+ T +

I'm entirely finished with FBL for the time being. So if there is going to be a v1.10, I'm afraid it's not going to come from me any time soon.

I can see the above being invaluable to anybody wanting to try and get NeoCD support working in FBL. I know next to nothing about code and that's straightforward enough that even I can see how it would work. I'd suggest anyone that expresses any interest in this be sent a link to this post.

Welcome back.

You don't need NASM for FBL. Just Visual Studio 2003 and the SDK.

You're most welcome.

Well a dev Xbox isn't a necessity. I've never had one. I just use my regular Xbox for testing. As for software; you need Visual Studio 2003 and the Xbox SDK plugin to compile xbe files, and I use UltraEdit for editing the source files.

Another great release. Best SNES emulator on the Xbox.

Don't feel you have to use an XP machine if you don't have one readily accessible. I've done everything related to FBL using a Virtualbox XP VM on my Windows 7 machine.

Well let me turn the question around; why don't you ask Madmab how to load an ISO file and add NeoGeoCD support to FBC yourself? I'm not joking. Listen, I get the impression there are many people who don't want the Xbox scene to die and I see all kinds of requests for features, tweaks and updates made to the few of us who have been maintaining the few active projects that still remain on the system. Well the fact of the matter is, if you people want the Xbox scene to keep going then how about, instead of hoping for it, you do something about it? From my own experience I can say without fear of contradiction that there is no excuse whatsoever. I knew nothing about coding or developing when I first took a look at the FBA-XXX sourcecode; I'd never even seen a sourcecode or even a line of C++ before. But once I'd gotten all the software installed and compiled my first xbe, I started tweaking; just changing little things here and there. And that's all I've been doing ever since, tweaking what's already there and, believe me, any one of you could do it. (CoinOPS, if nothing else, is living proof of that ) So why not give it a shot? I'd gladly give whatever assistance I can to anyone who wants to dip their toe into developing and, despite it's small size, we have a supportive community of people with far more knowledge and experience than me who I'm sure would be equally happy to give help to anyone who wants it. The fact is that, the Xbox scene is slowly dying, and if all the few that are left are going to do is endlessly ask and ask and ask for things and nothign else then the end is just going to come all the sooner. Comparatively small though it's been, I feel I've done my bit in terms of keeping the Xbox alive and kicking, and so now it's time for the rest of you that want to see new development to step up and have a go at supporting the system yourself if you don't want to lose it.

In that situation I have no idea which it will use. But the only two systems that use BIOS files are NeoGeo and PGM, the drivers for which have not been changed for several builds now (save for ROM updates). So if you already have the latest ROMs I wouldn't see any reason to run these games on an older version of FBL. It's not something I ever started work on. Getting the games to run in the NeoGeo core would be no problem at all, but it would require major additions or alterations to the UI in order to be usable and I just don't have the know-how to achieve something like that. FBC is something I would like to have developed more; not just the NGCD stuff but also the new SNES and PCE drivers that have been added to recent FBA builds. It would be great to have a real multi-system console emulator running on the Xbox.

I'm not saying the project is dead. Just that right now, I'm not working on it and have no plans to do so at the moment. I didn't want to keep promising that a new release was on the way so I thought it better to be honest about where things stand. That being said, FBL 1.10 is virtually complete; just a few small bugs to iron out in one or two games (that's with the FBA 0.2.97.18 core, I haven't even looked at the more recent updates). So if any of the developers on the EmuXtras team want to take a crack at the code then they can contact me and I'll gladly provide what I have.

I'll be totally honest; I'm not currently working on FBL at all. That's not to say I never will, but the FBA updates are coming faster than I have time to implement them and I have zero time for any kind of testing. Partly it is due to lack of time but also I don't have as much interest in the Xbox as an emulation platform as I used to. My primary motivation for working on FBL has always been in producing something that I want to use myself and on my current setup, all the emulators I used to run on Xbox are far outclassed by what I have running on PC and I think I'd find it hard to go back. Yes, a nice UI takes a lot more setting up and configuring on a PC, but it's a lot less time and work than coding that's for sure. I have the highest admiration for the work of madmab, freakdave and others for constantly pushing the limits of what this hardware is capable of and I can imagine that brings its own rewards, but projects like my work on FBL and CoinOPS are really just desperate and in many ways poor attempts to keep a dead system relevant using old and outdated software rehashed again and again and again. I really don't want FBL to become the kind of sad and bloated mess that CoinOPS has become; just a mish-mash of mangled old code masquerading as something new and innovative. In FBL's case, so many of it's components can't be updated because I don't have the knowledge to write Xbox-specific routines for the new code and in my view there's no point updating something unless you are actually able to move it forward and keep it current. Neither project has a real developer with real coding knowledge and so neither can ever bring anything truly fresh to the table. And as much as talented individuals such as iq_132 and kenshiro have made a huge difference to FBL, I can't go running to them for help every time I can't do something myself. Basically what I'm saying is, real innovation will come from the real developers in the scene and it's important that people know who they are and who they are not because it's with them that the future of the Xbox lies; people that have the skills to create and not just endlessly tweak and retweak what already exists. Sorry if I've gone on for too long here, but I've enjoyed the support and enthusiasm of everybody here for FBL in the recent months and I feel it only fair to share my current mindset on the project with everyone who has helped make it what it is.

The latest version is 1.9. Please don't report issues unless you're using this build as compatibility is improved in many games compared to 1.7.

