FBA vs. MAME

Darksavior

@danielmewhouse Right, we're talking about right now and what the pi can run. I know the history. I've been using emulators since 98 or something. As of right now available for the pi, fba has more advanced emulation than mame2003. I have a pi2 and pi3 and I make sure the games run fullspeed on my oc'd pi2 first. The accuracy will require more power, and that's when I resort to mame2003. It depends on the game.

Oh, getting complete romsets is so simple these days with a quick google search, it's less hassle to get the whole set and later dig through it to get the games I want.

danielmewhouse

@darksavior said in FBA vs. MAME:

Oh, getting complete romsets is so simple these days with a quick google search, it's less hassle to get the whole set and later dig through it to get the games I want.

This morning I found a website that provided the right roms for mame2003 individually, and actually works!!! 😁 Even Super Street Fighter 2 turbo worked!!! This game is my "Eleanor" (like Nicholas Cage's 60 seconds movie). Every time I try this game, or it's incompatible with the emulator, or the game speed and difficult adjustment just doesn't works. The game stills faster than Flash and harder as hell 😅

arcadez2003

@barbudreadmon said in FBA vs. MAME:

I think @gamez-fan posted a list of games that are better in fba not long ago.

Oh that was just a small list of Toaplan games, if was to create a list of all the games i know perform or are emulated better in FBA Vs ole MAME i'd be here all day :D

AndersHP

@udb23 said in FBA vs. MAME:

Global "best core" for roms file is available here.

Is there any DAT files that sort by this list? So one could build a MAME collection and an FBA collection of roms, and gather them to have the ultimate romset?

Or how do you guys do?

Darksavior

@udb23 From a quick look, I'm already seeing some errors. Like rtypeleo runs full speed on mame2003 and not quite well on fba. I've been testing my ~200 arcade games lately, and I can provide corrections when I'm done.

UDb23

@AndersHP , @darksavior said in FBA vs. MAME:

I'm already seeing some errors

My activity so far was just collecting the info provided by @Pussyfoot.
Next step I would like to add any required/suggested setting (per game); e.g. specific dip switch and/or controls config.
In parallel of course it is important to test if the list actually is correct; so more than welcome if you already can provide fixes.

No ideas on specific DAT files yet; open to suggestions.

danielmewhouse

@andershp said in FBA vs. MAME:

@udb23 said in FBA vs. MAME:

Global "best core" for roms file is available here.

Is there any DAT files that sort by this list? So one could build a MAME collection and an FBA collection of roms, and gather them to have the ultimate romset?

Or how do you guys do?

@AndersHP If you just put your roms at mame-libretro and FBA folders, you'll get two arcade options on system menu, one for Mame and other for FBA. The only problem is how to know what game plays better with what emulator. After this, just organize the games ok the respective emulator folder and presto!!!

UDb23

@danielmewhouse Even easier: move all wanted roms into the "arcade" folder and assign each rom to be launched with the "best" core.
Point is you also need the right rom version for that "best" core. That's why @AndersHP requests corresponding DAT files, if I understand correctly.

AndersHP

@udb23 said in FBA vs. MAME:

@danielmewhouse Even easier: move all wanted roms into the "arcade" folder and assign each rom to be launched with the "best" core.
Point is you also need the right rom version for that "best" core. That's why @AndersHP requests corresponding DAT files, if I understand correctly.

Yup, that was the idea. No idea if DAT files are easy to make though..

dudleydes

@andershp This is how I could go about moving roms into the arcade folder and assigning each rom to be launched with the best core. I have tested the commands (see here and here) but I haven't gone this process as a whole.

Use the rpie_arcade_best_core.xlsx spreadsheet to create .txt files for each emulator, lr-mame2003.txt, lr-mame2010.txt, lr-fbalpha.txt etc. These text files should contain a list of roms with their .zip extensions.

EDIT: I have noticed @Pussyfoot has placed his lists on pastebin which means the text files can be downloaded using wget as below:

wget -cO - https://pastebin.com/raw/6wAYWALb > mame-libretro.txt
wget -cO - https://pastebin.com/raw/8JLHcq8x > mame-advmame.txt
wget -cO - https://pastebin.com/raw/LG43KZs7 > lr-fbalpha.txt

Note the lists don't differentiate between emulators for a system, e.g. lr-mame2003 and lr-mame2010 or which version of advanceMAME.

Decide the default emulator for the arcade folder. eg lr-mame2003. These roms will be copied last.

First we will copy roms to the romset-specific folder, eg fba, so that we can create entries for /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg. This is the file that stores the emulator assignments other than the default. This will make sure the roms will launch in the appropriate emulator without having to use the runcommand menu to assign an emulator for each individual rom. First, create a backup of /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg.

