Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo

barbudreadmon

@Riverstorm Let's continue the discussion from mame2003+'s topic here, i did a few changes and the raster/vector info is now available in our dats. FYI i added the geometry info last year by user's request.

Afaik Killer Instinct is the only game that was ever removed from FB, so i'd assume the other games were renamed.

Ashpool

@barbudreadmon & @Riverstorm Sorry to interrupt - but for a personal project of mine (started aeons ago) where I am converting mame/FBN xmls t via python into csv/xlsx into human readable columns I am interested in... (short rant: ever changing xml struct, I never found a reliable source for the changes, and what each entry really mean...), but I am curious - ever since (listxml was possible) in mame - they differed in screen vector or raster, later lcd,svg and maybe others where added... but whenever mamedat/xml is refering to screen = vector, width and heigth (x/y pixel resolution) is ommited (makes sense IMHO), but FBN is providing such (well, maybe an artifact before type vector was added, as it was provided before for vector games)... is the (previous) x/y-data for vector games of any use and how could it be utilized? Or was it just a necessity out of not differing between raster/vector?

Riverstorm

@barbudreadmon - That looks amazing! You're amazing!! I very much appreciate the addition and completeness of the geometry information I know you don't need to look inside a DAT to utilize it but I find myself always looking inside DAT's. There is always extraneous information that is useful beyond the core info. needed to build sets.

I did a quick once over and the only thing that flagged for me was aztarac. It's listed video type is raster. I've played it several times and always think of it as a vector game but you never know.

@Ashpool - Yeah that threw me too like LCD, on and on etc. but some actually had an LCD along with the regular screen.

With vector games I basically think--infinite resolution (no pixels). They had a start and end point for each line but not a resolution. You probably know all that though since you been digging through DATs a long time.

Barbudreadmon might know better since emulated vector games truly aren't running on vector monitors for most of us (I would assume). So with that thought they probably needs some type of "boundary" defined with the (pixel) resolution or something to that effect. That's just a guess at best but I know what you mean with it being omitted in MAME. I am curious myself now.

@barbudreadmon - Thanks again cheers to you and the team--we have to get you a beer or two or three or a 6 pack for the amazing emulator and support! :)

Riverstorm

Yeah I think they have just been renamed (besides Killer Instinct & Killer Instinct 2). Just a few examples of the short list of 25 comparing the 2021-05-01 to the current DAT.

Old name:

kof98eck20
kof98eckvs
kof99rp2f
umk3pb1
umk3uc

New name:

kof98eckg
kof98ecky
kof99rp
umk3p
umk3uk

barbudreadmon

@Ashpool this is the default width/height at which we emulate those vector games (meaning if you don't turn on the hires dips), i intend to keep it like this for now.

@Riverstorm said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

I did a quick once over and the only thing that flagged for me was aztarac. It's listed video type is raster. I've played it several times and always think of it as a vector game but you never know.

And you are absolutely right, i added the GBF_VECTOR flag to several dozens of games yesterday but it seems i missed 2 boards, it should be ok now, thanks for the report !

Ashpool

@barbudreadmon said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

@Ashpool this is the default width/height at which we emulate those vector games (meaning if you don't turn on the hires dips), i intend to keep it like this for now.

:up: as it has a real meaning, I am all in for keeping that information "\o/"

Edit: As I, so far just used (with a few exceptions) FBA/FBNeo just for Neogeo roms and due to your discussion with @Riverstorm over at the other thread and here (M2k3+), I am inclined to reconsider my personal evaluation/stereotype of speed over accuracy in regards to FBN and I 'am therefore stepping back from those thoughts of preferring mame cores over FBN ones by now because of accuracy assumed.
Now to that hires dip ;> I've read about it on the FBNEo libretro pages, but I am missing further informations beyond the "1080p" datum. Does it mean that previous 800x600/600x800 / 640x480/480x640 information should be treated as 1440x1080 for 4:3(H) and 810x1080 for 3:4(V) in Applications which are utilizing/queriieng that info (usable then with an option of true/false dipswitch set: aka -> use dat size, or 1080p one)?

Riverstorm

@barbudreadmon - Cheers, it looks spot on now! If I see anything else that looks off I let you know and many--many thanks for adding that last bit of geometry information. It looks spectacular and will come in very handy! :)

Riverstorm

@Ashpool - I don't know if it would help, but jump into a few of them and poke around in the menus. The resolution is in there somewhere. Then turn on a hires dip and check it again. I had a few questions and it really helped in understanding what was going on.

