SNK - Neo Geo AES / MVS (Geolith) help!

I use the neogeo.zip for MVS and aes.zip for AES mode. These bios files are from "current’ MAME and have the exact same checksum as listed in the documentation. The notes says to get the bios from a relative recent MAME version. I only tested it with a few games so far, if they work with and without bios, to see if those files are even recognized and used.

It’s in the non-merged set. I just checked mine… it’s in there.

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That’s just it, though: “accuracy” means a lot of things. To most people, it just means tighter timing (hence “cycle-accurate” being such a buzzword), but there’s no guarantee that this is giving you the most true-to-life/hardware experience when it comes to playing a game. You can have correct timing for components and still have a bunch of broken behavior.

I wasn’t aware there was a non-merged/merged/split version of the separate “bios & devices” romset. Anyway, i suppose this romset has errors/missing stuff from where i’m getting it.

If you are talking about the complete set (that also has the games) the aes.zip is separated in the merged set as well.

The performance seems pretty good with a lot of breathing room, even on my 10 year old i5 4670 CPU.

I even enabled 4 preemptive frames to achieve next-frame response in Metal Slug (just for testing) and i didn’t notice any additional slowdown or weirdness.

There are plenty of pcb videos on internet that can be used for comparison.

Well, intended experience and accuracy can be different things though, a few examples :

  • “Street Fighter II’: Hyper Fighting” has a m68k at 12Mhz, this is the accurate frequency, however due to missing features in the m68k interpreter used in most emulators (musashi), the game is too fast. There is a known workaround which consists in running that m68k at 8.5Mhz, but that value is not accurate so MAME chose the spec accuracy over the intended experience.
  • Some games like “Burger Time” or “Narc” have sound bugs (noise) that were clearly unintended by their developers, yet accurate emulation means you must emulate those unintended bugs.
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That sounds like a case of “accurate but incomplete”. That’s expected, not all accurate emulators appear 100% complete out of the blue. Ares is the most accurate N64 emulator right now but it has more compatibility issues and bugs than Mupen because it’s much less matured. But Mupen has wrong timings because it’s inaccurate. So yeah, maturity is just as important as accuracy.

That doesn’t bother me. For me, emulation of retro systems means experiencing the games like you would back then, with all their issues and quirks. Bugs included. So maybe “intended” isn’t the right word. I just want the original experience everyone got at the time and be period correct.

I’m not against improvements like bug fixes, improved frame rates, upscale, etc, as long as the default is in the same state as the original.

You wouldn’t be able to hear that noise back then :slight_smile:

I converted the Neo Geo roms to neo format and copied the system roms, however Retroarch refuses to load it with this core. When I choose the core and then load a neo format, it shows me the list to download or install a core instead. Or there is a list of the current arcade cores but without geolith

I’m no expert but this is what I did:

Online updater -> update core info files

Online updater -> Core downloader -> get SNK - Neo Geo AES/MVS (Geolith)

then, what I did, was to make 2 copies of neogeo.zip from the fbneo romset. One of them renamed aes.zip then move both of them in /System folder.

Finally, Load content -> select a .neo file and it should automatically load the game because Geolith is the only core that plays .neo files.

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It seems I forgot to update core info file. Now it plays fine.

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Ι managed to emulate the arcade version of the board by using the Unibios Mode.

The MVS mode in the core settings still doesn’t work no matter what i do.

I have another issue running the core on Linux. It is not listed on Retroarch. I had to download the .so file externally. However the problem remains with the core info files. Retroarch does not update the list for this core. I downloaded the geolith_libretro.info file separately and extracted it to Retroarch info folder, which did not exist before. I use the flatpak version. However even so geolith refuses to load the games

edit: it seems core is only compatible with Retroarch 1.17 and above. It does not run in 1.16

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Runs great on 1.16 on my Windows box.

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Did you maybe forgot to copy the system bios files over to the other RetroArch installation? You can run RetroArch from commandline with verbose option to see if you spot any suspicious message: retroarch --verbose or on Flatpak version flatpak run org.libretro.RetroArch --verbose I believe. These commands will just run the GUI version normally, but you can see in the terminal some messages alongside. I use this method to see when a certain message appears, the moment I click on an option in example - live logging basically.

core info files are both on the info folder and the core folder, including geolith. I did copy the system files neogeo.zip and aes.zip l on system folder. But the issue is that Retroarch loads the core but not the content or else it would show the missing BIOS message or exit. Instead the Download or Install core message appears. It seems geolith info file is not recognised somehow. Yet I have copied the info files