Place the .txt file in the same folder as the romset and then use the following command to copy the roms:

    cd /path/to/fba-romset
    xargs -a lr-fbalpha.txt cp -t /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/fba/

Now use the following command to create entries for lr-fbalpha in /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg:

    ls -1 RetroPie/roms/fba | sed -e 's/\.zip$//' -e 's/_//g' -e 's/^/arcade_/' -e 's/$/ = "lr-fbalpha"/' >> /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg

Copy the fba roms from the fba folder to the arcade folder. It's probably easiest to do this using Samba or STFP rather than the command line.
Repeat for other emulators other than the default, lr-mame2003.
Finally copy the lr-mame2003 roms to the arcade folder with the command:

    cd /path/to/0.78-romset
    xargs -a lr-mame2003.txt cp -t /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/

Test roms are using the correct emulator.

AndersHP

@dudleydes Dude, you rock. This is what I'm talking about.
Will do, way to go.

What if I wanted to make specific launching-images for the fba roms, then?
Say, default launch image is a MAME related, I then have to copy and rename a [fba-romname]-launching.jpg file for all the fba core games?

dudleydes

@andershp I guess you could use the runcommand-onstart script as it has a preconfigured variable for the emulator, $2. I haven't played around with launching images or runcommand-onstart scripts so I'm afraid I can't be more helpful.

AndersHP

@dudleydes said in FBA vs. MAME:

xargs -a lr-fbalpha.txt

Just tried this in MacOS terminal, with my roms-USB plugged in, since it took me several minutes on the pi for just 5 test files (even though it worked brilliantly like you said!).
But apparently, xargs -a is not an option here, different language? Is this doable on Mac or should I just leave the pi overnight, copying files?

dudleydes

@andershp According to the Linux man page for the xargs command, the -a flag does the following :

-a file, --arg-file=file
Read items from file instead of standard input.

It appears that xargs in MacOS doesn't have this option.

I found the xargs command on Google and it worked on my Linux PC so there may well be better ways of doing it. After another search, I have found another way of copying files from a text list using the cp command so hopefully it will work on MacOS.

Here are the commands to copy the fba roms from the list on pastebin:

    cd /path/to/fba-romset
    wget -cO - https://pastebin.com/raw/LG43KZs7 > lr-fbalpha.txt
    cp `cat lr-fbalpha.txt` /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/fba/

Darksavior

@UDb23 K, here's my short list of corrections since I hand picked my arcade games. I used stock Pi3 speeds with the crt-pi shader at 1080p. Emulators used are lr-fbalpha and lr-mame-2003. Some games with slight drops in between might run fullspeed with an OC like cadash. Most hit 40-50fps in fba so I don't think an OC will help those games. Feel free to verify my findings. These are the games that should be changed to mame:

baddudes.zip
cbuster.zip not on the list
boogwingu.zip (I used boogwing.zip)
cadashu.zip (I used cadash.zip)
cninjau.zip (I used cninja.zip)
darius2.zip
deadconx.zip
edrandy.zip
dungeonm.zipnot on the list
gunforc2.zip
gunforceu.zip
hooku.zip ( I used hook.zip)
inthuntu.zip (I used inthunt.zip)
macross.zip
macross2.zip
nbbatmanu.zip(I used nbbatman.zip)
ninjawu.zip (I used ninjaw.zip)
rohga.zip
pulirula.zip
rtypeleo.zip
shinobi.zip has an audio bug where the player's voice cuts out in fba. shinobi2.zip , 3,4 are fine.
uccopsu.zip ( I used uccopsar.zip same game but uncensored in english)
wizdfireu.zip (I used wizdfire.zip)

AndersHP

@dudleydes think this line should be:

ls -1 /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/fba | sed -e 's/\.zip$//' -e 's/_//g' -e 's/^/arcade_/' -e 's/$/ = "lr-fbalpha"/' >> /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg

Seems to work, though. This is complete gibberish in my eyes! :) Will try in large scale now :)

AndersHP

Just realized that the above mentioned lists are very much made of US-versions of roms, meaning that since my FBA romset is split, all the US-versions doesn't have their parent ROM, and are useless.. I'm running a Replace "u.zip" with ".zip" on the txt files, and the few roms that actually end with a U gets an error message, that I use to change the txt files back again. Will post the final txt files afterwards, for others to use.

UDb23

@darksavior said in FBA vs. MAME:

These are the games that should be changed to mame:

Thanks.
Best core list updated accordingly.

AndersHP

I'd like to challenge the perception that Gyruss is better run on FBA. I see no performance differences, but the sound is better in MAME2003. Less fuzzy.

And in this game, sound is 70% of the experience ! :)

AndersHP

Allright, here's my contribution, that I used for my setup. Maybe someone find it useful:

Based on @Pussyfoot 's lists, but with no US clones, I've gone for the parent roms as good as I could (to make splitted romsets work also). With @Darksavior 's inputs (and my own regarding Gyruss and R-Type, which I think is better in MAME) some has been moved to the MAME2003 list.

mame-libretro list (updated with no ADVMAME games)
lr-fbalpha list, regular
lr-fbalpha list, NeoGeo roms included (new with input from johnodon)
mame-advmame list (new list with input from caver01)

Also see here how to copy files from complete romsets, to match the txt files. Brilliant work, @dudleydes - these copying scripts really helped!