Deathsmiles on lr-mame2015 : Any performance tips?

pjft

@roslof Thanks for testing these out, and above all make sure nothing breaks. That's indeed helpful, and I'll submit the change upstream. Mostly worried about it crashing other games, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

Interesting - I hadn't kept up with MAME, I had no idea that Pong was now emulated. I imagine that it's not a really easy one to emulate, as it was more of a physical simulation if I recall correctly.

http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/dettaglio_mame.php?game_name=pong

Reading the "INFO" tab there will provide some interesting backstory.

Thanks for giving these a shot.

AdamBeGood

@dankcushions Fair enough, I will stop tinkering so much I think! I just really wanted to get DeathSmiles working better, and now it does. Mission accomplished.

I completed it yesterday evening! :)

Thanks very much for all the information, I don't think I've done anything severe enough to warrant reinstalling but it is good to know how to go about that for when I do mess it up!

pjft

@AdamBeGood Nice, great to hear! Did it work well end to end with underclocking?

I'd certainly revert the options to the original ones, at least the ones @roslof mentioned. As @dankcushions stated, the options included in RetroPie are kind of adjusted for better performance in our scenarios.

By the way, I just submitted the PR for lr-mame. Thanks for testing it out @roslof .

AdamBeGood

@pjft Yeah, it was playable! Sometimes incredible slowdown, but it is hard to know how much of that is built into the game and how much of it is the Pi.

I've tried Pink Sweets and Ibara today, they are fairly slow but I think I could maybe play them for a while. Muchi Muchi Pork seems acceptable to me also, better than the other two.

I've reverted those options now!

Good work on the lr-mame PR, hope it goes through as quickly. The underclock is a good option to have, it really makes a difference.

Unless something else comes up, Mystical Ninja Starring Goeman on N64 is now my only significant problem game. Not a bad place to be in really.

stevas

Thanks for the suggestion of over voltage to 6, but it's solved nothing for me.

I try to go anything above:

gpu_freq=700
v3d_freq=750
arm_freq=1950

And the game I'm testing (Dreamcast capcom Vs snk) just craps itself after starting a match (reboots itself).

From the numbers I see talked about on here, either I'm just flat out doing something wrong, or I've been extraordinarily unlucky? Or flycast is glitchy as hell?

pjft

@stevas as mentioned, please start a separate thread and provide more details there. Does the game not crash in lower frequencies? If so, then yes, you're out of luck there.

But don't change GPU freq on the pi 4. Remove that and try again. See this: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/config-txt/overclocking.md

roslof

@stevas I'm thinking now it's either your kernel version or cooling on the Flirc.

Have you upgraded lately?
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/raspbian/updating.md

roslof

@pjft said in Deathsmiles on lr-mame2015 : Any performance tips?:

@stevas as mentioned, please start a separate thread and pedicure more details there.

Good point.

stevas

Okay, there's a possible explanation here.

I recently changed PSU (to one which has a switch).
And it seems fine with over voltage 5, but not 6. I totally forgot I was using that now. Apologies.

I also didn't realise you were supposed to use individual settings rather than gpu_freq - so thanks for that heads up. (Does the hdmi_enable and the gpu_freq fighting over core_freq possibly upset things, btw? Because... Yeah, I was using both.)

The kernel should be relatively up to date, as I did update all after a recent rebuild. Like, maybe 10 days ago.
(Quick related question: is it possible to update all and specifically NOT update just one package? Say, fbneo. Just... Everything but that?)

Is that "specific to pi 4b" section a very recent addition? I swear I was on that OC page, like, a week ago, and didn't notice it...

Anyway, I'll go back to my official PSU and try some things out, and if I still have such issues I'll raise a new shout for help!

Thanks a bunch, y'all are great.

pjft

I have to say that "pedicure" instead of "provide" isn't the worst auto correct I've ever had. Fixed that.

The remarks around the pi 4 have been there for a while, it's what caused me to set the 3 settings individually when I was playing with it. But you never know, go test things out! Feel free to tad me in the new thread, or report back here if successful.

stevas

Haha, I did wonder if there was some weird use of the word in the pi world I was as of yet unaware of...

Yeah, thanks loads - I'll try your individual settings and see if the official PSU fixes the weirdness I'm seeing...

stevas

Well, if anything, it's even worse.

I'm really starting to hate this thing.

stevas

Sigh.

Okay, I figured out that the entire problem is capcom vs snk through flycast, which seems to suffer from some sort of memory leak.
I'm unsure if:
a) this is due to that specific game, or;
b) it's because I've set some flycast core option the pi just does not like -
but, overclocking seems to accelerate the issue, i.e. the more you OC, the faster it forces a reboot.

I will raise this as a separate issue, but it looks like my OC settings are fine; and yes, I wasted a LOT of time thinking they were the problem.
A.
LOT.
/thousand yard stare/

Edit
And you know what, I just realised that:
"There is a memory leak somewhere in the Reicast code" is in the documentation for flycast.
So... Arse.

barbudreadmon

@stevas said in Deathsmiles on lr-mame2015 : Any performance tips?:

but, overclocking seems to accelerate the issue, i.e. the more you OC, the faster it forces a reboot

3 possible causes for those reboot :

overheating => try better cooling or safer overclocking
power supply issues => maybe your psu is bad
bad board => buying a raspberry pi is a lottery... might be worth mentioning the early models of pi4 had faulty components...

Also :

i don't know of any memory leak in flycast code
if a memory leak was causing a reboot of your device (a freeze/crash after using every last bit of memory would be more likely), it would happen on every device, that's not the case
flycast is not reicast

AdamBeGood

@barbudreadmon As this thread is so tangential now, and you used to work on YabaSanshiro - I have no sound effects (I have music) on Exhumed/Powerslave (I tried both Euro and US versions). Any idea what that could possibly relate to? I know the emulator is still not 100% the finished article, I just wondered if you had any thoughts on things I could fiddle with? I've tried Settings->Audio->Output and then changed the driver, but none of them make a difference.

Edit: feel free to utterly ignore this, it is just one game that is vexing me so thought I'd quickly ask.

barbudreadmon

@AdamBeGood no idea and not interested, i don't work on this anymore

AdamBeGood

@barbudreadmon Not a problem at all. Sorry for asking, I know it was a bit cheeky. Cheers!

Also, Flycast is fantastic - so thank you for that.

roslof

Game: Beastorizer (beastrzr.zip)
Pi-Type: 4B (OC CPU: 1025; GPU 750)
Emulator: lr-mame-2016
Test: Watch full intro or play game
Default Framerate: 55-57 FPS
CPU Change: Decrease to 70%
New Framerate: Between 59.8 and 60 FPS (blip of 53FPS during 3D to 2D transition)
Summary: Very good improvement. No noticeable decrease in gameplay speed.

roslof

Game: Battle Arena Toshinden 2 (ts2)
Pi-Type: 4B (OC CPU: 1025; GPU 750)
Emulator: lr-mame-2016
Test: Play game, observe framerate
Default Framerate: 55-60 FPS
CPU Change: Decrease to 80%
New Framerate: Solid 60 FPS
Summary: No noticeable decrease in gameplay speed.

pjft

Interesting that you're going for 3D games here. Good to hear it helps with these!

I imagine that your OC CPU isn't 1025 though?

Have a great day and do share more of these!