Singe — named after the dragon in Dragon's Lair — is an extension to the Daphne emulator that lets anyone build their own full-motion-video games. In practice it is mostly used to run the famous American Laser Games light-gun titles, the WoW Action Max games and a few arcade releases.
American Laser Games: Crime Patrol, Drug Wars, Mad Dog McCree, Mad Dog McCree 2, Mad Dog II: Typing Edition, The Last Bounty Hunter, Who Shot Johnny Rock.
WoW Action Max: 38 Ambush Alley, Blue Thunder, HydroSub 2021, Pops Ghostly, Sonic Fury.
Arcade: Ninja Hayate, Space Pirates, Time Gal, Time Traveler.
Unlike classic Daphne games, a Singe game has no .zip file in a roms folder: everything lives in a single <game>.daphne folder placed directly in /recalbox/share/roms/daphne.
┣ 📁 recalbox
┃ ┣ 📁 share
┃ ┃ ┣ 📁 roms
┃ ┃ ┃ ┣ 📁 daphne
┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┣ 📁 maddog.daphne
┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┣ 🗒 maddog.singe
┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┣ 🗒 maddog.txt
┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┣ 📁 cdrom
┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┣ 🗒 a_bank.m2v
┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┣ 🗒 a_bank.ogg
┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┣ 🗒 …
┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┣ 🗒 (game fonts, sounds and images)
Three items are essential:
<game>.singe — the game script; its presence is what switches the emulator into Singe mode;<game>.txt — the framefile, listing the video sequences and their positions;cdrom folder — the .m2v video and .ogg audio files, split into sequences.Depending on the game, .ttf fonts, .wav sounds and .png images making up the interface (crosshair, badges, panels…) are added alongside.
Up to Recalbox 8.0, files were split between
roms/daphne/singe/<folder>/<game>and the game folder. Since Recalbox 8.1, everything lives inroms/daphne/<game>.daphne. If you inherit an old installation, it needs reorganising.
| Game | Folder |
|---|---|
| Crime Patrol | crimepatrol.daphne |
| Drug Wars | drugwars.daphne |
| Mad Dog McCree | maddog.daphne |
| Mad Dog McCree 2 | maddog2.daphne |
| Mad Dog II: Typing Edition | typing-md2.daphne |
| The Last Bounty Hunter | lbh.daphne |
| Who Shot Johnny Rock | johnnyrock.daphne |
| 38 Ambush Alley | 38ambushalley.daphne |
| Blue Thunder | bluethunder.daphne |
| HydroSub 2021 | hydrosub2021.daphne |
| Pops Ghostly | popsghostly.daphne |
| Sonic Fury | sonicfury.daphne |
| Ninja Hayate | hayate.daphne |
| Space Pirates | spacepirates.daphne |
| Time Gal | timegal.daphne |
| Time Traveler | timetraveler.daphne |
The five Action Max games share a common folder, actionmax.daphne, holding the engine, the fonts, the sounds and the intro and menu videos. It must be present in addition to each game's own folder:
┣ 📁 daphne
┃ ┣ 📁 38ambushalley.daphne
┃ ┃ ┣ 🗒 38ambushalley.singe
┃ ┃ ┣ 🗒 38ambushalley.txt
┃ ┃ ┣ 🗒 video_38ambushalley.m2v
┃ ┃ ┣ 🗒 video_38ambushalley.ogg
┃ ┣ 📁 actionmax.daphne
┃ ┃ ┣ 🗒 emulator.singe
┃ ┃ ┣ 🗒 framework.singe
┃ ┃ ┣ 🗒 video_actionmaxintro.m2v
┃ ┃ ┣ 🗒 video_menu.m2v
┃ ┃ ┣ 🗒 (shared fonts, sounds and sprites)
The
actionmax.daphnefolder does not appear in EmulationStation: that is expected, it is not a game.
Each game's framefile must point to the shared videos. For 38 Ambush Alley, 38ambushalley.txt contains:
.
1 ../actionmax.daphne/video_actionmaxintro.m2v
355 video_38ambushalley.m2v
28175 ../actionmax.daphne/video_menu.m2v
The framefile may be supplied to you as
frame_38ambushalley.txt: rename it to38ambushalley.txt.
The hypseus_singe_data repository gathers every .singe script, framefile, font, sound and image needed — that is, everything except the video and audio files, which remain up to you. Starting from that repository avoids most structural mistakes.
For controls, quitting a game, the light gun and overlays, see the Daphne guide.