Emulation pc specs for batrider

[cools]

Batrider core was updated recently https://www.patreon.com/posts/coin-op-p ... -125520453

The difference to MAME in terms of latency is noticeable. I've not spent enough time to evaluate slowdown, and don't have a PCB to compare with anyway, but the few playthroughs I've done have felt great.

[SquidDude]

The difference to MAME in terms of latency is noticeable. I've not spent enough time to evaluate slowdown, and don't have a PCB to compare with anyway, but the few playthroughs I've done have felt great.

It's a pretty laggy game even on PCB, buffi's results (https://inputlag.buffis.com/) point to it having 4 frames of lag. MAME (once set up correctly) and PCB feel similar to me.

In the meantime, inspired by what you’ve said here, I’m going to actively put more effort into really beating it like I intended.

If you need any help with it let me know, I've beaten it a few times now; not the easiest game out there but it's very doable if you come up with a good strategy.

[cools]

The difference to MAME in terms of latency is noticeable. I've not spent enough time to evaluate slowdown, and don't have a PCB to compare with anyway, but the few playthroughs I've done have felt great.

It's a pretty laggy game even on PCB, buffi's results (https://inputlag.buffis.com/) point to it having 4 frames of lag. MAME (once set up correctly) and PCB feel similar to me.

The lag was the main reason I sold the PCB years ago, and one of the reasons I rarely play much on this hardware. MAME is definitely worse but its a case of bad to worse rather than good to bad.

Sometimes I'd fire it up and everything felt like it was on ice.

Curious whether MiSTer matches the PCB

[Marcelliott]

It's a pcb that I over looked back in the day. I was hell bent on cave and saw the raizing stuff as old hat.

I wanted just one game to get really dedicated to, fancied sticking some time into batrider, I probably wouldn't buy another game for a couple of years.

My dad got dementia in his 40s and I'm in my 40s, I want something to keep me sharp as I'm **** myself ill end up like he did.
Luckily I'm still really sharp.....haha, like to keep it that way.

Ok, great perspective, and for what it’s worth I’m sorry to hear about your Dad. Your motivation is clearly personal, so only you know to what extent owning this PCB really matters, but if it helps then here’s my personal take on it…

I too decided I wanted to get dedicated to a couple of specific games, so despite having no nostalgia at all for Batrider, when I learned about cultish, double pricey, niche SHMUPS, it massively stood out to me.
I bought it at a time in life that I could afford to, and I put some effort into beating it on a credit.
I haven’t yet, but I’ve played enough to know it’s realistically beatable on a credit.
I think it’s the ‘coolest’ and best presented SHMUP there is. A proper work of art. Plays brilliantly too.
I just enjoy booting it up and looking at it sometimes honestly.

Then I fell into the trap of ‘waiting for my real life to begin’, and while I wait to buy a gaff with the future Mrs Beans I’ve not actually invested much time into it, because ‘one day I’ll have the ultimate setup’.
What a waste.

A pricey PCB is still an asset. If you want to dedicate time to it, and eventually beat it, then you have the option to sell it again. Assuming you haven’t wildly over paid in the first place then you shouldn’t be out of pocket.
£3k is wildly over… please don’t pay that.

In the meantime, inspired by what you’ve said here, I’m going to actively put more effort into really beating it like I intended.

Let us know what you decide. I’m genuinely interested.

Wow, glad I'm out here inspiring folk

A guy has pmd me with batrider pcb, looks like I'm gonna be bat riding pretty soon, yay!

Which other pcbs do you own dude?

[Marcelliott]

I can't believe that rotating the screen with a line double gives 1 frame of lag, according to buffis data, there's 4 frames in batrider already.

There's 3 to 4 frames of lag in garegga pcb also.

@cools Could you really tell the 4 frames of lag?? To the point it made you sell the pcb. That seems really extreme dude.

[cools]

I can't believe that rotating the screen with a line double gives 1 frame of lag, according to buffis data, there's 4 frames in batrider already.

There's 3 to 4 frames of lag in garegga pcb also.

