MiSTer: FPGA gaming

[dataDave]

30 minutes ago, bignige said:

Mostly!

All works great on the BVM as long as the Extron is connected (rolling pic otherwise). 

 

Most PVM/BVM owners have been here before. This is a sync issue. You need to fiddle with the sync settings on the BVM (dial them in on any real hardware you have first, perhaps), and then tie them up to the sync settings in the MiSTer.ini, which should be set as follows:

 

ypbpr=0                ; set to 1 for YPbPr on VGA output.
composite_sync=1       ; set to 1 for composite sync on HSync signal of VGA output.

 

 

30 minutes ago, bignige said:

Quick question with regards to you mentioning Retrotink slot mask. Do you need a Retrotink for this? Which one do you have? 
Id like to hook it up to an LCD panel for when it’s not convenient to play on BVM.

 

No, you don't need one. The MiSTer has it all built in now! You can go back here to find my preset, but make sure you've copy and pasted Atrac17's integer modeline presets to the bottom of your .ini first.

 

 

30 minutes ago, bignige said:

Finally, when are we going to see you on Halo Infinite??

 

Eh? You're all playing it? I'm downloading now, but you couldn't possibly have asked at a worse time seeing as Splatoon 3 gets picked up this afternoon.

[bignige]

12 minutes ago, dataDave said:

 

Most PVM/BVM owners have been here before. This is a sync issue. You need to fiddle with the sync settings on the BVM (dial them in on any real hardware you have first, perhaps), and then tie them up to the sync settings in the MiSTer.ini, which should be set as follows:

 

ypbpr=0                ; set to 1 for YPbPr on VGA output.
composite_sync=1       ; set to 1 for composite sync on HSync signal of VGA output.

 

 

 

No, you don't need one. The MiSTer has it all built in now! You can go back here to find my preset, but make sure you've copy and pasted Atrac17's integer modeline presets to the bottom of your .ini first.

 

 

 

Eh? You're all playing it? I'm downloading now, but you couldn't possibly have asked at a worse time seeing as Splatoon 3 gets picked up this afternoon.

Nice one! I’ll have a go at this next week and report back. 
 

Big Jack, Yoshimax, Evil Boris and myself have been playing this quite a bit recently, but more often than not we end up with a three squad. Jump on if you see us / we’ll inv you if we see you!

[spanky debrest]

I must be the slowest laziest MiSTer setter-upper of all time.

 

I ordered the DE10 and various related bits and pieces late October 2021, had most of it early Jan '22. 

 

Attempted and failed at basic installation around March probably because the rather oversized 256GB SD card I was using just wasn't playing nice with something (black screen upon initial reboot).

 

Second installation a month later using a smaller SD card went fine, but the script didn't grab any arcade ROMs from archive.org and I couldn't quickly find how/where to configure the update script to check the issue, so i left it alone once more and got distracted by other stuff. 

 

A few weeks ago (mid August 2022) I managed the apparently herculean feat of transferring a few various console ROMs over to it, just for quick testing, setting up controllers, getting a baseline to work from when tinkering with video settings etc and getting used things.. but I think of all the systems ROMs I've yet to transfer, the virtual PC harddrives, the stuff I've meticulously organised on my flashcarts that needs to come over etc..and it's just so much easier to press a single button on actual hardware, flick a switch or two and start playing. 

 

I am still popping in here every so often and grateful that old timers are helping out new users with teething issues I may end up having too, once I commit to playing something on it.

[Vimster]

I was a loony and got a 512gb card for mine, and even with a shedload of PS1 and PC Engine CD games on it, plus the usual sets, I still have 350gb free. 256gb is probably the sweet spot.

[Ninja Doctor]

I only use a 64gb which is fine if you don’t want all the cd gamez. 

[spanky debrest]

Yeah I think the only CD images I'll put on it are a couple of dozen Mega CD ones  - and only because I'm not up for replacing the battery in my Mega CD model 1..which I really really should do because despite it working great (apart from not saving) I'm well aware that as a Model 1 unit that's never been serviced it's probably killing itself with capacitor juices as I type.

 

All I really want from my MiSTer is:

 

Arcade cores

Famicom

Super Famicom 

PC Engine 

32X

Microcomputers

 

So 64GB would probably do me fine too.

 

That 256GB card was assigned for use in the GameCube, for when I get around to installing picoboot.

 

Edit - I forgot about PCE-CD. Yeah I think I'll stick with 128GB.

[Protocol Penguin]

13 hours ago, bignige said:

When in game, press the Xbox home button (if using an Xbox controller) this will give you options to remove scan lines add integer scaling etc.

 

Also, if you want to check the resolution go to the scripts folders and select the settings ini, this will then load up and you can change many options from there - all done via controller. 

Ah, thanks… Did get as far as adding screenlines from the standard menu.

