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Final Burn Neo => FBN Development => Topic started by: Ryvius86 on May 08, 2019, 09:54:33 PM

Title: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Ryvius86 on May 08, 2019, 09:54:33 PM
I think it's only a matter of time before the first official FBAlphaFB build is released, so I've been working on some quality of life revisions to spruce up the Load Game menu.

(https://i.imgur.com/TFLuQKi.png)

- Switched Titles and Previews, so that Titles now appear on the left and Previews on the right.
- Added Bare Knuckle III (Twilight Translations) to the gamelist. Just mentioning this again for anyone who hasn't played it yet; it's much better than the Western version.
- Formatted various text throughout. Mostly just quality of life changes (punctuation, reordering, etc), except for the ROM information changes. These were too long and weren't displaying correctly. For example "Released by:" was displaying as "Released", and is now "Released:".
- Moved Favorites (I was tempted to change this to "Favourites" so many times) to the top of the Filter tree.
- Added Sonic the Hedgehog to the Family Filter.
- The Filter now functions a little better and even includes sub-categories for Capcom and Sega in the Hardware section, as the list was getting pretty long. This still needs some work though.

Some of these are from previous updates I've already implemented in the last week or so, but thought they were worth mentioning here for prosperity's sake. As mentioned, I'm not quite finished with the Filter changes, but it should be up on Git in the next day or so.

All future updates will also be posted here.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: dink on May 08, 2019, 10:04:44 PM
Very nice!  I especially like the Capcom sub-categories :)

best regards,
- dink
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Stifu on May 09, 2019, 05:19:58 AM
Added Bare Knuckle III (Twilight Translations) to the gamelist. Just mentioning this again for anyone who hasn't played it yet; it's much better than the Western version.

You might already know this, but FBA already supports the "definitive" (kinda) version of BK3: The Bare Knuckle 3 Project (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=675893652)
It has more characters, and all kinds of fixes and improvements. Also,it feels good to finally be able to use Shiva's fire kick (defensive special).
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Bad Dude on May 09, 2019, 09:34:28 AM
Nice, nice!
(https://media1.tenor.com/images/f2a5feda2a040c9e3ce5d77e68ff8e30/tenor.gif?itemid=13010078)
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Ryvius86 on May 09, 2019, 12:01:21 PM
You might already know this, but FBA already supports the "definitive" (kinda) version of BK3: The Bare Knuckle 3 Project (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=675893652)
It has more characters, and all kinds of fixes and improvements. Also,it feels good to finally be able to use Shiva's fire kick (defensive special).

The Bare Knuckle 3 Project is great, for all the same reasons as the SOR Remake - it's packed with updates. I can't recommend it enough. If you're looking to play something closer to the original though, without having to actually play Streets of Rage 3, Twilight's translation of Bare Knuckle III is the way to go.

Edit: Earlier tonight I added in a couple of extra versions of the SOR3 and BK3 Projects. I'm not really sure what all the differences are between them though, and I may need swap them again for other versions (I have 5 and 9 character versions, SOR 0.2, BK3 0.3, SOR 0.3 and others). Regardless, I'll have look into this more tomorrow. I can't even find any readmes, so if you have any info regarding the different Project updates/versions let me know dude!
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Ryvius86 on May 10, 2019, 08:09:59 PM
The Hardware sub-categories are proving to be a bit more challenging than expected. The mask worked (select/deselect all subs), but in appearance only.. the games wouldn't actually display. Now they display, but the mask doesn't work anymore. So I think I'm on the right track, and shouldn't take too long to figure out.

Looking at the screenshot in the first post I noticed the scrollbar in the Filter section had been moved slightly, so I shifted it back over. Here's the a new screenshot:

(https://i.imgur.com/f59kGsC.png)

I knew something was off, but only just clocked on. With the longer Family names and the new sub-categories, it seems it got pushed to the side a lil.

I also went ahead and updated the Bare Knuckle 3 Project to the latest version (the CRC is different, so PM me if you have any ROM-specific questions). As for the other versions, I decided to keep version 0.3 of the Streets of Rage 3 Project and the Bare Knuckle III Project, as these seem completely different to the latest Steam version. More info on them can be found here: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1346/ (https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1346/). As previously mentioned, theirs not a lot of information I could find regarding the different versions, so if you notice anything please let me know. I also have a 0.2 version which can be found on Steam, but to me it seemed the same as the 0.3 versions found on Romhacking.net.