@cools Could you really tell the 4 frames of lag?? To the point it made you sell the pcb. That seems really extreme dude.

Yup. Note that the mister rotation refers to play on a horizontal LCD, not a CRT in tate.

Other games when emulated with more latency than PCB - NewZealand Story (impossible to fire as rapidly or make accurate rapid tiny jumps), Bomb Jack (impossible to move perfectly horizontal tapping jump when falling).

I was comparing Raizing to other shmups at the time and it was noticeable. It's why I'm interested in measuring the new MiSTer core, comparing if I've just got older or it's better/same as PCB

[SquidDude]

Yagawa's games are always super laggy, but luckily they also don't require a lot of intense micrododging. So it doesn't end up mattering too much imo once your brain adjusts to it

If you REALLY hate it you can always play using runahead in retroarch, although some people may consider that cheating (for leaderboard submissions).

I put off playing Garegga for score for a while because of the lag, it didn't end up being too bad though.

[ChrisBEANS]

Which other pcbs do you own dude?

Roughly still this…

viewtopic.php?p=563511#p563511

[Marcelliott]

Which other pcbs do you own dude?

Roughly still this…

viewtopic.php?p=563511#p563511

Wow that's some collection dude, I hope you managed to get most of that lot before the prices went crazy.

[Marcelliott]

Yagawa's games are always super laggy, but luckily they also don't require a lot of intense micrododging. So it doesn't end up mattering too much imo once your brain adjusts to it

If you REALLY hate it you can always play using runahead in retroarch, although some people may consider that cheating (for leaderboard submissions).

I put off playing Garegga for score for a while because of the lag, it didn't end up being too bad though.

Do you think yagawa did this on purpose, why would someone design something that needs micro pression inputs with lag?

How's the ps4 do with say garegga? Is that the same 3 frames, I looked closer at the data and there's evidence to suggest it's closer to 4 frames on the pcb. Basically the same as batrider.

[Marcelliott]

I can't believe that rotating the screen with a line double gives 1 frame of lag, according to buffis data, there's 4 frames in batrider already.

There's 3 to 4 frames of lag in garegga pcb also.

@cools Could you really tell the 4 frames of lag?? To the point it made you sell the pcb. That seems really extreme dude.

Yup. Note that the mister rotation refers to play on a horizontal LCD, not a CRT in tate.

Other games when emulated with more latency than PCB - NewZealand Story (impossible to fire as rapidly or make accurate rapid tiny jumps), Bomb Jack (impossible to move perfectly horizontal tapping jump when falling).

I was comparing Raizing to other shmups at the time and it was noticeable. It's why I'm interested in measuring the new MiSTer core, comparing if I've just got older or it's better/same as PCB

It's crazy that old games like new Zealand story are still not accurate for what ever reason.
Why would modern technology not be able to emulate this? What are the tech reasons?

[pubjoe]

I wonder about this too sometimes. My guesswork is that (disregarding latency) maybe an input polling method can just never replicate some sequences that are possible with the parallel input of arcade PCBs. There are fighting game players who swear certain combos are near impossible with emulation.

I also wonder about those few frames of built-in latency and when this serves the purpose of input buffering which is needed to relax the timing of simultaneous button presses. I believe runahead would break this and I don't trust it, but I'm working with a few assumptions.

[Marcelliott]

I wonder about this too sometimes. My guesswork is that (disregarding latency) maybe an input polling method can just never replicate some sequences that are possible with the parallel input of arcade PCBs. There are fighting game players who swear certain combos are near impossible with emulation.

I also wonder about those few frames of built-in latency and when this serves the purpose of input buffering which is needed to relax the timing of simultaneous button presses. I believe runahead would break this and I don't trust it, but I'm working on a few assumptions.

I think I mentioned earlier in the thread that I'd read that m2 had wanted to port batrider but said it was way to hard as of how it changes frames per second under different scenarios.

What blew my mind is that it was almost suggested that current gen consoles wenrt capable enough.... I think they were talking about switch/ps4 though tbf.

