Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo

WeirdH

@barbudreadmon I recently read somewhere that FBneo has better NeoGeo emulation than Mame2003-plus. Is this also still true for a Pi 3B+? And if so, do you know if FBneo takes advantage of the romhack to speed up Metal Slug 2 in particular? (known as Metal Slug 2 Turbo mslug2t)

The game does launch and even recognizes the Turbo part as evidenced in the service menu, but I can't be certain it actually eliminates slowdown, as the Turbo version doesn't even do that 100% on M2003+.

barbudreadmon

@weirdh Over the years, i've seen users mentioning even current mame has glitchier neogeo emulation than finalburn, so it seems very unlikely mame2003-plus would do better.

The mslug2t hack has been supported in FBNeo since 2015, however i've no idea if it actually eliminates all slowdowns, if it doesn't then it seems very likely that's just how the hack actually is.

sirhenrythe5th

@barbudreadmon i used MAME for years to emulate NEOGEO, starting with MAME32 (later MAME32FX) on a Win32-System and AdvanceMame on the Pi.
Once i changed to FBNEO it was clear that i will never change back.
Maybe it is only my impression, but IMHO the sound is much much better as is the overall NeoGeo experience using FBNEO.
Great project!!

WeirdH

@barbudreadmon @sirhenrythe5th Thank you both for your replies. It appears I have some rom replacing to do.

dodonpachi

I use FBNeo for basically everything except Sega System 32 games and CV1000 games.

G30FF

I've been testing a bunch of different games, and I found a few bugs to report:

bishi.zip (Bishi Bashi Championship): Glitchy graphics especially on the title screen and intro
formatz.zip (Formation Z): The coin button does not work (works in lr-mame2003-plus)
cflyball.zip (Flying Ball): When the startup countdown ends, the game reboots and the countdown begins again. The game never starts.

barbudreadmon

@g30ff thanks for the report !

bishi : this one is known, that's because the romset is a bad dump, we can't do anything about it as long as no one redump it, and the game isn't exactly unplayable so i guess there is no good reason to totally disable it.
formatz : p1 coin is working fine on my side, and i'm noticing this game has no p2 coin, are you sure that's not what you are trying to press ? Or maybe you are using the same key for coin and retroarch's hotkey ? This is known for causing issues sometimes, apparently there are ways to get around it by playing around with retroarch's input_hotkey_block_delay setting.
cflyball : i'll look into this

G30FF

@barbudreadmon I didn't realize that about bishi, thanks for letting me know! As for formatz, I'm using the default controller settings, where P1 coin is controller 1 select. On this controller, I'm using the Home button for hotkey instead of select, so there's no collision with the Retroarch hotkey. I'll try building from source again to see if that fixes the issue.

EDIT: formatz's coin button DOES work, but if you do anything other than just very quickly press and let go of the button, it doesn't register the button press. It's odd, but it does work. I have seen that happen in a couple of other games, but I can't remember off the top of my head which ones.

barbudreadmon

@g30ff said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

EDIT: formatz's coin button DOES work, but if you do anything other than just very quickly press and let go of the button, it doesn't register the button press. It's odd, but it does work. I have seen that happen in a couple of other games, but I can't remember off the top of my head which ones.

Ok, it's weird that i can't reproduce it, but if that's the issue then i know how to fix it, thanks for the additional information, the fix will be available soon.

Edit : the fix is on git, let me know if you find any other game like this :).

G30FF

@barbudreadmon I built from source again, and yes, that did fix the issue for me! I'll let you know if I find any other instances of this! I didn't find any other issues in the batch of games I tested.

barbudreadmon

@g30ff the fix for cflyball is on git

G30FF

@barbudreadmon Built from source, and it works! Thanks!

dodonpachi

@barbudreadmon Is there a way to remap inputs for neogeo arcade games only? By default, FBNeo has the buttons assigned as follows:

C D
A B

While that's fine for Metal Slug and other games, I prefer the Street Fighter / modern KOF layout of:

A C
B D

I've made individual remaps for certain games, but is there a way to do it for all neogeo arcade games only?

barbudreadmon

@dodonpachi read https://github.com/libretro/FBNeo/tree/master/src/burner/libretro#mapping : the "Modern" device type is doing just that

dodonpachi

@barbudreadmon Well now I feel silly. Thank you!!

YFZdude

When I try to launch choplift.zip I get a message

This romset is known but marked as not working
One of its clones might work so maybe give it a try

But when I select lr-mame as the emulator it launches and seems to play just fine. (at least for what little I've played it)

EDIT: I should clarify I am running v1.0.0.3 and I just pulled the latest rom so I'm sure it is the most recent file available.

So now I have a couple of questions since I was considering switching to fbneo as the default arcade emulator.

Is this normal behavior for fbneo to not even attempt to run roms that are marked bad?
(I assume in the DAT file is where it is marked bad)

Does anyone on the team check "bad" romsets with new releases to see if the status needs to be updated?

Is there an override setting somewhere I could change to ignore this and run anyway?

sleve_mcdichael

@yfzdude I get the same error. chopliftu ("unprotected") works.

(Edit: doesn't answer your questions, I guess, but if you just want one that works...)

barbudreadmon

@yfzdude This game is marked as not working because its protection isn't emulated in FBNeo, this is the case for most/all parents marked as not working with a working clone. This is unrelated to the status of its dump.

sleve_mcdichael

@barbudreadmon said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

Ok, it's weird that i can't reproduce it

Is your "hotkey enable" on Select? This wouldn't be an issue on "default" setups because the combination of hotkey Select + input_hotkey_block_delay = "5" = the select (coin) button is never activated for more than a fraction of a second (5 frames so what, 1/4 of a second @ 20fps?). But on controllers with a dedicated "home" button that's used for hotkey enable, then Select wouldn't be bound to a hotkey so the "block delay" wouldn't kick in after the 5 frames and the button would be activated for as long as the user holds it.

G30FF

Found a minor bug to report. Playing ffightae, the three player hack Final Fight 30th Anniversary Edition, the third player cannot map the "Special" button (default Y on player 1 and 2). Special is not one of the available buttons when attempting to assign controls for the third player, but it is a choice for player 1 and 2. I tried to set input 1's Mapped Port value to 3 to test, and it unassigned the Special button when I did that, then reassigned it when I changed Mapped Port to 1 or 2.

The button is mapped in the normal ffight rom by default for player 1 and 2, so the default behaviour should be to have this button mapped for player 1-3 in ffightae.