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Final Burn Neo => FBN Discussion => Topic started by: dink on December 19, 2016, 09:22:23 PM

Title: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: dink on December 19, 2016, 09:22:23 PM
If you tried the game Power Drift, and noticed something isn't quite right with the steering - try this quick tip and you'll be enjoying a game in no time :)

The game requires a steering preset to properly control your vehicle, here's how to do it:

Load up Power Drift, then go to Input -> Map Game Inputs or just press F5.

Towards the bottom you'll notice 3 pull-down type boxes.  Pull down the first one and select "Player 1"
Pull down the middle box and select "Joystick 0", or "Keyboard" depending on what you want to use.
Pull down the 3rd box and select "Auto-Center", then click the "Use Preset" button.
Now, all you have to do is configure the buttons for Accelerate, Gear and Brake, press OK and start a game :)

This method works great using the thumbstick on either a DualShock or Xbox360-type controller.
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: Arcadez on January 03, 2017, 05:02:06 PM
Some games just dont transfer very well from Arcade to Emulator inputs wise, Power Drift controls like sh** for me in two Emulators
now and nothing i can do to fix that :( BTW another one you may want to look at to tweak the input settings is Double Axle  also
known as Power Wheels.
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: phozz on September 03, 2017, 02:53:45 PM
Hi all, I actually registered here specifically to discuss this issue and ask for help. As a long time fan of Power Drift (I miss that rotating cabin!) I have been struggling with the steering problem for a long time.

Historically speaking, the first emulator on which Power Drift was playable was Final Burn, which released in 2000 and (as far as I understand) was the predecessor to Final Burn Alpha. Its emulation was not perfect - the screen didn't tilt when the car turned - but other than that everything worked, and most importantly keyboard controls were responsive and razor sharp. With it I have no problems completing the game, often reaching the Bonus Stage (after a #1 streak). Despite being old the emulator works well on new PCs and it's still the one I use for playing this game.

In late 2002 development on Final Burn stopped, and soon Power Drift became playable on FBA and Mame. Unfortunately though, the controls were quite simply off. No matter what I did with these emulators I felt like a drunk driver, with the virtual wheel either responding too slowly or centering too slowly (or both) to be playable. I tried tweaking many settings while carefully comparing the behavior between FB and FBA/Mame (even using the game's diagnostics), but failed to find a satisfactory setting.

Last night I tried out the current version of FBA, fba64_029742. It actually seemed better, but still not perfect. I looked at the input settings and noticed this configuration line:
input  "Steering"         slider 0xcb 0xcd speed 0xe00 center 10

I compared it to the setting in Final Burn v0.518:
input "Left/Right"       slider 0x25 0x27 speed 0xe00 center 10

I tried to copy the values 0x25 0x27 but then the arrow keys stopped working - so I assume those are codes that determine which keys are used for steering and different values are used by the different emulators. But the speed and center parameters are the same, so.. why doesn't the slider behave the same?

Can someone with more knowledge shed some light and try to help? It's a shame that this game can't be played properly with modern emulators, and at some point Final Burn won't work on new machines any more. All that needs to be done is to compare the code responsible for the keyboard slider between FB 0.518 and the current FBA source, and make FBA behave the same as FB. (Well, at least it sounds simple...)
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: Gab75 on September 03, 2017, 05:22:09 PM
Hi phozz,
you can try with this setting (obviously combined with an analog joypad/joystick):
input  "Steering"         joyslider 0 0 speed 0xe00 center 10

I use a compatible dualshock joypad and this setting works fine for me... :) (for this kind of games a device with analog controls is highly recommended)
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: dink on September 03, 2017, 07:17:11 PM
Hi phozz,
I'd like to help here, but, could you please be more specific as to what is wrong here - for example, are the arrow keys not reacting fast enough?  What do you think is the difference between the slider from then and now the current version?
It might help a lot if you PM me a link to the old version of FB[a] which reacts how you want it and I'll try it and compare.  If its not available on the web, upload it to http://www.sendspace.com :)

best regards,
- dink

Last night I tried out the current version of FBA, fba64_029742. It actually seemed better, but still not perfect. I looked at the input settings and noticed this configuration line:
input  "Steering"         slider 0xcb 0xcd speed 0xe00 center 10

