Where can i find more information about the differences between the core and the old standalone version?
Supposedly, the core is more modern and has some updates from newer MAME versions. But i can’t find any details about this. What is added/improved? Does the core has it’s own unique romset with any added games that didn’t exist in the regular 0.78 romset?
I would like to know how out of/up to date it is compared to current, since the 2003 standalone version is obviously 20 years old.
Are you sure you aren’t confusing the 2003 version with the 2003 plus version? I don’t recall the 2003 version being particulary different, the docs also say it supports the 0.78 set and not anything about something else.
Yeah, i’m probably talking about the “plus” version. Wasn’t aware there are two different “2003” cores.
The “plus” core has it’s own romset (though it should still be largely based on 0.78).
The changelog over at github gives an overview of what you can expect
All my life I have stayed away from the 720° clutter that MAME generates, and now with RetroArch I find myself in the need to immerse myself in this “experience”. 
2003-Plus is the same as 0.78, although it is totally different…
MAME 2003-Plus is a fork of MAME 2003, which is a fork of Xmame 0.78 (an unix-like port with portability in mind) and this in turn is a fork of MAME 0.78. But it has a code rewrite that makes it practically an independent project. I think it should have another name.
As @Jamirus tells you it is compatible with original 0.78 romset, better said, they have given support to almost all of it. But 2003-Plus has added support for new games, fixed bugs and added improvements.
The most outstanding differences are, that you can create/use custom soundtrack and in high quality (I think it is the only MAME that does it). The options are adapted according to the characteristics of the machine, and can be saved based on that set.
The current 2003 fullset (0.78) supports 4727 (2314 parents) and 2003-Plus supports 5213 in total (2498 parents).
And not to mention, the support and integration with the RetroArch ecosystem.
While MAME2003-Plus used to have the best libretro integration among the MAME cores, i’m not entirely sure how much of it is still true after @sonninnos took over the MAME current core. Performance and the ability to use some OST as sample files might be his 2 remaining highlights nowaday.
How nice! No wonder I had seen some improvements in menu access, support for non-cabinet games like game & watch and overall better performance.
Yes, the 2003+ OSTs are very striking, Moonwalker, Mortal Kombat are a gem. Although, games that have bugs, they are plentiful.
…a slight OT. I think we lost the thumbnails in the last FBNeo update.
They are still there : https://thumbnails.libretro.com/FBNeo%20-%20Arcade%20Games/
If there is really an issue, i’d think it’s unrelated to FBNeo updates.
Yeah i have seen some very useful stuff in the latest (current) MAME core. Like the ability to overclock the emulated arcade and save the value in the .opt file. Before that, the only way to do this was through the slider menu in MAME and there was no way to save this (for safety reasons in case the casuals forget to reset those values and flood the bug reports).
This is useful for stuff like the Metal Slug series and Gunforce 2 for example.
Yeah, new stuff and also some fixes for long term issues, nowaday the core has partial support for runahead/netplay and handles libretro rotation, i also think internal throttling (which handled refresh rate) was finally disabled in favor of leaving that task to the frontend (as it should be).
I explained myself wrong, I have the thumbnails and playlists in the 1.16.0 ppa testing and the stable 1.15.0 appimage.
A core update came out, I downloaded the new .dats, updated the romset, updated the playlist and, the thumbnails disappeared.
The mame and 2003+ ones are there, but, this seems to be a bigger problem, because if I delete the thumbnails folder and download some, they are not created.
I didn’t understand this, to rotate the image I need to change the to TATE, with libretro I can’t rotate.
I was just making a list of opt’s with vertical games that can be played horizontally, because not all of them can be played horizontally, if that list is useful to you or @sonninnos , I’ll publish it :¬)
It’s still displaying the proper names in the playlist ? The dat file is only meant for that.
Maybe because you disabled libretro rotation at Settings > Core > Allow Rotation ?
Everything is fine, it was my mistake. 
I downloaded the thumbnails with git clone and the folder that is created is “FBNeo_-_Arcade Games” and the one RetroArch uses is “FBNeo - Arcade Games” without floors.
I have rotation enabled and working, FBNeo has an option in the menu, instead MAME you have to change the Libretro rotation option to some TATE.
One suggestion, both in MAME and in FBNeo, it would be nice to have the option to rotate the joystick of the controller when rotating the screen, to play this kind of games in horizontal screen.
With the screen will rotate, if you press up, it moves to the right.
