MacGuyver

Hi there, recently I found a super easy way to set up any Vic-20 game to work easily on Launchbox by using Retroarch. The trick is to make sure that every game you set up has the proper memory settings. So many of the best Vic-20 games ran from cartridges that require specific RAM setup to run. Running many of the popular Vic games on Launchbox has been frustrating many people, because lots of them don't work with Retroarch unless you update the RAM settings for every single game. It's a little bit of work the first time you do it, but once you understand the steps, it's very easy to do for all your games. Here is a step by step instruction. For this example, I'm using the game called "Cheese and Onion" which needs 35Kb RAM to run properly. Because it needs extra ram, this game won't run with the default Retroarch settings. Download the game here if you'd like to use it as an example: https://misfit.itch.io/cheese-and-onion The ROM file in this case is named "vic20_cheese_and_onion_32k.d64". Save it where you'd like it to live on your computer. On the Tools menu of Launchbox, select "Import ROM files", then single platform. Choose the game file you downloaded, and select the Commodore Vic-20 Platform when prompted. Choose "RetroArch" as the emulator you'd like to use to run this ROM Copy/Move or Leave the ROM file where it is, per your preference Click the checkmark to download Metadata for your game Decide which media you'd like downloaded from Emumovies (there may not be any) Skip "Download Bezels" because there won't be any for a Vic-20 game Select custom options, if desired Now the game has been installed in Launchbox. Next we need to adjust the per-game memory settings in the Launchbox menus. This is the most important step that many people miss, mainly because the Retroarch menu system is not entirely intuitive. Go ahead and double click on the game in Launchbox so that it starts running. You will see the standard Vic-20 Loading screen displayed (load *, 8), and then the following screen: (You can see that it's an unexpanded Vic currently, due to the 3583 bytes free. We need to change that. Very quickly the game will show you the below loading screen. The loading takes quite a while, which is the perfect opportunity to change the RAM settings. What is important to do next is to change the memory settings for this particular game IN RETROARCH (not Launchbox). You only have to do this once, and it will remember the setting! While you see the screen above, press F1 to enable the Retroarch menu (or press the X-Box guide button, if you are using an X-Box 360 controller) You will see the Retroarch menu appear over the game screen. The game is paused. Navigate to Core options->System->Memory Expansion Set the memory expansion to 32K (the default is off (no extra memory), which won't allow the game to load correctly) Back up one menu (using backspace key or controller) and go to Manage Core Options-> Save Game Options. It has now saved a memory expansion profile for this game only. The setup is complete, you can now run the game again and it will work correctly each time. For a graphical walkthrough of the Retroarch screens and settings, see :https://ibb.co/3yKyY9qd If you have done it correctly, the game will load and you will see the game menu running perfectly: If however you did not adjust the Retroarch game memory setting correctly, then the game will fail to load and you will see the following instead. If this happens, run the game again, and bring up the Retroarch menu while loading the game, and make sure you follow the above steps exactly to set the memory setting correctly for that game. A quick tip for speeding up loading time, since this game takes quite a while to load: You can press the spacebar in Retroarch to speed up the load time tremendously. Just make sure to press space again to turn off the speed loading once the game loads, or it will continue to play at high speed. I hope this helps folks on how to manage the memory settings per game on the Vic-20. It allowed me to easily build the ultimate easy setup and play every single Vic game I ever wanted to play, easily, alongside all the other systems I have setup on Launchbox. For other Vic20 games, the same steps will apply, although some games will need different memory settings. Often times the correct RAM needs are part of the file name. A special thank you to the readme file on the Cheese and Onion Game page, which showed me finally how to properly navigate the Vic20 memory settings page PER GAME in Retroarch, and to save the setting permanently! Let me know if anyone needs help with any specific ROM, and I'll do my best to help!

Which game did you download? What was the file?

I sorted it out! I didn't realize that for my game there were multiple versions of patches for slightly different ROMs of the same title, and I was selecting the wrong ones. Once I selected "only show owned games" in the RPCS3 patch manager, I quickly realized that none of the correct patches were enabled for the exact ROM that I had. When I selected those, they were enabled for the game correctly from Launchbox too.

Any tips on how to enable specific patches for the individual games? When I launch games from the RPCS3 interface directly, it remembers what patches I have enabled for the specific game. But when I launch the game through Launchbox, it does launch (hooray), but none of the patches are enabled, so there might be issues with bloom for example. But launching the game direct from RPC3, it remembers the individual patch settings.

Thanks again Zombeaver for the INSANE amount of careful work you continue to put into these updates. All the new features, the new shader, the updated core with improved SID emulation, new bezels, better zoom settings, all the game version updates, the new overlays, and especially the next set of curated games, it's a dream come true for the fans of this platform. We're not worthy! Truly awesome.

