Release Final Burn Alpha ported to Pandora (FAQ in first post)

[Link]

Dave,


Sounds great. Thank you. Need to replace my nubs and fix my board as I got a little carried away with a razor blade. Soon I hope.

 

[moxie]

Dave,


Sounds great. Thank you. Need to replace my nubs and fix my board as I got a little carried away with a razor blade.

:blink: :blink: :blink: :blink:

 

[fusion_power]

Do the vertical games play good with a rotated Pandora in Portrait mode? I still would prefer that instead of just rotating the screen and getting a tiny game image. ^^

 

[gruso]

^ That's how they've always played for me. They fill the screen nicely.

 

[Ian J]

The controls take a bit of getting used to but the games look stunning.


Only issue I have at the moment is that games are rotated to the right (left edge of the screen is the bottom of the vertical game).


This means I have to use my right hand for the D-Pad and it feels strange. Holding the Pandora the other way round (right side of screen is the bottom) with the D-pad at the top and the buttons at the bottom feels more comfortable.


Maybe Dave could add an option to select which way the screen is rotated on vertical games. (hint, hint)

 

[Jumpman]

Great update Dave. It runs fine now, no problems to report. The scaling options for the shooters are very cool.


I guess compatibility improvements and a few tweeks are all thats needed now. Any chance of adding "P" for a pause feature?


Excellent work, thanks for finally bringing this to the masses. It was long overdue. As far as I'm concerned the bounty is yours.


Chris

 

[gruso]

^ Hey, don't forget crow_riot. Tons of effort from both guys here.

 

[ZXDunny]

Where do I put the preview images for capex? For the version on the repo, natch.


D.

 

[ZXDunny]

It seems the main problem with the System16 games (Powerdrift, G-LOC, Afterburner, Enduro Racer et al) is not the emulation speed per se, but the sound - I'm getting very good framerates, but the sound is well messed up, and very stuttery.


Who was it said that Powerdrift works?


D.

 

[Mr_Loon]

Just tried the new version on the Repo, many thanks for fixing the buttons for the vertical shooters & for sorting out the saving of the configuration files.


In my fba-dave18 directory (under appdata) I now have 2 sub directories, conf & roms and a file capex.cfg, should there be anything else in there to allow saving of preview pics etc.?

 

[Dave18]

Preview pics go in a directory called preview within fba-dave18.


Sounds stutters if framerate drops below 60 as code is not generating enough samples to fill the timeslice, I could probably add some code to extrapolate the buffer over a longer time so sound effectively play more slowly to match game speed. I'll play around with it.

 

[ZXDunny]

Preview pics go in a directory called preview within fba-dave18.


Sounds stutters if framerate drops below 60 as code is not generating enough samples to fill the timeslice, I could probably add some code to extrapolate the buffer over a longer time so sound effectively play more slowly to match game speed. I'll play around with it.

It seems to be the sound synchro code that's causing the stuttering. I'm making some assumptions here (having not seen the source) but with sound disabled I assume the emulated CPUs are actually producing sound, you're just not piping the sound data out to the sound device? Turning sound off gives a massive speed boost, with way over 60fps in Powerdrift, ditto for Outrun and Afterburner II. With sound turned on and overclocking to 1.1GHz, the stuttering is exactly the same as at 600MHz, which doesn't sit right with me (I've written my own emulators previously).


Aside from issues of speed, there are some control and general look-n-feel issues I'd like to see sorted out:


1. Screen mode that stretches to fullscreen 800x480 regardless of internal game resolution


2. Option to disable rotation (I don't like it, and prefer to either stretch or play in a postage-stamp sized landscape screen)


3. Assign q/a/z to fire when rotated, it's terribly uncomfortable having to reach to the top of the device to hit the fire buttons


4. In games that require analog controls (such as powerdrift), please auto-centre the virtual analog control when no direction is pressed - Powerdrift is very difficult to play, as when you stop steering, the car continues to turn. Auto-centre would fix that.


5. A long shot, as they're quite difficult to code for, would be use of nubs in aforesaid analog control games


6. ESC to quit CAPEX and the emulated game - the only way to quit seems to be to press Q to get out of the game, then press A to start a game and then choose Exit CAPEX.


Other than that, this is great fun. The games that the original FBA2X supported play very well indeed, with the sound issues causing massive slowdowns in the new drivers.


Well done, this has great potential!


D.

 

[fusion_power]

Awww, again no emulator luck for me. The games are running but I have just a black screen, sound and music runs, also controlls respond but no image. I used my old FBA ROMS from the GP2X and they ran fine there.

 

[ZXDunny]

Awww, again no emulator luck for me. The games are running but I have just a black screen, sound and music runs, also controlls respond but no image. I used my old FBA ROMS from the GP2X and they ran fine there.

I downloaded a complete new set from FBAnext (r455, iirc) and let clrmamepro fix it all up. Out of the 6GB of ROMs from the download, it pulled in 1.6GB of files for FBA. Quite a lot of them fail, but there's usually bootleg or clone sets that work.


Just need to get these small sound hiccups fixed, and we're away!


D.

 

[fusion_power]

I'm not sure if the black screen is caused by a wrong ROM version because usualy a ROM works or not. However, my versions are all yellow/orange, so they are mostly clones ore something like this, not sure if split or merged or stuff like this. And they all work so far, you can play it but you just have a black screen.


Messing up with clrmamepro never was my fav. task, I just hope the ROMS are still working that worked with the old FBA from the GP2X. And somehow there also were the .fba rom archives working (I have some of them) but no luck with them on the pandora.

 

[Dave18]

When running with sound disabled I'm pretty sure it uses autoframeskip so you might not really be getting true 60 fps. Hold down both shoulder button and press Y to show the FPS counter.


When sound is enabled the frameskip is disabled and so each frame is drawn and the emulator slows down. As each frame produces enough samples for 1/60th of a second the sound stutters as empty (or filled with garbage) buffer is played.


I've done some profiling for Outrun and all three processors only take around 5 ms to complete, the sound another 2. The issue is that the rendering can take 20ms!! With only 16ms available for each frame this is the issue and why it is solved with frameskip.


I don't know how much optimisation can be done to the rendering code.


Dave

 

[Dave18]

v1.0.0.8 is in repo.


Frameskip is now enabled even with sound and the sound should sync automatically, no more stuttering.


Dave

 

[tuki_cat]

Works great, Afterburner now runs super smooth.

 

[fusion_power]

I am really the only one who just get a black screen while the games are running? :huh:

 

[ZXDunny]

I am really the only one who just get a black screen while the games are running? :huh:

No, I get that for quite a few games too - Thunder Blade is one.


D.