Author Topic: FB Alpha 0.2.97.43 Bug Reports  (Read 479375 times)

Offline el_rika

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Re: FB Alpha 0.2.97.39 Bugs Reports
« Reply #690 on: February 24, 2017, 01:23:43 PM »
el_rika, you seem to use libretro-fbalpha, did you update it to the latest version ?

yes, i did.

both .38 and .39 have strange sound issues in this game. Could be that i have an incompatible rom, though i tried 3 different versions.

Offline Arcadez

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Re: FB Alpha 0.2.97.39 Bugs Reports
« Reply #691 on: February 24, 2017, 04:01:54 PM »
If the sound becomes bad as well, then it is surely lack of power, if the sound stays good, then it's an issue with the emu.

Yeah the sound is fine, so as you say it's very likely a problem with the Neogeo code in FBL when it comes to this game as
we have alot of VMM loading code wrapped around the Gfx code so the big Neogeo roms dont run out of mem on boot
due to the 64mb Ram limitations of the Xbox console, maybe something in that extra VMM code which causes issues with
Strikers 1945 Plus.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2017, 04:07:15 PM by gamez fan »

Offline Arcadez

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Re: FB Alpha 0.2.97.39 Bugs Reports
« Reply #692 on: February 24, 2017, 04:13:20 PM »
I'm kinda surprised. It's using around 35% of 1 cpu core on my raspberry pi 3.
If you are using retroarch, it should be available on libretro's buildbot.

Yeah i dont think it's the hardware as such more than likely a Emulator problem as we have older MAME ports on the xbox and
Strikers 1945 Plus plays like a treat when using those.

Offline el_rika

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Re: FB Alpha 0.2.97.39 Bugs Reports
« Reply #693 on: March 10, 2017, 01:27:43 PM »
Battle Garregga issue.

I tested on .37, .38, .39, and after a while (pretty random, from a couple of minutes to fifteen minutes) the fire button (which is autofire in this game) behaves strangely:
1. it changes the autofire rate, with huge gaps appearing between salvos (it should normally be a pretty constant rate of fire).
2. stops working completely (the ship simply stops firing till i drop a bomb or die, or it just comes back after a few seconds, or not al all).
It is usually 1 followed by 2.
Tested mostly with Golden Bat (fourth ship chose by pressing A+B+C).

In Mame this doesn't happen.

Cheers, and have a beautiful weekend!  :biggrin:

Offline dink

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Re: FB Alpha 0.2.97.39 Bugs Reports
« Reply #694 on: March 10, 2017, 06:07:20 PM »
Hi el_rika,
Its really important to fix this one.  Please check your PM's here, I need some more information/help to track down this bug.
thanks for the report! :)

best regards,
- dink

Battle Garregga issue.

I tested on .37, .38, .39, and after a while (pretty random, from a couple of minutes to fifteen minutes) the fire button (which is autofire in this game) behaves strangely:
1. it changes the autofire rate, with huge gaps appearing between salvos (it should normally be a pretty constant rate of fire).
2. stops working completely (the ship simply stops firing till i drop a bomb or die, or it just comes back after a few seconds, or not al all).
It is usually 1 followed by 2.
Tested mostly with Golden Bat (fourth ship chose by pressing A+B+C).

In Mame this doesn't happen.

Cheers, and have a beautiful weekend!  :biggrin:

Offline dink

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Re: FB Alpha 0.2.97.39 Bugs Reports
« Reply #695 on: March 10, 2017, 09:12:08 PM »
el_rika:
I talked to a friend regarding our Battle Garegga emulation and things, he says that you probably accidentally put your ship into "program autofire" mode.  This will record the fire buttons you press and play them back.  Its built into the game itself, you can read about it here: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=351 search for autofire.  It causes problems exactly like you mentioned when it is accidentally activated.

