https://gitlab.synchro.net/main/sbbs/-/commit/b7c59b78c62840b5edc2ed23
Added Files:
src/doors/syncretro/GAMES_INI.md
Modified Files:
exec/load/syncretro_lobby.js src/doors/syncretro/.gitignore main.c probe_core.c syncretro_games.c test_binds.c test_games.c
Log Message:
syncretro: fix games.ini review findings, track GAMES_INI.md

Applies the final code review of the games.ini feature.

- Track GAMES_INI.md (was never git-added, though four shipped files
already cite it) and correct it: mark the feature implemented, amend
sec 7 so a missing/mistyped/unmeasured cabinet stays non-fatal but
is now reported (the old "no log noise" wording conflated "don't
fail" with "don't speak"), and document the stick2 asymmetry as a
known, deliberate limitation (button.* absent means unmeasured;
stick2 absent means one stick).

- syncretro_games.c: fix the button.* validator, which used
strncmp()/strcmp() while every xpdev ini lookup matches keys
case-insensitively (stricmp() in ini_file.c) -- a lower-case
"button.y" was honoured by the reader and flagged as invalid by the
validator in the same breath. Switch to strnicmp()/stricmp().
test_games.c gains a case proving this and failing against the old
comparison.

- sr_games_load() now reports which of three states it found (a
loaded section, no section, or no file) in one stderr line, so a
missing file, a typo'd section name, and a genuinely unmeasured
cabinet are no longer indistinguishable from each other or from
success.

- syncretro_lobby.js warns once if a dead names.json is still present
next to games.ini, since only a sysop's hand-added titles silently
vanish when it stops being read.

- probe_core.c: -hold no longer sits behind the -coin guard, so it
works standalone -- previously the only tool for measuring a
games.ini entry silently did nothing without -coin.

- Smaller fixes: syncretro_games.c's path buffer is PATH_MAX instead
of a silently-truncating 512; main.c's stale sr_games_load() comment
clause is trimmed; the syncretro .gitignore covers build-test/ and
build-probe/; two untracked *.pre-syncarcade.bak files are removed;
test_binds.c pins that every arcade button row's solo spelling
agrees with the key that actually reaches it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

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https://gitlab.synchro.net/main/sbbs/-/commit/05237f8fddd1f43142ca531b
Modified Files:
src/doors/syncretro/GAMES_INI.md M2_INPUT.md M3_MULTICORE.md README.md main.c syncretro.h syncretro_binds.c syncretro_input.c test_axis.c test_binds.c
Log Message:
syncretro: a second player at the same keyboard

A cabinet's coin and start buttons are per-player inputs: MAME 2003-Plus
reads coin n and n-player start off port n-1's SELECT and START. The
arcade profile bound port 0 only (3a9fb3c143, 2026-07-21), so it could
start one player and no more -- two coins and there was still no key that started a two-player game.

Both ports are now bound, on the gamepad profile as well as the arcade
one, and with the same keys: I J K L is player 2's stick, M , . / and
U O his six buttons. On a cabinet 6 is his coin slot and 2 his start; on
a console ; and ' are his Start and Select. The number row otherwise
spells MAME's own convention -- 5 and 6 the coins, 1 and 2 the starts -- alongside the Bksp and Enter the help screen could already name.

Player 1 keeps every key he had, the arrows included. Most cabinets
alternate turns on one set of controls and read port 0 for both players,
so those play exactly as they did whether one person or two are at the keyboard.

That leaves the second stick of a twin-stick cabinet (da866ee25b,
2026-07-24) sharing keys with player 2's first, so it moves from I / K to
P / ; -- the far right, clear of the second panel.

Pause moves from Space to Ctrl-P on every profile, and on a cabinet Space
now fires button 1. MAME's default keyboard map makes Space player 1's
button 3: a player reaching for it means to shoot, not to stop the game,
and a bare key driving a door action is the one exception to this table's
own rule that bare keys play the game and Ctrl keys drive the door. It
was bound to pause when the table was written (d3024daa0a, 2026-07-09).
Space stays unbound on the two cartridge profiles, where nothing on the
console corresponds and an unbound key raises the key legend.

The help screen is generated from the same table and so lists all of it.
Player 2's buttons render as one row, trimmed on a labelled cabinet to
the ids that cabinet uses: they are player 1's six ids under different
keys, and twelve named button lines do not fit an 80x24 screen.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

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https://gitlab.synchro.net/main/sbbs/-/commit/536bb66ea22238ecc21cad86
Modified Files:
src/doors/syncretro/GAMES_INI.md M2_INPUT.md probe_core.c syncretro_games.c syncretro_games.h syncretro_input.c test_axis.c test_games.c xtrn/syncarcade/README.md games.ini
Log Message:
syncretro: a cabinet whose stick is a potentiometer

Paperboy rides itself into the curb. With nobody at the keyboard the bike steers left and runs flat out, and it crashes about two seconds after the
level starts.