Tried the (integer) scaling, and while it removes the banding, unfortunately it makes the image much smaller than the actual screen, at least on my TV. Which is annoying. Perhaps less so than the banding. Hopefully a solution can be found.

 

13 hours ago, dataDave said:

It’s really easy. Don’t worry about it. I’m glad you’ve spotted that it’s a problem and it’s not just me going “well, actually…” like I always do. 😅

 

Like Nige says, if you go to your core menu and then video settings it should be in there. There’s also the vscale_mode .ini setting to ensure it happens across all cores...

 

MiSTer.ini:

video_mode=0 (720p)

vscale_mode=1 (Integer scale)

vsync_adjust=2 (HDMI v-sync refresh rate for lowest/zero latency)

Gave that a go earlier; the rest worked good, but the integer scale set to 1 gave the situation described as above (small game window). Is that as per usual, or just expected?

 

(FWIW, the MiSTer input usually overscans on my television. With arcade games, the top and bottom is usually missing at full screen. The update log when I active update_all always goes off the edges of the screen...)

[dataDave]

@Protocol Penguin Yes, some small borders are to be expected, but nothing terrible. What integer scaling does is multiply the pixels by a full number (an integer, so x2, x3, and so on.) Upscaling to 1080 from 240 is x4.5 - so that extra half/.5 is what usually causes that banding.

 

What resolution is your TV? I had an image size/scale problem with our old TV that I only discovered a few days before shifting it out for the new one. A quick dip into the image settings sorted it. 🤦‍♂️ Interestingly it was Sonic Mania’s CRT shader which highlighted the issue in the first place.

[Klatrymadon]

Is there a way to adjust the overscan on a cheap consumer CRT? Some of the Irem games have their entire HUD missing (Gallop and R-Type II most noticeably - it's also possible to move offscreen in the latter).

[Swainy]

1 hour ago, Klatrymadon said:

Is there a way to adjust the overscan on a cheap consumer CRT? Some of the Irem games have their entire HUD missing (Gallop and R-Type II most noticeably - it's also possible to move offscreen in the latter).

Run the update all script and you will find that the Irem games now have a timing option, if you change it to 50khz you get the full image.

 

Most CRT’s do have a service menu which allow you to adjust the size of the image. Try searching the model number of your TV on Google.

[Klatrymadon]

Cheers! I'll give that a shot. Yeah, I've switched everything on the M72 core to 50hz for now.

[Bangaio]

Well after running my de10 with an Amazon otg hub and nothing else I have gone full mister and it feels good to have the full stack even though I don’t really need the I/o board. This thing still amazes me and I’m now hitting the Amiga core with the amazing ready made image which is organised and built so well. Happy days. 

[pastry]

I must admit I’m put off by some of the package setups.. eg I know I am never going to play 300 DOS games or 500 Amiga games.

 

Even worse are the full sets you can get. Makes no sense to me at all. 

 

With that in mind I think 128GB is good until Saturn hits, where 256 might be safer. 

[Vimster]

10 hours ago, pastry said:

I must admit I’m put off by some of the package setups.. eg I know I am never going to play 300 DOS games or 500 Amiga games.

 

Even worse are the full sets you can get. Makes no sense to me at all. 

 

With that in mind I think 128GB is good until Saturn hits, where 256 might be safer. 

I know people who prefer to put just the games they want to play now on rather than have every game ever at the ready. There's some sense in that, it does help to maintain a focus on a game and you don't sit there scrolling through lists for half an hour before playing a game for 10 minutes. 

 

I am one of those idiots who just filled the card up with every game I could find, and I admit it's not ideal. There are some sessions where I simply can't decide what to play, or the weight of every other game demanding to be played stops me concentrating. It's the old emulation problem. 

 

Not sure what a good compromise would be though, maybe having them on the PC and FTPing any over when necessary perhaps. 

[Kevvy Metal]

I use the EverDrive packs for the cartride-based systems and that has a full comprehensive library at a low storage foot-print. 

It's good to have such a big archive, but I then treat is like a big digital store, and "purchase" / move the games I want over to one folder (per system) called - 00-mygames

and that's just a list of the game I most frequently want to play. I basically go into there 90% of the time. If there's something cool and weird I want to play from the massive library, I simply move it over. 

This approach totally works for me. Other wise you get the case where you see a cool obscure game - like Gimmick or Doh rah me fantasy - and have to search for a rom

[dataDave]

Yeah, I have all the EverDrive packs for all the consoles, which comes in at just over 100GB. But then I have '0_Favourites' that sits at the top for the actual games I'm going to play. If I hear of a hidden gem from somewhere I drop into The Archive™ to give it a quick spin to see if it's worthy or not.

 

Me and Kevvy are repeating ourselves, but it's worthy when so many newcomers are joining the thread.

