c64 C64 Dreams (massive curated C64 collection)

[Zombeaver]

Thanks!

Yep, still digging my way through. It will, very likely, be an ongoing endeavor for the next couple years. The good news is that the backend is nailed down well enough and the tools I've made to automate the "manual labor" crap are competent enough that the process is about as painless as I can make it at this point. There's still plenty of hands on work that has to be done, but not for any of the extremely monotonous stuff. This means that the majority of the work goes directly into selecting games, sourcing those games, and then making sure that they're working as they should be - which is by and large the "fun stuff". I can do that stuff for hours on end as it's pretty zen for me. I get to dig through mountains of obscurities and find buried treasure (just like when I was a kid, only with an exponentially larger "box" of disks) getting to play neat stuff that nobody's heard of or thought about for 30 years and hopefully bring those interesting nuggets to others so they won't be forgotten. Fun and productive at the same time

[Jimiga]

Sounds like you've found your happy place, after a lot of effort getting the process to this point. Hats off to you, and I'm glad to hear it's now a labour of love! 

I know exactly what you mean about trawling for treasure! Thanks to emulation and the community around retropie, I got into the scene in a big way a few years ago and love chatting with others on these forums to learn about hidden gems, new discoveries etc. With C64 and especially Amiga emulation now, I get to play all the games I could never afford as a kid, or that the local stores never stocked. There are some real evergreen titles. I also love that the scene is vibrant on both machines with new commercial titles and amazing demos being released seemingly weekly! The fan base around these machines is amazing. 

I've worked in video games animation for many years, and another funny thing is stumbling upon people's names in the credits of games who I've since worked with at various other studios. Sometimes I'll send them a screenshot, in 2020, of me playing a game they worked on half a lifetime ago!! 

It's really special that history is being kept alive in a meaningful way with projects like this, so I wish you all the best with your progress. I'll leave you with a SID demo, a tribute to a demo scener, that has one of the most uplifting tunes I've ever heard - hold tight for it to kick in properly, it's worth listening all the way through (and the tribute graphics/  messages are touching too). 

Downloaded your latest, and I look forward to each new edition! 

Cheers! 
 

 

Edited April 21, 2020 by Jimiga

[Alerum68]

Hello @Zombeaver!

I've modified the C64 Bezel Project to work with C64 Dreams.  Not all games in the collection have Bezels in this project, but about 450 of them will.  This will not modify the default Bezels within C64 Dreams, but when present will replace the default Bezel with one made for that game. To use, copy the config and overlay folders into the C64 Dreams\Retroarch directory. It It uses it's own overlay directory so any modifications you've made in the default overlays directory shouldn't be overwritten, just choose to not overwrite files when copying the config directory.  I haven't modifed and merged the 24 files that are in both projects, nor have I adjust screen resolutions yet, but that should be an easy fix.  

bezelproject-C64 Dreams.zip

Edited April 21, 2020 by Alerum68

[CalmGamer]

Hi @Zombeaver. thanks for all the hard work. Looks amazing. 
 

I do have a couple of issues/questions. Apologize if they have already been covered, I did look in thread but may have missed them. 
 

1). The games screen always opens in the background so I have to alt tab to switch focus to it. This doesn’t happen on any of my other big box or lb games.  Maybe retroarch bug?
 

2) My emulator is on a 6 button arcade machine I built (with attached keyboard). Do you think it’s straightforward to map the controls to it or is everything built around an Xbox style controller?

 

Thanks again  

Edited April 22, 2020 by CalmGamer

[Retrofrogg]

@Zombeaver - you may well have come across this already, but FYI; there is a collection on PD called "Ultimate_Tape_Archive_V1.0". This contains 473 C64 games which have been curated to include proper titles, year & publisher and to include game, cassette, inlay and inlay_back scans. You're probably aware of it but if not I thought it might help you with your project. 

[Zombeaver]

9 hours ago, CalmGamer said:

1). The games screen always opens in the background so I have to alt tab to switch focus to it. This doesn’t happen on any of my other big box or lb games.  Maybe retroarch bug?

I'm not sure what would cause that. You could try opening one of the game .bats and changing the second line of

..\..\Retroarch\Retroarch.exe

to

start ..\..\Retroarch\Retroarch.exe

If that fixes it, it would be relatively easy to fix en masse with something like Notepad++

It was actually changed to the way it is now because it was starting in the background for people that use W10 with it set to "start". I've not seen any other reports of anyone experiencing this on either 7 or 10 with it set the way it is now.

