Mame 2003 Retroarch controls for 6 button games
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@gemixin I don't think that's normal, the default configuration for a core shouldn't be mapping the same 3 buttons twice while ignoring the 3 other buttons, except if @mahoneyt944 (who still maintains this core ?) confirms that's the normal behavior in mame2003 ???
On a sidenote, i would never recommend using mame2003 nowaday, there are better arcade emulators available, even when performance is a major concern because you are using an older pi model, and if that mapping weirdness is really the default configuration then it's the icing on the cake imho.
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@barbudreadmon said in Mame 2003 Retroarch controls for 6 button games:
On a sidenote, i would never recommend using mame2003 nowaday, there are better arcade emulators available, even when performance is a major concern because you are using an older pi model, and if that mapping weirdness is really the default configuration then it's the icing on the cake imho.
The docs still pretty strongly steer people towards mame2003 for whatever reason, with statements like:
"MAME is the most well-known and works with thousands of games. FinalBurn is optimized for classic beat-em-up games like those from Neo Geo and Capcom."
To me, that reads as "unless you play mostly beat-em-ups, don't even bother." You gotta get a lot deeper in (it's not even on the same page) before you find the part where it says:
"FBNeo also should always outperform MAME in the games they both support, as it is tailored for speed, rather than accuracy."
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@sleve_mcdichael the statements were true at the time of writing. fbn has in recent years expanded its remit more and more but certainly MAME* supports the widest range of titles. one could argue the point that on low spec devices like the pi, FBN supports the majority of arcade games you could feasibly play, but there may still be some notable absences.
the docs are user-contributed so if there's a changing of the guard feel free to submit a (sourced) update :)
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@sleve_mcdichael I was mainly thinking about mame2003-plus which is a clear upgrade from mame2003. Sure, FBNeo is also better, especially with cps1/2 games (afaik it's the best emulator available for those boards, even including current MAME in the comparison), but i heard setting up controls within retroarch can be a pain when you aren't using a standard controller, which seems to be the case here, so it might not be the best fit here.
@dankcushions said in Mame 2003 Retroarch controls for 6 button games:
the statements were true at the time of writing
I don't think the project ever had a beat-em-up focus, even when looking at 15 years old pifba, this statement in your documentation always seemed quite random to me. If any "new boards" focus ever existed on FinalBurn, it would probably be about shoot-em-up. Also, we tailor for both speed and accuracy, there are systems where our emulation is more faithful than current MAME.
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@barbudreadmon said in Mame 2003 Retroarch controls for 6 button games:
@dankcushions said in Mame 2003 Retroarch controls for 6 button games:
the statements were true at the time of writing
I don't think the project ever had a beat-em-up focus, even when looking at 15 years old pifba, this statement in your documentation always seemed quite random to me.
it's probably a context thing - at the time mame2003 was clearly covering the broadest range of viable arcade titles on pi (at the time fba didn't support some notable classic titles, sega32, midway, etc - 1000+ of titles back in the fbnext days), but it had some important missing titles, especially cps3, and wasn't as good for neogeo, both of which have a beat-em-up slant, so a typical setup was mame2003 for everything, plus fba for neogeo and cps3. of course even then maybe it was better for other things too, but the path of least resistance was mame2003 for 95%, fba for a subset. maybe now fbn covers the 95%, i don't know.
like i say, if you disagree with or are disappointed by the docs, just submit an update :) it's not "my" documentation. it only be as good as those who give time to improve it, but note that recommendations for emulators aren't on pure functionality/performance/accuracy - the availability and update-rate of the romset is also a concern. i mame2003+ only had a year+ old romset in circulation, last time i checked, needing a manual romset build, so i would be reticent to recommend if that's still the case.
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@dankcushions Hmmm, i'm not so sure about the context thing, it just sounds kinda random and arbitrary. This sentence about beat-em-up was added in 2018, even back then fbalpha supported about 1900 different games (excluding clones and non-working). I don't think the mame2003 library (again, excluding clones and non-working) was much larger, making it a definitive choice for primary arcade emulator. There weren't many reasons either to choose mame2003 over fbalpha on a pi3 as far as performance and accuracy were concerned.
@dankcushions said in Mame 2003 Retroarch controls for 6 button games:
mame2003+ only had a year+ old romset in circulation, last time i checked, needing a manual romset build
I think that's fine though ? Most of the changes are additions, 99.9% of the romsets available in that older set in circulation didn't change. As for the additions, it's up to the user to decice if he wants to collect them or not, and it's not as if using mame2003 instead will help him in that matter.
@dankcushions said in Mame 2003 Retroarch controls for 6 button games:
just submit an update
Maybe if i find the time.
