RatherAnnoyed

Thanks Fu. While I'm here, I tried the last nba jam you posted (the 32x one), couldn't get it to work. Could hear stuff going on, but screen was blank. Did I miss some trick here? Edit: Oh, it was on neogenesis v25 I think, if that matters.

Uh... okay, I just tried this. As far as I can tell, there's no way for me to point the videos folder setting to where I keep my vids. The option is there (as it used to be), but whatever I change it to it just stays at "D:\videosextra" or something. It does allow me to edit one of the console paths to where I keep the coinops roms, though. Is this a lock that didn't get removed or something?

This quote suggests otherwise: "Make sure you get CoinOPS 4 Sunset Proper....I still have issues" There does seem to be some confusion over what is actually being released... of course, it'll probably be my fault if anyone in the entire world experiences any issues with this latest version. All my fault, yes.

Seriously mate, 3 Sunset, Xraine and FBL 1.10 (till the next destronger update). Forget about it, you aint missing out at all.

Remember now! "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein" lulz. Too funny.

Guys, nothing new is being added anyway. There is literally no reason to even bother with 4. Notice how often all the "updates" involve "bug fixes, too many to mention"? Yeah. Why all the bug fixes in something that was tested end to end and working perfectly before, huh? Remember how we were always told to just go check the difference between the gamelists if we wanted to merely know the answer to the (you'd think) rather simple question of what new arcade games had been added? Yeah, I did that one time. I found that a grand total of all of 12 "new" games had been added (can't remember off the top of my head which versions it was between, but I checked between at least two "revisions", both of which claimed the addition of... well, a lot more than just 12). And half of them were the same game, just different revisions of the rom. Oh, and they were all utter, utter shite, and not even worth the half meg they took up in space. (Just adding this bit too, there are often claimes of "speeding up" or "improving performance" on existing games in the collection... never seen any evidence of this. Oh, what a shock, we don't get any details on that either.) What's "new" that's worth worrying about? Everything that got added to FBL recently. What'll be "new" that'll be worth worrying about in the future? Anything that gets added to FBL. My advice is to just stick 3 Sunset, xraine, and wherever we get up to with FBL on your box. As long as you got the usual console emus on there (Snes, Megadrive, PCE), you won't be missing out. Edit: heh, +T+ beat me to it by a few seconds...

Aha, just assumed that cps2 and neogeo were on a different core, you live and learn. I... suspect that something happened after FBL 1.1/1.3. I'm sure I remember it saved high scores back then.

Haha, really? I even tried to pick two games I thought wouldn't be on that core (a videosystem/visco and a neo geo). Didn't have the internets to hand, so didn't check.

Yeah, looks like the problem is across the board. I also tried Aerofighters and Blazing Star, same issue.

I didn't get round to testing it on other cores, no. I just thought "huh, coulda swore it USED to save my scores" and tested it with the same game on an earlier version. As I say, sort of weird that it did actually save the file in 1.5, but didn't then load it on a reload of the rom (1.1, 1.9 and 1.7 didn't even save the file). I haven't paid much attention to high scores on the emulators on the xbox recently; due to the number of versions we've been going through recently for FBL/COPS, I didn't get much chance to even play the games, let alone attempt a high score. (Most of my "xbox time" recently has been spent on just updating stuff!) I'll try another game or two out tonight. Is it feasible that it could be borked on a core by core basis? Oh, by the way, I just found someone else who has the same problem (got this from another forum): "Am I just being silly, has anyone got any version of Final Burn Legends to save any Hi score. I am now running V1.10 and have gone in to the options once the game has loaded and turned on Hi score saving but nothing. Tried a few games including Progear, batsugun and 3 wonders with no hi scores being saved. has anyone managed to get fba legends to save any score and if so which version are you running and which game saves" Huh. Progear was probably one I woulda tried, too.

Am I just being really stupid, or has high score saving been disabled altogether? 1944 just wouldn't save the high score last night. Wouldn't even write the file to the highscores folder. I even checked previous versions back to 1.5. 1.5 saves the file... but still doesn't load those high scores in when you load the rom. Even checked CoinOPS 3 sunset. Doesn't do it either (though I've no idea what version of FBL that runs to get 1944 going). Anyone? Am I just missing something (I am enabling high scores in the menu for each game), or what?