9 hours ago, CalmGamer said:

2) My emulator is on a 6 button arcade machine I built (with attached keyboard). Do you think it’s straightforward to map the controls to it or is everything built around an Xbox style controller?

I couldn't say one way or the other there. 360/XB1 controllers is what it's tested with. Depending on the arcade stick, it may be easier to just make it behave like a keyboard and map it to the keyboard controls.

[CalmGamer]

4 hours ago, Zombeaver said:

I'm not sure what would cause that. You could try opening one of the game .bats and changing the second line of

..\..\Retroarch\Retroarch.exe

to

start ..\..\Retroarch\Retroarch.exe

If that fixes it, it would be relatively easy to fix en masse with something like Notepad++

It was actually changed to the way it is now because it was starting in the background for people that use W10 with it set to "start". I've not seen any other reports of anyone experiencing this on either 7 or 10 with it set the way it is now.

I couldn't say one way or the other there. 360/XB1 controllers is what it's tested with. Depending on the arcade stick, it may be easier to just make it behave like a keyboard and map it to the keyboard controls.

Adding start didn’t fix the issue sadly. Just as an experiment I imported a rom for commando into lb and used my existing retroarch (current build). That worked fine so it’s definitely related to the some issues between my pc and C64 dreams. I never checked what version of retroarch you are using, is it possible for me to update that to the latest version or will that cause problems.  I’m not that familiar with the way retroarch updates and what files it may overwrite.  
 

[Zombeaver]

You should be able to update the version by just dragging in and overwriting the files from a newer fresh copy of RA. That shouldn't cause any problems but what's in use now is what's been tested so that's about all I can say.

What is your Windowed Fullscreen setting set to in your existing RA version, out of curiosity? Is it disabled? If so, try changing it to disabled in C64 Dreams and see if that fixes it. Open C64 Dreams\C64 Dreams\Retroarch\retroarch.cfg and change

video_windowed_fullscreen = "true"

to

video_windowed_fullscreen = "false"

[CalmGamer]

2 hours ago, Zombeaver said:

You should be able to update the version by just dragging in and overwriting the files from a newer fresh copy of RA. That shouldn't cause any problems but what's in use now is what's been tested so that's about all I can say.

What is your Windowed Fullscreen setting set to in your existing RA version, out of curiosity? Is it disabled? If so, try changing it to disabled in C64 Dreams and see if that fixes it. Open C64 Dreams\C64 Dreams\Retroarch\retroarch.cfg and change

video_windowed_fullscreen = "true"

to

video_windowed_fullscreen = "false"

My Fullscreen is set to true. Changing to false didn’t help sadly. 

It does work if I bypass the Visual Basic script and run the batch file directly though. This also works with your retroarch so that rules out an RA bug. 

[Zombeaver]

Go into the game folder for one of the games. Edit the .vbs file and add in the following after the last line:

WScript.Sleep 500
Dim ObjShell :Set ObjShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
ObjShell.AppActivate("Retroarch")

And let me know if that fixes it.

[CalmGamer]

4 hours ago, Zombeaver said:

Go into the game folder for one of the games. Edit the .vbs file and add in the following after the last line:

WScript.Sleep 500
Dim ObjShell :Set ObjShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
ObjShell.AppActivate("Retroarch")

And let me know if that fixes it.

Hi. It worked 9 out of the 10 times I tried the new code. Weirdly enough once it works then all games seem to work properly even without the additional code I’m their vbs file. 
 

it also works like this after I run a file directly through the batch file. Not sure why having a game run properly once seems to fix all subsequent game launches. 
 

Is the command prompt Windows causing focus issues?

 

thanks

Edited April 23, 2020 by CalmGamer

[Zombeaver]

The prompt shouldn't cause any issues if you're starting it with the .vbs because that's the whole point - the script literally hides the prompt. The new code tells it to wait half a second and then set Retroarch as the active window. You could try changing WScript.Sleep 500 to 1000 for a full second delay. There's not much more I can suggest. There's something strange going on on your end that I can't replicate and I haven't seen any reports of similar behavior.

