FBA new core option

[barbudreadmon]

I added a new core option to fbalpha-libretro.
It will switch between "fast" and "accurate" mode for sh2 interpreter on psikyo and some kaneko games ("fast" mode is faster but will cause some issues i can't solve on a few games).
Raspberry pi should probably use "fast" mode by default.

[paradadf]

Thank you so much for all the impressive work you are doing with that core!

[acris]

Hello @barbudreadmon
thank you so much for your work, It's ok now.

It's possible that the same problem with pgm games and few cave game too ?

Bee Storm
Demon Front
DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Jou (Master et Black)
Espgaluda
Ketsui Kizuna Jigoku Tachi
Knights of Valour
Knights of Valour 2
Martial Masters
Oriental Legend
Puzzle Star
Puzzli 2
Spectral vs Generation
The Gladiator
Road to the Sword $
The killing Blade
The killing Blade Plus

[rockaddicted]

@barbudreadmon thank you dude

[barbudreadmon]

@acris said in FBA new core option:

Hello @barbudreadmon
thank you so much for your work, It's ok now.

It's possible that the same problem with pgm games and few cave game too ?

Bee Storm
Demon Front
DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Jou (Master et Black)
Espgaluda
Ketsui Kizuna Jigoku Tachi
Knights of Valour
Knights of Valour 2
Martial Masters
Oriental Legend
Puzzle Star
Puzzli 2
Spectral vs Generation
The Gladiator
Road to the Sword $
The killing Blade
The killing Blade Plus

I could find a quick fix for psikyo game because there was already such a fix for CPS3 game (which uses the same SH-2 cpu), basically the speedhack skip timers (which result in sound issues with some game, mostly kaneko suprnova games it seems, but for now i prefer not harcoding it in psikyo games for safety), you can find more about this there : http://neosource.1emulation.com/forums/index.php?topic=2825.0

About pgm/cave games, they don't use the same cpu, so there won't be a quick fix (that's actually quite strange you got speed issues with those, i thought they already ran at full speed on my rpi2, i will check later), i'll need to investigate if there was some big changes in pgm cpu over the past fba releases.

I also started to work on a complete rewrite of input handling (there are lots of bad/missing inputs with the current one because it is too hard to maintain), feel free to test it out (by appending USE_NEW_MAPPING=1 to make) and provide feedback on github.

[acris]

Hi @barbudreadmon
thank you for your explaination and investigation.

[barbudreadmon]

I finished my rewrite of input handling, feel free to test it and provide feedback before i make it the default.

[barbudreadmon]

I checked pgm/cave, those are m68k/z80 games (same as neogeo,cps1,cps2,megadrive, ... but with higher frequency), i don't understand why they wouldn't run at full speed on your raspberry pi. Are you talking about a raspberry pi 2 ? A raspberry pi 3 ? Both ???

[acris]

In my case, raspberry 3. They are slow and audio bug like psykio game before your option.
@rockaddicted do you have test theses games ?

[Substring]

@acris have you deactivated rewind ?

[barbudreadmon]

I don't understand, all those games run at constant 60fps for me, and i'm 99% sure they did on rpi2 too.

What's your /boot/config.txt settings ? Do you run those games in 'performance' cpufreq mode ? What's in your retroarch.cfg ? Do you run some cpu intensive shader ?

[voljega]

I confirm pgm and cave games are clearly not running at full speed on overclocked pi2 nor non-overclocked pi3.

It's a bit better at least for pgm on pi3 but still not full speed

Image is fine but sound cracky/lagging

[barbudreadmon]

@voljega said in FBA new core option:

I confirm pgm and cave games are clearly not running at full speed on overclocked pi2 nor non-overclocked pi3.

It's a bit better at least for pgm on pi3 but still not full speed

Image is fine but sound cracky/lagging

Not for me xD
I did a pull request to recalbox's fbalpha makefile, i hope it will help.

[barbudreadmon]

I ran htop while running a few of those games, one of the core topped at 90% of load while the other 3 were idle (i don't think i can do something about this), i suppose it could cause speed issues if your system is at stock frequency or if you have something running in background. Do you know what was the last version of fba where you saw pgm/cave games running at full speed on your raspberry ?

[Substring]

@voljega fba was "better" on recalbox 3.3.0-b17 ? or 3.2.11 ?

3.3.0-b17 uses commit 39a6baafc5b80fda617fe0d72aa8747fdea5f9e2
3.2.11 uses commit c6b13e90127ec9c6c21cfd19d95da3b6cf296cd6

[barbudreadmon]

Actually, none of those games run on Cave hardware, too bad that's the one i spent an hour checking xD. I'll check Pgm tomorrow.

[voljega]

@subs I don't think it was better before, those games never worked at full speed for me.
I'm there since Recalbox 3.2 I think

[barbudreadmon]

@voljega said in FBA new core option:

@subs I don't think it was better before, those games never worked at full speed for me.
I'm there since Recalbox 3.2 I think

By the way, what's your raspberry pi 3 clock settings exactly ? i'm backporting some old fba code and i need to test if some of it would solve your speed issues.

For reference, pgm games have no issue at all for me with those settings :

dtparam=audio=on
dtoverlay=sdhost,overclock_50=84
arm_freq=1350
gpu_freq=550
over_voltage=5
sdram_freq=550
sdram_schmoo=0x02000020
over_voltage_sdram_p=6
over_voltage_sdram_i=4
over_voltage_sdram_c=4
gpu_mem=384

[voljega]

@barbudreadmon I have not modified at all the clock settings on my pi3

[barbudreadmon]

@voljega ok, i'll use stock settings to test my speedhacks then.