I agree I would definitely lean toward accuracy over speed in an emulator but if the accuracy is hindering performance enough maybe a performance based emulator might be preferred. I had a bunch of games that I was on the fence about and finally just tried them in both to help make a decision.

I wish there was a slam dunk emulator for every game but some games you have to use alternative emulators if you want to play...well, hmmm, at least until FBNeo emulates them all... ;)

barbudreadmon

@Ashpool said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

Does it mean that previous 800x600/600x800 / 640x480/480x640 information should be treated as 1440x1080 for 4:3(H) and 810x1080 for 3:4(V) in Applications which are utilizing/queriieng that info (usable then with an option of true/false dipswitch set: aka -> use dat size, or 1080p one)?

Indeed, but i wouldn't recommend using the hires dips on pi4 with FBNeo, you'll likely run into performance issues.

Advmame is the recommended emulator for vector games on retropie, it does a far better job at performance and has features we don't for customizing visuals.

Machtroid

@Folly @barbudreadmon @Riverstorm Awesome this is great information to have, much appreciated! I'm definitely going to update fbneo and my romset, but it's great to know which new game additions to look for and play around with. I have never played some of these CAVE shooters and look forward to trying them out. Thanks for helping out with this!

WeirdH

@barbudreadmon Don't know if this should go here or in its own thread/report, but I discovered something weird: in snowbro2, when I change the dipswitches for the coinage settings (through RGUI), then save, exit and relaunch the game, the left direction on my joystick stops working. Changing the dips back and relaunching solves the issue. Is it a bug?

barbudreadmon

@WeirdH Thanks for the report, i have one good news and one bad news. The good news is that the issue should be fixed. The bad news is that this game is one of the few using conditional dipswitches (in this case, "Territory" is supposed to control which pair of "Coin A" / "Coin B" is available), and i never found a way to make those work properly due to how the libretro api works.

WeirdH

@barbudreadmon Well, as long as things still work without having to endure the god awful US/EU character selection screen, you won't hear me complaining.

Coinage options also aren't really that important to me, but I just stumbled upon this little quirk while fiddling around, so I thought I'd mention it.

EDIT: Confirmed fixed and working for me. Region was set to SE-Asia (gives English text and original character select), changed player 1 coinage setting, smooth sailing.

barbudreadmon

@WeirdH I was thinking about those conditional dips for the past few days and finally managed to get them working. It's still kinda awkward though with that libretro core option list working somehow asynchronously, and the conditional dips sometimes requiring a restart to work properly. But that's the best i can achieve with the tools i have at my disposal.

dodonpachi

So I updated to the latest binary for the libretro version, and I notice none of my CV1K games save their diagnostic settings. IE, lowered difficulty, 9 credits instead of 1, etc.

I know that a month or so back, the driver was updated to add speed hacks. Did something break in the meantime, or do I need to delete save files somewhere?

barbudreadmon

@dodonpachi due to multiple requests about this, i recently migrated FBNeo nvrams from the older headered/compressed format to a raw format closer to MAME's, it turns out my migration process didn't handle several cv1k games properly due to some unusual nvram behavior.
The fix is on git, thanks for the report.

dodonpachi

@barbudreadmon just downloaded the latest binary from retropie setup, and can confirm the in-game options are saving again! Thank you for the swift fix!

janderclander14

Regarding CV1000 games, I'm experiencing a strange behavior.

The first time I run a CV1000 game, it works as expected: near full speed with default 100% cpu in the core options, and almost perfect full speed if I change the core cpu % by the suggested value.

However, the second time I run the same game, fps are halved (around 33 fps) and audio drops are extreme. Also, core cpu settings do not seem to have any visible effect. I have tried saving per game core settings or not, but the problem remains. The only thing that remedies the problem is removing the .fs file for that game in the fbneo directory. Then, the game runs well again, until I run it a second time (after fbneo creates again the .fs file).

I'm using the latest fbneo binary, but I have experienced this problem in previous versions too, since when CV1000 support was added. I'm also running the latest Retropie version on a Pi 4, 4Gb.

Does anyone encountered a similar problem?

barbudreadmon

@janderclander14 said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

Does anyone encountered a similar problem?

I never heard of it. Does it maybe happen on specific games ?

@janderclander14 said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

I'm using the latest fbneo binary,

You mean latest from sources, right ? I've no idea how old is the version if you are installing from binary

janderclander14

@barbudreadmon Yes, it happens on all CV1000 games and the behavior is deterministic for all of them. And yes, the binary was compiled on Jul 23, 2022 sources.