade core list, should be brilliant!

KeRbDoG

If anyone is thinking of getting a MiSTer setup - I've IO boards+case up on the Marketplace if you plan on buying the parts individually

I think I need to tinker with my MiSTercade configs, certain cores drop into a freq which my Atomiswave SD doesn't seem to support. It's meant to be a tri-sync. When moving over to a MiSTercade, you are reminded that the analogue video output is raw - so most video options around rotating are ignored so no TATE cores on a YOKO setup :(

Inviere

Imagine being this skilled...

https://twitter.com/AzumFpg/status/1653712691951816704?t=mKgpb2DNeYciyKS8iZIJPg&s=19

o1s1n

Multiplayer Smash Bros on an arcade machine incoming, that's really going to be something else.

Still can't get over how productive the community is with this thing.

I was reading there about Jotego's work on the CPS 3 board. Apparently it'll take 15 months to trace everything, absolute madness. They reckon it actually might be too big a project to do and may need to come up with some alternative way of getting it traced.

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120550556#Comment_120550556

I do wonder if it'll ask too much of the DE10. It's possible only some games will run, possible none will run, and possible the absolute mad lad will just land us a fully compatible N64 FPGA core. Even if the FPGA dream doesn't materialise, he's at least written a fully low level (yes, low level!) N64 emulator. Granted today's PC's can't run it at full speed (the footage is sped up), but in time that could become the next B-SNES.

o1s1n

Does make you wonder what is in store for the future of FPGA. What will a successor to the DE10 look like and will it be similar schematically so that you could potentially hook it up to existing MiSTer hats / accessories or are we talking a scratch build again?

Would it even be possible at all to create FPGA cores for hardware post the 5th generation of consoles or would it all just be far too time consuming?

I suppose there's more than enough to keep programmers busy in regards to arcade cores, I really hope the likes of Jotego keeps that up. Looks to be no sign of it stopping for now.

Inviere

I'd say it'll plateau, in that we'll reach a technological point that'll make it extremely difficult to make fpga cores for ever advancing machines. I mean, even if we had the FPGA horsepower, what are the chances of someone dropping a PS2 core for example? I imagine the complexity will just be beyond mere mortals at that point.

o1s1n

If it'll take one person 15 months to just trace out the custom chips and the rest on the CPS 3 hardware then yeah, you'd be talking teams of people to handle something like the PS2. The level of complexity really does start to exponentially ramp up.

TBH I'm happy with it ending in it's current form at the 5th generation. Coincidentally it's where most of my gaming interest with this kind of hardware ends too :)

Retr0gamer

I was talking to someone on twitter about the N64 FPGA core and apparently a lot of it will be high level emulation as the current mister FPGA just wouldn't be able to handle the N64 so looks like there's a tech limit there. I'd love to see PS2 emulated better someday but I'm reading through a tech piece that goes through each consoles architecture and the PS2 really is a different beast from everything else. It relies on two sub processors to accelerate 3D calculations and while the PS2 has a very limited amount of RAM, it relies on ultra fast transfers of data from the memory to these processors. The main CPU is a custom branch of a MIPS processor but the two co-processors are custom and probably not documented. The CPS3 is child's play in comparison.

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120550708#Comment_120550708

I'm pretty much the same, my interests lie mostly on 5th gen and older.

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120550896#Comment_120550896

Yeah i don't forsee anything beyond N64 on the DE10 based systems. It'd need a more complex fpga chip, specs, and a commercial level effort to go beyond it I think.

Even if the N64 core does indeed have software emulation compromises, we can rest assured that the software emulation side of it will be cycle accurate, and likely be the most authentic way to play beyond original hardware.

The Last Bandit

If you want the accurate emulation take a look at MetalNES, it emulates the NES at the transistor level so performance is probably in the hours per frame region but hey its a research project :)

bugs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120550629#Comment_120550629

Jotego is making somewhere in the region of ~20k a month from Patreon. I imagine he won't be going anywhere while he's making that much money.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120553037#Comment_120553037

Mother of god, I was thinking it was just a hobby side thing he was doing - money like that you could easily employee a few people to help out with the more menial bits of work.

bugs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120553377#Comment_120553377

Funnily enough, that is what he has done. He has at least 1 person working for him.

geotrig

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120553377#Comment_120553377

haha o1s1n , the innocence of it 😃

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120553502#Comment_120553502

That's incredible and it's amazing to think really that so many people are interested in the project to the point where that's even possible. Does make me very hopeful for the future of arcade core releases.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120553644#Comment_120553644

Haha I know right? The peak of my interest in collecting and playing older games was about ten years ago, only really been getting back into it properly in the last two years and I'm absolutely blown away by the level of money people are making from Patreon/Youtube and how many devices and professional adds ons, flash carts etc have been released.

