Neogeo games looks shaded in PiFBA (+ lr-fbalpha talks)
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pifba is a fork of fba 0.2.96.76, it was heavily rewritten to provide full speed on m68k games (cps1, cps2, neogeo, cave 1st generation, and many other from the 16bits era) for rpi1. It supports around 600 games (clones included), i think around 100 of them are unplayable.
fbalpha2012-libretro is the first port of fba to the libretro API, it means it runs through retroarch and can use retroarch's shaders system, i think it supports around 2500 games, many of them are unplayable, won't launch or are glitched. It was not heavily rewritten for rpi1, so it is kinda lacking on speed for m68k games if you use it on rpi1, but will run those m68k games at full speed on rpi2/rpi3. It was kinda discontinued 4 years ago. I think it is tagged as a port of fba 0.2.97.30, but i'm pretty sure it is actually a port of fba 0.2.97.24 with some addendum from the following fba releases, which makes it kinda hard sometimes to find which rom you should use.
fbalpha-libretro is the second port of fba to the libretro API, i started it 2 years ago because i wanted an up to date fba port to libretro, and the first one didn't seem maintained anymore. It is in sync with current fba release (last one - 0.2.97.39 - was a few weeks ago), is actively maintained, is the first to support dipswitches, support games that need analog sticks like afterburner, have lots of bugfixes the first don't have. It supports around 4000 arcade games, and 7000 non-arcade games (megadrive, pc engine, master system, game gear, msx, colecovision, sg-1000). Most games should run flawlessly and at full speed on rpi3 (only cave 2nd generation games and some nec m107 games like "rtype leo" are known to have speed issues on rpi3, and i think those run at full speed on fbalpha2012-libretro). You can easily build a correct romset with clrmamepro (if you don't know how clrmamepro works, you should google it, it is really useful when you use arcade emulators) because the valid dat files are known and available there : https://github.com/libretro/fbalpha/tree/master/dats . And you can easily find the good rom on your favorite search engine by searching "fba nameofyourgame rom", because it is in sync with real fba romset, which is almost in sync with current mame romset.
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@barbudreadmon said in Neogeo games looks shaded/antialiased?:
fbalpha-libretro is the second port of fba to the libretro API, i started it 2 years ago because i wanted an up to date fba port to libretro, and the first one didn't seem maintained anymore. It is in sync with current fba release (last one - 0.2.97.39 - was a few weeks ago), is actively maintained, is the first to support dipswitches, support games that need analog sticks like afterburner, have lots of bugfixes the first don't have. It supports around 4000 arcade games, and 7000 non-arcade games (megadrive, pc engine, master system, game gear, msx, colecovision, sg-1000). Most games should run flawlessly and at full speed on rpi3 (only cave 2nd generation games and some nec m107 games like "rtype leo" are known to have speed issues on rpi3, and i think those run at full speed on fbalpha2012-libretro).
OK. I'm a bit out of my league I guess... Sorry for being a complete n00b here. But if I'm running an old 2003 MAME romset on a PIFBA emulator, the benefits of upgrading everything to fbalpha-libretro is the bug fixes primarily, and such?
I'm building a bartop with iPac connected to joysticks and buttons (no analogue).
But when I look through the compatibility list from the latest 0.2.97.39, I cannot really see the big benefits, everything seems to be untested, compared to the GNGEO list, where everything is marked with a green OK! To me it seems more risky to start resaddling, and running newer versions of everything, since I originally learned that the Retropie wasn't able to run the newest versions. What I'm trying to ask; if it works, should I fix it?
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@AndersHP said in Neogeo games looks shaded/antialiased?:
But when I look through the compatibility list from the latest 0.2.97.39, I cannot really see the big benefits, everything seems to be untested, compared to the GNGEO list, where everything is marked with a green OK! To me it seems more risky to start resaddling, and running newer versions of everything, since I originally learned that the Retropie wasn't able to run the newest versions. What I'm trying to ask; if it works, should I fix it?
