Homebrew Large NeoGeo games support and CPS3 tests

[Wiimpathy]

FBA_CPS3_R3

- Added frameskip (it's 1 by default).
- Improve cache creation and loading times. About 30s for SFIII 2d Impact.

It makes the SFIII games and JoJo's Venture playable with frameskip. Red Earth has still a lot of slowdowns.

 

[SieKensou]

Wooow, fantastic job!!!! Congratulations for that improvements!

 

[METALIGALO]

Wiimpathy great great great job for scene wii, thank you !

 

[METALIGALO]

friends, I played sf3 here in the glory of its 384x224p on sony bvm monitor, it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever had the pleasure to see in the gaming world, thank you wiimpathy for your great work!

 

[Wiimpathy]

Glad you like it @METALIGALO

Wiimpathy, do you think this commit could be reverted for your builds? I'm not sure how complex that would be, though i am curious because that would basically help recover HID support.

This is fixed finally! Reverting was out of question with all these commits. The controllers weren't detected because the PID/VID were wrong. Here's the fix if you're curious : https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/9099

 

[METALIGALO]

screens native 224p guys

 

[niuus]

Glad you like it @METALIGALO



This is fixed finally! Reverting was out of question with all these commits. The controllers weren't detected because the PID/VID were wrong. Here's the fix if you're curious : https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/9099

Holy wow! Will it be included in a possible next version of your VM builds? Thanks for the heads up, and specially for the CPS3 build, man. You're the best, and your builds are 240p bliss in my PVM.

 

[Wiimpathy]

The CPS3 build has the fix. The official neogeo core also have VM and the hid fix in the nightly builds : http://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/nintendo/wii/

What I forgot to say is that the ps4 controller doesn't work. In fact, it never worked I think it was never finished.
There are some #ifdef 0 and TODO here and there in the driver: https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/blob/master/input/connect/connect_ps4.c

 

[niuus]

The CPS3 build has the fix. The official neogeo core also have VM and the hid fix in the nightly builds : http://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/nintendo/wii/

What I forgot to say is that the ps4 controller doesn't work. In fact, it never worked I think it was never finished.
There are some #ifdef 0 and TODO here and there in the driver: https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/blob/master/input/connect/connect_ps4.c

Tested the HID USB support in the 2019-07-15 nightly with my 'Dual PSX to USB' adapter and a PS1 arcade joystick... working as intended!

Though i had no luck with the CPS3 R3 build and USB HID, only with WUPC. Can anyone confirm?

 

[Ericsonanzois]

Tested with SF3 III and Red Earth. The performance did the titles playables. I would like register the phenomenal work in this Wiimpathy! Because is only a guy dedicaded to enhance the emulation. Luckly there is few titles in CPS3 to adjust the emulation. Congratulations!

 

[niuus]

Tested with SF3 III and Red Earth. The performance did the titles playables. I would like register the phenomenal work in this Wiimpathy! Because is only a guy dedicaded to enhance the emulation. Luckly there is few titles in CPS3 to adjust the emulation. Congratulations!

Indeed, the guy is the hero we don't deserve. It is a joy to be playing CPS-3 titles and large Neo Geo games on the Wii.

 

[METALIGALO]

Wiimpaty is god, fantastic job for scene wii

 

[Wiimpathy]

Thanks for the compliments. Maybe a bit exaggerated but at least I know it's not completely for nothing. While coding this kind of stuff is fun it can also be frustrating sometimes.

About CPS3, we can't do much to improve performance. There are already little speedhacks in fba. I've looked at an old xbox emulator where they disabled some transparency when drawing. We wouldn't really gain fps with this. Only a powerpc dynamic recompiler for the sh-2 cpu could makes the difference. But that'd be a huge and complex task for few games.

You're right @niuus the CPS3 build I've posted didn't have the hid fix. I've replaced the link in the opeing post.
Now if only could someone explain me how to add the core in https://github.com/libretro/libretro-super so that it's available in the official retroarch package.(It's not forbidden to dream yet! )

I'm also trying to understand lightgun/pointer in retroarch. How difficult it looks for such a thing! Do any of you have any experience at least as user in the PC versions?

