DAPHNE LaserDisc

DAPHNE is the First Ever Multiple Arcade Laserdisc Emulator!1) For legacy reasons, the Hypseus fork of the emulator may be referred to as simply DAPHNE.

A LaserDisc video game is an arcade game that uses pre-recorded video (either live-action or animation) played from a LaserDisc. The first LaserDisc video game was Sega's Astron Belt released in 1983. The genre was popularized by Dragon's Lair released shortly after in the same year. The usage of LaserDiscs provided graphics close to an animated or live-action film which was vastly ahead of other arcade games at the time. However, with the drawback of limited interactivity compared to regular arcade games.

Cool website about Laserdisc games: http://www.dragons-lair-project.com/games/

Another useful resource is AmberElec's wiki entry on it: https://amberelec.org/System-Laserdisc.html

This system scrapes metadata for the daphne, arcade group(s) and loads the daphne set from the currently selected theme, if available.

Quick reference

  • Emulator: DAPHNE/Hypseus
  • Folder: /userdata/roms/daphne
  • Accepted ROM formats: .daphne .squashfs

BIOS

No Daphne emulator in Batocera needs a BIOS file to run.

ROMs

Place your DAPHNE ROMs (not to be confused with singe) in /userdata/roms/daphne/.

The file structure consists of a directory with the ending .daphne (containing video, audio and text files) and a corresponding .zip file in the folder roms. For example, Dragon's Lair Enhancement 2.1: 

roms
|-- daphne
|    |   (The folder below holds a laserdisc...".daphne"
|    |   tells emulationstation to add this to the menu,
|    |   and "dle21" tells daphne to use that game engine)
|    |
|    |-- dle21.daphne     
|    |    |-- dle21.commands  (Optional extra command-
|    |    |                   line params!)
|    |    |-- dle21.txt      (Framefile)
|    |    |-- lair.m2v
|    |    |-- lair.ogg
|    |
|    |                (All roms go into this roms folder)
|    +-- roms
|         +-- dle21.zip

Without the additional .zip file in the roms folder the games will be recognized by Batocera but will not be playable!

Emulators

DAPHNE/Hypseus

DAPHNE is the most famous emulator for LaserDisc arcade games. It supports more games than MAME. We use the Hypseus Singe, a fork of the original DAPHNE emulator.

DAPHNE/Hypseus configuration

Standardized features available to all cores of this emulator: daphne.videomode, daphne.ratio, daphne.padtokeyboard

ES setting name batocera.conf_key Description ⇒ ES option key_value
Settings that apply to all cores of this emulator
ES setting name batocera.conf_key Description ⇒ ES option key_value
Settings that apply to all cores of this emulator
GRAPHICS API daphne.gfxbackend Choose which graphics API library to use. Vulkan may not work on all hardware.
⇒ OpenGL OpenGL, Vulkan Vulkan.
ASPECT RATIO daphne.daphne_ratio Not all games support stretching, depending on their video files.
⇒ Original original, Stretch stretch, Force 4:3 force_ratio.
SCREEN ROTATION daphne.daphne_rotate
⇒ 0 degrees 0, 90 degrees 90, 270 degrees 270.
SMOOTH GAMES (BILINEAR FILTERING) daphne.bilinear_filter
⇒ On 0, Off 1.
SCANLINES daphne.daphne_scanlines Use with the stretch aspect ratio and adjust joystick sensitivity as required.
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
BLEND SPRITES (SINGE) daphne.blend_sprites Restore BLENDMODE outline on Singe sprites.
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
OVERLAY SIZE (SINGE) daphne.overlay_size
⇒ Standard 0, HD Gun Games oversize, Singe 2 Full full, Singe 2 Half half.
ABSOLUTE MOUSE INPUT daphne.abs_mouse_input This option is required for some gun games when playing with a mouse.
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
INVERT AXIS daphne.invert_axis Invert the vertical joystick axis on flight games.
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
JOYSTICK TO CURSOR SENSITIVITY daphne.singe_joystick_range
⇒ 5 5, 10 10, 15 15, 20 20.
HIDE LIGHT GUN CROSSHAIRS daphne.singe_crosshair Hide crosshairs in supported games e.g. ActionMax.
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
SDL TEXTURE ACCESS STREAMING daphne.daphne_texturestream Can improve video performance. Do not use with ActionMax games or scanlines.
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
CUSTOM CONTROLLER daphne.daphne_joy Use controller settings manually defined in custom.ini.
⇒ Off 0, On 1.

(Optional) Command line parameters

In roms/daphne/<game>.daphne/<game>.commands, extra command line parameters can be define. This is not required. For example, for Dragon's Lair in roms/daphne/lair.daphne/lair.commands:

lair.commands
-nocrc -noissues -nolog -noserversend -latency 950 -x 640 -y 480 -bank 1 00110111 -bank 0 10011000

Controls

Here are the default Daphne's controls shown on a Batocera Retropad:

Gamepad Arcade
SELECT Input Coin
START START Player 1
A Action Button
X DAPHNE Overlay
D-pad Stick

Troubleshooting

Further troubleshooting

For further troubleshooting, refer to the generic support pages.

1)
As quoted on their website: http://www.daphne-emu.com
  • systems/daphne.txt
  • Last modified: 13 months ago
  • by tovarichtch