Back in those days it was all really hobbiest level stuff.

Even new games being released for older consoles now, it's mad. I remember when Beggar Prince was released for the Megadrive by Super Fight Team around 2006 and that was seen as such a bizarre and big deal at the time. Wouldn't even blink if it was released today.

geotrig

i think when people started trying to make money out of other peoples hobby work left a bad taste to be fair..... the money being made these days as you say with patreon and "bounties" 😔 is on another level though. i suppose its this generations bedroom programmers in a way

Inviere

Another corker on the way....

https://twitter.com/topapate/status/1654768183021109248?t=Krc0VmefMJcSF_chZwSxgQ&s=19

80s Synth Pop

Are the mister devs all independently developing away individually or I'd there a central reviewer that checks code review standards and commits the final core to a central repository?

Take the recent konami cores. Developer Furrtek has developed the turtles core himself and jotego is doing the simpsons. Do they share the same code base or they completely independent and different cores with different standards?

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120562201#Comment_120562201

Good question. I know there's some heavy-hitter names like Jotego, Furrtek, FPGAzumSpass, etc...and their work is often seen as S-Tier. When it comes to work outside of this tier, I'm not sure how quality/standards are checked.

Colonel Panic

Jotego has his own framework for integrating cores into Mister that other devs use.

For core dev, you can usually import other people’s implementations of CPUs and other custom hardware as modules where needed.

I don’t think there’s coding standards as such, but Jotego in particular goes deep on analysing the boards he’s making implementations of.

That’s usually the “best”, but other people could just implement thing poorly with low accuracy.

o1s1n

I think the Konami Aliens core is due to be released by Jotego today, will have a check when I am home from work.

I am assuming everyone else will be too busy playing Tears of the Kingdom 😁

o1s1n

Boo, Aliens was beta only, not on public release as of yet. Too lazy to be installing it manually. 😁

Anyone else been dipping their toes into this?

My next project now is a vertical MiSTer setup in the Pony cabinet. I've a replacement PSU on the way for that machine so once it arrives and it plays nice with my current MiSTercade I'll pick up another DE10.

Need to do a bit of reading up to see how the OSD etc plays with a vertical orientation. I am hoping there's an option to edit the INI somewhere so it follows the screen orientation of the game.

Colonel Panic

An ini change is all it take! There's a sample ini file in the Mistercade Github repo.

I wish I had another cab for a vert setup myself! One day!

o1s1n

Excellent, exactly what I was hoping for! Quite excited to try that out now, really are a lot of very very good shmups on MiSTer.

You've a nice big space for it in that shed I'm sure, start saving 😁

Reckon if you were going for a second would you aim for another Aero or pick up something a bit different?

Colonel Panic

It’s more the availability of nice Candy cabs than the fund at this stage!

I think I’ll get something different this time, but maybe still Sega, even though two Aeros side by side would look nice.

Yeah, Battle Garegga on Mister for starters!!

KeRbDoG

So...is there a way to get MiSTer with a MiSTercade to rotate vertical games for those of us who have a YOKO setup and don't want to TATE? :D might just be a feature of the MiSTer producing a 'as intended' video signal with no processing etc. with an analog output.

My guess is no, it can only do that via the HDMI output.

Colonel Panic

Your suspicions are correct I’m afraid.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120603337#Comment_120603337

Literally my favourite shmup. Sometimes I stick it on just to listen to the soundtrack. 😁

Yeah MiSTer seems to be all about creating a 1 to 1 arcade board experience with zero post processing or 'friendly' additions like picture rotation. Some vertical games even display flipped the opposite way so you need to rotate your monitor counter clockwise.