I'm sure it's perfectly possible to optimise the CPS3 driver to work on an upgraded Xbox. iq_132 was able to get those games running on a stock Xbox not long ago, but even with the optimisations it was too resource intensive to run full speed without a major rewrite of the CPU core. I daresay that a RAM and CPU upgraded system would probably have been able to run that optimised driver quite nicely. But it isn't something I'd have any interest in personally as I feel that upgrading a console's hardware completely defeats the point of console emulation, which is that everybody has the same hardware and therefore all software is optimised for that hardware. If you're going to have a program that runs on multiple hardware configurations then you might as well be developing for PC and save yourself a lot of headaches.

Keeping compatibility with existing working games, yes. But that doesn't extend to removing games that don't work. You need to understand that every xbox-specifc change I make to the FBA drivers, I have to reimplement with every core update. If it's to keep a game working or maintain the performance of a previous build then that's fine, but I don't have the time to keep a list of what's been removed and then re-test those games with every driver update to see if they're now working. What doesn't work in one build might work fine in the next. I'm sure it would be very helpful to have a list of non-working games though; that way people can choose to remove those roms from their set if they wish, but as I've said before, I don't think a program should bottle-feed users things they could (with a bit of effort) do for themselves. I'm assuming you're running a RAM expanded Xbox. I forgot to re-add the VMM to the Asura games in the last build which means they shouldn't work at all (this is fixed in v1.10) and the JoJo games are on the CPS3 driver which shouldn't be capable of running anything on a stock Xbox in its current state. It's interesting you say that these games were working fine in previous versions, do you mean JoJo as well? I've always been curious as to whether any CPS3 games would launch on a 128Mb Xbox.

I could increase the default thumbstick deadzone, although the way it's set now seems to be the best for analog games like Out Run. I won't be removing non-working games as I want to keep things in line with FBA as much as possible. Also, it would mean having to re-enable and test these games with every round of driver updates and I just don't have the time for that. It's something much more easily handled from the user's end; just remove any games you don't want in the list.

The truth is I haven't touched the v1.10 code for a while. Maybe I just need to wait for the right time to get back into the swing of it. I don't feel that 2.0 would be appropriate given that this is still fundamentally nes6502's original FBL (albeit with a lot of additions and updates), so it's going to be 1.10, 1.11, and 1.100 if we're still going by then without some sort of major overhaul to both UI and core that would qualify as a 2.0 release. 4in1 as far as I know has always had this problem in FBL. The clone of Ace Attacker works fine, only the parent has this problem. Alien Challenge runs on the same driver as Lord of Gun which would need VMM routines to work on the Xbox. The Alpha Mission II prototype has issues because the Neo Geo core has not been updated in line with the most recent FBA updates; this is due to the fact that the old VMM code can't be utilised in the new driver, so new VMM routines would need to be added by someone more skilled than myself. I'm keeping the supported Neo Geo ROMs sets up-to-date but any new additions will be hit-n-miss for the time being. As for the ROM list issue; make sure your thumbsticks are centred as if they're 'drifting' slightly out of the deadzone it can cause exactly what you describe.

Last time I checked it was loading ok, but it contains graphical glitches in the current build because I was trying to boost performance by cutting some corners in the driver. On the whole though I don't think the trade-off was worthwhile so for the next build I'll be going back to the unaltered FBA version of the driver which is stable but slow.

I'd recommend the latest FBL. I always use the fastest available drivers so there is no performance decrease between versions. The new cores that are slow were not a part of FBL in any previous build, they're newly added and their performance has always been the same.

Irem M92 games such as Ninja Baseball Batman also get particularly poor framerates on a stock Xbox.

You're quite right. The hardware does send its native display size to the monitor, but it's what the monitor does with it that determines what we see on the screen. Currently there is no other solution for replicating this 'stretching' on the Xbox other than scaling the screen to emulate the effect. I can see why it would be desirable to have the Xbox output the original dimensions and then somehow stretch the pixels to fill the screen the way a CRT monitor would; but why some people want to output the original dimensions and then leave it at that will always be entirely beyond me.

The original R-Type is a good example.

That's interesting stuff. I'd like to see more games shown on old monitors. However this particular one doesn't seem right. The monitor here appears to have no scanlines, it's more like a PC monitor than an original CRT TV style one. That would explain why the horizontal image is not filling the screen correctly; what you're looking at is the equivalent of a 604x448 display on a 640x480 screen. The kind of original arcade monitor I was referring to (one with a traditional display made up of scanlines) would not display the image in the way pictured. EDIT: To illustrate my point, have a look at this video which claims to show a genuine original X-men cabinet being played. As you can see the image fills the horizontal width of the screen and does not have the large black borders that your picture shows. In fact it only has small borders at the top and bottom which is perfectly consistent with a vertical size of 224 being displayed on a 480 line screen with alternating scanlines. Admittedly the scanlines on this display don't appear to be very visible but there are other videos of X-men cabinets which all show roughly the same thing.

Thanks for reporting the NeoGeo filter issue. This is due to the fact that the hardware tag was changed in the recent FBA updates. I'll fix it for 1.10. I have no problems when exiting or starting PGM games. As for save states in Martial Masters, I'm not surprised if this function doesn't work correctly. As with NeoGeo games, the simplest solution I think will be to simply disable the feature in games that can't handle it.

Some of the newer KOF hacks probably need VMM routines added to work correctly. If you can give me a list of any that aren't currently working, I'll take a look at them. As for the controller config; it could be changed but since the current system is perfectly functional it wouldn't be high on my list of priorities.