Now back to this damn Filter..
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Ryvius86 on May 11, 2019, 02:27:36 PM
I managed to finish updating the Filter tree last night. Huge shoutout to dink for cleaning up my terrible code. I've attached a compiled version below for anyone who wants to try it out.

I've been thinking about replacing some of the Family (19XX, Aero Fighters and Power Instinct) with more popular or extensive (5 or more games) series. Or maybe adding a few extras if need be. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

I know that Sonic & Knuckles has a conflict issue with a prototype version and the Filter button (select/delect all filters) itself still doesn't work, but I think these may be beyond of my abilities right now. Nonetheless, they're still on my radar of things to fix.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: kev on May 11, 2019, 06:08:41 PM
I managed to finish updating the Filter tree last night. Huge shoutout to dink for cleaning up my terrible code. I've attached a compiled version below for anyone who wants to try it out.

I've been thinking about replacing some of the Family (19XX, Aero Fighters and Power Instinct) with more popular or extensive (5 or more games) series. Or maybe adding a few extras if need be. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

I know that Sonic & Knuckles has a conflict issue with a prototype version and the Filter button (select/delect all filters) itself still doesn't work, but I think these may be beyond of my abilities right now. Nonetheless, they're still on my radar of things to fix.

Nice work. As someone who has never looked into any video related code in my life, I can only assume it would be a massive pain, but it would look cool on that dialog box.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Ryvius86 on May 11, 2019, 06:27:11 PM
Yeah, or animated .gifs. According to the code you can add multiple preview images and it'll scroll through them (I think). That's probably the closest we'll get to video I reckon.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: kev on May 11, 2019, 06:44:38 PM
Yeah, the current code will go through different previews if they are available.  I might take a closer look as we are already using the video for window stuff for the avi recording, so it might not be too difficult.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Ryvius86 on May 12, 2019, 05:14:43 PM
Unfortunately, like so many of you over the last couple of days, this will be my last post. I can't stand being on a forum where one group of people's opinion is held above another's. I especially don't like people deleting posts that are A) directly related to the the title of the topic, or B) a direct reply to someone who quoted me and then disingenuously claim it to be "off-topic". To be honest, I don't really appreciate censorship of any kind. And this forum has that particular issue in spades. So many times over the last few days have I seen posts from users asking "why is it that one group of people can say whatever they want, and another is silenced?", only to come back later to find that post deleted. Personally, I don't think I was on either side of the issue, and had my own opinion, but because it didn't line up with the admin here, I, apparently, have no right to post. If you're going to have a karma system, why delete things at all? It makes no sense.

They keep saying "the issue is a sh** show" like it excuses censorship. Look around, you'll see it over and over again, like it's some pearl of wisdom. Everyone knows the issue is a sh** show, that's why they're talking about it. People have the wrong idea about certain issues, and quite frankly I'm probably one of them. But I'd prefer to be told, and then, if need be, I'd like to discuss those ideas. Isn't that the whole point of a forum? Deleting posts and crying virtue helps no one, except those who wish to see other people's ideas vanish. It's lazy and spineless.

It seems like kev suicide-bombed the thread in question. Took a a bunch of you out, and himself in the process (well done mate). Here's a quote from a PM he sent me:

"Sorry you feel that way, I believe I wasn't censoring anything, only trying to keep the thread on topic. Doing that from a phone sometimes stuff gets deleted by accident, but I try and out those back where I can. Sometimes I can't due to laziness, etc."

I'm surprised he could even muster the energy to reply, you know, due to laziness, etc. Don't worry though, it wasn't censorship, just incompetence. I tried replying, but it seems he's deleted his account. That one sentence says everything you need to know about the admin here: not only do they misinterpret  the meaning of the word "censorship", they don't care what gets deleted and what doesn't.

This place is dead, and I don't think anyone should be deleting anything.. not many people post as is. dink, you have a great attitude and a tremendously high work ethic, which I absolutely respect, but dude, you need tell admin to stop being such giant pussies. People can debate ideas without the need for others to dictate the entire conversation. It's unnecessary. Especially when they're clearly doing it with absolute disregard to the conversation at hand (you know, due to laziness, etc).

