RatherAnnoyed

Thanks tristanx. I'd rather avoid IRC though. No other way? Also thanks to +T+ for the reply about Angel Eyes, I suspected as much.

So... you gonna tell us about that?

Couple of quick ones for anyone: 1. is "Toukidenshou - Angel Eyes" at a similar stage to the cps3 stuff, i.e. it only works on a 128 xbox? I get a similar error, see. 2. How does one get unbanned from emuxtras?

Hey, thanks for the reply +T+, I'll forget about using that pixel perfect mcgubbins and just go back to PAL60 with bilinear and a filter.

Speaking of pixel perfect, I have a question for the collective. I've recently modded another box and put it with the CRT. It's dreamy. But the problem I have is that I'm not sure of how best to configure the emus. I'm UK based. Do I set the xbox to NTSC, PAL50 or 60... or what? The TV can handle both, however, if I set it to PAL60 (which I'd prefer), it seems some emus - SNES9 and Mednafen are the only two I've tried, presently - have some serious overscan if I use the "set screen to pixel perfect" setting (the one that defaults your filter settings to POINT and NOTHING). (By "overscan", I mean that the image is quite a bit bigger than the size of the screen, if you get me, meaning I can't see the top or bottom of the game that's running.) If I "force to PAL50" within the emulator itself, this overscan disappears. What's the best set up for a UK PAL60 xbox? Should I avoid using the pixel perfect setting in the console emus altogether, and just use bilinear and a filter? Is setting the xbox to NTSC the only way to get around this? Is there a setting I've just overlooked someplace? Anyone?

Brilliant stuff, +T+. Still my favourite... well, I was about to say "emulator on xbox", but it wouldn't be far off the mark just to say "thing" ever. It's a pity we're never going to see Raiden Fighters series/tCave SH3 stuff on there, as then I'd just never need to switch the laptop on again. Well, apart from when I need to update... that reminds me... I'm the guy who moaned about the constantly updated rompacks we'd have to contend with, due to these Alpha updates. See, the reason I moaned is because... well, I'm an idiot. I thought the only two ways I had of updating was to either use torrents (which I'd rather avoid) or use the websites that host rompacks (which are pretty unreliable, and slow, and a pain in the arse). But then I found that emuxtras ftp site... Yeah, so, it's not a problem now! So anyway, we talking major changes to the FTP roms then? Any tasty additions? Thanks again, man.

Awesome stuff. Some quick (promise) questions: 1. I (admittedly) glanced quickly and seen no mention of the ability to alter such settings as analogue dead zone, NEOGEO bios, etc. on a default emulator wide level (rather than in game) - is that in now? 2. What MAME version should I be looking for for any of the new additions, or is it the case that some will be from 141, some from 142, some from earlier, etc? Is there an easy way for me to check this, or is finding these additions more a case of just trial and error? 3. Dunno if there is already an option to do this, but it would be quite nice to just have a number on screen telling me how many roms the emu has available to run (from whichever folders you've set it to look at). A rom count, if you will, that will tell me at a glance if an update has maybe dropped a few roms (as in this case, with a rename or something). 4. A QUESTION FOR IQ_132 (or anyone else who knows the answer): this is probably a dumb question, but what are the chances of Ibara? Does that even run in MAME at all? If not, what's so "special" about it that it's managed to avoid emulation for this long? Many thanks to +T+, iq_132, kenshiro, and of course nes6502. You probably don't realise how happy you've made this silly old man. Edit: that was quite quick, wasn't it? Not bad. For me.

Aha! I wondered how long it would take before somebody spotted this. Support for Genesis games has been removed, FBL is now arcade games only. If you want to play arcade and console games under the same UI then you know where to go. Love it.

Oh, okay, I just wanted confirmation of that. I've always assumed a rom would either work or it wouldn't; didn't realise that it was possible to force older roms to work by simply changing the bios used. You live and learn. (And it's not that I'm "not into" it: I simply don't have the time nowadays. Any gametime I had available would be spent just updating everything rather than, you know... actually playing.) Thanks for clearing that up, though. Oh, one more thing - and I guess it's a personal question, so tell me to sod off by all means: you keep saying that whole "from now on" thing, and I get the impression that you've suddenly decided to really get back on top of things with this - what happened? What I mean is, it seemed (to me) like the FBA/FBL project died for quite a while, and now suddenly there's this update, and talk of quite a bit of work in the future... I'm just curious as to where this sudden burst of activity come from, is all.