I think I never ran into this in the million times I've played Battle Garegga because I always use the FBAlpha Autofire instead which can easily be configured: Input -> Autofire Rate, and Input -> Map Game Inputs and scroll way down to map the autofire buttons.

If you think its a bug and not this, please do the recording stuff I PM'd you about and I will investigate :)

best regards,
- dink

« Last Edit: March 10, 2017, 09:13:46 PM by dink »

Offline el_rika

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Re: FB Alpha 0.2.97.39 Bugs Reports
« Reply #696 on: March 11, 2017, 05:08:28 AM »
thanks for answering, i'm checking the link right now!

edit:
Ok, so i tested the game for the last few days, and also asked the guys at shmup forums about the fire rate. I swear the developers couldn't have made this game more complicated if the wanted, this is the MGS of shmups right here  :p
It is still a bit random the change in fire rate, but i guess it is how it is.

One small other thing though. I noticed that, unless i overclock the internal CPU of the emu to 200 (max), Garegga has slowdowns here and there (like when you lose your last life of the credit and all the power ups fall from you, or when the 2-nd stage boss appears, etc). As far as i know, the original PCB has almost zero slowdown, so i guess this is the way to experience it.

Thanks for you patience, have a great week!
« Last Edit: March 13, 2017, 03:14:26 PM by el_rika »

Offline dink

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Re: FB Alpha 0.2.97.39 Bugs Reports
« Reply #697 on: March 17, 2017, 04:58:12 PM »
Oops, I didn't see your reply until now because you edited instead of replied.  :redface:

I agree, Battle Garegga is seriously advanced in all respects, every time I play it I learn something new from the game.   and also most perfect shooter ever  :biggrin:
I think our emulation of it is near-perfect, but I will compare our emulation of B.Garegga with MAME and PCB to find those timing problems you have mentioned, and try my best to fix them properly without needing any sort of overclocking.

best regards,
- dink

thanks for answering, i'm checking the link right now!

edit:
Ok, so i tested the game for the last few days, and also asked the guys at shmup forums about the fire rate. I swear the developers couldn't have made this game more complicated if the wanted, this is the MGS of shmups right here  :p
It is still a bit random the change in fire rate, but i guess it is how it is.

One small other thing though. I noticed that, unless i overclock the internal CPU of the emu to 200 (max), Garegga has slowdowns here and there (like when you lose your last life of the credit and all the power ups fall from you, or when the 2-nd stage boss appears, etc). As far as i know, the original PCB has almost zero slowdown, so i guess this is the way to experience it.

Thanks for you patience, have a great week!

Offline dink

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Re: FB Alpha 0.2.97.39 Bugs Reports
« Reply #698 on: March 17, 2017, 09:10:46 PM »
So far I tried Battle Garegga in MAME and FBA, and the slowdown when you die at the first and second boss is exactly the same for both emulators.  I don't see any slowdown when the 2nd level boss appears in at all, can you possibly make a video of this slowdown or record a input recording(using the windows version) to show me how and where this happens so I can figure out where the problem is?  Are you using the windows version?  If not, can you see if the same problem happens in the windows version?

Thanks & best regards,
- dink

Offline jan_klaassen

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Re: FB Alpha 0.2.97.39 Bugs Reports
« Reply #699 on: March 18, 2017, 09:05:27 AM »
The hardware that game runs on has a register that reflects the CRT status in detail, and that's probably wrong to some degree in most or all emulators. The games heavily depend on it, and will sit in loops to wait for certain conditions.

e.g. here's one from battle garegga (there are more):
Code: [Select]
002236 -- -- -- -- 3f07 move.w  D7, -(A7)
002238 -- -- 3e39 0021 c03c move.w  $21c03c.l, D7
00223e -- -- -- 6b00 0008 bmi     2248
002242 -- -- 3e39 0021 c03c move.w  $21c03c.l, D7
002248 -- -- -- -- 5307 subq.b  #1, D7
00224a -- -- -- 0c07 00ee cmpi.b  #-$12, D7
00224e -- -- -- -- 64e8 bcc     2238
002250 -- -- -- -- 3e1f move.w  (A7)+, D7
002252 -- -- -- -- 4e75 rts

Get that register right, and it affects both the slowdown and the sprites moving out of sync (my current source code is a bit better with the CPU at 100%). These games are a part of the reason for the CPU overclocking feature in fba.

