BeetleDC Libretro NAOMI and MAME ROM support!

Daniel De Matteis

Flyinghead is adding MAME ROM support to the arcade side of BeetleDC Libretro.

Here is what has currently been implemented:

  • NAOMI M1 cartridge support
  • NAOMI M2 cartridge support
  • NAOMI M4 cartridge support

Things you need to know

  • Right now, only non-merged romsets work. A merged rom is a ROM without parent, it contains all the files needed.
  • NAOMI M4 cartridges require a special BIOS file to be put inside your System directory. The M4 bios should be in a “naomi.zip” file in the BIOS folder (/dc ). The file in specific which hsould be inside that zip file is called ‘epr-21576h.ic27’.

Other important additions/changes

  • in the past, NAOMI games would only work with BeetleDC Libretro if you loaded .lst files. .lst files are no longer necessary now. You should be able to run an arcade game with BeetleDC Libretro using the plain .bin/.dat file instead now. So theoretically it should now be capable of just loading Demul-compatible ROMs instead.
  • Ring Out 4×4 now allows for up to 4 player support due to adding dual I/O board support for this game.

What are the list of MAME ROMs that are compatible?

You can check the entries inside this file here –

https://github.com/libretro/beetle-dc/blob/master/core/hw/naomi/naomi_roms.h

Out of these games, nearly all should work except for Samba De Amigo right now.

What’s planned/next?

  • Sammy Atomiswave MAME ROM support
  • Sega NAOMI GD-ROM MAME ROM support

BeetleDC Libretro and BeetleDC OIT Libretro merged into one! What you need to know…

Daniel De Matteis

Flyinghead has succeeded in merging both renderers into one. As a result, we no longer require a separate core for BeetleDC OIT, and there will be only one BeetleDC core from now on, simply called BeetleDC Libretro.

Recommendations

Moving forward, we recommend that you remove the BeetleDC OIT Libretro core from your cores directory, and leave only the regular BeetleDC Libretro core instead. This file should be called reicast_oit_libretro.{so/dll/dylib}. You can also remove the core info file that exists for it inside your Core Info directory. We have already proceeded to remove these files from our buildbot, but these files will be left lingering in existing installations unfortunately, necessitating this manual cleanup by the user.

So how do you switch between OIT and non-OIT now?


By default, BeetleDC Libretro will boot in non-OIT mode. You can tell if this is the case by going to Quick Menu -> Options and checking the ‘Alpha sorting’ option. If it’s set to ‘Per-triangle’ or ‘Per-strip’, the non-OIT GL2/GL3 renderer is used. You can use OIT mode by setting it to ‘per-pixel’ and then restarting the core.

Make sure that just like before, OIT mode (per-pixel accuracy) requires a video card that has OpenGL 4.3 support. Be aware that OIT mode is also much more GPU intensive than either per-strip or per-triangle alpha sorting. You might really need a good discrete GPU in order to be able to play this at decent speeds.

For which platforms is OIT mode (per-pixel alpha sorting) available?

It should be available for both Windows and Linux builds. macOS only supports OpenGL up to version 4.1, so per-pixel alpha sorting has to be excluded from this version unfortunately (since it requires GL 4.3).

BeetleDC Libretro now supports the keyboard as an input peripheral!

Daniel De Matteis

Keyboard support has now been implemented by flyinghead! In this video you see us testing the game Typing Of The Dead, which relies on a keyboard as its primary input device..

In order to play this game, make sure the keyboard is set to Port A of the Dreamcast. You can see us doing this in the video by going to the Quick Menu, selecting ‘Controls’, and setting the first port to ‘Keyboard’. Now restart the core and the game. You should now be able to play the game.

Game focus toggle

Quick tip: RetroArch by default binds a lot of keyboard keys to hotkeys. In order to be able to use the keyboard in full, try to bind ‘Game focus toggle’ to a key. You can do this by going to Settings – Input Hotkeys, and binding ‘Game focus toggle’ to any key you want.

How this will work is as follows: if you press the game focus toggle, you will be in ‘game focus’ mode. In this mode, none of the hotkeys will work, and you can use every key of the keyboard. When you want to go back to the RetroArch hotkey mode, you press the ‘game focus toggle’ key again in order to deactivate game focus mode.