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i didn't add the sentence about beat em ups but at that time it would have been what i would have wanted to impress onto users also - for an easy life, fba = cps3 + neogeo, mame2003 for everything else. as said. bear in mind that at/close to that time FBA didn't support mortal kombat, nba jam, robotron, etc, so mame2003 was going to be satisfying the majority use-case.
I think that's fine though ? Most of the changes are additions, 99.9% of the romsets available in that older set in circulation didn't change. As for the additions, it's up to the user to decice if he wants to collect them or not, and it's not as if using mame2003 instead will help him in that matter.
it's added complexity and in my experience users struggle enough with "just use 0.78 + mame2003", never mind "use 0.78 and mame2003+ and if a game doesn't work/isn't present you need to rebuild the romset or you need to use it in mame2003 as long as your romset was 0.78 of course, not what you rebuilt.. .hello?".
of course they can do all of that if they want in current retropie, or if someone thinks they can explain all this in laymans terms such that in can become the easiest/best solution, then... update the docs ;)
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@dankcushions said in Mame 2003 Retroarch controls for 6 button games:
fba = cps3 + neogeo, mame2003 for everything else. as said. bear in mind that at/close to that time FBA didn't support mortal kombat, nba jam, robotron
Well, back in 2018, FBA supported over 500 unique games that weren't supported at all in mame2003, including many shmup masterpieces. I really think there was no real context for those recommendations/informations, they were purely arbitrary.
I really don't understand all the shyness about recommending mame2003+, the core is so much better than mame2003, and the compatibility would actually be rather high even if you were using a legacy mame2003 set without updating it.
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@gemixin I know I'm late to the party here but I wanted to say I ran into the same problem sometime in the last 6 months.
- Stock raspberry pi 4, ipac2 wired up in a not insane way... I was living the 6 button dream!
Then, I did the big "don't do that!" thing and kept updating Retropie along with my emulator cores... while NOT updating my romset along the way. (facepalm). Then things went haywire on me, but only in mame2003. I still don't know exactly what went wrong.
Anyway, what i found is my 6 button mame2003 games were actually treating buttons 4, 5, 6 as multiple keys. So for Street Fighter 2, button 4 was BOTH weak punch and weak kick, and it would show on the screen as a weak punch. this made it very hard to troubleshoot and unravel, especially considering I hadn't changed my buttons or wiring, hadn't messed with core or rom remapping. Still, sure as heck, if i tried to remap in the rgui, if i pushed button 4, 5, or 6 it would list multiple keyboard buttons.
My solution? i got an FBAlpha romset and moved all my favorite roms over there. Now I'm in six button fighter heaven again. I changed nothing else and things were good again.
Everyone learn from my mistakes! :)
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@Jabulator said in Mame 2003 Retroarch controls for 6 button games:
while NOT updating my romset along the way. (facepalm)
Which is not a problem with vintaged cores, mame2003 is still using the same dumps MAME was using back in 2003. Read this if you are confused about arcade versioning.
From your testimony, it definitely sounds like some update to the input handling code of this core caused this. @mahoneyt944 any idea ?
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@barbudreadmon I don't think mame2003 receives any input updates, that was one of the unique things brought to mame2003-plus and left as is in mame2003. At least for a few years now.
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@mahoneyt944 nothing about ini parsing/generation either ?
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@barbudreadmon not sure, I don't really work much in mame2003, except for things like crash fixes and such. Or easy fixes ported from 2003+
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@dankcushions said in Mame 2003 Retroarch controls for 6 button games:
it's added complexity and in my experience users struggle enough with "just use 0.78 + mame2003", never mind "use 0.78 and mame2003+
I would tend to agree with @barbudreadmon. Even mame2003 is starting to "drift" with changes (albeit small but still no longer the static set it used to be--a few additions here, a rom set rename there). You might as well go with mame2003+ for the most part.
If you can get the ROM management concept down for those minor changes in mame2003, that is if those games interest you, then mame2003+ isn't that much more work.
I would have rather seen mame2003 hold a hard line on its set and let mame2003+ be the dynamic set with additions, deletions and corrections.
I think mame2003 is much simpler to understand and configure (mainly the interface) but mame2003+ is more progressive. They do have 3 folks doing quite a bit of work currently with some worthy additions.
As barbudreadmon pointed out a majority are the original rom set but some updates improve accuracy (like Bubble Bobble) and some additions are recent emulation code, hence more accurate. When you think of the target platform of low spec hardware it's a worthy core. I have a great base game set on the Pi 3 that I'm happy with, and the Pi 4 provides some nice 'oomph' for other cores.
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