Hey everyone,
First off, I've been using FinalBurn for a very long time and I want to thank all the devs for their amazing work. I probably should have reached out sooner, but like so many others I've been enjoying your efforts silently but gratefully. You all do awesome work, and it's been great watching FBNeo get better and better!
I don't know if this idea will pique anyone's interest, and sadly I am code-illiterate so I can't take a crack at it myself, but for years I've been hoping some emulator would add short-press/long-press macros. Primarily this would be for NeoGeo Pocket and Pocket Color fighting games, which use tap/hold presses to mimic a four-button control scheme with just two face buttons. I still dust off my NGPC from time to time, and to be honest I find this input method fiddly and obnoxious. I would love to see a work-around through which I could play these games with dedicated A/B/C/D buttons as the fighting gods intended.
I'm not quite sure of the frame counts, and it might require a little experimentation to find out if there's a meaningful difference from game to game, but here's how I think Last Blade (NGPC) simulates the Neo Geo version's commands:
A: Activates on button release if Button 1 is held for fewer than N frames
B: Activates on frame N if Button 1 is held for N consecutive frames
C: Activates on button release if Button 2 is held for fewer than N frames
D: Activates on frame N if Button 2 is held for N consecutive frames
With tap/hold bindings, the user could have a dedicated button for each of these commands without the chance of accidentally performing the alternate input. I guess it would look something like this:
Short press 1/2: Releases input after one frame regardless of whether the button is held
Long press 1/2: Sends a minimum number of frames (4/5?) of "button down" on press, regardless of whether the button is released
It's already possible to guarantee a short-press using rapid-fire, but it would be nice to be able to experience these games with a proper arcade stick and not have to fight years of muscle-memory from other games. There might also be some value to users of the FBN core on the android build of Retroarch using virtual buttons on a phone screen, where inputs may be imprecise.
Okay, sorry for being so verbose. ^_^ I have a couple more questions that don't really go anywhere else:
Would it be possible to make the default Neo Geo bios user configurable (or simply change the default to the latest available Universe Bios?)
I know this one is cutting it close to "request" territory, but is it okay to ask if an unsupported game has been tested recently, or if it's known not to work? I'm looking at Mouja and the board, CPU, audio chips, etc., are all handled in other games in FBN quite well. I did a search on the forums/discord and it doesn't seem to have been mentioned (except once, in a MAME update.) I'd test it myself, but I'm unsure of how to get FBN to recognize the romset.
Thanks again for FinalBurn!