Oh, and Haze.. 99.9% of people that use emulation also use pirated games. Hardly any of them can code, and they all think gaming is better than coding. And the reason is, people like you have made it so easy for them. To say otherwise is being completely dishonest and paints the situation in an entirely different colour. I'm glad you like pink, but the world is blue. Yes, their are crazy-smart and talented people working on emulation. And I love them for it. But the law is the law. You can call it "using Capcom's IP in (your) spare time" all you want.. you're a pirate. Like the rest of us. I've never once said that FB Alpha coders deserve to to have their hard work taken away from them. Or that they owe these game companies anything. They don't. But to paint the whole emulation community in that wonderful pink light of yours is wrong. I don't appreciate you putting words in my mouth. It's a logical fallacy, and a terrible way to debate an idea. And for someone to delete my response multiple times is spineless. You're not as virtuous as you think. Capcom are bummed out that people have pirated their games for 2 decades due to emulation. Then along comes Barry, from the emulation community, to sell them an illegitimate licence. Go ahead and cry capitalism all day long, but Capcom are being betrayed just as much as the FB Alpha contributors. If not more.

I'm out.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Stifu on May 12, 2019, 05:34:49 PM
This is sad, we need all the contributors we can get. A few of my comments got deleted from that thread too, but I don't really care. What matters to me is the software itself, not these forums.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Kev on May 12, 2019, 05:41:55 PM
You shouldn't feel that way. To be honest that was the only time in the history of Neosource I think I have ever moderated a thread. and FYI, I deleted the one user who wanted to be deleted and my old account so I no longer have admin rights as I was clearly pissing people off.

However, my intention wasn't to piss anyone off, it was just to keep that thread to the topic, which I intended to be about what the situation is with Koch Media and what happens to FB Alpha going forward, and not have everyone argue about things that were not specifically that topic in just that one thread.

To save myself getting too stressed out, I have decided that I shouldn't care who is doing what to FB Alpha, and just carry on as I was. I hope that situation gets resolved, but my heart is telling me that it won't. Hopefully you see this post and change your mind, the other admins are more experienced at that kind of thing and probably take a more balanced hand.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: JohhnnyB on May 12, 2019, 06:25:25 PM
@Ryvius86

Sorry to hear you've decided to go as I think you're doing a really great job working on the part of the emulator that hasn't been updated for a while. Your updates are consistent and stable and that's what the project needs most.
It would be a shame for the project to loose a talented contributor who makes a difference in just a matter of days.

The final choice is yours however and that should be honored.

I won't preach since I'm not a preacher. I understand your frustration, I understand your point of view, I understand your reasoning.
My business relationship experience tells me however that your expectations for mature communication are a bit... idealistic. In business, as in real life, human communication is usually lacking any point and consistency and ends in bullshit if you allow it to run without any rules. Especially if it's attempted between people who just don't understand each other's point of view at all and try to defend theirs "because it's right".

Dink made a very good decision to just stop replying in the thread and instead focussing on the job after Haze had a go at him after an off-hand post. Let the armchair generals and frustrated alpha-males beat it out and you do what you enjoy. That's life.

In general however I personally feel that there were two big mistakes made in handling the topic in question.

1. Allowing toxic people (Haze) to actually take part in the discussion at all. Haze's posts might seem smart but are very acerbic at the core (Holy Crusader mentality). Not sure what's wrong with the fella (girl?) but there's something not right in the emotional department if you act like that in a public place. Don't believe? Look for similar topics on reddit to see more Holy Fire from Haze.

2. Allowing the topic to be an open discussion at all. The topic should be locked down immediately from the public after the initial post with a comment saying - we are working on it internally - .
Then continue the convo between the team internally since it's an internal affair between project members.
Such situations are a feast for trolls, carrion eaters and other unhealthy individuals.
The horse already died, time to clean up the PR side and move on. Everything else is company business, not a public discussion.


Atom-bombing the thread is a no-no but don't blame Kev. Everyone makes mistakes, we've all been in that place. Bombing your account by accident is even funny. :)
No need to ridicule anyone and point fingers, we're all doing charity here anyway.
Maybe apart from Barry. :P

I hope you give it a few more days, rethink your choice and come back to us. I'm sure more people apart from me appreciate your hard work and valid opinions.


@Kev

You ninja'd me by just a few seconds. :)

Please have a look at my notes.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: dink on May 12, 2019, 06:39:38 PM
Ryuvius86, first off I want to say you're a cool dude and I like hanging out and coding with you.

Times have been rough for all of us, we really don't want to see flamewar bullshit every time we load up the forum.  You have to at least be able to understand that and respect that enough to not contribute to the avalanche of crap.

