FBA new core option

[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.

[Substring]

@voljega i remember people saying PGM and psyko games running slow on a pi2, but they looked (almost) fine on my pi3

[barbudreadmon]

@subs As i said, they run totally fine on mine, never saw them under 59.9 fps. But perhaps my overclock settings are agressive, and my system is better optimized, so i'll try to lower the requirements with a few speedhacks.

[voljega]

OK I must have mixed something a little because my test results are better than what I remember on PI3 :

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F5tBguhRxpj1AQcnDWF6AVSx4av_Gm3cDQedQB7IECk/edit#gid=32876421

Thoase are tests with non overclocked Pi3 and overclocked Pi2 (this one overclocked only through the ES menu)

[barbudreadmon]

By the way, with latest commit, every control issue should be solved.

[gkralicek2]

FYI, PGM games on my OC Pi3@1400 run full speed (59.9-60fps) exception made for the 2 most recent titles released in 2005 : "Spectral Vs Générations" and "The killing blade Plus" which perform only around 54-57fps max during gameplay.
The same games executed on my OC Pi2@1100 display around 50-54fps max with slightly choppy sound everytime the framerate drops (42-46 fps only for Spectral vs Generation & The killing blade plus with almost constant choppy sound during gameplay)

All those framerate tests have been performed using earlier versions of FBA_libretro core (v0.2.97.30 and v0.2.97.34) which appear to be less resource-consuming. The same tests run on versions 0.2.97.37 or 0.2.97.38 of the FBA core result in a drop of approximately 7% in performances compared to earlier releases, thus degrading a bit more the experience :=(

[barbudreadmon]

@gkralicek2 what about v0.2.97.36 ? "The killing blade Plus" performs around 57-60fps for me with v0.2.97.36, and my OC is lower. What's more, unlike porting v0.2.97.30/34 code to current fba, porting v0.2.97.36 code to current fba is something within my skills.

[voljega]

@barbudreadmon said in FBA new core option:

By the way, with latest commit, every control issue should be solved.

What do you mean by that ? In which game for instance ?

[paradadf]

@voljega there are a lot!

For example:

• Ace Attacker (FD1094 317-0059) - no button working
• Angel Kids (Japan) - impossible to go left
• Arkanoid - Revenge of DOH (World) - the sensitivity is super high (?)
• Asterix (ver EAD) - player 2 can't access the game
• Bikkuri Card (Japan) - payout screen can't be skipped
• Bomb Bee - the sensitivity is super high (?)
• Bullet (FD1094 317-0041) - only coin and start button working
• Caliber 50 [No sound, imperfect inputs] - directions don't work
• Check Man - only coin button working
• Chance Kun (Japan) - only coin button working
• Cutie Q - the sensitivity is super high (?)
• Dark Planet [Dial doesn't work very well] - directions not working properly
• Deroon DeroDero [No sound] - only directions working
• DownTown / Mokugeki (Set 1) [No sound, imperfect inputs] - directions not working properly
• Excite League (FD1094 317-0079) - only coin and start button working
• F-1 Dream [Game is bugged, use the bootleg instead.] - weird directions on turns
• Ganbare! Marine Kun (Marine 2K0411 JPN) - only coin button working
• Gee Bee - the sensitivity is super high (?)
• G.I. Joe (World, EAB, set 1) - coin to pass black screen, but impossible to select
• Heavy Barrel (US) - directions nor working properly
  etc...

Maybe some of these aren't directly related with the input system, but you get the idea

[voljega]

@paradadf yeah but i assume each one of those is a different issue or so, how is it possible that they would be all corrected in a instant ?

[paradadf]

@voljega I was just mentioning the first ones from my list which have some kind of input problems. And as I said before, I'm not certain that all those were directly related to the input handling, but some for sure. I can't differentiate the root of the problem

[barbudreadmon]

@voljega not really different issues, most of them were missing inputs because the old input handling was hard to maintain, i rewrote it.

What we were doing before :

• Compare button's display name with a list of 305 display name we indexed
• Use the first one matching, adapt it through core option
• If no match, skip the button

What we are doing now :

• Use the button's normalized name, there is around twenty of them, and, unlike display names, they are programatically understandable.
• Get the number of "fire" button (= buttons used in gameplay) used in the game, if lesser than or equal to 4 "fire" button tell if it is a neogeo game or not, if greater than 4 "fire" button tell if it is a street fighter or not
• Use a different mapping for each of those 4 cases, adapt it through core option

NB : I didn't debug the analog inputs yet, but that's a different issue.

[voljega]

@barbudreadmon Cool ! I'll retest everything not working when it's released then

[barbudreadmon]

@voljega It is released, but not in recalbox's makefile yet, you can still build and use it the "normal" way :

git clone https://github.com/libretro/fbalpha.git
cd fbalpha/
make -f makefile.libretro platform=rpi2

Then you would have to update your es_systems.cfg file with the path to the "fbalpha_libretro.so" you just built

Since recalbox is "readonly", i suppose you have to remount your filesystem in read/write mode first :
mount -o remount,rw /

There are still a few games that segfault because of dipswitch, that's the next thing i want to solve.

[paradadf]

@barbudreadmon I having the following errors with Ubuntu 16.04 32-bit::

paradadf@paradadf-pc:~/fbalpha$ make -f makefile.libretro platform=rpi2
cc -DARM -O2 -DNDEBUG -fPIC -Wno-write-strings -D__LIBRETRO__ -DLSB_FIRST -marm -mcpu=cortex-a7 -mfpu=neon-vfpv4 -mfloat-abi=hard -ffast-math -DINLINE="static inline" -DSH2_INLINE="static inline" -D__LIBRETRO_OPTIMIZATIONS__ -DUSE_SPEEDHACKS -DFRONTEND_SUPPORTS_RGB565 -Isrc/burner/win32 -Isrc/burner/libretro -Isrc/burner/libretro/tchar -Isrc/burn -Isrc/cpu -Isrc/burn/snd -Isrc/burn/devices -Isrc/intf -Isrc/intf/input -Isrc/intf/cd -Isrc/intf/audio -Isrc/burner -Isrc/cpu -Isrc/cpu/i8039 -Isrc/cpu/i8051 -Isrc/dep/libs/zlib -Isrc/burn/drv/capcom -Isrc/burn/drv/konami -Isrc/burn/drv/dataeast -Isrc/burn/drv/cave -Isrc/burn/drv/neogeo -Isrc/burn/drv/psikyo -Isrc/burn/drv/sega -Isrc/burn/drv/toaplan -Isrc/burn/drv/taito -Isrc/dep/generated -Isrc/dep/libs -c src/burner/unzip.c -o src/burner/unzip.o
cc: warning: ‘-mcpu=’ is deprecated; use ‘-mtune=’ or ‘-march=’ instead
cc: error: unrecognized command line option ‘-marm’
cc: error: unrecognized command line option ‘-mfpu=neon-vfpv4’
cc: error: unrecognized command line option ‘-mfloat-abi=hard’
makefile.libretro:585: recipe for target 'src/burner/unzip.o' failed
make: *** [src/burner/unzip.o] Error 1

I suppose, I would need to make some modifications in order to cross compile, but that's beyond my skills XD