I thought the whole point of fpga was thr perfect accuracy, I almost feel like the goal posts have been moved.
I acquired a mega sg and super nt with the plan on getting back into gaming around 2019, I didn't, but point is from what I read about fpgas back then, it was as if the land of milk and honey had arrived, total accuracy, but yet here we are talking about fpgas, mister etc just like people used to speak about MAME, emulation in 2005, crazy.

[pubjoe]

how it changes frames per second under different scenarios.

Some games, especially shmups, were tested and tuned to the precise capability of the hardware and the resulting slowdown is an exploitative feature. Replicating it as intended requires incredible accuracy.

just like people used to speak about MAME, emulation in 2005, crazy.

We're in the era of fussing about the last percent. We'll be doing it until we're 70.

[cools]

Re: New Zealand Story, the emulation is fine but the whole chain of PC stuff it needs to go through causes the lag. It's much harder for a modern PC emulation setup to achieve consistent low latency than it is on a fixed FPGA platform. It's possible, just more finicky.

"Accuracy" just comes down to effort expended in development whatever the system. Low latency without fuss is the benefit.

[SquidDude]

I think I remember hearing somewhere that the M2 PGM ports are quite intensive on the PS4, so maybe they did run into issues with performance doing Batrider.

I also wonder about those few frames of built-in latency and when this serves the purpose of input buffering which is needed to relax the timing of simultaneous button presses. I believe runahead would break this and I don't trust it, but I'm working on a few assumptions.

Nah, I think it's just "bad" programming. For example, when you want to select an ABC ship type in Garegga (without waiting for the selection screen to timeout), you still need to press A, B and C on the same frame, no built-in buffer for that.
Run-ahead works fine, some players just don't like the idea of it.

I thought the whole point of fpga was thr perfect accuracy, I almost feel like the goal posts have been moved.
I acquired a mega sg and super nt with the plan on getting back into gaming around 2019, I didn't, but point is from what I read about fpgas back then, it was as if the land of milk and honey had arrived, total accuracy, but yet here we are talking about fpgas, mister etc just like people used to speak about MAME, emulation in 2005, crazy.

Depends on how they're developed, as far as I know the only two mister cores that truly make use of the FPGA's potential accuracy are the Neo Geo and Mega Drive cores. Also yeah Analogue's "no emulation" false advertising is/was really dumb.

[pubjoe]

For example, when you want to select an ABC ship type in Garegga (without waiting for the selection screen to timeout), you still need to press A, B and C on the same frame, no built-in buffer for that.

Good example. Thanks. I thought I'd getcha with a fighting game example but my google result says Zangief's spinning lariat requires ABC on the same frame too. Ahh well.

[Marcelliott]

@SquidDude

Yeah that's a very good observation, analogue were talking like emulation and fpga couldn't even be said in the same sentence.
Tbf I was convinced by what I was reading at the time.

Infact, I used to watch a cool podcast by a guy called Smoke monster, he's someone I've always held in high regard, as backward as I am with tech, he always came across as a really well informed, clever guy, I found him easy to understand on technical subjects compared to others.
I can always remember him saying he was done with with any tangible hardware/software as mister was 100% accurate and it was what he would now concentrate on, he was talking like the code had been cracked so to speak,
That's why I'm so surprised with finding out about these issues regarding accuracy,

[pubjoe]

Haha, I was thinking of Smokemonster's videos when I posted yesterday. He used phrases like 'cycle-accurate' pretty liberally, and I remember him saying he can finally get rid of PCBs at the release of new cores. I guess he'd just never used Groovymame.

MiSTer is excellent by the way. It's just that saying it's more accurate than Mame is.. inaccurate. But it's also not exactly wrong if you compare to the average Mame setup, like the crappy machines in a disappointing barcade I recently visited in Brighton. It just depends that's all. It's pretty nuanced, and like cools said MiSTer is very low fuss.

[SquidDude]

The biggest pro of it IMO is the easy CRT output, and there is a low-lag way to get MAME displayed via the mister, so you can even use that for games that aren't on mister if you have a de-10 laying around.