verbose command mentions nothing related to the issue

/usr/bin/flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=retroarch org.libretro.RetroArch --verbose [INFO] [Config]: Looking for config in: “/home/petros/.var/app/org.libretro.RetroArch/config/retroarch/retroarch.cfg”. [INFO] RetroArch 1.16.0 (Git 6c2cc45) [INFO] === Build ======================================= [INFO] CPU Model Name: Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz [INFO] Capabilities: MMX MMXEXT SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE4 SSE42 AES AVX AVX2 [INFO] Version: 1.16.0 [INFO] Git: 6c2cc45 [INFO] Built: Jan 22 2024 [INFO] ================================================= [INFO] [Input]: Found input driver: “x”. [INFO] [Environ]: SET_PIXEL_FORMAT: RGB565. [INFO] [Core]: Version of libretro API: 1, Compiled against API: 1 [INFO] [Core]: Geometry: 320x240, Aspect: 1.333, FPS: 0.00, Sample rate: 48000.00 Hz. [INFO] [Audio]: Set audio input rate to: 48000.00 Hz. [INFO] [Video]: Set video size to: fullscreen. [ERROR] [Wayland]: Failed to connect to Wayland server. [INFO] [Vulkan]: Vulkan dynamic library loaded. [INFO] [Vulkan]: Found vulkan context: “vk_x”. [INFO] [Vulkan]: Detecting screen resolution: 600x240. [INFO] [XINERAMA]: Xinerama version: 1.1. [INFO] [XINERAMA]: Xinerama screens: 1. [INFO] [X/Vulkan]: Using Xinerama on screen #0. [INFO] [X/Vulkan]: X = 0, Y = 0, W = 600, H = 240. [INFO] [X/Vulkan]: Using windowed fullscreen. [INFO] [Vulkan]: Found GPU at index 0: “NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060”. [INFO] [Vulkan]: Found GPU at index 1: “llvmpipe (LLVM 17.0.6, 256 bits)”. [INFO] [Vulkan]: Using GPU index 0. [INFO] [Vulkan]: Using fences for WSI acquire. [INFO] [Vulkan]: Using GPU: “NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060”. [INFO] [Vulkan]: Queue family 0 supports 16 sub-queues. [INFO] [Vulkan]: Got 3 swapchain images. [INFO] [Vulkan]: Using resolution 600x240. [INFO] [Vulkan]: Using RGB565 format. [INFO] [Vulkan]: Loading stock shader. [INFO] [Joypad]: Found joypad driver: “sdl2”. [INFO] [Video]: Found display server: “x11”. [INFO] [PulseAudio]: Requested 24576 bytes buffer, got 18432. [INFO] [Audio]: Started synchronous audio driver. [INFO] [ALSA] Using ALSA version 1.2.9 [INFO] [Microphone]: Initialized microphone driver. [INFO] [Display]: Found display driver: “vulkan”. [INFO] [Playlist]: Loading history file: “/home/petros/.var/app/org.libretro.RetroArch/config/retroarch/content_history.lpl”. [INFO] [Playlist]: Loading history file: “/home/petros/.var/app/org.libretro.RetroArch/config/retroarch/content_music_history.lpl”. [INFO] [Playlist]: Loading history file: “/home/petros/.var/app/org.libretro.RetroArch/config/retroarch/content_video_history.lpl”. [INFO] [Playlist]: Loading history file: “/home/petros/.var/app/org.libretro.RetroArch/config/retroarch/content_image_history.lpl”. [INFO] [Playlist]: Loading favorites file: “/home/petros/.var/app/org.libretro.RetroArch/config/retroarch/content_favorites.lpl”. [INFO] [X/Vulkan]: Resized fullscreen resolution to 600x240. [INFO] [CRT]: Requested Resolution: [email protected] orientation: normal [INFO] [CRT] Video context is: vk_x [INFO] [CRT]: CRT Mode: 3 - pc_31_120 [INFO] [CRT]: Monitor Index Auto: auto [ERROR] XRANDR: <1> (xrandr_timing) [ERROR] missing X11_LIBRARY library [ERROR] sr_init_disp: error, couldn’t init the display [INFO] [CRT]: SR rtn -1 [ERROR] [CRT]: error at init, CRT modeswitching disabled [INFO] [CRT]: Aspect ratio forced by user: 2.500000 [INFO] [X/Vulkan]: Resized fullscreen resolution to 600x240. [INFO] [Config]: Saved new config to “/home/petros/.var/app/org.libretro.RetroArch/config/retroarch/retroarch.cfg”. [INFO] [Core]: Content ran for a total of: 00 hours, 00 minutes, 00 seconds. [INFO] [PulseAudio]: Pausing. [INFO] [Core]: Unloading core… [INFO] [Core]: Unloading core symbols… [INFO] [XINERAMA]: Xinerama version: 1.1. [INFO] [XINERAMA]: Xinerama screens: 1. [INFO] [XINERAMA]: Saved monitor #0. [INFO] [Video]: Average monitor Hz: 122.309198 Hz. (6.736 % frame time deviation, based on 2048 last samples).

For MAME, you put the aes.zip in your roms folder. Not sure if this core is the same.

This core requires neogeo.zip & aes.zip both in retroarch system folder.

window version has the neogeo and aes in system folder and core is recognised and runs the games.

Probably it seems a flathub issue. I’ll post on the relevant Github.

edit: had to add separate system directories manually to retroarch as the app/share default folder was void

It would be cool if Retroarch could become more standardized as far as where to put various roms/bios/loose parts, etc… it mostly is but there are a few things you find that don’t match. I’m guessing with all the different cores it isn’t a practical request, but just thinking out loud.