Batrider also has some weirdness with the sound communication, though that only seems to affect the attract mode. FBA's drivers need an update to synchronise the cpus and sound better, but that probavly won't affect the slowdown at all.

Offline dink

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Re: FB Alpha 0.2.97.39 Bugs Reports
« Reply #700 on: March 18, 2017, 02:42:54 PM »
Where does the issue with Batrider's sound happen?  I'd like to fix this asap but need to know what to listen for.

best regards,
- dink

Offline dink

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Re: FB Alpha 0.2.97.39 Bugs Reports
« Reply #701 on: March 18, 2017, 09:00:26 PM »
Ahh right, so after listening to Batrider on MAME and PCB, I realized how sluggish ours is.  Bumping the interleave up from 8 to 64 gets ours on par with everything :)  Happy day!

EDIT: after many many many more comparisons, I found a couple spots where certain sounds lagged still.  Increasing the interleave a bit more and removing a check that only ran the soundcpu every other frame interleave did the trick. 

I wonder if any other toaplan games suffer from this as well?  I guess I will have to investigate.  :cool:

best regards,
- dink
« Last Edit: March 18, 2017, 09:29:21 PM by dink »

Offline dink

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Re: FB Alpha 0.2.97.39 Bugs Reports
« Reply #702 on: March 19, 2017, 09:31:03 AM »
Regarding the recent toaplan bughunt / from the "all video effects matters" and "I was always told FBAlpha's Toaplan emulation was infallible" departments.

Gab75 pointed out earlier that the mosaic effect is missing from FixEight during scene transistions.  I made a fix for this, but we need to do some more testing before committing - since some major games are involved (battle garegga/bakraid, mahoudai, shippumd & truxton2).

best regards,
- dink
« Last Edit: March 19, 2017, 09:34:12 AM by dink »

Offline el_rika

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Re: FB Alpha 0.2.97.39 Bugs Reports
« Reply #703 on: March 20, 2017, 07:25:01 AM »
Oops, I didn't see your reply until now because you edited instead of replied.  :redface:

I agree, Battle Garegga is seriously advanced in all respects, every time I play it I learn something new from the game.   and also most perfect shooter ever  :biggrin:

It is indeed a pretty good game. I just discovered it a year ago and i love it. It is an outstanding achievement from the developers seeing how it is so complex and difficult yet the game is so balanced and addictive  :)

The hardware that game runs on has a register that reflects the CRT status in detail, and that's probably wrong to some degree in most or all emulators. The games heavily depend on it, and will sit in loops to wait for certain conditions.

Get that register right, and it affects both the slowdown and the sprites moving out of sync (my current source code is a bit better with the CPU at 100%). These games are a part of the reason for the CPU overclocking feature in fba.


So my assessment was correct. I think with default CPU clock, Garegga stutters a bit compared to PCB (when you die, at the levels transition, some bombs involving a lot of sprites, etc). With the clock to 160 though, it is smooth. I foud Progear to benefit from this too, though a bit more testing is needed.

Sadly i can not use the emu on PC atm, it is antiquated :(

My newly acquired Note 3 should be strong enough to keep me in the loop. Except for the Cave SH3 games (in mame of course), everything flies ;)

Offline barbudreadmon

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Re: FB Alpha 0.2.97.39 Bugs Reports
« Reply #704 on: March 20, 2017, 07:42:38 AM »
Sadly i can not use the emu on PC atm, it is antiquated :(
Which means you are using fba4droid ? libretro-fbalpha ? You should mention it when you report an issue, it could be an issue specific to the port.