How to go about Arcade emulation on RPi4?

ecto · 16 Jun 2020, 08:15

Hi,
I have a quick question:

I had a quite good working RPi3b+ setup with mame2003+ as my main emulator for the Arcade folder. I cross referenced the roms with the mame2003+ dat file and the No Filler Arcade list.

Most games worked out of the box. With the ones that didn't, I used FBNeo or mame2010.

Now I have a RPi4 and just copied over my configs and ROMs. So far everything still works nicely, but I'm wondering, if I should switch over to newer or better emulators / ROMsets now with the almighty RPi4?

What do you think? What is the best emulator / ROMSet approach on the RPi4?

sirhenrythe5th · 16 Jun 2020, 08:38

There are still no other/newer/better Arcade-Emulators available for the Pi4, so those for the Pi3 are still the way to go with the Pi4.
There are some WIPs, but nothing that is allready released and working at this moment.

What works better with a Pi4 than a Pi3 is SEGA-NAOMI (flycast), so maybe this is something you could try until new Arcade-Ports are released.

barbudreadmon · 16 Jun 2020, 09:13

@ecto While FBNeo is globally more accurate than old MAME versions (meaning less bugs) - and sometimes current MAME - it's probably not worth changing a working setup if you can't notice any glitch with it. At most you might want to try adding games that were unplayable speed-wise on pi3, there are some gems (which makes me wonder : "Heavy Smash" is running full speed on pi4 ? it's my favorite "sport" game with windjammers).

ecto · 16 Jun 2020, 09:48

@barbudreadmon "Never touch a running system", right? ;)

Anyway, thanks for your explanations!

I'll look into those roms you mentioned (I think some even appear on the "No Filler List" like Mushihime-sama or Windjammers). Also @sirhenrythe5th thanks for the idea of running NAOMI games. I just looked again, and there are lots of those in the No Filler List, too! I forgot about those since it's been some time since I built my collection...

Btw. those Naomi/Atomiswave roms have to be put into the Dreamcast folder, right? Or is there a way to somehow put them in the Arcade folder, too?

dankcushions · 16 Jun 2020, 10:09

whilst it initially makes sense for mame2010 or later to be MAME of choice for the pi4's superior CPU, the problem is that a lot of these other MAME libretro cores haven't had the attention that mame2003, and fbneo had/have. so lots of features missing, control problems, scaling/aspect ratio issues, and so on, even if the core emulation might potentially be better.

for now i would still recommend mame2003 and fbneo, with an eye on https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/pull/2697

johnodon · 16 Jun 2020, 10:40

As far as a list of mame2003+, fbneo and mame2010 roms, have you seen this thread: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/20348/all-in-one-overclocked-rpi3b-arcade-rom-set-setup (credit @MajorDangerNine).

This is the list I am currently using. I do run into the occasional game that is not full speed but I am hoping that the rpi4 will help with that (I have an rpi 3b). This will also allow me to add a few games that I could not run before.

John

Darksavior · 16 Jun 2020, 10:47

I went with fbneo first and then mame2016. Latest mame is at least 2x slower than 2016 so I'll never use it. If a game runs slow on 2016 then I downgrade to an older mame.

2003plus has bugs with at least system16, 18, and 32 and they'll never be fixed. I use 2003plus as a last resort. No need to cripple your pi4 with it. It does have its benefits like having final fight with the sega cd audio.

I still need to test games that require a steering wheel or anything similar.

ecto · 18 Jun 2020, 08:06

@Darksavior OK, I thought, what the heck! I just updated all ROMs to MAME 0.19x and made FBNeo the default emulator with MAME2016 as a fallback.
I know, that this is not the right ROMset version, but I figured, that it's still near enough for both MAME 2016 and FBNeo.
(My old arcade folder and setup is backed up in an sd image file, so I was not afraid to go this route full out.)

So far It really looks good, but I had to overclock the RPi4 to 1950MHz to reduce audio crackling and lags in MAME 2016. One thing though is strange: Demon Front (dmnfrnt.zip) which was working on FBNeo before wouldn't load. I had to run it on MAME 2016 (which runs is well with OC). I'm just digging, if the rom was changed recently, but so far I haven't come up with a clue.

Ah, and I added lr-flycast as an emulator for the arcade folder and I can run all those cool NAOMI/AW ROMs, too! Thanks again for the tip @sirhenrythe5th!

barbudreadmon · 18 Jun 2020, 08:19

@ecto said in How to go about Arcade emulation on RPi4?:

I'm just digging, if the rom was changed recently, but so far I haven't come up with a clue.

I don't think it did, however if you replaced your pgm FBNeo bios by MAME's, you'll have issues with pgm games like demon front, FBNeo's has 2 additional files

ecto · 18 Jun 2020, 09:07

@barbudreadmon Oh, ok! I'll look for that pgm.zip than (I must have had it before...) Thanks!

Clyde · 18 Jun 2020, 12:04

Just for another subjective opinion, I'm content with MAME 2003-Plus (in arcade) and FB Neo (in fba) next to each other and see no need to change that after moving to a Pi 4.

For more recent MAME versions, I have my bigger computers. But I didn't feel the need for that for over two years now.