Some games feel stuttery (FBAlpha)?

mediamogul · 25 Jan 2018, 00:02

@greenhawk84 said in Some games feel stuttery?:

What emulator do you guys use these days for arcade?

I started using AdvanceMAME sometime last year after it was optimized for the Pi. At first I just used it for it's beautiful hi-res vector rendering, but I've since switched over entirely. I play all the fighters and brawlers you mentioned pretty regularly and they all perform smoothly. The only two brawlers that I'm fond of that don't reach peak performance are 'Spider-Man' and 'Ninja Baseball Batman'. I can actually get 'Spider-Man' up to a steady 60fps with a minor overclock and 'Ninja Baseball Batman' only misbehaves when rendering the map between levels. However, I believe this is the case with NBB on all the arcade options on the Pi.

GreenHawk84 · 25 Jan 2018, 00:44

I correct my reference to Psikyo fast/accurate, I guess it's only a hack for certain games. SFIII gave me issues for sure.

Just playing TMNT: Turtles in Time arcade on FBAlpha just a moment ago and I noticed the background got stuttery sometimes as I progressed. I seriously do not remember this in previous builds.

I have a Pi3 not over clocked or anything special, my settings are stock as far as I can remember. I don't have shaders enabled but just an overlay on some games.

If there are any recommendations as far as Retroarch video/whatever settings "make sure this is not enabled" advice, let me know.

@mediamogul, I was having trouble using AdvanceMAME because it wasn't an LR emulator which would recognize my arcade controls.

GreenHawk84 · 25 Jan 2018, 00:59

Just confirmed Mame2010 to run much smoother for me in TMNT: Turtles in Time and Golden Axe. It feels so much better. Not sure if FBAlpha had some regression in quality.

mediamogul · 25 Jan 2018, 01:22

@greenhawk84 said in Some games feel stuttery?:

I was having trouble using AdvanceMAME because it wasn't an LR emulator which would recognize my arcade controls.

AdvanceMAME, like MAME itself, auto-maps controls based on js event assignments by default. This auto-mapping is sometimes less then ideal and doesn't take into account controls that register as keyboard events. However, in either case the controls should still be completely configurable from the 'tab' menu. Was that not the case?

robotronman · 25 Jan 2018, 03:59

@greenhawk84 Hi Greenhawk. Have you tried to go into Retroarch video settings and make sure your refresh rate accurately matches your monitor refresh rate? I had the same problem with many games on multiple cores, but as soon as I made sure to match the monitor refresh rate using Retroarch’s sampling my scrolling was smooth, and didn’t have any tearing, or jerkiness. Note I believe this option is only available if you turn off threaded video.

Good luck!

caver01 · 25 Jan 2018, 09:47

@greenhawk84 I noticed the same stutter issues in FBA last night. I thought it might have been my messing with video driver settings in an attempt to reduce controller lag. I just reflashed my SD card though so I can’t troubleshoot with you now, but I wanted to confirm that I saw similar effects in Mslug and a few others.

barbudreadmon · 25 Jan 2018, 09:56

@greenhawk84 You are using an old version, there is no sh2/psikyo speedhack core option in the latest code, cps3 have a speedhack enabled by default and psikyosh/suprnova have "Speedhack" dipswitches to turn on dedicated speedhacks.

If you got issues with street fighter 2 (cps1), golden axe (system16), there is something wrong with your setup, those games don't consume a lot of cpu ressources. @caver01 the same applies to neogeo games.

"TMNT: Turtles in Time" and some other games from the konami tmnt driver (https://github.com/libretro/fbalpha/blob/master/src/burn/drv/konami/d_tmnt.cpp) are known for consuming a lot of cpu ressources, and won't run smoothly on lr-fbalpha if you don't use an overclocked rpi3.

GreenHawk84 · 25 Jan 2018, 14:18

@barbudreadmon said in Some games feel stuttery?:

@greenhawk84 You are using an old version, there is no sh2/psikyo speedhack core option in the latest code, cps3 have a speedhack enabled by default and psikyosh/suprnova have "Speedhack" dipswitches to turn on dedicated speedhacks.

If you got issues with street fighter 2 (cps1), golden axe (system16), there is something wrong with your setup, those games don't consume a lot of cpu ressources. @caver01 the same applies to neogeo games.