The door was answering correctly, which is what made this hard to see. Instrumenting MAME 2003-Plus at the revision the arcade install runs shows
the driver receiving a dead-centred handlebar every frame -- both ADC
channels at 0x80, the port's own declared middle, with no residual delta.
The trap is that 0x80 is not where Paperboy's handlebars rest. Sweeping the converter and tracking the player sprite: below about 36% of travel the bike walks into the oncoming lane, above about 50% it walks the other way, and
the speed axis saturates so early that 0x10, 0x40 and 0x80 are one value -- flat out. So a centred stick is a hard left turn with the throttle open, and every frontend produces one. Current MAME declares the same 0x80.

games.ini gains analog_rest: where a cabinet's control sits when nobody is touching it, as a percentage of each axis's travel. The door answers the
left analog stick with it, and drives the axis to its stop while a direction key is held -- a keyboard has no half-press, and the ends of the travel are where the bars physically go. Releasing returns to rest, which is what a
sprung control does.

There is no default and no root-level form. A rest position is a fact about
one machine and a guessed one drives the game on its own, so a cabinet that declares nothing reads a centred stick, byte for byte what it read before.
Of the romsets in the arcade install, Paperboy is the only one whose driver declares an analog joystick. A value that does not parse as two numbers is treated as absent rather than as zero: zero is a real setting, and quietly meaning it would reproduce the bug the key exists to fix.

probe_core gains -analog, the analog counterpart of -hold, so the number is re-measurable rather than folklore. It only bounds the answer -- anywhere inside the band tracks straight -- and the shipped 45,57 was settled by
playing it. The speed axis has no band at all and is anchored to the pace
the game itself rides at during a level's scripted entry.

test_games covers the parse, the clamp and the malformed-is-absent rule; test_axis drives the real input path end to end for the rest value, a held direction, the return to rest, the second player, and the cabinets that
declare nothing and must still read a centred stick. GAMES_INI.md sec 15 carries the measurements and the method.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

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https://gitlab.synchro.net/main/sbbs/-/commit/92bc048a96c8570354505023
Modified Files:
src/doors/syncretro/GAMES_INI.md xtrn/syncarcade/games.ini
Log Message:
syncarcade: sort games.ini by romset, so a duplicate has nowhere to hide

The file was grouped by hand at the top and grown by appending blocks to the bottom, which is how two sections naming no driver sat in it unnoticed -- burgtime fifteen lines from the btime it duplicated, millipedes nowhere near milliped.

A duplicate section is worse than untidy: xpdev's reader answers out of the first one and never sees the second, so every key in the second is lost with
no warning at all. Verified against the reader rather than assumed. Sorted,
the pair is adjacent and a reviewer cannot miss it; unsorted, nothing short of a script finds it.

Only the order changes. Every section's keys and values are byte-identical,
and the handlebar note travels with the section it explains. The convention is recorded in the file's own header, where the next contributor appending a
block will read it, and in GAMES_INI.md sec 4.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

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https://gitlab.synchro.net/main/sbbs/-/commit/3f5480ed05a0a881fffad704
Modified Files:
src/doors/syncretro/GAMES_INI.md xtrn/syncarcade/syncretro.ini xtrn/syncivision/syncretro.ini xtrn/syncnes/syncretro.ini
Log Message:
Ship suspend/resume config for SyncRetro's three consoles

Turns on the suspend/resume feature built in the earlier tasks of this
plan, and documents the per-romset override.

Two keys, deliberately kept separate:

- [console] save_state is a capability claim -- this core and driver
snapshot and restore reliably -- and is ours to make, not the
sysop's. syncivision (FreeIntv) and syncnes (fceumm) each get
`true`: one core, one driver, verified. syncarcade (MAME 2003-Plus)
gets `false`: save-state support in that lineage is per-driver
across roughly 5000 drivers, a partially-supporting driver restores
a subtly broken machine that fails as a wrong-looking game rather
than as an error, and nothing has been verified.

- [state] auto_resume is the sysop's switch -- whether this install
offers the feature at all -- and says nothing about any core. All
three consoles ship it `true`.

Collapsing these into one key would force a sysop who just doesn't
want resume on their NES to write `save_state = false`, recording a
false claim about fceumm that whoever reads or copies that file next
inherits.

GAMES_INI.md documents the matching per-romset `save_state` override
in games.ini, and ties it to the existing sec 14 rule: a section in
games.ini means someone here has actually run that cabinet, so a
bulk verification tool run against games.ini only ever covers
cabinets that have been played.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

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