Final Burn Legends 1.7

[gamez fan]

tk densho looks cool an all female lineup as well

 

in the newer mame sets alcon is now the parent for slapfight it works in my pc mame set but not in FBL

you get the hw switch error when the game has finished loading could a small driver update sort this

would be cool to play slapfight in FBL super chase crminal termination even without sound would be a bonus as well

 

BTW when i tried to load alcon in FBL 1.7 it freezes on the loading screen you then have to reboot the xbox

to get back to FBL might just be my set though

Edited November 15, 2011 by gamez fan

[RatherAnnoyed]

Actually, how difficult is it to get extra memory in an xbox?

My understanding is that it involves de-soldering the existing RAM chips from the mainboard and replacing them. On a personal note, I'm not keen on the idea of the RAM and CPU upgrades; for me the appeal of running emulators on a console is that everybody has the exact same hardware and the challenges are in optimising the code to get the best performance within those limitations.

 

About 40 fps. I think adjusting the vmm will help more than anything.

Something else I've been wondering about; drivers for older games from past builds of FBA always seemed to run well on the Xbox, however with this latest wave of updates the majority of newly added games don't perform too well (including the most recent Data East drivers from 0.2.97.13). Is this because they're ported from the latest MAME drivers which have become more resource intensive or is it that FBA is being coded with the current specs of modern PCs in mind, or is it simply that the drivers are new and there is room for optimisation? Just curious.

 

Me too, man, but it kinda winds me up a bit that I have roms on there that just plain won't work, you know? I like to feel I can just go pick a game even at random, and check it out. (Perhaps "winds me up" is a bit strong; let's just say that I like to know all the games I have sitting there will just work.) I guess I could just delete them when I come across them, but I'm never sure if a game just plain didn't work because I was doing something daft!

 

As for your other point: I'm under the impression that with every iteration of MAME, drivers/roms are "improved" in such a way that emulation is more accurate, which is usually more resource intensive. That is to say: accuracy is paramount, even to the detriment of raw performance. Is this the same ethos for FBA? i.e. are we going to soon get to the point where the xbox will struggle even to emulate stuff it's been handling in its sleep the past few years? I note you're having trouble with the neogeo stuff in the new build; would I be correct in assuming these issues are related to said performance degradation?

[+ T +]

BTW when i tried to load alcon in FBL 1.7 it freezes on the loading screen you then have to reboot the xbox

to get back to FBL might just be my set though

I'll look into the problem with Alcon. In the meantime though, the Slap Fight bootleg clones all work fine in 1.7.

 

As for your other point: I'm under the impression that with every iteration of MAME, drivers/roms are "improved" in such a way that emulation is more accurate, which is usually more resource intensive. That is to say: accuracy is paramount, even to the detriment of raw performance. Is this the same ethos for FBA? i.e. are we going to soon get to the point where the xbox will struggle even to emulate stuff it's been handling in its sleep the past few years? I note you're having trouble with the neogeo stuff in the new build; would I be correct in assuming these issues are related to said performance degradation?

It's not so much the same ethos for FBA as it is the fact that FBA drivers are ported from MAME drivers so the "ethos" is carried over in a sense. But you're right that if the most recent version of MAME were ported to the Xbox, many games that ran perfectly well in older builds would run poorly due to increased accuracy in the drivers at the cost of performance. This is partly my thinking as to why these new FBA drivers for older games struggle to get a decent framerate on Xbox hardware.

 

The new NeoGeo code has no performance issues at all. I compiled a working build of FBL with the updated driver and it runs just as well as the previous driver. The problem is that without VMM, only the smaller games load and anything that requires more RAM than the Xbox physically has won't work at all. It's beyond my ability to code new VMM routines for the updated driver and at the moment there's no real benefit to doing so since the only major additions are multi-slot support (which would be unsuitable for the Xbox anyway) and the NeoCD support (which should theoretically work without VMM).

[RatherAnnoyed]

Ah, I see. I got the wrong end of the stick. I mainly use FBL for neogeo stuff (and Cave, obviously), so I get a bit twitchy if there is any sort of indication of it just suddenly not working. (Once again, a huge thankyou to all concerned for allowing me the facility to play these games.)

 

To be honest, though, I'm wondering what is actually left for neogeo emulation? That is, are there improvements left to make? Even on the old xbox (using your latest release) it seems nigh on perfect to me? We still don't have save states, is that correct? But then, that's not really "emulation", which is what I was really talking about.

[+ T +]

To be honest, though, I'm wondering what is actually left for neogeo emulation? That is, are there improvements left to make? Even on the old xbox (using your latest release) it seems nigh on perfect to me? We still don't have save states, is that correct? But then, that's not really "emulation", which is what I was really talking about.

NeoGeo savestates apparently caused problems in early builds of FBL and so nes6502 disabled them. Other than that I think there are some graphical effects in the driver that aren't emulated 100% correctly but my info could be way out of date there. Rest assured though I won't be updating any code in FBL if it's detrimental to the performance of existing games, in fact astute users may have noticed that I even added an additional xbe core to v1.666 specifically for the purpose of running older drivers that perform better than their newer counterparts. So you can update with confidence that existing games will always run as well as or better than in previous builds.

 

EDIT: I just checked Alcon and it's flagged as not working in the driver. So there's your answer. Play the bootleg clones for now.

Edited November 15, 2011 by + T +

[RatherAnnoyed]

Thanks man, it's reassuring to know that you are indeed "future proofing" your emulator!

