FBA vs. MAME

UDb23

@barbudreadmon soon seems a good timing ;-)

MortalWombat

@dudleydes this is an incredibly helpful spreadsheet, thank you for sharing. Not sure if there's an official title, author (tho I'd guess it's more of a shared project) or link for it (would be even better if this was saved as a Google sheet everyone could access w/a link), but I'm definitely going to be referencing/promoting it moving forward. Case in point, I myself wasn't even entirely aware just what a multifaceted emulator FBA was up until this point-- I was under the impression that it was mainly just for NeoGeo games-- but by referring to this, I finally today was able to get some 21 ROMs working that I hadn't been able to use on either mame2003 or libretro, including Alien Storm & Kid Niki, 2 that'd been eluding me for a few weeks now...

Still, as far as the "lr-mame" titles, I guess we have to do the digging to see if those work on something other than mame2003?? Because I do see Cruis'N World, DJ Boy, and Paperboy listed as compatible, and have the ROMs listed as much (unless I have the wrong ones?), and they still haven't been working.

But really, the only other main addition I would make (I'd certainly help w/it if I could) would be to spell out the games that the .zips are referring to (looks like that info was meant to be for column E), since in some cases I'm having to Google the zip name to see which game is being referred to.

Otherwise great, great work.

barbudreadmon

@mortalwombat said in FBA vs. MAME:

this is an incredibly helpful spreadsheet

this is just way too outdated (3 years old) to be useful, fbalpha became fbneo and dozens of games were added/fixed, other mame cores became available, new models of pi too (i believe this spreadsheet was done on rpi3 non-plus).

if you want a good compatibility list, i recommend @roslof 's : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Rq4shU1RUSdcc7cTVWeORMD-mcO6BwXwQ7TGw8f5_zw/edit#gid=0

MortalWombat

@barbudreadmon oh man, this is even better, thank you!! May have to share it on here. Still, it begs a few questions:

*Am I still supposed to file games labeled as lr-fbneo in the FBA folder on my flashdrive etc?

*Is there a separate optional package/emulator I'm supposed to install to Retropie to play these MAME games labeled as lr-mame-2016, lr-mame-2015, lr-mame-2003-plus?

Because the only optional packages I see on Retropie 4.7.3 are lr-mame-2010, lr-mame2000, lr-fbalpha2012, and Advmame.

dankcushions

@mortalwombat check the experimental packages list :)

MortalWombat

@dankcushions ah can't believe how many times I'd passed that by installing the Optional ones. :/

A couple of these look promising for the arcade games I'm trying to play, like the mame, lr-mame, lr-mame2003-plus, the others previously discussed and the lr-neocd one. Can I select most of them as emulators on a game-by-game basis without having to necessarily file the games themselves into separate folders on my flashdrive (and in turn, end up w/separate emulator menus on the main Retropie interface??

As is, I have some 255 arcade games spread btwn Final Burn Alpha, Arcade, MAME-Libretro, NeoGeo, and AdvMAME menus; for the time being I'm happy w/whatever it takes to get em working, but ultimately it might be nice being able to consolidate em/not have to hunt individual ones down...

And the packages themselves, they don't take up TOO much space, right? (otherwise, I figure I'd just install everything that looks useful and delete what I don't end up using...)

Also, do you guys generally recommend just installing these optional/experimental babies from Binary, or Source?

The one YouTube tutorial I first saw when I learned about this process suggested Binary then possibly Source later, I've just been trying to install from Source hoping to skip an extra step down the road...

dankcushions

@mortalwombat said in FBA vs. MAME:

@dankcushions ah can't believe how many times I'd passed that by installing the Optional ones. :/

A couple of these look promising for the arcade games I'm trying to play, like the mame, lr-mame, lr-mame2003-plus, the others previously discussed and the lr-neocd one. Can I select most of them as emulators on a game-by-game basis without having to necessarily file the games themselves into separate folders on my flashdrive (and in turn, end up w/separate emulator menus on the main Retropie interface??

sure - all arcade cores can be selected via the runcommand when launched from the arcade folder - the arcade folder is precisely to avoid this kind of arbitrary menu clutter.

