FBNeo vs MAME?

[Kefka2b]

Hey folks,

I see that FBNeo supports achievements… so I am thinking of using it as the main Arcade core, I heard it’s actually better that MAME in many games -> Is this accurate?

If I wanted to get a new updated romset for FBNeo, and play the rest of the games with MAME, is there an easy way to remove all FBNeo compatible roms from a MAME romset? (just to avoid duplicates…).

Maybe an extra question, has anyone got some good recommendations for dat files that are up to date similar to “All Killer No Filler” trims?

[Hari-82]

I personally use Fbneo 99% of the time, it works well and “plays” well with retroarch.

Also you can have a look at this:

MAME games to complement FBNeo

I’m using FBNeo as my go-to arcades core in retroarch and is been a while that I do not keep a full mame romset at ready. So I opened this thread to ask game titles (2D, “8/16bit” style) that are missing from fbneo (up to early 2000’s) that are worth having. My first suggestios are: Bosconian : great Namco classic from 1984, somehow strange to be missing in FBneo, if you know and like the game I also suggest to try the x68K version that is more then a “simple” port and is probably the defitiv…

[aorin1]

The way I use it personally is basically playing 2D classics with FBNeo and a few 3D of the era I go with mame, as obviously, FBN never intended to emulate 3D graphics as far as I know, but there are still a few obscure 2D games that FBNeo doesn’t run, these are less known games, though.

Reasons being, FBN feels lighter on the resources and starts faster, it aims to emulate only 2D arcade games (albeit it also emulates consoles, but I wouldn’t use it for this goal if I can opt for dedicated cores).

It supports runahead and similar input delay features, among other retroarch options that feel better integrated.

For vertical games, I have better luck with mame, it just doesn’t behave right with me when I set vertical mode in FBN for some reason.

Mame is great but it’s goal is way too big for the average player. While I feel that FBN could also benefit from having a FBN Pure variant that would emulate only arcade games.

It’s true that many devices can handle the extra load with relative ease, but the lighter, more focused variants would provide a better experience overall.

All in all, I was never disappointed with either and we can only be grateful for having two great choices to play with.

[Awakened]

I found FBNeo’s audio to seem higher quality sounding compared to the MAME Current core. Dodonpachi DaiOuJou was the first game I noticed that when comparing. It might be because FBNeo has “4-point 3rd order” sample and FM interpolation enabled by default. It also has a low pass filter you can enable if certain games sound too tinny.

[shakalakka]

Mame is more accurate, FBneo has better Performance and somewhat better playability. Also mame Supports much more Games.

[BarbuDreadMon]

@shakalakka

Mame is more accurate

As i keep saying, this is not exactly right. Most games are equally accurate in both emulators, and while some games are more accurate in MAME, the opposite is also true.

@aorin1

For vertical games, I have better luck with mame, it just doesn’t behave right with me when I set vertical mode in FBN for some reason.

Well, write a proper report explaining your issue and i’ll be able to help.

[BarbuDreadMon]

@Awakened

I found FBNeo’s audio to seem higher quality sounding compared to the MAME Current core. Dodonpachi DaiOuJou was the first game I noticed that when comparing

FinalBurn used to have better ics2115 (pgm’s sound board) emulation than MAME. Several years ago they wanted to backport our driver but couldn’t get the authorization to re-license it from its author. I heard they rewrote their driver some time ago so i’m not sure how much of this is still true.

[aorin1]

@BarbuDreadMon

Well, write a proper report explaining your issue and i’ll be able to help.

On FBN, vertical mode to ON

Using MAME, setting in Quick Options/Video the screen rotation from “libretro” to “internal”, displays the correct vertical mode.

On both cores, FBN or MAME, not setting to vertical mode just stretches the image across the 16:9 display.

Retroarch version - 1.20.0 FBN version - v1.0.0.03 Game tested Dodonpachi (Japan) Windows 10/10GB/GTX 1660ti Shader used - /border/ambient-glow-crt.slang

[BarbuDreadMon]

@aorin1

vertical mode to ON

What are you trying to achieve by enabling vertical mode ? Is your screen vertical ? That core option is meant for users with a vertical screen.

Also, i think you are forcing an aspect ratio instead of using the one provided by the core. Or maybe you disabled core rotation in retroarch settings (that might also explain why you set rotation mode to internal in mame) and things are going bonkers as a result, apparently someone changed the behavior of that retroarch setting without a care about the cores that might suffer from this…

More information at https://docs.libretro.com/library/fbneo/#why-are-vertical-games-not-working-properly.

Edit: i pushed a fix for the disabled core rotation : https://github.com/libretro/FBNeo/commit/eb3a2f5a5767ce9edc74ad6e3d3f139777cab58b

[aorin1]

@BarbuDreadMon

i think you are forcing an aspect ratio instead of using the one provided by the core. Or maybe you disabled core rotation in retroarch settings

I never changed this option, I actually didn’t know this option existed under settings/core, but here’s a screenshot of what it was set to anyways:

And under Video options, it’s also using its default setting:

@BarbuDreadMon

What are you trying to achieve by enabling vertical mode ? Is your screen vertical ?

I always thought that Quick Menu/Core Options for both FBN and MAME, as far as setting specific games to vertical mode was always needed, as I don’t think any vertical game I played since 2015 automatically rotated the image. It was always something I had to change for a decade now.

[BarbuDreadMon]

With default retroarch settings and core options, arcade cores will automatically rotate vertical games so that they are playable on a horizontal screen, you don’t need to change anything. FBNeo’s vertical mode is a core option for users who want to play on a vertical screen.