Like I told you on irc, friendly/fba-related, dev releated & game/tech related talks have _never_ been deleted.

Haze is a seriously respected guy, he's responsible for a lot of the RE & emulation for the games we love.  Of course he knows what you're trying to tell him, because he basically was there from the beginning.

best regards,
- dink
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Kev on May 12, 2019, 06:50:11 PM
@Ryvius86

Sorry to hear you've decided to go as I think you're doing a really great job working on the part of the emulator that hasn't been updated for a while. Your updates are consistent and stable and that's what the project needs most.
It would be a shame for the project to loose a talented contributor who makes a difference in just a matter of days.



I agree completely!
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Arcadez on May 12, 2019, 07:03:14 PM
@Ryvius86 Dont go yet bigman we'd all like to see you stick around, take a few days to think it over im sure you'll still have the bug
to work some more on the FBA codebase.



Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Gab75 on May 13, 2019, 01:29:46 AM
@Ryvius86

I'm sorry to read your decision... obviously the "final choice" is yours, but (as Arcadez wrote) you should take a few days to think it over... sometimes moderating a forum isn't an easy task and it can happen to make "mistakes"... I hope you will "retrace your steps" !
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Ryvius86 on May 13, 2019, 08:16:15 AM
Appreciate it guys.

Kev, I'm sorry for pointing the finger squarely at you. Posts were deleted hours after you un-personed yourself from the forum, so it wasn't just you. But what was said regarding deleting posts by accident and being too lazy to check rubbed me the wrong way.

JohnnyB, I think Haze is entitled to his opinion, and I'd never want his posts removed either. He should be as welcome to speak as anyone else.

dink, I managed to fix that weird scrollbar bug you were talking about the other day, but with everything that went down I kinda forgot about it. It's a simple one, and you'll probably kick yourself, but here:

This line: xScrollBarDelta = (a == IDC_TREE1) ? -18 : 0;
Change to: xScrollBarDelta = (a == IDC_TREE1) ? 0 : 0;

It's the "TopLeft" one. Theirs only 2 lines like this in sel.cpp, so you can't miss it. The other "TopRight" one is -12 from the issue I had with the other scrollbar. You might wanna lower that one too (by a few pixels maybe, to tidy up the right hand side), but don't change this one to 0 as it moves the scrollbar way too close to the Filter tree.

Still going though, just wanted to make sure that bug gets fixed. I really like FB Alpha and you guys should be proud of it. I think it's a cracking lil emulator. Thanks again everyone, that was cool to read.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: dink on May 13, 2019, 08:50:03 AM
Thanks, actually the bug is a little more involved than that, but you're on the right track :)  Unfortunately, just changing that will cause more issues when the list is resized later.
This is what I came up with last night, it should cover everything:  ( a later commit removes the debug printfs and counter :P )
https://github.com/dinkc64/FBAlphaFB/commit/20cb4637769986fc429a3871d3705f1fd4340e88#diff-8db68385edb2d08689701b5ba924eccb

best regards,
- dink
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Ryvius86 on May 13, 2019, 09:54:05 AM
Glad you sorted it man. It worked when I tested it yesterday, but I guess it was worse than I thought!

Take care man. All the best.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Kev on May 13, 2019, 11:31:59 AM
Still going though, just wanted to make sure that bug gets fixed.

I respect your principles! I do hope you reconsider some day though.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: barbudreadmon on May 13, 2019, 12:23:26 PM
@Ryvius86 : That was a bad timing, censorship is not commonplace here, but at some point more drama just kept bringing more drama, and most of the devs were sick of it. No one is to blame here except the companies trying to divide and conquer. Take care, i hope you'll reconsider though.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Haze on May 13, 2019, 07:33:50 PM
Oh, and Haze.. 99.9% of people that use emulation also use pirated games. Hardly any of them can code, and they all think gaming is better than coding. And the reason is, people like you have made it so easy for them. To say otherwise is being completely dishonest and paints the situation in an entirely different colour. I'm glad you like pink, but the world is blue. Yes, their are crazy-smart and talented people working on emulation. And I love them for it. But the law is the law. You can call it "using Capcom's IP in (your) spare time" all you want.. you're a pirate. Like the rest of us. I've never once said that FB Alpha coders deserve to to have their hard work taken away from them. Or that they owe these game companies anything. They don't. But to paint the whole emulation community in that wonderful pink light of yours is wrong. I don't appreciate you putting words in my mouth. It's a logical fallacy, and a terrible way to debate an idea. And for someone to delete my response multiple times is spineless. You're not as virtuous as you think. Capcom are bummed out that people have pirated their games for 2 decades due to emulation. Then along comes Barry, from the emulation community, to sell them an illegitimate licence. Go ahead and cry capitalism all day long, but Capcom are being betrayed just as much as the FB Alpha contributors. If not more.