I compared it to the setting in Final Burn v0.518:
input "Left/Right"       slider 0x25 0x27 speed 0xe00 center 10

I tried to copy the values 0x25 0x27 but then the arrow keys stopped working - so I assume those are codes that determine which keys are used for steering and different values are used by the different emulators. But the speed and center parameters are the same, so.. why doesn't the slider behave the same?
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: phozz on September 04, 2017, 01:55:36 AM
Hey dink, when driving the keys are both a little slow to respond and a little slow to center - and in a game like this where timing is critical, that's the difference between going for #1 and crashing into a Victory Furniture billboard. On the other hand, in FB I can easily choose any of the 5 courses at the startup page while in FBA it seems to much more quickly jump to the extreme (A or E) selections so it's hard to pick B or D. So the wheel seems both too slow and too fast to respond, depending on the case! Now I've spent hours trying to tweak the settings (in Mame there are lots of them) looking for a combination that would replicate FB's behavior but failed. For example, if I set it to center quickly like it should then in some cases the car would not actually center but instead start drifting to one side rather than drive straight.

I really can't explain what "secret sauce" FB used, I guess a peek at the code is the only way to find out - though I don't have a copy of it. I hope it can be found somewhere.

I'm sending you a copy of the emulator. I'm including the ROM because there are slight differences in how FB preferred to have the data packed and named (try to use a current ROM file and it'll complain that something is missing. Still playable and behaves the same though). Remember in the Input menu to select Player 1, Kbd Centering Slider.

Another thing I'd like to mention is the High/Low gear setting indicator. In FB it's at the lower left corner (next to the speed indicator) and is very clear and readable. The characters are even styled to make it look like part of the original game. In FBA it's at the opposite corner and hardly visible - a handicap when playing. Perhaps this could be made more user configurable?

(For anyone else who wants to try: the emulator can be found at http://doperoms.com/files/emulators/mame/finalburn.zip . Use your current ROM file but rename it to pwrdrift.zip . Some sounds will be missing but the game will work.)

Thank you!
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: dink on September 04, 2017, 08:58:38 AM
Thanks for all the info and stuff, it helped me to replicate the behavior of the original FB.  With this setting and running FBA and FB side-by-side, both the car and the selection screen seem exactly the same with this input setting:
input  "Steering"         slider 0xcb 0xcd speed 0x900 center 10

For the next version I'll move the low/hi gear indicator to the lower left side of the screen.

best regards,
- dink
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: phozz on September 04, 2017, 01:46:10 PM
Wow, this is definitely much better! I hope you agree the game is a lot more playable now - and if you do, why not make this the default for everyone?

It still isn't an exact replica of FB's behavior however - it feels just a little bit different, and in the game's diagnostics > Input test > Handle right/left, the numbers are different. But I guess going for the exact behavior would require looking into the sources, and would take a lot more time and effort. I wouldn't mind doing it myself - do you have any idea where the old FB source code can be found? The original website is long gone. I can see a very old version of FBA (0.137) on the website - would that code likely be the same as the old FB?

Update: I've compared the sources. The FB source is found here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040614184019fw_/http://www.finalburn.com:80/fb/source.html
The relevant function is InputTick(), found at burner/input.cpp. In the current FBA source it's in src\intf\input\inp_interface.cpp. There are some API differences but functionally they look identical. Oh well. Any tips on where else to look?

Thanks a lot!
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: dink on September 04, 2017, 10:00:40 PM
I did some testing and found:
0x800 will get the same values in the diagnostics as FB
0x890 though, is closer to the timing in FB, and the values in the diagnostics are a little different, but the game responds exactly the same IMO.  Try both and see which one you like better :)

best regards,
- dink
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: phozz on September 05, 2017, 02:15:11 AM
I've just played under the two options and it looks like 0x800 nails it - I felt no control issues and got a #1 streak for the first time under FBA! Yay :biggrin:

I strongly recommend making this the default value for the keyboard slider under this game, or at least mention it in the Game Notes (where the current string is "Select Auto-Center preset in Input Configuration").