I'm a little confused at this point. Yeah, again. +T+, are you saying that these games that I had to switch the bios to unibios to work... they should work with the default bios you've chosen anyway? Was it just a case of me simply not waiting long enough on the green screen or something? Also, just thinking aloud here... I can find a full pack for 1.3, and a full pack for 1.4, and I can find the additions for 1.4... wouldn't it be really splendid if, oh, say some lovely dude was to put together a pack that contained any roms that have actually changed from 1.3 to 1.4, i.e. roms that worked in 1.3, but will no longer work in 1.4? Wouldn't it? Yes. Yes, it would. Not that I would ever request such a thing. Oh, no. Not I. *ahem* Lastly - really can't say this enough - a bamazillion thanks to +T+ and iq_132 for this. Absolutely loving it. More to come, you say? Keep it coming, chaps!

Thanks for the swift replies guys. I really don't have time to mess around with building rompacks these days, and I'm also on a limited download package. Hopefully someone will put together an upgrade pack that contains only the differences between the 1.3 roms and 1.4. Can I just ask, are we certain mslug3 is one of those roms that should not work between 1.3 and 1.4? Because as I say, I got it to work by simply changing the bios. Anyway, I'm happy enough that this release just lets me play the new(ish) cave stuff, to be honest! +T+: I might be mistaken as to the causes, but it was definitely one of the recently added cave titles that give me an out of memory (i.e. either ket, espgal, or ddp3 - pretty sure it was espgal though). As I say, might have been something else I fiddled with; maybe I changed the filters before dropping to 720 and that's what fixed it instead? It's possible - I just remember that it wouldn't work off the bat with the settings that were my default, is all. Wasn't aware of that issue with guwange, mind. Which is strange... because I've been playing that one recently... You'd think everyone's xbox would be the same, wouldn't you?

Typical, I go on holiday... Many millions of thanks to both T and iq for their work on this. I can now play Dai Ou Jou in bed! Probably more info than you needed, there. And now I see you're teasing me with SFIII... wow. Just to throw some of my own thoughts into the mix, here: I've no idea about this pixel perfect thing. I just left the screen sizes as they were, switched the Widescreen Fix on, and everything seems to be the right size to these old eyes. I use bilinier and scanlines, so maybe this combination is hiding most artefacts I would see otherwise. However, what would be nice for a future release is if these perfect inis (that's what I'm gonna call them anyways) were somehow incorporated, maybe as just the default inis sitting in the folder (easy enough to delete if you don't like, right?) - so I could at least see how all you guys think these games should look. Secondly, is there a default ini that's used that I can edit someplace? There seem to be some settings that are only available in game, and yet they're settings I'd like a certain way that's the opposite to the default, so I am finding I'm having to go into every game and change a few (in particular, I like the FPS switched on, high score saving set to yes, and I tend to fiddle with the analogue dead zone settings). This leads me onto my third point, which might be relevent to the current discussion about certain ROMS not working. Firstly, can we just get this out of the way? If I'm using a romset that worked with FBL 1.3, should all those roms work with 1.4? I understand there have been some additions, and that they're from a different MAME to whatever 1.3 was based on, but what I'd like to get out of the way is the idea that I now have to go off and grab another collection of roms for this? I say this because I too thought that I had roms that were not working (even though they all worked with 1.3), however, I did make an interesting discovery last night: I noticed that the default setting for the NEOGEO bios is set to US version 6 or something. I too could not get mslug3 or KOF98 to work. (I will say, though, that I did not get any error, they just hung on the green screen that appears before the game). I got around this by going into the game, clicking the right thumb to get to the in game menu (strangely, I had to click three times for these games), and then setting the bios to 2.3. BAM, games worked perfectly then? Any of that make any sense, like, at all? EDIT: Also, one of the new cave games wouldn't work at 1080i, think it was espgaluda. Had to drop down to 720 to get it to work.

Bang on. Haters gonna hate and all that. Leave the drama well alone. I just want someplace to talk bout games... in between pretending to work and actually playing them, of course. Yeah, I think I'm similarly inclined on the emulated slowdown question. That is, I'd rather play it as it was originally (intended or otherwise), but for some games where the slowdown is a bit intrusive (Deathsmiles), or it was just down to the hardware struggling to keep up (espRADE), it's nice to have the option there to see how the game would handle running without it.

Removed. EDIT: It's peaceful around here now, no point going over old ground.

Interesting... wait, are you talking about an actual proper commercial release? That would be... insane. Also, is it 720p enabled?