And the packages themselves, they don't take up TOO much space, right? (otherwise, I figure I'd just install everything that looks useful and delete what I don't end up using...)

i think mame binaries can be quite large - into the 100s of MBs for the later ones. lr-fbneo is ~50MB

Also, do you guys generally recommend just installing these optional/experimental babies from Binary, or Source?

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Updating-RetroPie/#binary-vs-source-updates
note that source updates will take hours for MAME. almost a day for current MAME. i would recommend binary every time unless there's some specific cutting-edge fix you want.

MortalWombat

@dankcushions yeah, shoot I guess a Source install is something you should only try installing overnight?? I defaulted to that for mame2016 shortly after making that last post, and it's STILL going all this time later (in comparison, when I did a Source install for the Vice package, it took 10mins tops; guess these experimental packages are a bit less streamlined??).

Not sure I wanna wait hours on end for this to finish when I could be testing ROMs or doing other things. Can I just stop the installation/turn off the Pi, delete the partial install and then try reinstalling the Binary (or Source) when I'm not planning on using it? Is there much risk of damage if I do so?!

dankcushions

@mortalwombat said in FBA vs. MAME:

@dankcushions yeah, shoot I guess a Source install is something you should only try installing overnight?? I defaulted to that for mame2016 shortly after making that last post, and it's STILL going all this time later (in comparison, when I did a Source install for the Vice package, it took 10mins tops; guess these experimental packages are a bit less streamlined??).

not really, it's more to do with how viable/tested/compatible they are on your current system. the length of the compile is typically dictated by the amount of source code. MAME supports over 7000 games on many systems, so as you can imagine that is a lot of source code to compile. earlier versions of MAME supported less so take less.

Not sure I wanna wait hours on end for this to finish when I could be testing ROMs or doing other things. Can I just stop the installation/turn off the Pi, delete the partial install and then try reinstalling the Binary (or Source) when I'm not planning on using it? Is there much risk of damage if I do so?!

it's best to never turn off your pi without a proper shutdown. ctrl+c will cancel a compile in progress, and then you should clean the build folder for the same package after via the package manager. note that some experimental packages may not have an option to install via binary.

Riverstorm

@MortalWombat - I know some of the games you listed above work fine in mame2003-plus. They've also been doing a lot of game fixes and palette color tweaks.

They are starting to use the code to generate html pages for which games are fully working and which have issues. Like graphics, color or sound issues etc. I think they are still in the testing phase and working out details but here's an idea of what it will look like. It's actually quite useful for finding which games are working in mame2003-plus.

mame2003-plus working games status

I think the Libretro team is going to do something similar for other cores in the future so you can cross reference. Coming directly from the code bases it should be accurate and current at all times.

I only use a 32GB card and have pretty much all of the MAME cores loaded (minus the latest which doesn't really work well on the Pi) so space shouldn't be a big issue. I also use Arcade to consolidate ROMs under a single pane.

Once you figure out the core names I found it easier to manually modify the file /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg directly and add all the games vs. launching each game. That way each game will launch with your preferred core for the ROM right from the get go.

The file looks something like this. The name is usually just arcade_ followed by the ROM name and the emulator.

arcade_gravitar = "advmame"
arcade_astormu = "lr-fbneo"
arcade_1943 = "lr-mame2000"
arcade_1942 = "lr-mame2003"
arcade_spacfury = "lr-mame2003-plus"

Yeah, if you pull the plug you'll almost certainly have corruption on your card, I've done ctrl-c many times though. Even if it boots fine and seems fine it probably isn't. The Pi is very prone to card corruption and usually starts with something small and builds until the issues have to be dealt with.

I found a good way to test for corruption is to make an .img and use pishrink (search Github). It checks for corruption (and does try to fix it) before shrinking it. If none you'll get a clean compressed image when it's done.

If I show any corruption I always roll back to my last good image and start from there. I even seen vdroop cause corruption due to an extension cord being to long.

Riverstorm

@MortalWombat - The cores that compile in a "reasonable" time frame (under 2 hours) are mame2000, mame2003, mame2003-plus, mame2010 and FBNeo. mame2003 (plus changes ported over), mame2003-plus and FBNeo seem to be under rolling development. I watch those cores as new games and fixes are being added all the time.