Deathsmiles on lr-mame2015 : Any performance tips?

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!

dodonpachi

Any updates in performance tips for the CV1K games? Mushimesama and Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu are so close when the CPU overclock is set to 30%, but while I don't get audio drops, the slowdown is unfortunately too slow to be enjoyable. On other forums, I've read adjusting blitter delay can help--has anyone tried that? (Or know how to adjust that on lr-mame2016)

dodonpachi

Reviving this thread as it's relevant to the discussion. The last CV1K game, Dodonpachi SaiDaiOuJou, has been finally released...

... sort of, as a meme romhack.

I've tested it in lr-mame2016 with CPU overclock set to 30. It runs fairly well.

pjft

@dodonpachi you can't just drop that video here and leave it at that :D

What are we looking at here and, if it's a "romhack", what does that mean? Is it the actual game (as close as it gets, at least)? Does the most recent lr-mame2016 accept it if we compile it from source?

All I know of the game comes from here, and I suppose this is timely as yesterday I bought Dodonpachi Daioujou and Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu (again) on iOS as I actually find that these bullet-hell games play quite differently and satisfyingly on a touchscreen as well, though it becomes a completely different game.

Regardless, I'm all ears :) Thanks for sharing, and let us know more!

dodonpachi

@pjft it's a romhack of SaiDaiOuJou, titled "SaiDaiOuJou & Knuckles." It is in fact the real SDOJ, and I'm playing it as we speak on my Pi 4B using lr-mame2016. It's altered to have the player characters swapped with (I'm not making this up) Knuckles, a photo realistic tyrannosaurus rex, and Hello Kitty. The final boss was changed to Sans from Undertale.

However, when you find the rom, you have to rename the zip "DFKBL" in order to play it. Since SDOJ isn't support in Mame yet, it's only playable by tricking the emulator into thinking it's Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu Black Label.

The clean, unaltered SDOJ rom is still nowhere to be found, but allegedly it will be released by the creator of this hack on 4/20/22 (420... again with the memes).

Edit once more, for context: SaiDaiOuJou was the final Dodonpachi game made for arcades, released in 2012. Though almost 10 years old and clearly easy to emulate, the rom had not been released to the public until now... sort of. Previously, the only way to play this game was to import a copy of the Xbox 360 port.

dodonpachi

Following up on my post above, the real rom of Dodonpachi SaiDaiOuJou is finally released and out in the wild, titled "ddpsdoj.zip."

Like I documented before, it runs okay on Pi 4 2GB with lr-mame2016. To play it on lr-mame2016, it must be renamed to "dfkbl.zip." I set the CPU overclock setting to 36 and blitter delay (in the MAME menu, press Tab on keyboard) to 57%. The audio cuts in and out frequently when too much is happening, so unfortunately the emulation isn't full speed--and probably won't be until Pi 5.

arcadez2003

It would be trivial to add support for DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou to one of the older libretro mame cores that supports
the driver i almost did the other day before backing out due to the C&D........

https://github.com/libretro/mame2016-libretro/pull/55/commits/fb0b9592d29d517f7d5870bfaf02d642cba8645f

Darksavior

Totally unrelated, but can someone post the method to edit the lr-mame2016 installer script to point to a commit?

sleve_mcdichael

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

Totally unrelated, but can someone post the method to edit the lr-mame2016 installer script to point to a commit?

Add the commit sha (e.g. a1c23b4) after the branch (e.g. master) on the repo line of the module:

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/blob/master/scriptmodules/libretrocores/lr-mame2016.sh#L16

For example change:

rp_module_repo="git https://github.com/libretro/mame2016-libretro.git master"

To:

rp_module_repo="git https://github.com/libretro/mame2016-libretro.git master a1c23b4"

Then reinstall the module through RetroPie-Setup.

Darksavior

@sleve_mcdichael That doesn't work. Error 128. I tried the 7 digits/letters and the full commit name.

Winding back https://github.com/libretro/mame2016-libretro.git->master to commit: #fb0b959
fatal: 'fb0b959' is not a commit and a branch 'fb0b959' cannot be created from it
HEAD is now in branch 'master' at commit '69711c25c14f990b05fdce87fb92f3b5c312ec1e'
Error running 'git -C /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/tmp/build/lr-mame2016 checkout -f fb0b959 -b fb0b959' - returned 128
/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup

sleve_mcdichael

@darksavior yeah weird, it doesn't work for me either, although the commit does exist.

Looking at the other scriptmodules, though, while that is how it's done in ports, not a single libretro core uses a commit rollback like that. Maybe there's a reason for this? I don't know...

arcadez2003

Anyone can fork that core or the 2015 version and create your own special build which supports the game in question, there are two steps add
the game as i did to the driver and then declare the romset so the emulator will know to look for it during a rom scan.

i never got as far as step two as the DMCA came to my attention and i adandoned it, this commit for Akai Katana will show how it's done....
https://github.com/libretro/mame2016-libretro/commit/6fb13374ea3ca584fc7b4f629c7034bab62b6b6b

Or if your brave enough just add the game to the main core yourselves everything you need to do it is there just complete step two and your done :)

dodonpachi

@adambegood I know it's been a long time since you posted on this thread, but I've searched the net and experimented more, and found very promising settings for Deathsmiles on mame2016.

CPU overclock: 52
Blitter delay: 59%

Run the game, press Tab on keyboard. Using the arrow keys, navigate to slider controls. Set blitter to the percentage above. Then go to Machine Configuration, select Yes on whether you want to use blitter delay. Then select Reset.

The audio will still drop in and out if too much is happening on screen, but now it's so close to being perfect on Pi 4. If it could overclock to like 2.5 ghz it'd probably seal the deal.