Guys after playing around with PRG Starter and running into some snags, I'm moving onto a different solution. Even though it's useful for many situations, from what I can tell it still does not provide an easy command line method of running multipart files, which means excluding some of the best Vic20 cartridges. I feel like the best option is to follow in Zombeaver's footsteps on the C64 Dreams project, and use RetroArch with the latest VICE xvic core. There is a lot of great features being added right now on the VICE cores, and the ability to to use shaders etc from Retroarch is just too powerful to ignore. I'll update when I'm further along.

Zombeaver, the quality and breadth of the work you are doing with these releases is insane. New games, new features, updated versions, custom notes, new bezels, the list goes on. And now with possible savestates and an improved VICE core around the corner, there is more to come, apparently! Thank you so much!

The game specific instructions presented as a sticky note is awesome! Smart idea with the database so you can consider upgrading game versions, too. And more games coming? How do you find the time for all this?! Thank you!

Wow, what a lot of work and detail you are putting into these updates! BIG thanks!!!!

Sweet! Can't wait.

Holy smokes, what a treat! THANK YOU SO MUCH! This is the ultimate way to play C64 M.U.L.E. Wow, 4 player simultaneous gameplay on a Commodore 64 game, how incredible! It was really nice of you to take the time to figure this out. Now that you've got this 3 & 4 multiplayer sorted out, you might want to consider setting up Bruce Lee Return of Fury the same way! It just got released as freeware a few months ago and looks incredibly slick, plus it allows 3 player simultaneous play! https://megastyle.itch.io/bruce-lee-return-of-fury

Thanks for the super detailed explanation, which made me realize the complexity of this idea. I thought about this and I think that ultimately it would be too easy to mess up the other person's game. So I don't think it's worth pursuing but I do appreciate the inventiveness of the solution! I do think that this is the best way to do this, if you're able to make it work. And yes, if it works with 3 controllers it should also work with 4 I'm happy to do any testing and very appreciative! ?

Hi Zombeaver, a BIG thanks for adding M.U.L.E into your super slick C64 Dreams setup, and also the work you put into customizing the keyboard. It works fantastic! I even tested the 4 player setup and it's definitely a better keyboard layout. I can't wait to play this with my kids, I've been talking about this game for years. BUT, I've been thinking a little more about the 4 controller setup, because I'm not going to give up on this! I know that my copy of retroarch sees my xbox 360 controllers # 3 and 4 when I turn them on because I see a status update from Retroarch when it detects them. However I realize that the VICE core in retroarch normally allows only 2 controllers for input as far as I know. So I have 2 theories of ways this could be bypassed to finally allow full 4 player controller support on MULE. I have yet to test either of these, but open to your feedback. Method #1 - Don't use VICE to interpret the 3rd and 4th joysticks. Instead use something like Joy2Key to read controller 3 and 4 and convert them into the W, S, D and up arrow, down arrow, and right arrow keys. Method #2 - Use a specially modified version of C64 M.U.L.E which was re-coded to read signals from a 4 player joystick adapter. Of course, the actual hardware adapter is for a physical C64 made by Protovision, but I understand that VICE has a special user port mode that can emulate this adapter called CGA mode. Details here https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=39013&sid=02011793d92a367b12679b878453b371 And here is the link for the specially modified 4 player version of M.U.L.E.: https://csdb.dk/release/?id=101455 Interested in your thoughts!

Thanks very much for adjusting the keys on M.U.L.E. Zombeaver! Really looking forward to testing this.

M.U.L.E. is actually my favorite C64 game of all time, and you have to play with a group to truly get a feel for how great the competition aspect of the game really is. Having said that, it's nearly impossible to have players 3 and 4 use the keyboard at the same time comfortably so I would love to find a way to map those keys onto controllers 3 and 4. The part I wasn't sure about was the fire button being two keys together. And thanks so much for the shift tip on the forum replies ?

Hi Zombeaver, thanks for the update, and I can't wait for the next installment! An expansion on my request for "M.U.L.E." which it sounds like you've just added, my dream is to be able to play the 4 player mode with my kids, using 4 controllers. ON the 4 player mode on the C64, M.U.L.E. uses the keyboard for players 3 and 4: Left Keyboard Player: "Q" key = up, "Commodore" key = down, "Q" + "Commodore" = Fire Right Keyboard Player: "Up Arrow" key = up, "=" key = down, "Up Arrow" + "=" = Fire I wonder if there is an easy way you could map these keyboard commands onto controller 3 and 4? (I'm also using XBOX 360 controllers). Thanks ever so much! (Also, how are you responding single spaced on the forum?) I can't seem to sort that out.

