Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo

[WeirdH]

I noticed something weird. Still not sure if it's an emulation thing or if it's my setup: in donpachi, the sound will start fading out with some static in stage 3. It sounds like a radio losing a signal. But after a few seconds or when releasing the autofire, the sound is back to normal. I've never seen this in any game before, so it might be tied to the game, or my setup is just now starting to fail when I'm playing this particular game.

I'm on a Pi 3B+ with audio going through the 3,5mm jack. So if anybody knows: is this hardware or software related?

EDIT: disabling low pass filter seems to make it better. The music in stage 3 appears to have some fading effect that apparently doesn't play well with LPF and my tiny speakers...

[barbudreadmon]

@WeirdH said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

EDIT: disabling low pass filter seems to make it better. The music in stage 3 appears to have some fading effect that apparently doesn't play well with LPF and my tiny speakers...

You should probably let know dink at https://neo-source.com/index.php?topic=3647.735 (i hardly had time to meet him on irc lately so i'm not sure when i'll be able to relay the information).

[WeirdH]

@barbudreadmon Done.

[GreenHawk84]

@G30FF hello, I tried your tip to edit the mk2p.nv file for Mame2003-plus, but Smoke, Jade, and Noob are still locked:

[G30FF]

@GreenHawk84 The offset I mentioned is in Decimal, not Hex.

[barbudreadmon]

cv1k : https://neo-source.com/index.php?topic=2487.msg33938#msg33938

Still kinda a wip (you can only change cpu clock by 25% steps).
I'm not too sure how well it will perform on a pi4, fwiw when clocked at 50% it seems a tad faster than our segas32 emulation on my desktop.

[dodonpachi]

Testing on Pi 4, CPU 2100 GPU 750... only the first stage or so, single player.

Dodonpachi Saidaioujou plays with its original filename (ddpsdoj) instead of borrowing dfkbl, which is a pleasant surprise. Both it and Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu (ddpdfk) seems to perform best with CPU clock set to 25% and blitter delay off, but it practically plays in slow motion. No blitter delay setting seems to improve gameplay speed while maintaining audio consistency.

Mushihimesama (mushisam) runs very well with cpu 25% and blitter delay 57. Same with Futari and Black Label.

Deathsmiles and Black Label seem best with 25% cpu and blitter delay off.

Akai Katana also seems best with 25% cpu and blitter delay off, but like the Dodonpachi games, it's in slow motion and no blitter delay settings seem to improve it.

For a WIP, performance seems promising. I think we could get better results once the CPU overclock system allows for variables not in 25's.

[G30FF]

@barbudreadmon I decided to go give it a try and see how the performance looked. I tested out Deathsmiles in lr-mame2016 and lr-fbneo as a comparison, and both cores performed about the same if I set the CPU clock down to 25%. I also set a 1/2 fixed frameskip in lr-fbneo. There was some slight movement stuttering, but the framerate was good, the game was fully playable, and there were minimal sound issues. I can test other CV1000 games, but this seems promising.

EDIT: I tested more games, and I found some bugs to report.

Deathsmiles Megablack Label (dsmbl.zip) - The video mode is wrong. This is a horizontal shooter, but it's being cropped into TATE mode like a vertical shooter (original deathsml.zip is fine)
AMI games (ibara.zip, ibarablk.zip, pinkswts.zip) - Inserting coins is slightly problematic. Sometimes you have to mash the select button to have it register a coin. I believe this is happening if you try to insert a coin before the title screen appears; trying to insert a coin after doing this does not register every time.

[barbudreadmon]

@G30FF said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

Deathsmiles Megablack Label (dsmbl.zip) - The video mode is wrong. This is a horizontal shooter, but it's being cropped into TATE mode like a vertical shooter (original deathsml.zip is fine)

Yes, we noticed this one, it was fixed yesterday however i only synced the libretro port now.

@G30FF said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

AMI games (ibara.zip, ibarablk.zip, pinkswts.zip) - Inserting coins is slightly problematic. Sometimes you have to mash the select button to have it register a coin. I believe this is happening if you try to insert a coin before the title screen appears; trying to insert a coin after doing this does not register every time.

Hmmm i can't reproduce this at all. Are you using the same button for coin and retroarch hotkey ? It sounds like the infamous issue where retroarch hold hotkey button logic is conflicting with FBNeo hold coin button logic. Does it still happen if you map coin button elsewhere ?

[G30FF]

@barbudreadmon I updated from source, and now dsmbl is working correctly!

My controller does not use select as the coin button, it uses the Home button. I'm using an 8bitdo SN30 Pro Wired controller. The issue is a very minor one, and might not even be a bug in FBNeo, honestly. It only occurs if you try to insert a coin before the game's title screen appears (like on the copyright disclaimer screen). Once the title screen appears, adding coins works exactly as expected.

[barbudreadmon]

@G30FF i think i fixed the issue

Edit : also, the performance should be better with latest commit

[G30FF]

@barbudreadmon I updated from source, and yes, that did fix the issue! Thanks!

I tested out a couple of games with the performance updates, and they worked well with the CPU clocked to 50%. It wasn't a thorough test, but at 50% CPU it seemed to work better than the last update.

[Darksavior]

@barbudreadmon I've only tested deathsmiles black label (50% cpu) and it got a huge boost. Even better than mame2016. It's now 59-60fps most of the time with 57-58fps dips. The vertical level will still dip into 53-55fps but it's still a big improvement.

I'm using retropie on bullseye 64bit lite, 2000 cpu/750 gpu, glcore, 1440p crt-pi shader.

[barbudreadmon]

@Darksavior Yeah, the emulation is almost twice faster on my desktop at 100% cpu, That improvement is about the sh3/sh4 interpreter and will have less of an effect if you downclock that cpu, but it should still be quite noticeable.

[G30FF]

@barbudreadmon I was playing some NeoGeo games on my Pi, and I tried out the Crossed Swords II MVS/AES conversion (crswd2bl.zip). The game has a number of graphical glitches, with sprites that appear to stutter and flicker. They don't seem to affect gameplay, and the game still works aside from this. I don't think it's an issue with the conversion, as I see the same problem using a Redump version of the Neo Geo CD version. The bug is not present if I run the game in lr-neocd, but it is present in lr-fbneo.

[barbudreadmon]

@G30FF Thanks for the report ! I'm surprised no one ever reported that one, the fix is on git.

[G30FF]

@barbudreadmon Yep, the problem is fixed now! Thanks!

[G30FF]

@barbudreadmon It seems that now the flickering sprites issue is happening in Blazing Star, on the level 2 backgrounds at least.

[barbudreadmon]

@G30FF Sorry for the late answer, i wasn't home for the past few days. The issue was reported and fixed upstream last week, but i couldn't sync the libretro port immediately, it's done now :)

[G30FF]

@barbudreadmon No problem at all! I built from source and can confirm it's fixed. Thanks!