42 replies to this topic

[satan165]

I received my Harmony today and I am setting out to build the ultimate ROM pack made specifically for this medium.

GOALS:
-minimal file naming. CAPS only, no spaces, no symbols or other information.
-[MOST IMPORTANTLY] correct file types that reflect the bankswitching of the game (currently using this guide in lieu of anything better)
-zero bad dumps/overdumps/hacks/prototypes/homebrews
-organized in folders by company/publisher
-corrected dumps as brought forth in this forum (see below)

KNOWN BAD ROMS:
-Midnight Magic [new dump included]
-Tomarc the Barbarian [new dump included]
-Road Runner [new dump included]

CURRENT PROGRESS:
-Atari DONE [23 F6 / 40 F8 / 70 standard / 133 total]
-Activision DONE [4 F6 / 7 F8 / 3 FE / 31 standard / 45 total]

I am working from my existing rom set which I have sourced from various places, then weeding out anything that does not below and checking the final list against (what else?) atariage.com.

Anyone with relevant information to share please do so! I will release this as soon as it is completed and am open to any thoughts/etc... I am currently working one publisher at a time so it should not take long.

Thank you!

Edited by satan165, Mon Jul 26, 2010 6:34 PM.

[satan165]

CURRENT PROGRESS:
-Atari DONE [23 F6 / 40 F8 / 70 standard / 133 total]
-Activision DONE [4 F6 / 7 F8 / 3 FE / 31 standard / 45 total]
-Absolute DONE [2 F6 / 2 F8 / 4 total]
-American DONE [1 F8 / 1 total]
-Amiga DONE [1 F8 / 2 standard / 3 total]
-Answer DONE [2 standard / 2 total]
-Apollo DONE [11 standard / 11 total]
-Avalon Hill DONE [5 standard / 5 total]
-Bomb DONE [4 standard / 4 total]
-CBS DONE [2 F8 / 3 FA / 2 standard / 7 total]

[Stephen]

Sounds like a lot of work! Thanks for the effort.

[psquare75]

Looking forward to this!

[satan165]

It is quite tedious but I have always enjoyed work of that nature, especially under these circumstances!

I have made more progress which I have not posted. When it is done, I need some serious beta testers to go through and play all the games. Perhaps we can assign companies to certain people? They can report back with problems and we can figure out if it is a bankswitching problem or a bad dump, in the case of the latter we can try to source a different binary or get someone to do a new dump.

I will release these a version at a time and host all versions on my server as they are released.

Thank you for the support! Glad to know I'm not headed down a road no one is interested in. I couldn't believe no one did this already...until I got knee deep in the tedium!

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

Your efforts are greatly appreciated!

[batari]

satan165, on Mon Jul 26, 2010 6:14 PM, said:

GOALS:
-minimal file naming. CAPS only, no spaces, no symbols or other information.

Why caps only? Harmony displays lower-case just fine. Also, I think what's important here is to show the important text in the first 24 characters as Harmony can display names longer than 24 only when you hold down the joystick button.

Quote

-[MOST IMPORTANTLY] correct file types that reflect the bankswitching of the game (currently using this guide in lieu of anything better)
-zero bad dumps/overdumps/hacks/prototypes/homebrews
-organized in folders by company/publisher
-corrected dumps as brought forth in this forum (see below)

The last three are important, but I don't see why manually specifying all bankswitching is necessary, much less MOST important. Harmony auto-detects bankswitching and is accurate nearly 100% of the time. If you find any that aren't detected properly, you could change extensions then, but if you let us know of any incorrect detection, we may be able to fix it in later BIOS revisions.

[satan165]

Quote

Why caps only? Harmony displays lower-case just fine. Also, I think what's important here is to show the important text in the first 24 characters as Harmony can display names longer than 24 only when you hold down the joystick button.

Stella reads from an info file when displaying the game title, it does not display the 'raw' file name which in many cases is not simple. So in that case I do not care what the rom's file name is. Here, I do care, since it is exactly what I will use to find the game I want to play. (I only bring up Stella as a comparison since it is the only other program I use that accesses my ROM collection). I wanted it to be quickly and easily readable so I wanted it short, to the point and IN ALL CAPS. I am aware of the Harmony's abilities, this choice is about my own visual abilities.

I don't see that there is any 'important text' besides the game title and perhaps the company/publisher, and that is specified by the folder it is in. And the game title is usually half of that -- if it isn't, it deserves to be truncated. Spaces/symbols is a poor convention for file naming in any environment so that should go as well.

Quote

The last three are important, but I don't see why manually specifying all bankswitching is necessary, much less MOST important. Harmony auto-detects bankswitching and is accurate nearly 100% of the time. If you find any that aren't detected properly, you could change extensions then, but if you let us know of any incorrect detection, we may be able to fix it in later BIOS revisions.

I was not aware that it was so close to 100% of the time, and I wasn't aware that it would warrant a new firmware version to resolve the issue.

What I was aware of was an entire section of the manual that says the Harmony can 'sometimes' fail and the simple solution is to tell it the bankswitching method by labeling the file extension. And I get my kicks by pouring through 100s of files and renaming then, and referencing different documentation that specifies information about these files. And I get my kicks by sharing the work with the world, even if it makes hardly a bit of difference, maybe it is seen as useful to others.

