+ T +

It would be more practical to use the NestopiaX interface since that is effectively the FBL UI with a working file selector. The problem however (and I'm afraid many things come down to this) is that I just don't have the coding knowledge for that sort of thing. I can manage tweaks, fixes, and updates just fine for the most part, but for any serious additions or changes I'm still very much reliant on the support and contributions of far more experienced and skilled coders like kenshiro and iq_132. FBL is one of the most refined and polished emulator ports on the Xbox (if not the most) and it really deserves better than my capabilities can offer. But I think it's more important to focus on what we do have rather than what we don't.

Lol. You can ask for anything you want, I don't mind. But as long as you don't mind that sometimes my reply won't beat about the bush.

You can't have "MAME in FBL". They are two entirely different emulators. Unless you mean you'd want the FBL UI to launch MAMEoX via some cheap command line trick. But I would have to ask what's the point of that? All you would end up with is MAMEoX running with none of the features or configurability of the original emulator, much like the old FBA core in CoinOPS. Let me be clear and say that FBL will definitely not be going down that road as long as I'm working on it as I consider that sort of thing to be entirely counterintuitive. FBL is an Xbox port of Final Burn Alpha and that's the way it's going to stay.

Unfortunately I've no idea how I would go about adding support for a trackball device in FBL. By asking you to test Arkanoid I was hoping that FB Alpha's built-in mouse support might allow it to work but it seems that the mouse is only emulated by the analog stick and there is no actual mouse support in FBL.

The very fact that you have a to do list is much appreciated . Btw, I may PM you soon as I seem to be having some trouble getting your new NeoGeo code working with the latest FB Alpha driver. Probably something I'm doing wrong.

Fantasy Zone 2 is supported in the new FB Alpha. Unfortunately it runs out of memory in FBL so this is another game that will require VMM to be added. That sort of thing is way beyond my ability but it's possible that kenshiro will be taking a look at getting these games working at some point. As to how well they will run I can't say though. FBL's Sega driver is still a little too resource intensive for the Xbox to handle comfortably. Some games do run full speed (Out Run is a great example and it's even better with the newly added analog controls) but most don't and I daresay we're unlikely to see any significant optimisations in the FB Alpha driver since even the most basic modern hardware can handle it with no problems. It's the same story with the new Irem and Data East drivers; on Xbox they're extremely slow. So adding VMM to any of the games that need it is no guarantee that they will run well. It would be the same if the most recent version of MAME were ported to the Xbox. Many games that ran fine before would be unplayably slow. With the current MAME port (regardless which derivative you use), the 0.84 drivers were coded eons ago and contain all kinds of hacks and not-so-accurate code that allowed them to play well on the PC hardware of the time. So the sad truth is that the Xbox is frozen in time while emulators are moving forward and leaving it behind and FB Alpha is just another example of this. That being said, I'm pleased with how FBL1.6 has turned out. I spent a lot of time testing and addressing any performance issues in existing games caused by the core update. So everything plays as well as it did previously or in some cases even better. But the day will come when it simply isn't worth updating FBL in line with FB Alpha due to the limitations of the hardware. But it is not this day.

Yes, full DATs will be included. The ROMs will be identical to the current FB Alpha 0.2.97.12 set which is based on MAME 0.143u7. So if you have a full set for either of those emulators then you'll have everything you need for FBL1.6.

It will be a parent set in the next version since the ROM sets will all be based on the latest MAME and ssf2t has been a parent since 138u1.

FB Alpha 0.2.97.12 has been released. It contains the Zombie Raid calibration fix and several other fixes/updates. I'll update the FBL code later today. 1.6 is still very much in the works, but right now I'm only able to work on it a little each day. There are some big megadrive changes in this new release as well so once FBL1.6 is done I'll try to release an update to FBC.

Out of interest; try your trackball in Arkanoid in FBL1.5 and see if it works.

If FBL ever advances to the point where it is a significant enough improvement over the 1.x releases, only then would the version increase to 2.x. I believe that version numbering should actually reflect progress and not just be a means of generating hype. Next release is still going to be v1.6.

Can't be worse than my last marriage. Where do I sign?

Yes, I saw this and I've already updated the FBL WIP code to FBA 0.2.97.10.

I've looked at the code and it seems like it would integrate just fine into FBC's NeoGeo driver. The problem is there's no way to select a game. I know that sounds ridiculous but the original code uses a standard Windows dialog box to select the cue sheet for the game you want to play. Obviously that won't work on the Xbox and I have no idea how to go about replicating that action in the FBL UI. I don't know if it's possible that the code could be modified to launch games as zipped sets in the same way as the existing ROM-based games but I'm thinking that's probably beyond my limited coding skill as well. It's on my list of things to look into though. That's something you'd have to ask iq_132 about.

I'm not doing anything at all with CPS3 stuff. iq_132 managed to get the driver running on a stock Xbox with his usual wizardry but it wasn't full speed and apparently required that the CPU core be entirely rewritten. As far as I know, that's as far as things have gotten and possibly as far as they are likely to get since rewriting a CPU core is no small job.

Should be fixable. Zombie Raid has a calibration option in the service menu.

Operation Thunderbolt currently runs at about 40fps. Interestingly, Zombie Raid runs full speed but the calibration is slightly off from the crosshair.

If I can't find a way to speed things up then yes, I'll still release it since some of the new additions run nicely and there are improvements to several existing drivers. I've still got a lot of work to do updating the other xbe cores to the new code though and finding the time is a bit of a problem at the moment. But rest assured it will get done.

I've compiled a preliminary build based on 0.2.97.09 and all of the new drivers I've tried work ok without VMM. The problem unfortunately is that many of the added Irem and Data East games run extremely poorly speedwise on the Xbox. I haven't done any tweaking yet to try and improve speeds but as it stands even older games like R-Type don't run full speed.

BIG NEWS. Looks like FB Alpha 0.2.97.09 has been released. The changelog is massive with many new and updated drivers. As soon as I get back into working on FBL, I'll make integrating these changes a priority.

thanks to wired-child for originally posting this. Thanks for that, I'll look into it. Will get that fixed also. If someone can tell me how to access the dip switch screen in Ketsui or ESPGaluda then I'll add a control for it as I did with the Cave hardware games. These two games have had a performance boost in 1.6 anyway so you should notice they play even better. Gladly. Do you still have that list of games that are just crying out for VMM to be added??

Apologies for the delay on FBL1.6. I've been away from home for the last couple of weeks and am returning tomorrow. I'd hoped to get 1.6 released before I left but updating all the ROM sets to the latest MAME versions is taking a lot longer than expected as so many have changed and several new clones/parent sets have been added.

I didn't actually mean it could be done in the code. What I meant was that creating custom configs as suggested by A Murder Of Crows and darknior could easily be done for major systems as it would mostly be a case of copying and pasting.

It could easily be done for the major systems (CPS, NeoGeo, Cave, Psikyo, etc.) since most games that run under these drivers use only one set of controls. It's when you start getting into all the Misc games that things would become complicated.

The problem with that is the way that FBL assigns controls. It's done dynamically so each game has specific control labels; these are defined in the driver. FBL doesn't have a default control configuration (with the exception of 'Coin' and 'Start' which are always the same) it just reads the available controls for the specific game and assigns the buttons in sequence starting with Button A. So, with things as they are, there's no way to set (or define) one particular control layout that will work for all games. The entire button mapping system would need to be changed.