Thanks again for your help!
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: jorgemagana on June 13, 2019, 12:40:34 PM
Hello, this is my first post, congratulations to this incredible community.

My question is:  how do I configure Auto-Center option, for example ir Recalbox or Retropie? Thanks!
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: barbudreadmon on June 13, 2019, 02:25:16 PM
My question is:  how do I configure Auto-Center option, for example ir Recalbox or Retropie? Thanks!
There is no need for this in the libretro port, afaik it's only useful when simulating an analog axis with digital inputs, and i only map analog axis to real analog controls in the libretro port.
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: jorgemagana on June 15, 2019, 10:22:55 AM
Thanks!
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: phozz on January 12, 2023, 01:59:18 PM
Hi all, it's been several years and I'm happy to see that development is continuing on this excellent emulator.

Unfortunately, it seems that the steering issues with Power Drift have returned; once again the controls are sluggish rendering the game unplayable with a keyboard. And this time I can no longer fix the problem by changing the Steering setting to "slider 0xcb 0xcd speed 0x800 center 10" because this is already the default for this game! I'm back to square one on this issue.

Is anyone able to find out why the steering behavior has changed, and perhaps suggest a fix or workaround? It was perfectly fine in FBA's last official release, 0.2.97.43 and is bad in every FBNeo version that I tried - 1.0.0.0, 1.0.0.2 and the current nightly (15d46df).

Thanks a lot everyone :cool:
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: dink on January 12, 2023, 06:14:01 PM
EDIT: please disregard this message, I've come up with a better answer here:
https://neo-source.com/index.php?topic=2991.msg34918#msg34918

Hi phozz,
We had to add the steering delay directly to the game, because it had problems with joysticks and other methods of input as well - for example, if a big jump in the steering wheel movement happened at once - the game would get buggy.   Try this:
Load the game, press F5 to edit inputs, select steering and click the Map Digital checkbox.  You can map the left and right keys here, but before you do that: change the speed scrollbar.  left side is slower, right side is faster. 

best regards,
- dink
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: dink on January 12, 2023, 09:16:24 PM
Just fyi, fixed a little bug where the arrow keys would move the slider while mapping them.  d'oh!
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: dink on January 13, 2023, 01:38:43 AM
Hi phozz,
tonight I did a bit of debugging, comparing the old vs. current emulation again and made some adjustments, please grab the latest exe's from the repo:
https://github.com/finalburnneo/FBNeo/releases/tag/latest

The previous setting might be OK:
input  "Steering"         slider 0xcb 0xcd speed 0x800 center 10
If that doesn't feel quite right, try this one:
input  "Steering"         slider 0xcb 0xcd speed 0x700 center 10

best regards,
- dink
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: phozz on January 13, 2023, 07:11:36 AM
Thanks for the quick responses and the effort. Unfortunately I can't see an improvement in nightly 1f46da0, the steering is still nowhere as responsive as it was in FBA.
Here's a little experiment you can do to see just how sluggish the steering has become. The specific ROM I'm testing is Power Drift (World, Rev A).
Insert a coin and see how many times you can move the course selection cursor with the arrow keys from one side to the other (A to E, then back to A again) before the time runs out.
With FBA I can do this 13 times, with the current nightly it's down to 9 or 8 depending on the speed setting of 0x700 or 0x800 respectively. I see no improvement with other values.

You mentioned that bugs occurred in the game because of the steering; I play this game often and intensively and the only bugs I've seen are:
(A) rarely I'm listed as second place even though I'm clearly ahead of everyone else (and the car behind me finishes after me and gets #1), and
(B) in the Extra Stage with the fighter jet, sometimes the first three AI cars run at full speed and it's impossible to pass them so I finish at #4.
Are these bugs related to steering? To be honest they hardly bother me.
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: dink on January 13, 2023, 09:35:44 AM
I'll get to the bottom of this, hopefully today :)

Curiosly, are you using 0x800 for the speed on .43?  I can't seem to get above 10 A-E's on .43 with 0x800, but with 0xe00, no problem.  Maybe its just me :)

The 2 things you've mentioned seem like how Sega programmed the game, usually we can't influence game logic like that, unless there is some sort of difficulty setting to be changed.