So, after reverting vertical mode to its default, is everything back to normal ?

[aorin1]

@BarbuDreadMon

So, after reverting vertical mode to its default, is everything back to normal ?

I didn’t change anything, the previous screenshots are just to show the rotation settings were always in their default settings.

Possibly, two things are what cause the issues I mentioned, first being the aspect ratio I set to full, this is because the ambient glow CRT shader I mentioned fills the unused part of the screen to render the glow/color effects you seen in my previous screenshots.

But the rotation behavior was the same years before I started using the ambient glow shader.

Setting the aspect ratio to full, however, just stretches the whole game without the image being rendered in vertical mode anyways.

If you want to reproduce that, please, set the aspect ratio to full and then load the slang shader under border/ambient glow crt.

[BarbuDreadMon]

@aorin1

I didn’t change anything

Meaning vertical mode is still on ? Could you please properly explain what you are trying to achieve by doing this ? For the 3rd time, that setting must be set to off (the default value) if you are playing on a standard screen that was not physically rotated to a vertical/portrait position (i.e. not like this).

@aorin1

If you want to reproduce that, please, set the aspect ratio to full and then load the slang shader under border/ambient glow crt.

Setting this to full is setting a display aspect ratio to match your screen, so 16:9 instead of the core-provided 3:4, i guess this is intended retroarch behavior ?

As for that shader, it seems to be broken. In its current state, you won’t be able to use that with vertical games in FBNeo. Apparently it doesn’t do much with core-provided aspect ratio and cut half of the screen when set to full. Those 2 results were achieved on a standard horizontal screen where the vertical mode core option is set to off as it should. It might be one of those shaders that doesn’t work properly with libretro’s hardware rotation.

Edit : it seems that shader is something @hunterk wrote a long time ago, maybe he’d be interested in fixing it for hardware rotation support.

[aorin1]

I’ve been clearly explaining every detail, you asked for a proper report and I’ve provided it, including the shader I’m using.

Setting aspect ratio to full is required for basically most shades in wide screen displays, for obvious reasons. Ambient glow would be useless without this set to full.

I know quirks like these are mostly shader related, as I explained, retroarch always behaves like this with shaders and only with per game settings or property designed shades, vertical games are displayed correctly.

The thing is, only with mame I can set them to vertical mode like shown before, as with FBN, the game won’t be displayed correctly even setting them to vertical mode or whatever I try.

[BarbuDreadMon]

@aorin1

The thing is, only with mame I can set them to vertical mode like shown before, as with FBN, the game won’t be displayed correctly even setting them to vertical mode or whatever I try.

I repeat, vertical mode in FBNeo is an option meant for users with vertical screens, and nobody else, it rotates the display by 90°. As for MAME, its core option is meant to switch between hardware rotation (libretro) and software rotation (internal). Meaning they are entirely different things, so stop making a parallel between them.

@aorin1

I’ve been clearly explaining every detail

No, you keep dodging my question. I still don’t know if you still have vertical mode enabled in FBNeo and/or have a screen rotated vertically.

Edit: To be clear, i can’t do anything about that shader being broken with hardware rotation, but what i want to know is if everything works properly when you remove that shader and disable FBNeo’s vertical mode.

Additional note : FBNeo’s vertical mode is roughly equivalent to this setting in MAME OSD :

[Hari-82]

I think the problem could be with the shader itself, I quickly tried border/ambient-glow.slangp and it does not work for me.

this is what I get setting aspect ratio to Full and loading ambient-glow.slangp

[BarbuDreadMon]

@Hari-82

this is what I get setting aspect ratio to Full and loading ambient-glow.slangp

Yes, that’s the result i ended up with. As previously said this shader doesn’t seem compatible with the hardware rotation used by FBNeo.

In MAME, you can set Screen Rotation Mode to internal to deal with shaders that aren’t compatible with hardware rotation, it’ll replace the hardware rotation (rotation done by the gpu) by a software rotation (rotation done by the cpu). There is no such option in FBNeo for 2 reasons :

• it’s extremely inefficient to use the cpu instead of the gpu for rotating an image
• cores shouldn’t have to accomodate for shaders that don’t respect libretro standards, hardware rotation has been available through the libretro api since the very beginning of this project, and both shaders and cores should be coded to be compatible with it.

[aorin1]

This was just a comment that I had a few issues with vertical games days ago and you asked for a proper report, that’s what I did.

But all in all, I don’t really think it’s something that bothers me to the extent that it has taken already, I don’t think we should even investigate it further, specially since it sometimes seems to lead to personal arguments.

I’m happy with how it just works with mame, even if there are those who are technically Inclined to just tell me it’s just wrong, etc. It just works.

Yes, I knew it’s a shader quirk as I previously mentioned, but the few vertical games I already have set up in mame plays and are displayed perfectly fine.

I won’t be replying to this thread further, but I thank the attention given to the issue.

[BarbuDreadMon]

@aorin1

it sometimes seems to lead to personal arguments.

I kept asking a question about your usage of a core option after noticing you enabled it, and you kept dodging it by making a parallel with an entirely unrelated core option in another core. I’m sorry that you see this as a personal argument because it’s not, it is a misunderstanding about the usage of those 2 core options.

Hopefully, those shaders incompatible with hardware rotation will get fixed someday. That ambiant-glow shader was last edited 8 years ago so i’m not too surprised about it. It used to be feasible but hard for a shader to detect if hardware rotation was in use, it only became easy with the implementation of the rotation uniform 2 years ago.

[alexb3d]

Also…

FBNeo supports many homebrew.

MAME lets you enter a fascinating new world and discover how a cigar vending machine works.