My main 'missing' feature at the moment is high scores. Really wish Jotego would work to implement them, particularly in shmups.

eddhorse

I was looking at a switch that would flip the yoke connection wires.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120609460#Comment_120609460

I'm surprised this isn't something you see on more cabinets to be honest. Didn't even know it was a potential solution until I read about it very recently.

eddhorse

More info here https://forum.arcadeotaku.com/viewtopic.php?t=14538

Inviere

Fpga work begins...

https://twitter.com/AzumFpg/status/1660716020892311571?t=rI-xo2I6C3KqmIdhQ9m2BQ&s=19

Inviere

I finally figured out how to tell the update_all script to download to external storage, and threw on a few games over FTP to test. What an amazing piece of hardware, and how lucky we are to have decades of greatness preserved so brilliantly like this. Next step is to begin loading up the drive with desired content...a task I hate doing is curating libraries for various systems. Thankfully, Launchbox has a wonderful feature that lets you export a folder of games per system, so I should make light work of it that way.

o1s1n

It's actually ridiculous how versatile it is with some configuration. I know I said it before but wirelessly transferring files over FTP to a unit inside an arcade cabinet is just amazing. After getting a wireless dongle that works I don't think I've actually taken any of it out of the cabinet since. Just no need to now.

Yeah I went the lazy route and just threw on full romsets of the consoles I'm running on it, no curating as of yet. Plenty of sports and mahjong games that need to be deleted. 😁

eddhorse

@Inviere have you looked at RetroNAS? It creates all the folders accepted by the MiSTer

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120641332#Comment_120641332

Looks interesting, cheers Ed. For this unit though, it's a MiSTer Multisystem which has provision for an internal ssd inside the case so I'm going that route. I do have an Unraid Server here which serves up 90% of my roms, but for the Mister I want it consolised and fully independent

o1s1n

What controllers are you using with your Multisystem actually as a matter of interest?

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120642392#Comment_120642392

Currently really only still in testing/config phase, so standard Xbox one controller. I'm very tempted by the new "Slice" addon they've revealed lately though, with more to follow. When I get to actually using the thing for serious gameplay, it'll be original controllers either with the Slice or the various SNAC adapters

CTRL Dock is the correct term, you get buy it with a printed shell to fit to the bottom of the Multisystem as a Slice - https://shop.retrocollective.co.uk/ctrldock-classic-se-joystick-adapter/

eddhorse

Rip jamma expander, pop the magic dragon smoke, not sure what I did wrong. Time to get a MiSTercade.

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120646546#Comment_120646546

PSU in the cab ok?

eddhorse

Yeah pretty sure I put in the jamma connector in backwards, whoops haha

Inviere

One annoying thing about Mister, is how everything seems so fragmented. I'm looking for the latest unstable/nightly Neo Geo core here....it leads me to Discord. Think I can find it on Discord? Not a chance. Can I find it on Github? Nope. Can I find it on the Web? Nope. It's out there, I just have no idea where it is or where to get it. Whoever thought Discord was the proper place to document this stuff?? It's one giant Whatsapp message.

o1s1n

The moment Discord is involved in downloading anything I just stop looking. Can't stand it as a platform. I used to find Reddit annoying, Discord is on a whole other level!

Is that the new Jotego Neo Geo Pocket core you are looking for? I'll probably just wait until it goes public release myself.

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120662238#Comment_120662238

I'm very much the same, I've avoided Discord for years because I don't like walls of text. Reddit is mild compared to it. It's probably just that I'm not used to it, but I just can't help but think it's a really, really, REALLY messy way to organise things.

No I'm looking for the latest Neo Geo core, which supports the Neo Geo CD. It's not the build that the update_all script will pull, this one is a manual install. Found it on the Mister forum eventually, and have it working...just need a to tell it where the games are via an MGL file now....

o1s1n

Ah I see!

Any reason why you want Neo Geo CD compatibility? Completion sake really?

The only Neo geo CD exclusive I'd be bothering with really is Ironclad and you can get a nice MVS conversion rom that'll run in the standard Neo Geo Core.

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120662287#Comment_120662287

Nothing other than novelty reasons, for my sins

o1s1n

Gotta see that monkey juggling loading screen first hand 😁

KeRbDoG

Wonder who maintains these, don't seem very recient

https://github.com/MiSTer-unstable-nightlies/NeoGeo_MiSTer