best regards,
- dink

Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: phozz on January 13, 2023, 09:54:04 AM
Yes, speed is set to 0x800 on FBA 0.2.97.43. Can easily switch 12 to 13 times with the arrow keys. So if you can do 10 on FBA, how many can you do on Neo? Do you notice the difference like I did?
Good luck in your investigation :)
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: dink on January 13, 2023, 09:08:43 PM
phozz,
Thanks for helping me better understand the issue!  Please give the latest exe a try :)

best regards,
- dink
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: phozz on January 14, 2023, 03:59:46 PM
It's much better, but control is still not quite as sharp as in FBA 43. The car is still a little slow to change direction in response to an arrow key and will still skid sideways for too long after I've released the arrow key. In the game's built-in diagnostic however it looks like the exact opposite is happening - according to the displayed hex values the wheel is both responding faster and centering faster!

So really I don't know what to say. I wish we could just restore the behavior from FBA, it really was perfection and it seems to me that there was no need to change anything. In your comments in the source code I see you wrote "Power Drift gets confused if there is a large change between steering values - making the car very difficult to control" - I've never seen such a problem when playing with the keyboard. You mentioned earlier that this occurred with joysticks and other forms of input, I assume this is because an analog joystick's input value can vary much quicker than a physical steering wheel - that's understood, but perhaps you can make the fix apply only in that case and not for digital (=keyboard) inputs?
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: dink on January 14, 2023, 06:12:27 PM
phozz, that's a good idea - I've added a dip to enable/disable the steering fix to hopefully solve the problem, let me know how it goes :)
best regards,
- dink
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: phozz on January 14, 2023, 07:21:35 PM
It goes really really well. It's perfect. Thank you.
My only comment is that there needs to be some documentation somewhere that states that this new setting is not technically a DIP switch (it's not something that existed in the original arcade machine) and what exactly it's intended to fix. I suppose a good place to do that would be in the Notes that appear when choosing the game in the Select Game dialog, but I leave the decision up to you.
I think this is the first time since the original Final Burn (which was released in what, 2002?) that Power Drift is fully playable on an emulator on keyboard without tweaking some obscure setting. Congrats :)
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: dink on January 14, 2023, 08:32:33 PM
That's good news :)  Thanks for helping me get it right!

I would like to make an attempt at improving the fix so that it won't cause any side effects at all, would you be willing to test it again if I do come up with something?

best regards,
- dink
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: phozz on January 15, 2023, 01:01:25 AM
Sure. But please don't break it  ;p
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: dink on January 15, 2023, 01:06:31 AM
After a bit of thinking on this one: it's not going to work when using a keyslider - since it basically does the same thing (at the driver level).  Oh well :)  Carry on!

best regards,
- dink
Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: Pipeline79 on May 08, 2023, 03:25:42 PM
Hi, this is a question for Phozz:

How are the controls supposed to work in Power Drift?  I've been trying with MAME (0.247) and an xbox 360 controller on Windows this afternoon.

By controls I mean the steering.  And MAME classifies it as a paddle.  If I set the Left Stick X-axis to the paddle (not Paddle Inc/Dec), the way it seems to work is that it turns the wheel relatively left and right - which seems wrong.  If I'm coming out of a corner I have to push the stick past centre in the opposite direction to get the car going straight again - which is way difficult.  If I set it to just Increase/Decrease the paddle and the auto-centering comes into effect it's much more playable.

I think I saw a post from 2006 or something where someone was complaining about this and I think a MAME dev said that's just how the game was - although I didn't really understand his explanation.

I haven't tried the FB Neo implementation yet that you've been discussing, but the way it's working in MAME really threw me - it's almost like it's working the opposite way I would expect.  I don't know if say, using an actual spinner-like device with a wheel would be more playable with things like this.

Just wondered if someone could explain this to me.

Title: Re: INFO: How to play Power Drift in FBAlpha
Post by: phozz on May 09, 2023, 02:07:17 PM
Sorry, I've never had any luck with this game under MAME, and I've only ever tried playing with the keyboard or a steering wheel. I'm not really an expert, sorry if the high quality of my complaints made it seem like I am :wink: