Compatibility of Raine as a libretro core?

I was wondering if anyone could shed some light or information on what kind of compatibility Raine (previously known as neoraine) emulator has with RetroArch and if a libretro core of the emulator would ever be possible? The emulator is currently supported on windows, osx, linux, and multi-arch. Doesn’t appear to demand too much in terms of hardware, runs perfect on a dual core nuc with integrated intel graphics. Would this be difficult to bring over to RA, if not, how well would it play on mobile devices (android & ios)?

http://rainemu.swishparty.co.uk/

http://rainemu.swishparty.co.uk/html/do … atest.html

Yeah, Raine does currently only play neogeo cd games, but it’s also the best at what it does in comparison to other options on pc. Also probably the best emulation option to go for (in terms of compatibility, performance, and features) on any platform. Some may think, “well, why play the neogeo cd version when basically all of those games are already available on neogeo mvs/aes, which FBA already supports?”; True, but there were actually a few exclusive games to the system; and also many of the games re-released on the neogeo cd featured some new features or extra content, and new arranged soundtracks in full red book audio (cd quality). Especially when it comes to the arranged soundtracks in cd quality, that alone sets it apart from its previous versions. Playing Raine through a good set of speakers or through great sounding headphones… mmmm, retro heaven. :slight_smile: lol

Thoughts and feedback?

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FBA supports NeoGeo CD games too, but it hasn’t been implemented in the libretro port yet.

Yeah, I was aware of that and was actually thinking about asking about it and why it was missing from the libretro port. Though after testing out neogeo cd playback on FBA, I realized that it wasn’t actually worth bringing up. Bringing that feature over to the libretro port wouldn’t do anything on making neogeo cd playback better on FBA. Atleast I would think. In terms of performance and compatibility of neogeo cd games, FBA isn’t even half as good as Raine (which was soley created for the purpose of playing neogeo cd games). On FBA, 2 out of the 3 games I tested crashed on start up. I was only able to get samurai showdown II working, and even that didn’t play perfect; the biggest issue on that was sound issues. The stage bgm wouldn’t play unless I paused the game, which then caused the stage music to sync and play-at the cost of freezing up the screen. There are other emulators on PC that play neogeo cd games, but nowhere at the level that Raine has accomplished. That’s why I say that Raine is the best option to choose for neogeo cd emulation. Regardless, it would be good if the libretro core of FBA contained all (or the majority) features and setting options that are present on its PC counterpart, though in regards to neogeo cd, is that even a main goal that the developer (of FBA) is addressing with his updates? With Raine, everything pretty much just works, is easy to set up, and has a high compatibility and performance rate. That’s why I brought it up to see if it could be ported to libretro, especially since it’s already on a few other platforms besides windows.

So far any NGCD game I’ve tried on FBA worked as it should, although I didn’t try Samurai Shodown II. FBA development is pretty much non existent nowdays since the developers moved over to a private repository and there are only about 2 people working on it.

oh really, it’s worked fine for you? Hmmmm, perhaps I was doing something wrong… I just put the neogeo cd ISO, cue, and wav files inside the neocdiso folder, then I put the neocd.bin and 000-lo.lo in the roms folder along with neogeo.zip. Then in FBA, I click the Load neogeo cdz game option. Is your set up different, and how do you go about loading up a neogeo cd game?

I actually use FBA on pc to play neogeo aes/mvs games, and i love how it plays nicely with pretty much any type of controller. If neogeo cd games have been working perfectly fine on your side, then i’d like to know how to accomplish this on my end as well. If it actually plays as great (or even better) as Raine, then I guess just bringing over the neogeo cd support to FBA’s libretro core would be the best approach for bringing over neogeo cd functionality in RA. Two things I would knock in regards to Raine is that it doesn’t play as nice with varying controllers as FBA does, and also raster effects don’t seem to be working even with the option enabled. Perhaps it could be working on a per game basis, though it wasn’t working for last blade 2; the stage with fire has raster effects, though it wasn’t present when playing through Raine.