I could have dumped all my ROMs into my Harmony but the filenames were shite - plenty long with excess info spaces and symbols. And since I will need to read them quickly to find what I want (which I did not have to do in the past) they ought to be in a simpler format.

And if backswitching is an issue 1% of the time, and the manufacturer recommends explicitly that the simple solution to resolve that is to label the files -- well, I'm doing that already! I can do both at once.

So those are my motives. I meant no affront to the capabilites of the Harmony and actually I mean all of this as being its biggest proponent. While it may all be unnecessary, it's just what I do for fun.

[satan165]

CURRENT STATUS:

29 companies completed, 344 roms...........

[A.J. Franzman]

satan165, on Wed Jul 28, 2010 7:42 PM, said:

Quote

Why caps only? Harmony displays lower-case just fine.

I am aware of the Harmony's abilities, this choice is about my own visual abilities.

You're deliberately choosing to make the text harder to read? Seriously, there have been many studies on this, and they confirm that for the majority of people, standard capitalization is much easier to read than all-caps, regardless of visual acuity or lack thereof. Simply displaying text larger or having it closer or farther away (depending on your particular visual deficit) should nearly always be more effective at increasing its legibility than switching to all-caps.

[satan165]

feel free to avoid the pack due to the extensive research you have apparently compiled

[batari]

satan165, on Wed Jul 28, 2010 7:42 PM, said:

Quote

The last three are important, but I don't see why manually specifying all bankswitching is necessary, much less MOST important. Harmony auto-detects bankswitching and is accurate nearly 100% of the time. If you find any that aren't detected properly, you could change extensions then, but if you let us know of any incorrect detection, we may be able to fix it in later BIOS revisions.

I was not aware that it was so close to 100% of the time, and I wasn't aware that it would warrant a new firmware version to resolve the issue.

What I was aware of was an entire section of the manual that says the Harmony can 'sometimes' fail and the simple solution is to tell it the bankswitching method by labeling the file extension. And I get my kicks by pouring through 100s of files and renaming then, and referencing different documentation that specifies information about these files. And I get my kicks by sharing the work with the world, even if it makes hardly a bit of difference, maybe it is seen as useful to others.

I could have dumped all my ROMs into my Harmony but the filenames were shite - plenty long with excess info spaces and symbols. And since I will need to read them quickly to find what I want (which I did not have to do in the past) they ought to be in a simpler format.

And if backswitching is an issue 1% of the time, and the manufacturer recommends explicitly that the simple solution to resolve that is to label the files -- well, I'm doing that already! I can do both at once.

So those are my motives. I meant no affront to the capabilites of the Harmony and actually I mean all of this as being its biggest proponent. While it may all be unnecessary, it's just what I do for fun.

Harmony's autodetection code is taken directly from the Stella codebase. Essentially, the detection code was just converted from C++ to C. During testing, only a handful of games failed detection. Some of the ones that fell through the cracks were handled individually using md5sums. If another game does fail, we can see if the algorithms can be improved, but if not, we can just add another md5sum.

We won't update BIOS just for that but if we're doing it anyway, we could do that as a part of the update.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

batari, on Thu Jul 29, 2010 2:09 AM, said:

If another game does fail, we can see if the algorithms can be improved, but if not, we can just add another md5sum.

Maybe we should start a public thread with a list of games which fail auto-detection? Would be useful for Harmony and Stella.

[stephena]

Thomas Jentzsch, on Thu Jul 29, 2010 2:15 AM, said:

batari, on Thu Jul 29, 2010 2:09 AM, said:

If another game does fail, we can see if the algorithms can be improved, but if not, we can just add another md5sum.

Maybe we should start a public thread with a list of games which fail auto-detection? Would be useful for Harmony and Stella.

Yes, this would be useful, if you can find any The list is getting smaller and smaller all the time.

[stephena]

Also, to anyone wanting the info built into Stella, there are several ways to get it:

1) The stella.pro file is available from Stella SVN. Also available is the resulting C source code, DefProps.hxx, as well as the Perl script that generates it: create_props.pl.

2) The same info above can be generated from Stella at runtime with the following command:

stella -listrominfo

This will output all the info in a format similar to the C++ file above, which can be redirected to a file.

3) The above won't contain the bankswitch info, which is auto-detected in Stella since version 2.8 or so. However, you can launch Stella as follows, to get extended info for a ROM (including bankswitch type):

stella -rominfo ROMFILE

Of course, this only applies to a single ROM. I'll leave it as an exercise to create a script to go through all your ROMs with this command. If you're a little clever with the script, you could even have it automatically rename the ROM based on the bankswitch type it detects.

EDIT: I should also add that Stella can do ROM 'auditing', whereby the names you see from the internal database can actually be applied to your ROMs (it'll rename the ROMs according to stella.pro). Have a look at Options -> Audit ROMs for more info.