 

[niuus]

About CPS3, we can't do much to improve performance. There are already little speedhacks in fba. I've looked at an old xbox emulator where they disabled some transparency when drawing. We wouldn't really gain fps with this. Only a powerpc dynamic recompiler for the sh-2 cpu could makes the difference. But that'd be a huge and complex task for few games.

I still wanna thank you for your cool efforts. Coupled with the varied controllers support, the Wii is now an arcade machine mini-powerhouse. It can play all the catalog from a handful of the most important 80s-90s arcade systems, at full speed and at the original resolution, for pixel perfect gameplay on CRTs! While CPS-3 System is the only one that can't achieve the 100% speed, it is very close. Hopefully it can be tackled in the future by anyone interested, a bounty, etc.

I'm also trying to understand lightgun/pointer in retroarch. How difficult it looks for such a thing! Do any of you have any experience at least as user in the PC versions?

I do have the PC version already installed, 1.7.5 i think. Not an expert of any sorts, but you need any specific help or troubleshooting that i could maybe report to you?

 

[Wiimpathy]

I'm having a hard time to even understand what to implement. I mean it's confusing since there are 3 ways: mouse, pointer, lightgun. Some cores are mixing pointer/lightgun like in genplus for example.
I wanted to know what's the current status. Which core have lightgun and how it's implemented. And also which one have multi mice to play 2 players game like duck hunt vs or Terminator 2.
It depends on the used driver too, linux(udev...), win, etc...

Anyway, it's kind to offer your help. I'd really like to have something even a bit buggy. I've made some progress but really no promise on this one.

 

[Xemma]

Hi Wiimpathy, I have long admired your amazing work on the wii scene!
I love to see how you drive a limited console to exceed its limits! Your work is way ahead of the awful official neo geo wads released on wii!

Well, I usually make forwaders in the spare time to use on each retroarch core on my wii and vwii wiiu!
When I create a forwarder I always reduce the quality of the images without significant loss on an online site! The site delivers what it promises, many images are reduced more than half the size with no visible loss to the human eye!

So I've been wondering if it would be possible to unzip all or most of the images from the zip of CPIII games and shrink them on the online site called Tinypng? I believe if this is possible the CPSIII games will run at normal speed on wii! I imagine it would be the solution to get rid of the performance problem of CPSIII games or even other cores that do not run certain games!

Thank you for your attention, I await answers (^ __ ~)

 

[Wiimpathy]

No, it's a lot more difficult than you think. First, the graphics are not png or similar. NeoGeo and CPS3 are tile based system.
The size issue has nothing to do with speed. The virtual memory fixes the lack of Wii RAM.

The Wii processor is too slow for CPS3. In particular, that's the emulation of the hitashi sh-2 CPU that slow down the games. To gain more speed, one would have to write a dynamic recompiler and that's a long and very hard task.

What's true is that the zoomed effects in Red Earth also slow down the emulation.

 

[Xemma]

So use special tile system for images !? I translated Majora's Mask 3 years ago into my language and I know how annoying it is to mess with such mounted images!

Changing the subject Wiimpathy, I'm trying to run MSlug 3 via its NeoGeo VM0.5 Core and as soon as I get into the submarine water part the game's fps gets almost zero, it crashes everything! Why does it happen???

Another thing, there are some games that scanlines don't show up on - kof2000, kof2003, mslug3, mslug5, samsh5 and samsh5sp! Why don't scanlines work with them?

Thanks in advance for your attention!

 

[Wiimpathy]

Please use VM 0.6 : https://gbatemp.net/threads/large-neogeo-games-support-and-cps3-tests.493767/page-9#post-8586876

The overlay scanlines is disabled in those games. Why? Because beyond a Ram limit, retroarch is very unstable and could crash. It's a sacrifice but I think it's better to avoid this type of random crashes.

If you're able to compile retroarch here's the changes you'd have to remove : https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/pull/8294

 

[eyeliner]

This is massive! Right when I am seriously considering making a Wiircade. Need to decide on how to make the arcade controls, because the screen is taken care of.
Thanks, @Wiimpathy.