Yes, bugfixes and more games, "untested" in the compatibility list generally means the game is a clone and is supposed to work because the parent works, if it's about neogeo games, i can guarantee you there is no neogeo games who won't run with fbalpha-libretro to my knowledge. I don't think you should replace mame2003, both emulators complement each other (some examples : mortal kombat is not on fba, street fighter III is not on mame2003). But i would discard gngeo for any libretro core who runs neogeo games (mame2003, mame2010, fbalpha2012, fbalpha, ... even mame2000 i think), because retroarch have some nice features like shaders, and is not discontinued.
You are totally right, if it works, don't fix it, but i thought you opened this topic because you actually had issues.
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@barbudreadmon said in Neogeo games looks shaded/antialiased?:
@AndersHP said in Neogeo games looks shaded/antialiased?:
But when I look through the compatibility list from the latest 0.2.97.39, I cannot really see the big benefits, everything seems to be untested, compared to the GNGEO list, where everything is marked with a green OK! To me it seems more risky to start resaddling, and running newer versions of everything, since I originally learned that the Retropie wasn't able to run the newest versions. What I'm trying to ask; if it works, should I fix it?
Yes, bugfixes and more games, "untested" in the compatibility list generally means the game is a clone and is supposed to work because the parent works, if it's about neogeo games, i can guarantee you there is no neogeo games who won't run with fbalpha-libretro to my knowledge. I don't think you should replace mame2003, both emulators complement each other (some examples : mortal kombat is not on fba, street fighter III is not on mame2003). But i would discard gngeo for any libretro core who runs neogeo games (mame2003, mame2010, fbalpha2012, fbalpha, ... even mame2000 i think), because retroarch have some nice features like shaders, and is not discontinued.
You are totally right, if it works, don't fix it, but i thought you opened this topic because you actually had issues.
OK, so basically: I'm currently adding a few games at the time (hasn't got a pc, so clrmamepro is not an option I guess), but from now on, I should rather try finding the newest romset and add roms from that, and set the default emulator to be lr-fbalpha, right?
You're right about the issue I have, although it's a small issue, compared to a complete rebuild of my catalogue. I have gotten the impression of MAME on Retropie, that you're most likely to find a lot of games that doesn't work, and it's a bit of a hassle to set things up, so I considered myself a bit lucky that I haven't had more issues than shaders ;-)
I haven't experienced bugs either, but I guess a lot of the discontinued romsets and emulators could crash on you or something like that? Which would make the newest MAME romsets a better starting point?
And again; why have I heard everywhere that Retropie can't run the newest MAME roms, if it totally can do this with the fbalpha?
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Oh, and another question. lr-fbalpha 0.2.97.39 is based on the MAME 0.175 romset right? But if you say it's totally up to date, why is it that there's also a MAME 0.179 ?
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Unlike mame, fbalpha don't include game for the purpose of "preliminary support", everything just works, there can be a few bugs (upstream, in the libretro port itself or from running on arm), but they generally get fixed if you report them on https://github.com/libretro/fbalpha/issues .
Latest mame emulator won't run very well on arm, because there is a lot of x86 specific code, because it is really heavy (there is preliminary emulation for pretty much anything that existed and played games), because his goal is to be 100% accurate whatever the cost for speed. I think the guys who said "Retropie can't run the newest MAME roms" just meant retropie can't run the latest mame emulator, and can't run mame roms which only run on it (some examples would be stv games, naomi games, cave 3rd generation games, ...) -
I said "almost in sync with current mame", because mame 0.175 set is from a few months ago, i don't think there is that much difference between a mame 0.175 rom and a mame 0.179 rom in the arcade boards emulated by fba, it should be ok for 99% of them, perhaps 100%.
