[lr-fbneo] New: right-stick controls for several rotary games

Thorr69

@Drdave79 Stop looking for individual games. It's that simple. Complete sets for each tentpole MAME version are ridiculously easy to find. Old rom sets also don't change. Download a full set. Store it on a spare drive somewhere. Then pull out stuff you need from the individual sets and you are fine. I keep a 0.78 (mame2003)set, a 0.139 (mame2010)set, and a 0.37b (mame2000)set on an external SDD and I just grab what I need from them whenever I want to change emulators for a game. I also keep a set of FBNEO that I keep updated since FBNeo updates on occasion.

Seriously, just download some staple sets and store them. You will save yourself all of this headache.

barbudreadmon

@Drdave79 said in [lr-fbneo] New: right-stick controls for several rotary games:

There's many sources for roms, but very few (if any) tell you what version they are.

I'm always surprised to see people not using emulator+version in their search engines queries, knowing it's a fundamental notion in arcade emulation.

IanDaemon

@barbudreadmon
I agree. Considering the international community I try to remember that local laws and regional abilities may tailor someone's actions. While I have your attention, thanks for all of your hard work over the years.

Drdave79

@Thorr69 ok, I don't know why your words resonated so much, but holy crap. I feel like a tremendous weight has been lifted off my shoulders. @barbudreadmon I never considered searching for an entire rom set and storing it away. No need to mess with confusing mame tools that I don't understand. wow. Just wow.

Thank you both and @sleve_mcdichael for finally getting through this thick skull!

Drdave79

@sleve_mcdichael My screen looks different than yours.

sleve_mcdichael

@Drdave79 said in [lr-fbneo] New: right-stick controls for several rotary games:

@sleve_mcdichael My screen looks different than yours.

It looks like you've got a different menu_driver in use than the default "rgui".

You can add button labels ("input descriptors") to your controller's autoconfig file in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/autoconfig/[device name].cfg, for example:

## Input Descriptors
input_left_btn_label = "D-Pad Left"
input_right_btn_label = "D-Pad Right"
input_up_btn_label = "D-Pad Up"
input_down_btn_label = "D-Pad Down"

input_b_btn_label = "(A)Green"
input_a_btn_label = "(B)Red"
input_y_btn_label = "(X)Blue"
input_x_btn_label = "(Y)Yellow"

input_start_btn_label = "Start"
input_select_btn_label = "Back"

input_l_btn_label = "LB"
input_r_btn_label = "RB"
input_l2_axis_label = "LT"
input_r2_axis_label = "RT"

input_l3_btn_label = "L-Thumb"
input_r3_btn_label = "R-Thumb"

input_l_x_minus_axis_label = "L-Analog Left"
input_l_x_plus_axis_label = "L-Analog Right"
input_l_y_minus_axis_label = "L-Analog Up"
input_l_y_plus_axis_label = "L-Analog Down"

input_r_x_minus_axis_label = "R-Analog Left"
input_r_x_plus_axis_label = "R-Analog Right"
input_r_y_minus_axis_label = "R-Analog Up"
input_r_y_plus_axis_label = "R-Analog Down"

Drdave79

@sleve_mcdichael I'm thinking it's an option somewhere else. Here's my settings on both ports 1 & 2 and still not working. Also, I should add there's tron.zip through tron5.zip in the complete fbneo rom set. I'm using tron.zip if that matters at all.

sleve_mcdichael

@Drdave79 said in [lr-fbneo] New: right-stick controls for several rotary games:

@sleve_mcdichael I'm thinking it's an option somewhere else. Here's my settings on both ports 1 & 2 and still not working. Also, I should add there's tron.zip through tron5.zip in the complete fbneo rom set. I'm using tron.zip if that matters at all.

I'm also using tron.zip from the fbneo set, crc32: bdbdf1ee. I'm using the same version fbneo core as you (1.0.0.03 5ad211c) but I do see your retroarch is 1.8.5; I'm on 1.10.0, maybe that's why it's different?

Not sure what else to check. You are in quick menu > controls and not settings > input, right?

Drdave79

@sleve_mcdichael That's correct. I can try to update Retroarch and see what that does. I still refuse to update emulation station because I find the newer updates load much slower on boot up. I'll try it and see what happens.

sleve_mcdichael

@Drdave79 said in [lr-fbneo] New: right-stick controls for several rotary games:

I still refuse to update emulation station because I find the newer updates load much slower on boot up.

(Edit: just FYI, I don't think the ES version should affect this issue, at all.)

(Edit edit: whoops, and it's not even correct, see below.)

Re: this: I remember there was something a while ago where "threaded loading" was disabled by default because it was causing some users crashes. This did slow down the loading time on RPi4 since each system had to load one at a time instead of using all four cores at once.