Wow, it's awfully nice of you to open this up to the community for the next set of games you'll do. I'll add a few more games to the list, if I'm not too late. So many good titles to choose from! Here's a few more obscure titles that I enjoyed playing way back in the day: Flloyd of the Jungle Gyruss Jupiter Lander Mario Brothers Miner 2049er Oil's Well Pharaoh’s Curse Racing Destruction Set Snokie Ultima III:Exodus Wizard of Wor

Quick question Zombeaver - If I already have a platform in my LB setup called "Commodore 64", how can I merge the games platform in C64 dreams into this current one? It was relatively easy to change its parent to computers like you suggest, but when I tried to change the name it said "Another platform already exists with the specified title. Please choose a different title" Hmmm - Any way to merge platforms? Or do you have another suggestion to integrate it with my current Launchbox C64 games setup? Thanks!

Thanks again for all the help. I sure am going to be looking forward to your updates on this project. I can't stress enough that in all my years of C64 emulation, I've never seen as good a presentation as what you've done here. The games play better than on a real commodore! What a treat. I'll PM you with a separate list rather than hijacking your thread. Thanks again!

My DPI scaling in Windows is set to 100%. I found someone else having the same problem with Retroarch, and the solution which worked for me was to right click on the Retroarch.exe program in the C64 dreams folder, click "change high DPI settings", and select the checkmark "override high DPI scaling behavior performed by" and select "application". Now it works perfectly! What a treat! I'm really impressed how you've got the zoom level perfect to crop out the borders, and the Retroarch rendering looks incredible as far as scanlines. Thanks very much for the explanation of how hotkeys work on Retroarch. Makes sense. By shortcuts, I was refererring to the fact that sometimes when I click on the C64 dreams copy of Launchbox.exe it would install it instead of running it, and the Launchbox shortcuts in my windows Start menu would launch the C64 Dreams version of Launchbox instead of my regular installation. Would like to avoid this, but maybe the easiest way is to just import C64 Dreams into my existing Launchbox setup. A few more questions How can I change the alien type background on the sides? Do you plan on showing a tutorial for the process you go through for adding new games, so that I could add some more favorites of my own to this setup with the same care and attention that you have? Based on how careful and how you are actually doing custom setups for every single game, I totally believe that it's going to take you a few years to get through the entire library. You are doing this with the same level as an archivist, and for that I thank you!

Wow, what an incredible amount of work you've put into this, Zombeaver! I absolutely love how insanely careful and picky you are to ensure the experience is smooth. I absolutely love the cheatsheet controller image that comes up, and how you've set up the controller with such useful features. I plan on digging into this in a big way! A few quick questions. The biggest issue I had is that I couldn't get the display resolution to work correctly. My monitor is 1920x1080 but for some reason the image appears zoomed in when I run this setup. I even tried running the 1080p bat file but it did not help. I will admit that I don't find the user interface on Retroarch very easy to use but I'm not familiar with it. The other thing that was difficult is that getting to the Retroarch screen to adjust was also difficult, since it does not display wide enough to show the video settings. I was able to fumble my way to 4x3 on the aspect ratio, so I could see everything but then the image was quite small, so I'd love to hear any suggestions on how to adjust this to be in between the two. The other thing I noticed is that running the version of Launchbox with your package would occasionally interfere with the shortcuts for my main launchbox installation, Finally, the one last item I wished for is the ability for the escape key to quit, instead of representing the run stop key on the keyboard. Is this easy to adjust? Thanks!

Changing the config file to read-only worked for me. Now all 4 of my x-box 360 controllers always work on Mame. Could never get this to stick and it was driving me crazy.

Interesting! I'll try this. Thanks for the tip.

Thanks for the tip on avoiding unzipping roms!

This one was tricky, mainly because there are a lot of Vic20 ROM dumps that are multipart, and I haven't quite figured out how to run two seperate files in Launchbox, one after another, with different custom command line parameters for each. So until someone helps me with that, what I have been doing is finding alternative dumps where someone has already combined the two parts together. What you were running with all the 6000 prg files you were finding was probably only half of the dump, with (very likely) some A000 files that need to be run as well. I was able to locate the following dump of The Vic20 Atarisoft version of Moon Patrol: (Notice that is does not have "multipart" in the title) Moon Patrol (1983)(Atarisoft)(NTSC)[6000].CRT This file is located in the TOSEC.2016.11.11.Commodore.VIC20.AlphaBot ROM collection on Archive.org. With this file, the -cart6 command will run the game without any problems. (you MUST unzip the file first!) A few notes: For some reason I was not able to import this file with Launchbox. I think the square brackets are causing problems. Once I removed the square brackets around [6000] it worked fine. Also I am noticing on my imports that when I import zip files, a lot of games get missed for some reason. So I am only imported unzipped roms. I am only noticing this with my Vic20 Roms. I hope this helps.