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@AndersHP said in Neogeo games looks shaded/antialiased?:
You're right about the issue I have, although it's a small issue, compared to a complete rebuild of my catalogue. I have gotten the impression of MAME on Retropie, that you're most likely to find a lot of games that doesn't work,
that impression is generally got from people who don't understand how mame works, trying to to get some random arcade rom they've downloaded from online to work with a random emulator.
eg, you shouldn't have to rebuild anything - just download the correct romset that you need. clrmamepro is totally unnecessary in my experience.
btw, for lr-fbalpha i wouldn't bother getting mame 0.175 romset, get the fba 0.2.97.39 romset. full mame romsets are 100s of GBs and most of that will be useless for FBA. plus there's a bunch of stuff like romhacks that i presume aren't in mame romsets.
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And again; why have I heard everywhere that Retropie can't run the newest MAME roms, if it totally can do this with the fbalpha?
the pi can actually run current mame. see http://choccyhobnob.com/mame-benchmarks-on-raspberry-pi-123/
however, if you read into those benchmarks you'll see it super struggling with games that run fullspeed on our older mame emulators (and fbalpha!), so there's little point in it for me. almost everything 2d that you'll want to play has been in mame and/or fba for 10-15 years.
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Hm.
So I tried the lr-fbalpha. Updated to latest version via Retropie-Setup and tried a few test-games from the newest 0.2.97.39 romset, both MAME and NEOGEO. But not with much luck.NEOGEO:
Breakers - doesn't start even though it's marked with a Green OK! Works on PiFBA...?
Garou - same as the above. Works on PiFBA bot not lr-fbalpha.MAME:
1944: The loop master - doesn't start even though it's marked with a Green OK! Works with PiFBA.
Aero Fighters - only one of my test games that actually works on lr-fbalpha.Also tried some of my Neogeo games that ran fine on PiFBA, but they don't work on fbalpha either (but I guess that could be roms related, since they're not from the latest romset?)
What's wrong with my lr-fbalpha...??
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@AndersHP All those games work, obviously either you don't have the right roms, or you don't have the right bioses. Do you have neogeo.zip from the same romset in the same folder ? Can you confirm me you have a "1944.key" file in "1944.zip" file ? Could you give me the full list of files in "1944.zip" ?
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@barbudreadmon
Beat me to it, I was just about to edit my post. I forgot about getting the Neogeo.zip from the Romset, that fixed the Neogeo games, and I tried a few other MAME's, that also worked.And no, the 1944 doesn't have a "key" file. Does that mean the romset is bad or something? I don't think it was easy to find the romset actually.
Anyways, I still have a few questions regarding the lr-fbalpha emulating Neogeo games compared to PiFBA though:
When I start the games via lr-fbalpha, I first get a green graphical glitchy eerie screen for about 3 seconds, before the game starts.
Then, every time I press the coin button, the screen and sound blacks out for a split second. And also, I think there's a bit of other artifacts in the graphics in-game. PiFBA didn't have any of these. If I remove the shaders from the PiFBA (which I haven't tried yet), I would feel that this still does a much better job! Ain't that a bit weird? -
@barbudreadmon said in Neogeo games looks shaded/antialiased?:
Could you give me the full list of files in "1944.zip" ?
Yes, it's:
nff.01
nff.04
nff.11m
nff.12m
nff.13m
nff.14m
nff.15m
nff.16m
nff.17m
nff.18m
nff.19m
nff.20m
nffu.03
nffu.05 -
@AndersHP You'll get the "green graphical glitchy eerie screen for about 3 seconds" on every game, i never put much thought about it, i'll check if standalone fba have this later to know if it's normal or not, same thing about "the screen and sound blacks out for a split second", i'm not sure it's in every game, and i never checked standalone to compare since it's not really game-breaking either. About the "artifacts in the graphics in-game", could you post a screenshot ? I never noticed that.
About 1944, you only miss the key file, it should be present in any fba rom tagged 0.2.97.39 and any mame rom tagged 0.175+ . It's actually a small file of 20 bytes which contain the decryption key of the cps2 game, and it wasn't needed before those releases because it was hardcoded in the emulator, but they removed that.