[Vimster]

Aye, on my 351P I use the Favourites a lot and tend to just play games out of that. Should do that on the MiSTer really but as has been said it's tricky with things like MegaAGS and the frankly mad BBC Micro image. 

[Ninja Doctor]

I put about 30 of the main hitters for the most common systems on mine (which pretty much aligned with the games on my minis so nice and legal). 
 

if anything else needs adding, it’s a 20s job via the samba server. 

[ulala]

The packs usually have top 20 lists etc 

 

genres

grouped by publisher

year

 

very useful stuff 

[pastry]

Yeah ok, some good ideas there. It's the usual choice paralysis, but even when I try to be really "good" I get this anxiety that I could and maybe should be playing something else.

 

And also conscious of my own bias which means I tend to pick out stuff I already know and love.

But lately I've been consumed by Bubble Bobble and I don't feel I could be missing anything – what else is possibly as delightful? 

[ulala]

dont put pressure on yourself.

 

play what you want, when you want.

 

[pastry]

Absolutely, and I mostly do. But I know there are some classics I should try to give some time to. I only seem to manage about 1hr a week at the moment.

But tonight I'll probably be playing the Mega Drive version of NBA Jam with my 7 year old – still working on getting her to give Bubble Bobble a try!

[Protocol Penguin]

On 10/09/2022 at 10:33, dataDave said:

@Protocol Penguin Yes, some small borders are to be expected, but nothing terrible. What integer scaling does is multiply the pixels by a full number (an integer, so x2, x3, and so on.) Upscaling to 1080 from 240 is x4.5 - so that extra half/.5 is what usually causes that banding.

 

What resolution is your TV? I had an image size/scale problem with our old TV that I only discovered a few days before shifting it out for the new one. A quick dip into the image settings sorted it. 🤦‍♂️ Interestingly it was Sonic Mania’s CRT shader which highlighted the issue in the first place.

It's an LG flatscreen 4K/UHD. (Yeah, I suspect a 4K modern television isn't great for MiSTer, but unfortunately I don't have the space for a CRT or time and energy to hunt out a useable one locally.)

[spanky debrest]

Had my first little test on the MiSTer, and plan on noting all the little bits I need to understand better, but is there a something that needs configuring for a daemonbite adaptor to be detected?

 

I was hoping to test some SNES and NES games with authentic controllers using one, but no joy.

 

My 8bitdo wireless usb PC Engine controller wasn't being read either.

 

Only my old native wired USB ibuffalo SNES worked straight off, which is fine for now.

 

Aside from that, playing Assault Suit Valken on a CRT for the first time since about 1994 was amazing. And was surprised to see the SNES core running a broken comedy hack like Super Diagonal Mario 2 without an issue. Very cool.

[Ninja Doctor]

You may need to set the controller up in the main mister menu but it will then function as a regular usb controller. Use the “define joystick buttons” option on the main menu. 

[Swainy]

Plus if you get a Snac adapter and a joypad adapter you can use original controllers: 

 

https://misterfpga.co.uk/product/mister-snac-adapter-usb/

 

Use the code retroasylum to get a 6% discount.

 

[spanky debrest]

1 hour ago, Ninja Doctor said:

You may need to set the controller up in the main mister menu but it will then function as a regular usb controller. Use the “define joystick buttons” option on the main menu. 

 

Yeah, Thus is what I tried, but no detection of either real pads via the daemonbite box or the 8bitdo PCE pad. Just the ibuffalo. I have only spent about 30 minutes with it though, so it's probably me being a donut. 

 

1 hour ago, Swainy said:

Plus if you get a Snac adapter and a joypad adapter you can use original controllers: 

 

https://misterfpga.co.uk/product/mister-snac-adapter-usb/

 

Use the code retroasylum to get a 6% discount.

 

 

Thanks for this, however I got myself a few of these last year. I'll test them out once I get the more basic stuff ironed out. Looking forward to a PSX one with a composite video input for light guns, eventually.

 

I'll also go back and read this thread a bit, as I'm sure issues I'll face will have been addressed already.

[Camel]

I'm still on the fence about getting involved in this. Is the tiny screen on a big TV issue that PP is facing normal? Is there a fix? Also, the talk of having to run cores at 50hz to resolve overscan issues - is that resolvable? 

[Count Buffalos]

There are lots of scaling options. It’s only integer scaling (which is my preferred option) than will produce a smaller picture.

[spanky debrest]

I think the issue with those Irem M72 games and overscan is related to those boards running at 55hz and just using more of the area normally not used by regular console games. 

 

In other words, the original monitors used in the cabinets would have displayed more than what regular consumer CRTs do, so that's why some HUD info is cut off. They also run at nonstandard, higher resolutions than other games of their era.