@ +T+ I guess I'm kinda both sorry to hear that, and glad. On the one hand, the recent revival of FBL has resulted in me getting to play a few games on the old xbox that I never thought I would (espgal, ketsui, etc). On the other - as you've said previously - we're eventually going to get to the point where the xbox will struggle with the emulation updates. You're probably better quitting now, rather than waiting till that becomes more and more apparent (if you aint got time to test stuff now, and that testing is becoming more and more important, then...) If I were you, I'd get the next one out, make sure it's all working fine, and draw a line under the whole shebang. Call it FFBL. (See what I did there?) I'm probably swinging towards the same mindset, actually. (Starting to think I could replace the xboxes with Raspberry PI...) Whichever road you take, I'm probably gonna stop trying to keep up, personally. I only ever notice the new games anyway; frankly, I'm told the emulation is "better", but in most cases I don't notice much of a difference! In my defence: I'm quite old. Ahem. (As for CoinOPS: I already stopped trying to "get" that joke about six months ago. Doubtless we're up to version tweveltybamazillion by now. If he's not careful he'll run out of actual numbers.) So... yeah. Unless wizkids like iq figure out how to get SH3 working on the old fella, thinking I'll just stop bothering with the upgrades and, you know... actually play some damn games on the thing. Anyway, just wanted to post and say: whatever you do now, I appreciate what you've already done. And will appreciate it for years to come. You take care, dude. PS. A quick question: say I have multiple folders for FBL version rompacks (i.e. F:\Roms\FBL1,F:\Roms\FBL2,etc), and I point an FBL at a few of them (as maybe I don't have a complete updated rompack in the FBL2 folder - it just has the roms that have changed - but the missing ones will still be in the earlier FBL1 folder)... how does FBL handle multiple BIOS files? I might not want to necessarily delete, say, the earlier neogeo.zip, as I still have the earlier version of FBL sitting there using it (I do tend to keep earlier versions of emulators sitting on the drive rather than overwriting them). I realise that if it sees two versions of a game rom you get to choose either one - just wondering which BIOS file it would use for that? Or would I just confuse the hell out of it by doing this?

Apologies to you both - I wasn't thinking. Yeah, I am running in HD. I'll try waiting longer on the green screen.

Great stuff, +T+! I been wanting to try out Batsugun for years. Couple of quick questions: 1. will the rompack for this be on *snip* any time soon? Oh, and what kinda differences are we talking between this and the 1.7 pack? Just a few roms, or another whole complete set? 2. I got the 1.7 set from there (just before the childishness), and I'm still having to change the neogeo bios in the settings for each game to unibios to get them past the loading screen; it's not a huge deal (I'm going in there to change other stuff anyway, such as highscore saving), but I remember you saying you did not have to do this with your neogeo.zip. What files am I missing? Have a great xmas dude!

If I understand this correctly, I grab that tecmosys.c and put it in the required BIOS zip (which one is that, by the way?), and Angel Eyes will now work? For some reason I don't have permission to download...

Thanks for the confirmation, +T+. I wasn't sure if I was missing something that enabled "proper" FBA access to those games running through CoinOPS (all I could ever get to actually fiddle with was the size of the screen).

How about some way of filtering that isn't also tied to a menu selection? I'm thinking back to FBA here, and what I really did like about it was the option to cycle through the four categories (CPS1, CPS2, Neogeo, Other). It would be nice if you could somehow cycle through all the filters with just a button press, and maybe have one of those filters as the default view also. I'm thinking I'm not doing a good job of explaining, so let me give examples. I would set the default filter to Cave. When I start up FBL, that's what would show. Useful for me, as that's generally what I eventually end up playing anyway, and saves me scrolling past all the pron while I try to decide, you know? The button allocated for cycling through the filters would then move onto the next category (Taito, Psikyo, whatever) when pressed, should I decide I don't want to play a Cave shmup (unlikely, but whatever). Also, if this is possible, filters for types of game would be really cool too. Hori shmups, vert shmups, run and gun, blah blah blah. In this case you (yes, I'm using you for the example this time) might have scrolling fighters as your default view (not... a bad choice, I suppose), but sometimes you might come in and think, "hmmm, actually, I really do fancy playing one of those strange pron games?"; at which point you press the cycle filter button a few times, pron is now all over your screen, and you're probably sitting there thinking, "the hell? What's wrong with me?" Can't help you with that last bit, I'm afraid.