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@barbudreadmon said in Neogeo games looks shaded in PiFBA (+ lr-fbalpha talks):
@AndersHP You'll get the "green graphical glitchy eerie screen for about 3 seconds" on every game, i never put much thought about it, i'll check if standalone fba have this later to know if it's normal or not
looks like it's the HW self-test for neogeo: http://www.xbins.org/nfo.php?file=xboxnfo1563.nfo (look for v1.12)
however i dunno if normal FBA has any options to turn it off
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@dankcushions said in Neogeo games looks shaded in PiFBA (+ lr-fbalpha talks):
@barbudreadmon said in Neogeo games looks shaded in PiFBA (+ lr-fbalpha talks):
@AndersHP You'll get the "green graphical glitchy eerie screen for about 3 seconds" on every game, i never put much thought about it, i'll check if standalone fba have this later to know if it's normal or not
looks like it's the HW self-test for neogeo: http://www.xbins.org/nfo.php?file=xboxnfo1563.nfo (look for v1.12)
however i dunno if normal FBA has any options to turn it off
That's basically what i thought. I suppose standalone has something to suppress it then, because "iq_132" is one of their main developper. I'll look into it if i find some free time.
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@AndersHP said in Neogeo games looks shaded in PiFBA (+ lr-fbalpha talks):
Then, every time I press the coin button, the screen and sound blacks out for a split second
By the way, it only happens on title screen, right ? I never had that while in play. That's why i thought it was the game's normal behavior, actually i kinda remember the cabinet doing the same thing.
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@barbudreadmon OK, about the key file, I searched through the 1-D part of the romset, and only a handful, say 30 games, have the keyfile in the zips, and they've all god different names starting with 317-xxxx.key. Should I just grab one of those, and why are they not in all the zipped mame roms?
Oh, and yes I believe it's not doing this within the games, but for me the things adds up and while the PiFBA emulator seems to be emulating the games at exactly the same performance, but without these glitches, I think it makes for a better impression of the games in the end, TBH. But maybe that's just me :-)
I have another question for you, when you say the "new version of fba is out", is it the emulator that's got modified, or is it the romset, or both? I thought it was the emulator, but I can see some of the bug fixes is specific games-related, so that suggests that it is the code inside the games that you're updating?
Talking about PiFBA makes me seem very ungrateful here, but I really have a huge amount of respect for guys like you, modding and tweaking these classic games to be even better in your freetime, for us all to enjoy! Also, thanks a bunch for taking the time to reply here!
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@AndersHP said in Neogeo games looks shaded in PiFBA (+ lr-fbalpha talks):
OK, about the key file, I searched through the 1-D part of the romset, and only a handful, say 30 games, have the keyfile in the zips
Yes, the key files i mentioned are only for cps2 games.
You searched "fba 0.2.97.39 romset" on google ? I don't think i can link roms website here but the first result for me seems great.
New version of fba means the emulator is modified : bugfixes, new features, new romset with addition and fixed dump.
We don't update the code inside the games, we update the code which read and emulate the best dump known.
Roms change once in a while, but not that often, cps2 roms didn't change for years (probably 10+), but they changed a few months ago when someone finished retro-engineering the cabinet.@AndersHP said in Neogeo games looks shaded in PiFBA (+ lr-fbalpha talks):
but without these glitches
Well, i hope you understand those are actually not glitches but original behavior of the cabinet. I suppose we could mask them, like pifba or standalone fba, but this is really low priority for me.
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In extension of our Little MAME vs. FBA talk here, I'm trying to build my own romset to be completely compatible with my arcade build.
I wanted to use Romlister, but this needs Controls.xml and Catver.ini files, and these I cannot find for FBA romsets.
Am I missing something, or is Romlister not compatible with FBA romsets?
If not, how do you arrange the romsets in a way that doesn't require you to manually test every game?
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