Well I'm simply stating that the reasons for development aren't always what you think, and in the end it is the developers who have contributed that own the code in the projects, and without them, and their reasons for contributing, that code wouldn't exist.

We actually recognized this need for MAME / commercial emulation, so spent in excess of a year of our time, often away from developing the project, to do a proper job of re-licensing everything specifically so that in cases like this Koch Media, or Capcom could take MAME 0.172 (or newer, preferably newer since there were some important CPS2 Qsound improvements etc) and put it in a commercial product like this.  This was one of the largest scale changes to happen in MAME, and significantly more work than anything else that has ever happened with the project.

FBA remained a safe-haven for people who *didn't* want their code used commercially.  There are plenty of people who feel this way, so while MAME headed in one direction, FBA remained in another, which provided a good balance to the scene, and gave options for developers.

Koch Media / Capcom got screwed over by their own laziness / trying to be cheap about the hardware requirements in this case, with Barry being the catalyst for that by misrepresenting FBA.  In that sense, after all the work we went through to make it easy for them I personally find it difficult to feel especially sorry for them.  Legitimate options were available, at no cost.  If they're getting bad press for this it's fully deserved, there's no excuse for a large company not doing a bit of due diligence.

You seem to, no matter how much effort we put in, prefer to side with Capcom / Koch Media in this, even if they ignored perfectly legitimate options that were on the table, at no cost, and instead perused ones which were obviously unsuitable which is both insulting to those who took time out from improving our emulator to, unprompted, do all the re-licensing work for them, and insulting to those who felt their code in FBA was safe under a non-commercial license.  They're not the innocent party in this, and even if you feel people have been simply pirating their games for years, it doesn't justify the behaviour.

The scene has tried to be as accommodating and helpful as possible while recognizing that some developers do prefer their work to remain non-commercial.

Anyway, I have nothing else to say on this matter, as others have said, time to move on, rebuild, create a new Final Burn, with a new name, and ensure that your message (licenses etc.) are more clearly conveyed (for example I strongly suggest putting pressure on the RetroArch maintainers etc. to show the license on startup so there can be no confusion) so that the people who contributed to Final Burn for the sanctuary of it's no commercial use clause can continue to do so without worry.

Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: iq_132 on May 13, 2019, 10:44:02 PM
I went through the deleted posts and restored them. Whichever mod is deleting things, please stop.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: Arcadez on May 14, 2019, 09:59:56 AM
I went through the deleted posts and restored them. Whichever mod is deleting things, please stop.

As per a request that came to me via pm from an admin on here, to keep the peace i have removed my original post as the motivations
of the person hosting that site cannot be ascertained it might all be bullshit it might not be, but it's not something im personally gonna give
anymore thought to.

Let's leave it deleted and move on now, i'll not be entering into any further discussions via PM on this subject nor will i be bringing it up again
i've one more push to make later today and that'll be my last interactions with the libretro projects.

Regards.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: barbudreadmon on May 14, 2019, 11:20:48 AM
As per a request that came to me via pm from an admin on here, to keep the peace i have removed my original post as the motivations
of the person hosting that site cannot be ascertained it might all be bullshit it might not be, but it's not something im personally gonna give
anymore thought to.

Really ? I'm just asking you by pm if you would mind hearing his version directly and maybe removing your link afterward, nothing more nothing less, why do you bring that up here as if i'm pressuring you ? I'm just trying to keep peace.
I'm done, i really need a break from all that sh**.

@Haze i opened a feature request about it : https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/8785 , i'm not familiar with RA's ui code myself so i just hope someone more competent will look into it.
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: dink on May 14, 2019, 11:32:50 AM
Arcadez it doesn't concern your posts at all buddy :)
Title: Re: Ryvius86: Development Updates
Post by: 7zxkv on May 29, 2019, 11:04:44 AM
it would be necessary to add the hack of bk3 dx, probably the best !
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1328/