Heh, nice one.

Morning chaps. I have a quick question regarding CoinOPS and FBL. Does anyone actually use CoinOPS for FBL stuff? i.e. games that require the FBA core. I can't really see the benefits? You don't get access to the filters, for one (a pretty big one, too). I've not tried the console stuff, but I'm guessing the same deal applies (that is, for example, SNES stuff is simply using - I don't know - a ZSNES core or something, but you still don't get access to the filters from that emulator either)? I don't get it. I'm also rather confused as to what the author means whenever he claims that CoinOPS fixes all these bugs that were in the FBA core...

Thanks man, it's reassuring to know that you are indeed "future proofing" your emulator! Heh.

Ah, I see. I got the wrong end of the stick. I mainly use FBL for neogeo stuff (and Cave, obviously), so I get a bit twitchy if there is any sort of indication of it just suddenly not working. (Once again, a huge thankyou to all concerned for allowing me the facility to play these games.) To be honest, though, I'm wondering what is actually left for neogeo emulation? That is, are there improvements left to make? Even on the old xbox (using your latest release) it seems nigh on perfect to me? We still don't have save states, is that correct? But then, that's not really "emulation", which is what I was really talking about.

My understanding is that it involves de-soldering the existing RAM chips from the mainboard and replacing them. On a personal note, I'm not keen on the idea of the RAM and CPU upgrades; for me the appeal of running emulators on a console is that everybody has the exact same hardware and the challenges are in optimising the code to get the best performance within those limitations. Something else I've been wondering about; drivers for older games from past builds of FBA always seemed to run well on the Xbox, however with this latest wave of updates the majority of newly added games don't perform too well (including the most recent Data East drivers from 0.2.97.13). Is this because they're ported from the latest MAME drivers which have become more resource intensive or is it that FBA is being coded with the current specs of modern PCs in mind, or is it simply that the drivers are new and there is room for optimisation? Just curious. Me too, man, but it kinda winds me up a bit that I have roms on there that just plain won't work, you know? I like to feel I can just go pick a game even at random, and check it out. (Perhaps "winds me up" is a bit strong; let's just say that I like to know all the games I have sitting there will just work.) I guess I could just delete them when I come across them, but I'm never sure if a game just plain didn't work because I was doing something daft! As for your other point: I'm under the impression that with every iteration of MAME, drivers/roms are "improved" in such a way that emulation is more accurate, which is usually more resource intensive. That is to say: accuracy is paramount, even to the detriment of raw performance. Is this the same ethos for FBA? i.e. are we going to soon get to the point where the xbox will struggle even to emulate stuff it's been handling in its sleep the past few years? I note you're having trouble with the neogeo stuff in the new build; would I be correct in assuming these issues are related to said performance degradation?

Great stuff, I look forward to trying Angel Eyes out! Top stuff. Along similar lines, is it ever going to be possible to get the cps3 stuff working in FBL on a 64 box? Or is that similar pie in the sky stuff to me hoping that we'll someday see SH3 or the later Seibu stuff? Actually, how difficult is it to get extra memory in an xbox? Loving the way everything is progressing, chaps. Keep it up.

You, sir, are a diamond. A diamond, I tell you.

Yeah, I'd like to know what I'm actually getting over and above 2 with this - i.e. what were the new arcade games that were added. Apparently it's, like, really, really, really, REALLY difficult to tell. Even for the "creator". "Blah drone check the files for differences yourself blah blah blah" It's a bit like Microsoft releasing Windows 8 and saying, "you want to know what's new? /shrugs/ Well, you could always just read through the help, you know?"