Neo geo Rom weird graphics

barbudreadmon

@hellasius said in Neo geo Rom weird graphics:

using lr-fbalpha for all games.

If you are not using retroarch, then you are not using lr-fbalpha, retroarch is the frontend for lr-fbalpha. If you are using pifba (the only fba emulator not running behind retroarch in retropie), it's not surprising you get those issues.

Hellasius

@barbudreadmon I confirm that i am runing my neo geo roms with FBAlpha (it is writen when starting the roms).
I succed opening retroach during the game, version is 1.7.1 FB Alpha V0.2.97.42 e758230

barbudreadmon

@hellasius said in Neo geo Rom weird graphics:

e758230

That's not a commit with potential issues. If you already made sure you have the right romsets for both mslug5.zip and neogeo.zip (verifying romsets is the first thing you should do when dealing with arcade emulators), the only possibility i can see is a corrupted support file associated with this game, go into the fba subdirectory of your savefile directory (not sure where it is located in retropie, you can figure it out by opening retroarch.cfg and searching for the savefile_directory line) and try removing any file starting with "mslug5"

pjft

I'm inclined to suggest this is related to power adapter issues, video mode, HDMI or something other than FBA here.

@Hellasius what power adapter are you using?

Can you try to plug it into a different TV/monitor and see if it still happens?

Your /boot/config.txt file over pastebin might also come in handy, in case you changed it for the video mode or something.

Ecks

The thing i am wondering is did you try downloading the rom from another site cause the rom you have could be the problem as well and not the emulation.

pjft

@ecks it might certainly be.

I'm slightly skeptical of that being the case in arcade sets because there are some thorough CRC checks for each individual ROM file inside the zip but... I suppose it certainly may happen.

Ecks

After testing out both Metal Slug 5 and Metal Slug 5 Plus on my Pi 3B+ it might as well been his rom cause on mine it is working perfectly.

Hellasius

I tried several roms (metal slug 5) from several website, always the same....

I also tried on another smaller TV with VGA, it's the same.

I feel it is more like a bad graphic parameter, that need to be changed for this Roms, but I don't realy know what and where....

Other metal slug from 1 to 4 works correclty..

barbudreadmon

@hellasius said in Neo geo Rom weird graphics:

I tried several roms (metal slug 5) from several website, always the same....

Yeah, basically you didn't read arcade documentation on romsets, and now you have issues. After asking several times if you made sure you had the right romset and having no answer, i should have known. Don't expect any more help from me, bye.

grant2258

@barbudreadmon

We have added rom loading information to mame2003 when its a bad crc ect so users know will know when a bad load happens when looking at /dev/shm.

That is a problem that mame and fba have in common if the filename is the same with the wrong crc it will load it anway and try the version you have which is a reasonable behavior.

If this event was logged the user would know the wrong rom was loaded when looking at the ra logging.

[libretro INFO] [MAME 2003+] Opening ROM file: sf2e.30g
[libretro INFO] [MAME 2003+] read_rom_data: All done
[libretro INFO] [MAME 2003+] Opening ROM file: sf2e.37g
[libretro INFO] [MAME 2003+] read_rom_data: All done
[libretro INFO] [MAME 2003+] Opening ROM file: sf2e.31g

if the crc was wrong that would show in our logs maybe you guys are doing that already. It just makes things easier for us to figure out if someone is using the wrong romset.

barbudreadmon

@grant2258 I do something similar, i guess the output could get some rework though.

pjft

I was under the impression that if the crc was wrong that it'd fail to load altogether. Didn't know you'd try to load it anyway. Thanks for the heads up.

grant2258

@pjft said in Neo geo Rom weird graphics:

I was under the impression that if the crc was wrong that it'd fail to load altogether. Didn't know you'd try to load it anyway. Thanks for the heads up.

well this is the order

if exists use it
if file doesnt exist search for crc match

barbudreadmon

@pjft said in Neo geo Rom weird graphics:

I was under the impression that if the crc was wrong that it'd fail to load altogether

That's what i was doing until late 2016, i changed this after unibios author (and cps2 hacker) razoola came posting this issue : https://github.com/libretro/fbalpha/issues/95 .
Basically, when you buy an official unibios, it has a unique crc, so people couldn't use the unibios they bought if crc checking was too strict.

pjft

@barbudreadmon Wow. Interesting read - I had no idea about Unibios having a unique CRC. Thanks for sharing.

Hellasius

Thank you for all for your help on this subject. I admit that I am not very comfortable with emulation systems. And you are talking about things that I don't understand (CRC, unibios,...)

@barbudreadmon sorry if I upset you.

I initially download the metal slug 4 and 5 from the same website, and nowhere on the website, there is an indication about a difference about how to use it, That's why I don't understand why I have an issue with one and not the other.

I still don't know what to do.

AndersHP

@hellasius In my view, the only way to make sure that you've got the correct rom from the correct romset, is getting the entire romset and plucking roms from there.

I suggest you get the 0.2.97.43 FBA romset (~11 GB), pick the bios and the game, update lr-fbalpha to version 0.2.97.43 via the RetroPie setup, and try again.

Hellasius

@andershp I tried what you saied, and it works, thank you for your help.

A small other question, is there any way to avoid the green screen when starting a neogeo rom?

AndersHP

@hellasius You're welcome.
AFAIK, the green screen is a self-test screen that the original NeoGeo arcade did when booting up. I just look at it this way, and it just adds to the authenticity :-)

Maybe you can turn it off if you change the mode to UNIBIOS?

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/lr-fbalpha

barbudreadmon

@hellasius said in Neo geo Rom weird graphics:

A small other question, is there any way to avoid the green screen when starting a neogeo rom?

No, this is present in original hardware. I know there is a trick to hide it, perhaps i'll look into it the day there won't be things more important to do in the emulator, which means probably never. I don't mind if someone try to add a core option for this and make a PR though.

@AndersHP no, unibios has it too.