FBA vs. MAME

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!

caver01

@UDb23 I see several vector titles listed under AdvanceMAME. I have always been a fan, as AdvanceMAME has the superior image when it comes to rendering vector games whereas the others have the arbitrary limit of 640x480 (jaggy vector lines do NOT look cool).

Still, several vector titles are missing. At a quick glance:
armora - Armor Attack
omegrace - Omega Race
quantum - Quantum
ripoff - Rip Off
spacfury - Space Fury
warrior - Warrior

These should be AdvanceMAME, despite what @ AndersHP thinks ;-).

@AndersHP why no AdvanceMAME love? Your vector games will thank you for it.

juice

has anyone got Arabian magic to run full speed, i tried it on fba and it very slow, updated to latest fba from source. it is the same with or without shaders. lr-mame 2003 seems to be a bit better for me but still little laggy

pi 3 no overclock
retropie 4.3

Darksavior

@andershp rtype and rtype2 run fine on fba. There's a slight .1fps drops sometimes in rtype but I plan to overclock once I'm done sorting arcade roms but even then I don't notice it. I just prefer to use the newer emulation.

@juice I don't think any emulator can play that fullspeed.

UDb23

@caver01 said in FBA vs. MAME:

Still, several vector titles are missing.

Roms added to the file.
Vector games MUST be played with Advancemame, no doubt :-)

AndersHP

@darksavior said in FBA vs. MAME:

@andershp rtype and rtype2 run fine on fba.

I haven't tested rtype2, but rtype has sound glitches in FBA that is not there in MAME, and otherwise there's no difference. Played the heck out of rtype at the MAME ROW, and it's flawless in MAME.

AndersHP

@caver01 said in FBA vs. MAME:

@AndersHP why no AdvanceMAME love? Your vector games will thank you for it.

Yeah, I'm just not really that into vector games, so haven't prioritized it at all. Also, it's not a libretro-core is it?

Darksavior

@andershp I played through the first level and didn't notice audio bugs. Oh well..

caver01

@andershp said in FBA vs. MAME:

@caver01 said in FBA vs. MAME:

@AndersHP why no AdvanceMAME love? Your vector games will thank you for it.

Yeah, I'm just not really that into vector games, so haven't prioritized it at all. Also, it's not a libretro-core is it?

Nope.

AndersHP

@caver01 said in FBA vs. MAME:

These should be AdvanceMAME, despite what @ AndersHP thinks ;-).

Above lists have been updated, so I split MAME-libretro and ADVMAME into two, whilst adding the games @caver01 mentioned.
Though, I cannot find the game roughrac.zip. It doesn't seem to be part of MAME2003 or FBA 0.2.97.42? MAME 0.106 perhaps? Never tried this romset...

Also: is it true that the best way to get ADVMAME running on a fresh setup would be a MAME 0.106 romset and the latest ADVMAME 3.x version?

AndersHP

@dudleydes will this line do the same job, but provide extra lists to the emulators.cfg file, without overwriting previous inputs, and is the name of the emulator correct?

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

?

UDb23

@andershp said in FBA vs. MAME:

roughrac.zip

Emulated in mame since .95; would expect it to run both in advmame (.106) and lr-mame2010 (.139). Haven't tried yet .

caver01

@andershp said in FBA vs. MAME:

Though, I cannot find the game roughrac.zip. It doesn't seem to be part of MAME2003 or FBA 0.2.97.42? MAME 0.106 perhaps? Never tried this romset...

Yes, I see in the .106 that roughrac.zip is Rough Racer (Japan, FD1094 317-0058-06b).

Also: is it true that the best way to get ADVMAME running on a fresh setup would be a MAME 0.106 romset and the latest ADVMAME 3.x version?

Yes. However, some folks have reported better performance with 1.4 (same 106 romset) but I have had the opposite experience. I have found games like Golden Tee variants work better in the 3.x versions. Video bugs have apparently been corrected in version 3.x that were present in 1.4 and earlier, and you can always swap between them with runcommand if you want to try 1.4 since the ROM is the same. I have never seen any benefit/reason to use AdvanceMAME .94.

I see four main reasons besides the romset that you might want to use AdvanceMAME. First, it was build to support custom video situations, arcade monitors etc. where you can specify the modeline and define the exact timing of the video scanlines. Of course, this requires the support of hardware and is not as useful for those of us on a Pi using HDMI. But if you were trying to configure a CRT, this might be really handy, and it is essential on other hardware using an arcade monitor.

Second, AdvanceMAME has a superior control mapping scheme that allows you to matrix just about any combination of controls. For example, if your goal is a three trackball Rampart cabinet, you can do that. You want to run four spinners and pay Warlords? No problem. The configuration is very flexible Although great strides have been made recently in RetroArch too with respect to analog indexing and lightgun support, AdvanceMAME has always been ahead of others in that regard.

Third, the rendering of vector games is the best of all of the arcade emulators we have. It draws lines at native resolution. You can also control the quality of the vector in terms of brightness, flicker, line thickness, etc. Check out this post for some ideas and images.

Finally, AdvanceMAME includes AdvanceMESS. There may be other system-specific emulators that do a better job, but MESS is a nice tool to have. You need to jump through some hoops to get it running the way you want but it is possible (I have 3.x running as my Apple II emulator).

dudleydes

@andershp Yes that command should do it.

You can check the string to be used in the command by checking in opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg

AndersHP

I just want to let people know, that following the above mentioned lists and commandlines, I have succesfully merged MAME2003 (0.78)/FBA 0.2.97.42/ADVMAME 0.106 in my Arcade folder, and the best core are chosen for the best versions of games.

I don't know how much maintenance it will demand on longer sight (probably manually editing a game at a time if something doesn't work), but for now, it's really great that everything is centralized and optimized for best core. Recommendations!

mitu

@andershp said in FBA vs. MAME:

Recommendations!

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs !

strangeruk

Wow, this thread has been most useful in sorting out my arcade section! Big thanks to @dudleydes, @AndersHP and @Pussyfoot for their contributions.

Being a Windows user I did a slightly different approach in copying out the roms from my set via the text file list and did it with PowerShell. For what it's worth, here's the command I used:

$Files = Get-Content filename.txt
$Dest = "PathTo:\Desired\Rom\Folder"

foreach ($File in $Files) {
  Copy-Item $File $Dest
}

Once again thanks to everyone who contributed in this thread.

PS. I'd also recommend Knuckle Bash for comedy value.

robotronman

Hi All,

I totally agree with @strangeruk here. This thread has been super helpful. Big thanks to @dudleydes, @AndersHP and @Pussyfoot for their contributions.

I too use windows to administer my Retropie systems and have a tip for using @dudleydes UNIX commands directly from Windows.

First download and install Gow found here: https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow/releases/

Gow (Gnu On Windows) is the lightweight alternative to Cygwin. It uses a convenient NSIS installer that installs over 100 extremely useful open source UNIX applications compiled as native win32 binaries. It is designed to be as small as possible, about 18 MB, as opposed to Cygwin which can run well over 100 MB depending upon options.

This tool is unbelievably awesome, and lets you run xargs and cp and many other UNIX commands right on your Windows machine. I've successfully used @dudleydes process above on Windows to filter my lists and files quickly and efficiently.

Bravo guys, awesome work!
robotronman

pjft

@robotronman said in FBA vs. MAME:

First download and install Gow found here: https://github.com/bmatzelle/gow/releases/

Thank you for the tip! Had been looking for something like this for a while - I had something similar in the past, but I completely forgot the name of what I was using then, so this comes in handy!