 

Heh.

[RatherAnnoyed]

Morning chaps.

 

I have a quick question regarding CoinOPS and FBL.

 

Does anyone actually use CoinOPS for FBL stuff? i.e. games that require the FBA core. I can't really see the benefits? You don't get access to the filters, for one (a pretty big one, too). I've not tried the console stuff, but I'm guessing the same deal applies (that is, for example, SNES stuff is simply using - I don't know - a ZSNES core or something, but you still don't get access to the filters from that emulator either)?

 

I don't get it.

 

I'm also rather confused as to what the author means whenever he claims that CoinOPS fixes all these bugs that were in the FBA core...

[cba.gy]

no comment !

 

(you answered your own questions really)

[RatherAnnoyed]

Heh, nice one.

[+ T +]

Does anyone actually use CoinOPS for FBL stuff? i.e. games that require the FBA core. I can't really see the benefits? You don't get access to the filters, for one (a pretty big one, too). I've not tried the console stuff, but I'm guessing the same deal applies (that is, for example, SNES stuff is simply using - I don't know - a ZSNES core or something, but you still don't get access to the filters from that emulator either)?

 

I don't get it.

 

I'm also rather confused as to what the author means whenever he claims that CoinOPS fixes all these bugs that were in the FBA core...

I'm sure some people do but, as you've already noticed, they're selling themselves short by doing so. And it's not just the filters either; the FBA core in CoinOPS doesn't allow configuration of any kind including access to DIP switches and service modes.

 

As for the "bugs", the last I heard the author was not using FBL but an old version of the FBA core taken from nes6502's Final Burn port. He certainly shouldn't be using any code from FBL since I state in every release that this should not be done without releasing the source (and I've also made it clear that it's my personal wish and the previously expressed wish of nes6502 not to have FBL included in CoinOPS). But in any case, I've found it to be true in the past that the author will often use the term "bugs" extremely loosely to refer to things like tiny reconfigurations of options or controls. The fact is, it's ridiculously simple to keep track of fixes you make in the code, regardless of how small or how many. If these hundreds of "bugs" actually existed and were fixed in CoinOPS, I'm pretty sure they would be shouted about in the changelog.

 

Any bugs that come to my attention, I will fix. Any "bugs" that don't come to my attention clearly aren't bothering people enough to notice them if they exist at all.

Edited November 16, 2011 by + T +

[RatherAnnoyed]

Thanks for the confirmation, +T+. I wasn't sure if I was missing something that enabled "proper" FBA access to those games running through CoinOPS (all I could ever get to actually fiddle with was the size of the screen).

[gamez fan]

well i dont run any games in the FBL core in coinops as ive got FBL 1.7 for the reasons +T+ mentioned dip access etc

but as ya know there's a good few games in coinops that use that core but if your not into extra settings and just wanna

play the games then that'll work for ya

 

if you like gun games there's a handfull that play better control wise "my opinion" in coinops if using the FBL core so that might be a good reason

for runnin them in that core in coinops

 

people ask me about FBL elseware some have never heard about it some have but dont want it i always highly recommend it

as i like it and have it myself

 

regarding the wider implecations of this core being in coinops ive no opinion about that as i just wanna play games

i try and avoid all the drama in this scene if i can help someone whos havin problems or to get the most outta coinops or FBL then its all good

 

must admit im startin to get sick of all the shit from all sides in this crazy scene never seen anything like it anywhere else my mates cant

believe it either it's like the school f****n playground except were all ment to be adults anyway takin a break from these mental sites

got arkham city and elder scrolls 5 will be playin these till next year time to get back to playin games instead of talkin about them

[gamez fan]

back on topic

 

didnt know operation wolf 3 played in FBL so i gave it a go loaded the dips and reversed the screen to upright then added easy difficulty,blood, extra life bars and so on but just

cant seem to get the gunsight to calibrate correctly in the gun options

 

problem is the game has a small box on screen crosshair and the best i can get the FBL crosshair is about half covering the box

which gets really annoying when tryin to play apart from that the game plays really well

 

so +T+ want to ask can this be sorted by adding an option so you can add or remove the onscreen FBL crosshair like you can in the mame emulators

or do you think you could sort the calibration yourself for next release

Edited November 17, 2011 by gamez fan

[+ T +]

easy fella i was kidding but its the roms you do not own you cannot ask for (ask someone to PM you a link ), its ok to talk about the emus with illegal bios files like the ones used for neogeo (just kiddin) I dont even know if they use the bios files its just a guess... i just play the games

Just to clarify; the forum rules are that you cannot ask for ROMs whether you own the original game or not. Also FBL does not include any illegal bios files; the bios files neogeo.zip and pgm.zip are separate files that are a part of the ROM set.

 

But, forum rules aside, this is intended as a development thread and it makes it harder for me to keep track of requests and reported bugs if it starts to get bogged down with people making and responding to ROM and/or emulator requests.

 

so +T+ want to ask can this be sorted by adding an option so you can remove the onscreen FBL crosshair

or do you think you could sort the calibration yourself for next release

I was aware that opwolf3 had calibration issues. But it's currently running at such a poor framerate I didn't think there'd be much interest in playing it this way. Now that I know differently I'll look into.

 

back on topic

Indeed.

[gamez fan]

wow quick reply the ink was hardly dry on mine

 

just played the 1st level it seemed to run fast enough never noticed any slowdown

Edited November 17, 2011 by gamez fan