If the new script fixes it, it would be relatively easy to replace the code in the rest of the .vbs files en masse. You would just need to get Notepad++ and then add in the plugin here to enable multi-line find and replace support. Go into the C64 Dreams\C64 Dreams\Games folder, do a search for *.vbs, drag them all into Notepad++, press Alt+Shift+F and do a search for the last line, and then replace it ("Replace All") with the last line + the new lines (and make sure Search in "All Open Documents" is set):

It'll replace it in all of them in one go. Then go to File > Save All and then File > Close All.

You'd want to do this in the Demoscene, Magazines, and SID folders as well.

If that really does fix the problem on your end I can update them for the next version. It's not going to hurt anything, even if it's unnecessary for 99% of users.

[CalmGamer]

Awesome thanks. I’ll keep playing around with it. 
 

 

[zr0cool]

Awesome work with this! Setting it up with my current LaunchBox library worked flawlessly.

One issue I'm running into with gamepad controls. I tried swapping a disc using Back+RB - Back+Y - Back+RB.

It brings up the virtual keyboard and pauses the emulation and upon trying again, it starts flashing the virtual keyboard without any way to stop it. Seems the speed fluctuates and a volume indicator pops up while all this is going on.

Is this an issue or could it be something retroarch related?

[Zombeaver]

Sounds like a problem either with your controller or possibly with some other kind of external mapping software like possibly Steam or just something assigned in Windows. Y is the virtual keyboard button, but that mapping is only triggered if the "enable hotkeys" button (Back) isn't held down.

Volume adjust isn't set in the hotkeys at all in the included Retroarch:

So if you're seeing a volume adjust then there's something very strange going on.

I know that one person was having an issue with the keyboard hotkey for enable hotkeys (numpad minus) and he was seeing a volume adjust indicator because he actually had that set to do that somewhere in Windows itself, removing it fixed it. I don't know what would cause it for a controller button other than some other kind of mapping software.

[Zombeaver]

No, I'm talking about someone else. They messaged me on Discord. I think it was @Retrofrogg

[Zombeaver]

[Zombeaver]

I've already updated all the relevant configs in the set so that now 100% of the cropping is handled in the core itself, video settings are untouched. This is a godsend because now it should "just work" for everyone. Equally important is that now that I can adjust these crops by single pixels, they're more exact than the previous pre-defined zoom levels.

I'll probably release an update to 0.20 shortly that uses this, because that would be an easy update. You'll literally just replace the cores and config folders in Retroarch and be set.

I'll be honest, I wish every core had this option. I would use it. At the very least Beetle PSX and Beetle Saturn could really use it.

Thank you for doing this! It resolves probably the single biggest issue with this project, so that's a major boon.

[Zombeaver]

6 hours ago, Pixelpiper said:

I'm going to use the above text as a testimonial.

Go for it lol

Alright, here's the update for people that want to try it out.

C64 Dreams v0.20 update.7z

Go into the C64 Dreams\C64 Dreams\Retroarch folder and delete the "config" and "cores" folders and replace them with the included folders in the update.

Then copy the contents of the included "overlays" folder into the existing one - the reason for this is that two games (Ballblazer and Jar's Revenge) are wider than normal, so I made a custom overlay for such instances that has the first overlay layer as transparent (so it's not covering the image) while the second layer (the controls overlay) is still accessible.

EDIT: And replace the core options file in C64 Dreams\C64 Dreams\Retroarch with the included one (retroarch-core-options.cfg).

Games that are custom cropped are below:

Alien Syndrome
Another World
Ballblazer
Bangkok Knights
Bear Essentials, The
Brainway
Delta
Dominion
Donkey Kong (Oxyron)
Draconus
Forgotten Forest
Fortress of Narzod
Game Over II - Part 1
Gemini Wing
Genesia
Ghostbusters II
Heatseeker
It's Magic
It's Magic 2
Mega Phoenix
No Mercy
Paperboy
Phobia
Planet Golf
Powerglove
Run Like Hell
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles
Tiger Claw
Turbo Outrun
Wizball
Wolfling
Worm
Zolyx

Because the image is now cropped horizontally and vertically across the board, all the games should display properly at any resolution/aspect ratio.

[Z3R0B4NG]

installed the update (on a fresh install) as instructed...  aaaand somethings horribly off here

 

//removed because fixed//

Edited April 25, 2020 by Z3R0B4NG