@fumanchu Interesting, I was not aware of it being removed on the US version of DS. The slowdown on that game is pretty mental (I have the PAL version), so to be honest I'd be a bit miffed too: removing the slowdown would surely make the game near enough impossibly difficult? While on the subject of games just not working, I got an out of memory error last night while trying to run Dodonpachi in CoinOPS? I'm on Epic R9 if I recall correctly (I've avoided keeping up to date with it; cannot be chuffed with the constant updates that add little more than shortcuts to other console emus).

Yeah, I figured as much (that the slowdown was possibly "emulated") - thanks for the confirmation. I'll take a look see at this overclocking malarkey. That did not occur to me. (Probably because I've never felt like FBL ever even needed it.) When you say "cause problems" you just mean it's more likely to crash the emulator? Or did you mean that it forces the xbox itself to work a bit harder than it's used to? What I mean is, are the issues you speak of caused by an instability in the emulator or the xbox itself working too hard? Oh, one more thing. IGNORE ME AND MY STOOPID QUESTIONS AND GET 1.4 FINISHED ALREADY, YOU HEAR? This does raise an interesting question though (which I'll throw out to everyone): Would you prefer that slowdown present in the arcade version was also present in the emulated version? To be perfectly honest, I'm not even sure how I would answer. I have a number of conflicting thoughts on the subject. For example: It made espRADE a whole bunch harder. Everything just seemed a bit quicker and more manic in the CoinOPS version. But: It's not then "arcade perfect", and the slowdown present in the arcade might have been there for that very reason. Hmmm. /strokes chin thoughtfully

Wow, personally, I can't wait to see which games have been improved/added. + T +, just wanted to ask you something. Last night I was playing espRADE, and I tried it in both CoinOPS and FBL1.3. I noticed that even though the FPS while using either didn't dip at all*, it did seem like there was more slowdown in FBL. Is this just because it's emulated "better", i.e. it actually includes slowdown that was present in the arcade (whereas CoinOPS doesn't)? I'd always been under the impression that if FBL runs it, it'll run it better than CoinOPS. (CoinOPS is for "everything else".) Note: I'm using an earlier version of CoinOPS and it wasn't running espRADE in the FBA/FBL core. EDIT: * actually, yes, it did dip, but nothing really worth pointing out. i.e. CoinOPS showed 58 all the time, FBL showed 59.something (it fluctuated between 59 and 59.whatever). Huh. Might have just answered my own question there? That is, CoinOPS runs it at a slightly lower constant framerate? EDIT 2: also, I did direct the question at +T+, but if anyone else knows the answer...

Ah, right, I get you. I see, now, how this isn't as straightforward as I first suspected!

No worries, just thought I'd ask (about rdft)! Is there some way for us to edit those default values directly, then? Even if it's just a config edit, that would do the job. i.e. you point us towards the file that contains the values you're using for these defaults, and we just work out what we want them set to and edit them straight in? I'm just trying to think of ways to avoid trying to set the screen size purely on just how it looks, is all. I guess I could get a tape measure out, huh? Ha. Thanks for the responses anyway, and looking forward to the new release immensely. Just noticed you jumped in there fu: yeah, I have them running on a laptop anyway. I was all over the PAL release of Raiden Fighters for 360, but it's very much dead now. A shame. Not prepared to go buy a whole new console just for them, though!

Yeah, you're thinking of SD users (with the overscan issue), which is fair enough. I'd leave it as that if I were you. I agree on which is preferable. The only thing I'd add to this (and I'm not sure if you already did this, but anyway), is allow us to easily tell if the screen default we've set is the ratio we want (4:3, 3:4, whatever). Either simply a division of the pixels, or a lock mechanism - doesn't matter how it works, really. Brill, I already have most of 141. Final hassle, I promise, but... any chance of Raiden Fighters series?

+ T +, in response to your query about sizing: I tried last night, and realised what it is that was confusing me earlier with this. It wasn't that I wasn't getting the "default" sizes, it was that these default sizes did not use the full vertical of the screen. This of course meant that I was having to go in and resize every game anyway, as I'd prefer the full vertical was used - however, this also obviously meant I was losing the true aspect ratio because I was doing it by eye. To clear things up, here's how I believe it works currently: Any vert scrollers get given a default screen ratio of 3:4. Any horizontal scrollers get a default of 4:3. All games have their own config also, which overwrites the default if you should set the screen size while playing that game. There is no option to set your own defaults (as far as I can see). This current setup is great. i.e. a default screen size but with the option of overwriting that for preference per game. The only thing I would say is, it would be perfect if this default size could fill the whole screen, OR the user could have access to the two defaults (vert and horizontal) that are hidden away, preferably with a "locked aspect ratio" also. Does that all make sense? Lastly, these new additional roms for the update, which MAME they from?

