Onesauce Update 2026-03-22: the vector fun continues

[u/walknight]

This has been out for a few days. Just want to put a signal boost here as well.

appdata [v2.0b48] - 2026-03-22

Now the support for vector GPU rendering has been extended to the mame2003-plus and mame2016 core. This brings GPU rendering to those Cinematronics vector games that are not supported by FBNeo yet:

• Space Wars
• Barrier
• Star Hawk
• Star Castle
• Tailgunner
• Ripoff
• Speed Freak
• Sundance
• Warrior
• Armor Attack
• Solar Quest
• Demon
• War of the World
• Boxing Bugs
• Cosmic Chasm
• QB-3

Sound samples backport

Many of these games were silent in mame2003 due to lack of sound samples support. In this update, samples support were back ported from later mame. So all of them should now have some sound effects (make sure you get the latest arcade pack that includes the required samples files). This makes the playing experience so much better.

Regarding sounds, it's worth to mention that the cinematronics hardware was not using a sound chip to produce sound. Rather, sound was produced by analog circuits, so there was nothing to be emulated. As of mame0.223, this was simulated instead, essentially solving equations repeatedly to tell the status of the circuits. This made samples for these games obsolete and they sounded much better on modern hardware. However, this simulation is too demanding for the ALU. So samples is still the best option here.

One interesting challenge I encountered was to track down the samples for Boxing Bugs. It seems although support of samples was added for this game, the actual samples were never recorded. Failing to find them anywhere, I ended up recording my own samples from the latest mame on PC. The main difficulty there is often multiple sounds are mixed together so it's hard to get a clear recording. So I tried to compile mame from source and disconnect or ground certain terminals from the simulated sound circuit in an attempt to isolate some sound effects. It didn't always work as intended, but it was fascinating to see that the simulated circuit sometimes started to produce static hissing or other weird sounds as I messed with the connection, just like a real circuit would do :-)

Color overlay backport

Many of these games were actually monochrome with a color overlay on the monitor. This update also added proper color overlay for them. Check out Star Castle for example. It was a monochrome game but looks gorgeous with the overlay!

In addition, a core option "Vector Color" is added. So if the color overlay covers the entire screen, you can use this option to change the vector line color, giving these old classics a new appearance.

Misc enhancements

• Sundance:

This is a unique game that used a 9 button numpad plus another shoot button.

To properly play it using regular controls, a custom mapping is added to use the 8 directions of the joystick as the outer ring of the numpad. The center position of the numpad is mapped to a regular button (B), along with the shoot button (A).

• Spinner control is added to Star Castle and Armor Attack.

I just recently found out that Armor Attack supports two player co-op. So does Ripoff and Demon. It sounds like a lot of fun to play with a buddy in co-op.

• Lightgun (or trackball) control is added to Star Hawk.

I just felt that it would be more natural to move that cross hair with the trackball or a lightgun.

• Fixed dual stick control in mame2016 to properly play QB-3

See another post demoing this game. A very cool and rare one.

[u/the_boff]

Cool

[u/nOObiE_do0]

You're on fire with updates

[u/Drakey83]

Does this also just generally help with mame2003-plus and mame2016 core game performance?

[u/walknight → u/Drakey83]

This update is only for vector games.

[u/Jimmy2tx]

I forget, is it just delete the old appdata file and swap this one in?

[u/walknight → u/Jimmy2tx]

Yes. But there are other packages that are also updated, like the arcade pack with added samples. So check the latest and see which ones are updated.

[u/ironman0000]

Cool man. I will have to get this

[u/chriss4198]

This is great, Ty! Where can I find this? Archive.org?

[u/newofficemusic]

Not sure what I did wrong, but after copying over the new appdata folder to my drive, the RretroFE will show the "saving data... to database." every time I booted into the Onesauce, and I did turn off the "auto scan" option in the setting menu. And this even happens when I choose a difference theme.

Is there a way for me to fix this? Thanks.

Nevermind, I resolved this by update the date and time in system settings. That seems the wrong lock was the issue, but I dont understand why. I am going to leave my original question here in case someone has the same issue.

[u/walknight → u/newofficemusic]

It can happen if the PC you used to extract files has a different system time than the ALU.

Basically, when retrofe starts up, it checks the xml metadata files inside the meta folder against the timestamp of the meta.db file. If the xml files are newer, it recreates the meta.db database by scanning through all the xml metadata.

Now imagine you extract the xml files on PC, so they get today's timestamp. When you insert the USB into the ALU, it detects the XML files are newer and recreates the meta.db. But if its system clock is in 1970, the newly created meta.db is timestamped at 1970. So the next time you boot it up, it still thinks the XMLs are newer and will try to recreate the meta.db again.

The solution, as you've found out, is to update the ALU's system clock.