I go to Game -> Select CD Image, pick the .cue file of the game I’d like to play and then select Game -> Start Neo Geo CDZ to play it while having neocdz.zip in my rom folder.

Well thats odd, I just tried the exact same thing and im still having the same issues. Even after throwing in the neocdz.zip in the roms folder. Samurai Shodown II still has the same issues I mentioned above, and King of Fighters 98 and The Last Blade 2 keep crashing FBA on start up. Have you tried either kof 98 or Last Blade 2? My files are working fine on Raine without any issues, so i wonder why it’s not playing nice with FBA. Perhaps its the audio format of the music files…maybe FBA doesnt officially support .wav audio files yet; what audio format are your audio tracks in?

so i just tried 3 different versions of each game that contained mp3 format for its music. Results are as follows:

Samurai Shodown II- Loaded, playable, but no bgm music at all. Not even pausing did anything.

KOF 98- Loaded, playable, but no sound at all. No game sound effects or bgms.

Last Blade 2- Loaded but not playable, never goes to game screen.

So yeah, I give up with trying to get neogeo cd games to run properly on FBA. Looks like I’ll be sticking to Raine. For neogeo cd emulation on the go or portably, ncdzpsp is a really good option if you have a psp. Both these emulators work great. Perhaps one day neogeo cd emulation (that just works) can make its way into RetroArch. Then it’ll become even closer to being the one and only go to source for all emulation needs. Though, it could also use additional features and options beforehand that standalone emulators have. Anyways, looking forward to the upcoming release of the new update for RA.

wouldn’t mess work?

I don’t know, Ive never tried MAME or MESS; well, i’ve attempted at using MAME, though I find it more of a hassle setting up than it’s worth to use. Not only does it not play nice with various kinds of controllers, but I just find the lack of instructions and the hassle of setting everything up too much to even bother with it. Its actually more of a hassle than RetroArch on PC. Both are currently not very friendly to people who may want to try it out, who may be familiar with some emulators but not quite know all the the ins and out of something like mame and it’s whole DOS-like navigation. It ends up turning away a lot of those people from wanting to use the emulators and instead use something with a friendlier UI and GUI, especially since everything is more self explained and clear cut. Raine was the first emulator I bumped into that played neogeo cd games that just ‘worked’ (and worked well) out of the box, once you’ve put your files where they belong. I then eventually tested other emulators (such as FBA and nebula) to see how they would compare.

I’ve tried using RA on PC a couple times, but the whole RGUI-only look and set up process turned me away. So, i think its great that the pc version will be getting a fresh new look in the upcoming update; and with the whole XMB look which i’m very familiar with, I’ll def be giving it a look and another try on pc. BTW, do you guys currently have plans to bring MESS to RA? What are the main differences and benefits of MESS and MAME when compared to each other, and will the updated version of RA be coming with a newer/up to date version of MAME?

Also in regards to neogeo cd emulation in RA, the psp version of RA will be coming with optimized ports of cps2psp and mvspsp from what i’ve read. Though what about ncdzpsp, which is also one of the other emus by NJ? It’s a neogeo cd emulator for psp and it works just as great as mvspsp and cps2psp. So, will the RA psp cores only remain exclusive to that platform, or will it be available as one of the stock cores for all platforms (once the update gets released)? If it becomes stock cores for all platforms, then would it be easier porting ncdzpsp to libretro instead of Raine? And seeing as how it was initially created for a weaker handheld, then any other device shouldn’t have any issues running it at full speed, along with the other psp specific emulators making their way to libretro cores.

RGUI might look dated but it’s very functional and now you can configure pretty much everything from there. And there has been a MESS core since march. MAME/MESS are bleeding edge cores now.

Can Mame overclock the loading speed of the CD? Because Raine can, with a maximum of x16.