That's correct. Arcade games run at a huge variety of different resolutions, but when output, the display device will stretch the video horizontally to fill the screen. The amount of stretching would vary slightly from screen to screen so there is no way to have one single value that is arcade perfect, but 4:3 is a great all-round ratio that gives a visually accurate representation of how the game would look on an arcade monitor. All 'pixel perfect' does is take the game's internal resolution and doubles/triples it which means you end up with all kinds of crazy shapes and sizes which you would never see on a genuine arcade machine since all standard arcade monitors are 4:3 or 3:4. EDIT: As to your question about how to set the screen in FBL. By default FBL displays horizontal games in 4:3 and vertical games in 3:4 which is exactly how they should be so really you shouldn't need to adjust anything at all. Unless of course you have an HDTV in which case you would need to switch it to 4:3 mode (I don't have one personally so I'm assuming that's possible) to get a visually accurate display. Thanks for the confirmation, + T +. I did not realise this. With all the fuss about Pixel Perfect I assumed that what this meant was that we would be seeing the games exactly as they were in the arcades! Obviously not. I'll bear that in mind in the future. Maybe my strange FBL behaviour is related to the fact I'm putting it through an HDTV, yes. And yeah, it's at 16:9. If I recall correctly, it seems to default all games to a 4:3 square that doesn't quite fill the vertical space available (i.e. I have to resize it if I want it to fill the screen vertically). I'll try switching the TV to a 4:3 ratio the next time I fire it up. Thanks again. EDIT: just in addition to this subject (and this IS related to the thread), these Cave games - was it the same deal with these? I remember the resolution of them being very strange (a very "thin" vertical resolution, if you get me), but were they stretched to a 3:4 screen in the arcades also? You know what? Thought just occurs... never seen a Cave game in an arcade!

Some interesting stuff on the pixel perfect, which I feel partly responsible for initiating, so I'll just clarify my position: I'm not all that bothered by it either. I only mentioned it as it seemed to be the "big deal" in CoinOPS recently (along with HD). That is, it is - as far as I can make out - seemingly seen as the one feature that it has that FBA/FBL doesn't, and it often comes across to me that most people also see this as reason alone to have EVERYTHING running through CoinOPS. Now, personally, I'd rather most games just filled a 4:3 (non-verts, I mean). I probably won't even notice any difference in the aspect ratios anyway (certainly not if I'm relying on a 25 year old memory of said game, you know?) Also, as I said, FBA/FBL has more options on the filters, and I quite like the scanlines on there. You don't get any of these if you run an FBA core game in Cops. All you can do (over and above the CoinOPS settings, that is) is resize the screen. (Again, as far as I'm aware.) Having said all that, I got a bit lost in the discussion earlier: are you all saying that most of these games in the arcade had different resolutions but ended up being stretched to a 4:3 anyway? Apologies if I got completely the wrong end, there. In short: if I have CoinOPS displaying to 720p and I use Pixel Perfect, are you telling me that this isn't in any way necessarily representative of how it would have looked in the arcades? Then yeah, I agree: what's the point? How SHOULD I be setting the options on that emu then? Just "Scaled"? Secondly: what's the easiest way to get FBL to have the screen automatically size at 4:3 for every game? Maybe I set it up wrong, but it seems that with every game I start up I have to re-size the screen the first time (it remembers from then on, for just that game). EDIT: apologies for the massive side-track, equally massive thanks to everyone involved in getting these games working and sprucing up FBL.

Most of the KOFs, SFII, Zero/Alpha 2 and 3... let's just say most of the Streetfighters, X-men COTA, Marvel Super Heroes, all of the versus series... Okay, just about anything by SNK and/or Capcom that involves punching someone else in the face? Them. DonPachi, DoDonpachi, Esp R.A.D.E., Pro Gear No Arashi, Guwange... Okay, just about anything by Cave that involves shooting stuff in the face? Them. And the Raiden Fighters series. Still gutted that we're not getting that 360 collection in PAL-land. Edit: Forgot Battle Garrega. And Battle Bakraid. And Gunbird 1 and 2. And Armed Police Batrider - look, you did say "games"...