FBA vs. MAME

UDb23

FBA was once meant to emulate one single game: Afterburner from SEGA.

Interesting ! Was not aware of that.

Pussyfoot

I remember when FBA was needed to emulate CPS1, CPS2, and NEOGEO because they weren't playable under MAME. MAME was more accurate, but FBA was usually faster. Of course, this was over a decade ago...

I was a little surprised to see games that work fine in FBA on Windows may not even work on the Raspberry Pi.

dankcushions

@pussyfoot said in FBA vs. MAME:

I was a little surprised to see games that work fine in FBA on Windows may not even work on the Raspberry Pi.

can you give an example please?

pjft

@sirhenrythe5th I remember using it indeed for Galaxy Force. I didn't know it had started with After Burner.

I also remember using Raine to play Taito games such as Space Gun on my PC... Indeed, grateful for all the progress on MAME and FBA, as well as the amazing things the Pi can accomplish on such a small chip.

Pussyfoot

@dankcushions galpani4

dankcushions

@pussyfoot said in FBA vs. MAME:

@dankcushions galpani4

according to the compatibility list this works but has slowdown, is that correct? because that kind of thing is expected on a raspberry pi - they are far slower than any PC or laptop from the last 15+ years.

pjft

@pussyfoot I'd try AdvMame for games that exhibit slowdowns on FBA or MAME 2003. It will usually work surprisingly faster.

Pussyfoot

@dankcushions It doesn't even start up on the Pi.

@pjft I experimented with Advancemame for vector games. It works much nicer. I'm disappointed that Advancemame is separate from the other MAME options. I don't like having two MAME menus on RetroPie.

pjft

@pussyfoot you can merge all FBA, Mame and AdvMame in the arcade folder, and configure different ROMs to use different emulators.

dankcushions

@pussyfoot said in FBA vs. MAME:

@dankcushions It doesn't even start up on the Pi.

not according to our compatibility sheets - it works. i can't test myself at the moment but i can't see why someone would say it starts if it doesn't. are you sure you have the right romset for your version of lr-fbalpha?

Pussyfoot

@dankcushions

I have a verified Non-Merged set using CLRMAME Pro.

The zip file has the following files:

gp4j1.u10
gp4j1.u8
gp4-101-00.u20
gp4-100-00.u24
gp4-200-00.u16
gp4-201-00.u18
gp4-300-00.u4

It's possible that I'm missing the Super Kaneko Nova System BIOS files elsewhere in the roms. I'll check it out.

Pussyfoot

Yep. That was it. I didn't have the skns.zip file!

Pussyfoot

Mea culpa on bioship, blkheart, and hachamf . They work fine in FBA.

GreenHawk84

This is great, I really want to know the nuances of the arcade emulators; which games run best, etc.

Are you saying the CPS games (Street Fighter II) are not accurate in FBA? So many games run so amazingly well in FBA. I may consider changing some games back to Mame2003 according to this thread. Someday I hope there is a single arcade emulator which is geared for Raspberry Pi.

Pussyfoot

@greenhawk84 Historically speaking, FBA ran CPS 1, CPS 2, and NEOGEO games faster with less CPU overhead. MAME is about hardware accuracy. It wants to emulate every aspect of the hardware environment. It's more concerned with accuracy on HOW the game is run vs. the overall performance. In general, my advice was if the same game is available in both MAME and FBA, use FBA.

However, I've noticed that there are a lot of games (usually older classic games) that are just plain buggy in FBA. Galaxian and Galga have text glitches in FBA. MAME, which is using a baseline that's 7 years old, runs them great. Gauntlet 1 is buggy in FBA. I get multiple exits on the into level. Burger Time works well in FBA, but the sound is a little off when compared to it running in MAME.

I'm building a RetroPie on a PI3 for a friend, but I don't know if I'd use this hardware again. The performance issues and lack of using the current MAME makes me wonder if it would be worthwhile to build a small x86 unit instead. You can't beat the price of the Pi, but the time I'm putting in to figure out which variant of MAME works best for different games is also costly.