"TMNT: Turtles in Time" and some other games from the konami tmnt driver (https://github.com/libretro/fbalpha/blob/master/src/burn/drv/konami/d_tmnt.cpp) are known for consuming a lot of cpu ressources, and won't run smoothly on lr-fbalpha if you don't use an overclocked rpi3.

Thanks for the reply. I just asked my Retropie yesterday (1/25/2018) setup to "update all installed" so whatever it grabbed was the latest right? As for your reference to the TMNT Konami driver, I have played Turtles in Time for a while now on my setup using FBAlpha and it has always been very smooth. As I mentioned switching to Mame2010 saw the difference in performance.

@robotronman I'll have to check out the refresh but from what I remember threaded video is "on" by default and I remember seeing 60Hz which is my monitor refresh. I just tried Sonic the Hedgehog 2 last night on the GX emulator which has a ton of motion and it was butter smooth.

barbudreadmon · 25 Jan 2018, 14:48

@greenhawk84 said in Some games feel stuttery?:

so whatever it grabbed was the latest right?

If you have the sh2/psikyo speedhack core option, no. This option disappeared 2 months ago. Furthermore, if you have a version with this option, you are probably affected by a buffer overflow bug i fixed in late december.

@greenhawk84 said in Some games feel stuttery?:

TMNT Konami driver, I have played Turtles in Time for a while now on my setup using FBAlpha and it has always been very smooth.

I never had those slowdowns myself, but i know a lot of people mentioned them on this forum, especially on "Sunset Riders".

GreenHawk84 · 25 Jan 2018, 20:00

@barbudreadmon - how would I go about grabbing the latest FBAlpha? Update from Source? I wonder why the standard "update installed packages" leaves me with an older version of FBAlpha?

mediamogul · 25 Jan 2018, 20:30

@greenhawk84 said in Some games feel stuttery (FBAlpha)?:

I wonder why the standard "update installed packages" leaves me with an older version of FBAlpha?

Assuming the binary has been updated, it could be that your RetroPie-Setup script didn't get updated before updating the packages. You might try updating the script manually and then reinstalling/updating.

GreenHawk84 · 25 Jan 2018, 22:25

@mediamogul - I asked Retropie to fetch the script, it was very quick saying I had the latest, then I updated FBAlpha via binary, also very quick, and no changes occurred.

GreenHawk84 · 25 Jan 2018, 22:59

OK, so I went the Source update route again for FBAlpha and it appears I have the latest build. However, the jittery movement (tried Goldenaxe) is still there.

barbudreadmon · 26 Jan 2018, 00:07

@greenhawk84 What's written in the bottom left of the retroarch menu ?

GreenHawk84 · 26 Jan 2018, 12:54

@barbudreadmon 1.6.9 - FB Alpha v0.2.97.42 54ee769

barbudreadmon · 26 Jan 2018, 13:31

@greenhawk84 Hmm that's weird, last time i checked, my rpi1 was able to run those games at full speed with lr-fbalpha, so that can't be related to high cpu usage. I can't say those drivers had drastic changes over the last few years either. The only things that come to mind are setup related (cpu governor not set to performance, programs running in the background, sd in a bad state, bad combination of settings in retroarch, ...), and i don't think i'll be able to help you with that.

GreenHawk84 · 26 Jan 2018, 13:42

@barbudreadmon still odd that Mame2003 running Mortal Kombat 2/3 is fine, Sega Genesis/SNES emus are fine, and Mame2010 running the games I noticed issues with was fine.

GreenHawk84 · 26 Jan 2018, 14:37

I uninstalled FBAlpha totally and installed from Source. The issue was still there. Loaded Goldenaxe on Mame2010 for a sanity check and it was very smooth.

@caver01 let me know if you find anything.

caver01 · 26 Jan 2018, 16:38

@greenhawk84 well, I am in the process of a total software rebuild on my mini NESPI where I saw this. My thought was along the line of video settings to improve input lag. I know I was playing with dispmanx, and a handful of settings from here. I am not sure if you were exploring similar settings, but it might explain why one emulator is having issues and not everything else if adjustments were made to its retroarch.cfg.

barbudreadmon · 26 Jan 2018, 16:44

@caver01 said in Some games feel stuttery (FBAlpha)?:

dispmanx

I wouldn't recommend using dispmanx with lr-fbalpha, from my experience it prevents screen rotation, which is a big issue with arcade emulators, i don't know if there are other side effects though.