~~I'm not sure if this is the same slowdown you're referring to but I believe the issue causing the crash has been fixed, allowing threaded loading to be re-enabled now for fast loading again.~~

https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation/commit/ab38884a15b9e7ca99bdaa1edfc6ccfdb24bd368

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/31858/emulationstation-often-crashing-when-using-themes-other-than-the-default

mitu

@sleve_mcdichael said in [lr-fbneo] New: right-stick controls for several rotary games:

Re: this: I remember there was something a while ago where "threaded loading" was disabled by default because it was causing some users crashes. This did slow down the loading time on RPi4 since each system had to load one at a time instead of using all four cores at once.

That's inaccurate. The "threaded loading" feature wasn't present/active in the stable version. When it was added, it caused issues and the option was turned off by default. So you can't 'slow down' from disabling something that wasn't even present in a previous version.

FWIW I also think the option is ok to be turned on now IF you're using the emulatiosntation-dev version, thanks to some fixes added by @Tomaz.

Drdave79

@sleve_mcdichael I FIGURED IT OUT! I mapped player 2 left and right (auto -0 & auto +0) to dial + and - and both ports 1 & 2 to Mapped Port 1 and that did it! I left the options at the bottom alone.

Drdave79

@Drdave79 said in [lr-fbneo] New: right-stick controls for several rotary games:

@sleve_mcdichael I FIGURED IT OUT! I mapped player 2 left and right (auto -0 & auto +0) to dial + and - and both ports 1 & 2 to Mapped Port 1 and that did it! I left the options at the bottom alone.

I should warn anyone reading this. Updating Retroarch messes with the Sinden Light Gun configurations in Retroarch. If you have Sinden Light Guns, you have to change the mouse port on player 2 to the second Unknown SindenLightgun mouse choice to get player 2 to work.

pjft

@sleve_mcdichael If you're comfortable with compiling something from source and installing it, you can try out my current development build:

https://github.com/pjft/FBNeo/tree/timesoldiers-analogs

It should work as intended. I'll try to submit it upstream shortly.

sleve_mcdichael

@pjft said in [lr-fbneo] New: right-stick controls for several rotary games:

It should work as intended.

Looks good here, I can now lock-in all 12 directions with the r-stick.

pjft

@sleve_mcdichael Thanks.

It's been merged upstream, so you can now just update lr-fbneo from source from RetroPie-Setup. Thanks @barbudreadmon for the quick response!

roslof

@pjft said in [lr-fbneo] New: right-stick controls for several rotary games:

@sleve_mcdichael Thanks.

It's been merged upstream, so you can now just update lr-fbneo from source from RetroPie-Setup. Thanks @barbudreadmon for the quick response!

I finally had time to check this out. It's perfect. Really, REALLY enjoyable to play all of these now, but Time Soldiers, esp. Love the 12-way. Thanks for spending the time to do this!

For most of these games and as a preference, I manually mapped Button 2 to the L1 and R1 buttons. This works well on DualShock 4 and similar controllers where your thumbs are on the sticks, so hard to press the normal B/A/Y/X buttons. Feels really good.

Cheers,
-ros

pjft

@roslof thank you! Yes, I use that mapping as well - it really only feels awkward on Midnight Resistance, unfortunately, which was the game I really wanted to play and that led me to look into this in the first place :) using triggers to jump is a bit of a mess.

I personally love Caliber 50, a game I didn't know of before. Plays like a modern twin stick shooter, and it's quite fun.

I tried out Time Soldiers and didn't quite feel it, but seeing the love in this thread can someone sell it to me so I can enjoy it further? :)

Thanks all and have a great weekend.

sleve_mcdichael

@pjft said in [lr-fbneo] New: right-stick controls for several rotary games:

I tried out Time Soldiers and didn't quite feel it, but seeing the love in this thread can someone sell it to me so I can enjoy it further? :)

This one is mostly about the nostalgia for me. It's one of the first arcade games I remember, they had one at the corner store by where I lived. It's a major quarter-muncher and I never had more than a couple bucks to feed it so I never got very far. Now I play it like I've got unlimited quarters, and I just try and stay alive long enough to use my special weapons before I eat it.

sleve_mcdichael

This may be only tangentially related, but...

Most of these games that I've tried (ikari, timesold, hbarrel), in addition to the right-stick aiming control (and before it was implemented), had rotate left/rotate right controls on the L1/R1 bumpers, and a singular "rotate" face button (usually on Y/west) that would let you aim with the d-pad.

Caliber 50 (calibr50) has this "rotate" on the Y button, but it doesn't have the "rotate left/rotate right" on the bumpers (and there's no option to enable them, that I see). Is it supposed to? Is there somewhere better I should bring it up?