[Pioneer4x4]

I renamed all the roms and scanned images of the carts I own to match what is on the actual cartridge. I matched case the best I could to the actual label. For example the only Activision cart I have that isn't all caps is blue label "Cosmic Commuter". Atari is about 50-50 all caps and all lowercase, Sears is all caps.
I keep a seperate folder of the ones I own, and the others are in a "wishlist" folder. It is nice to move roms from wishlist to owned! I just go to move CHUCK WAGON last week!

[psquare75]

Since I got a Harmony, my "wish list" became a "meh list". I haven't even touched my carts at all. Great conversation piece in the 2600 in the living room (Why does that Atari game have an SD card?)

[KevinMos3]

All caps with no spaces sounds like a bad idea. Also, some game names have non-alphanumeric characters, so removing those doesn't look right. I say this because if you want it to be the "Ultimate ROM Pack", then it should appeal to the most people and be the most accurate. Rom Hunter's naming convention is already the most accurate if you remove the extra info.

What I did for my Harmony was to start with Rom Hunter's collection and use a command line to separate the main versions from the others. Rom conveniently included ~ in those names. I also separated PAL and prototype ROMs.

I used Advanced Renamer to do mass renaming and removed all the extra info from the ROM name. If a game uses Paddles or a Driving Controller, I left that in the name with parentheses.

I also added my favorite hacks to a hacks folder and homebrews to their own folder.

So when it was all done I had:

Licensed
Cassette
Homebrew
Hacks
Prototypes

Because of the way the Harmony sorts the files, I temporarily renamed some games to sort them the way I wanted in Windows, (Defender I and Defender II for example). Once Defender I displayed before Defender II in Windows, I changed it back to Defender so that it copied over to the SD card in the right order and displayed that way on the Harmony cart.

[psquare75]

Wait. I missed that. no spaces in the names? This became "Another Rom Pack" Not "The Ultimate".

Yawn.

[eegad]

psquare75, on Thu Jul 29, 2010 4:02 PM, said:

Wait. I missed that. no spaces in the names? This became "Another Rom Pack" Not "The Ultimate".

Yawn.

I think the project is a good idea and worth doing - definitely want to check it out when it's done. But have to agree - the "no spaces" part of it doesn't seem like a good idea. I don't care about all caps vs lower case, but no spaces will definitely be harder to read.

[toymailman]

I think if you use the following then no spaces can be accomplished. Upper-case for the first letter of new words and lower-case for the rest. Examples are below.

StreetRacer
WormWarI
TheEarthDiesScreaming
VideoPinball

[psquare75]

toymailman, on Thu Jul 29, 2010 7:31 PM, said:

I think if you use the following then no spaces can be accomplished. Upper-case for the first letter of new words and lower-case for the rest. Examples are below.

StreetRacer
WormWarI
TheEarthDiesScreaming
VideoPinball

That'd be great.. but he wants to do all caps.

[Pioneer4x4]

KevinMos3, on Thu Jul 29, 2010 3:49 PM, said:

All caps with no spaces sounds like a bad idea. Also, some game names have non-alphanumeric characters, so removing those doesn't look right. I say this because if you want it to be the "Ultimate ROM Pack", then it should appeal to the most people and be the most accurate. Rom Hunter's naming convention is already the most accurate if you remove the extra info.

What I did for my Harmony was to start with Rom Hunter's collection and use a command line to separate the main versions from the others. Rom conveniently included ~ in those names. I also separated PAL and prototype ROMs.

I used Advanced Renamer to do mass renaming and removed all the extra info from the ROM name. If a game uses Paddles or a Driving Controller, I left that in the name with parentheses.

I also added my favorite hacks to a hacks folder and homebrews to their own folder.

So when it was all done I had:

Licensed
Cassette
Homebrew
Hacks
Prototypes

Because of the way the Harmony sorts the files, I temporarily renamed some games to sort them the way I wanted in Windows, (Defender I and Defender II for example). Once Defender I displayed before Defender II in Windows, I changed it back to Defender so that it copied over to the SD card in the right order and displayed that way on the Harmony cart.

I had to use a mass renamer on ROM Hunter's pack also to get rid of the tilde, since you can't easily search on it since it is a wildcard character. I also have mine by folders with controllers. So I only see games that match the controllers I am useing. I go to the "Paddle" folder to play paddle games...

[raindog]

satan165, on Mon Jul 26, 2010 6:14 PM, said:

-minimal file naming. CAPS only, no spaces, no symbols or other information.
-organized in folders by company/publisher

These already make me question the use of the word "ultimate", as "ultimate" means "no need for any further iterations" and any ROM pack I use will have easy-to-read titles and multiple sets sorted by name, year of release, publisher, category, etc., but....

satan165, on Mon Jul 26, 2010 6:14 PM, said:

-zero bad dumps/overdumps/hacks/prototypes/homebrews

...this means the set won't even be complete, since no Atari collection can be complete without Oystron, Thrust, Space Instigators and all the other homebrew games that have pushed the limits of what's possible on the 2600, not to mention some of the more substantial hacks like Nukey's Pac-Man variations. So I guess I'll hold out for the "ultimate ultimate Harmony ROM pack".

[satan165]

good points made, it was not a well thought out idea

carry on, nothing more to see here.......