Currently, I just installed the latest AdvanceMAME and moved all the vector games to it. Now, I can play Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back using a mouse. I'll post up my rom lists for FBA, MAME and AdvanceMAME soon. I went through the trouble of filtering out all the FBA games BY HAND so that they contain all the working variants (when explicitly mentioned in the DAT file) and USA versions. That list has shrunk now that I've transitioned a lot of titles from FBA to MAME.

sirhenrythe5th

@pussyfoot im into mame since the late 90s (34b7) and love this project!
I managed to get 600 roms running well under AdvanceMame on the Pi3 (not including 140 NeoGeo Games, i seperated this great System using FBA for it).

Yes, there are some that are not playable because of the lack of needed power.
In example all the CHD-Games, Sega Titan and a few more.
But most of my beloved Evergreens run well.
And i really mean well: as soon as there are lags, sound errors or other issues i remove the roms from my rom folder.

CPS2 + 3, Taito F3, Kaneko Supernova System, Polygon Master System....they all run absolutely perfect.
Ok, im not using Vsync, but those great Scanlines from AdvanceMame (Horizontal 2) and am very very satisfied with the performance of MAME on the Pi.
Speaking as a die hard Mame Fan 😊

Last but not least: historical speaking IMO the best performance concerning CPS1 was Raine and concerning NeoGeo its NeoRageX.
I used them on a Pentium2 with 400MHz and it was awesome, did run those games like we are used today by the current emulators.

Pussyfoot

Here is my list of arcade roms folders (except neogeo):

fba: https://pastebin.com/gQ1XndkY

mame-advmame: https://pastebin.com/mbNPABzG

mame-libretro: https://pastebin.com/HCwY0V2N

BIOS: https://pastebin.com/XK65phrP

I put the samples for both MAME and AdvancedMAME in the BIOS folder. I had to edit the advmame.rc file to add that path to the sample path. I did that so the samples folder doesn't show up on the list of games. I also put all the FBA BIOS zip files in the BIOS folder except for NEOGEO.zip, which is in the neogeo folder.

No, I don't use the arcade folder. It's easy to see at a glance which emulator uses which rom by storing the roms in the separate folders. If I ever had to do a new install, I can upload all my files and everything will be in the correct place. There's no overlap except for Afterburn II because I'm testing out controls in MAME as well as FBA. There's only a handful of games where I use MAME 2010 (Moon Patrol), but I don't know how to get a list of which ones I already configured to use it.

Anyone have any recommendations for which games work better in AdvancedMAME (other than vector games, which I already moved)?

pjft

@pussyfoot I can share the small list of games I have that run better in AdvMame (basically anything that lags on Mame or FBA I try it there) when I have the chance to retrieve them from my Pi but the SEGA System 24 like Bonanza Bros, Crack Down and Gain Ground run flawlessly there, as well as Bubble Symphony, Bubble Memories, Darius 1 (3 screens), Darius 2 and... Gaiden, was it? RayForce. Sly Spy and Midnight Resistance don't have audio issues later in the game. Arabian Fight. Puzzle Bobble 2, 3 and 4 (I think). Nitro Ball.

I'll need to checking as I might be mistaken on some of those and I'm surely forgetting some.

Oh, I also use it for Outrun and Turbo Outrun as well because of the analog controls and no noticeable lag.

It's a really nice emulator - I just don't use it by default because I find the scanlines to be too thick for my liking when compared to RetroArch shaders or overlays.

UDb23

@pjft said in FBA vs. MAME:

RayForce

Does it run nice in advmame? I did try it with lr-mame and fba and was impossibly slow to play.(pi3)

pjft

@udb23 buttery smooth on AdvMame on the pi 3, no overclock. I believe RayStorm, the sequel, also ran smooth but had some graphical glitches on level 2 when the 3d backgrounds started to come up. For that one I got the psx one.