Making twin cobra/kyukyoku tiger smooth in MAME?

[TVG]

How are you supposed to get a decent non choppy refresh rate on twin cobra?

According to the "properties" thing, the board runs at 54hz, however even when I put my refresh rate at 54 it's still choppy. Tripple buffering helps with the stange tearing like screen distortion (worse than tearing) but not the choppyness.

I'm a little frustrated, I really like the game but this is ugly. It's not my hardware either, it's the same on my xbox emus, etc. Was the arcade board choppy too?
R-type, another game with a weird refresh rate (55 iirc) can be made smooth as silk at 55 or 54, why not twin cobra?

[Obiwanshinobi]

Are you sure you're getting 100% speed?
I can only answer as usual: if your monitor outputs refresh rates higher than 60 Hz, set it to the highest refresh rate possible and don't bother synchronising it to the game's native framerate or vice versa. I run everything on MAME at its native framerate on a CRT set to 100 Hz (800x600), without v-sync or triple buffering (since those induce extra input lag). In my experience refresh rate high enough cures all issues of this kind (technically the screen still tears and all that, but it's easier to overlook). This is not a popular solution, but works for me. For instance, 60 fps games on Kega Fusion tear like a bitch at 60 Hz (sic!) unless I enable v-sync or triple buffering (I don't want these in action games). At 100 Hz, however, the very same 60 fps games look all fine and dandy without v-sync or triple buffering whatsoever. Same with other emulators - 100 Hz works like a charm, no matter the framerate.
Also, if you are playing on shmupmame, all games blessed with this hack will have jumpy sprites movement.
Actually some games even without shmupmame support behave like that (Sky Adventure), as if the sprite buffer was removed. I'm not sure if KKK Tiger is one of them.
P.S. Aye, sprites seem out of sync with the background, but not like in shmupmame. Rather, the background scrolls at half as much frames per second as everything else (the would be ~27 fps for background, ~54 fps for sprites). I'm afraid it's just the way it was programmed.

[Aquas]

I can only answer as usual: if your monitor outputs refresh rates higher than 60 Hz, set it to the highest refresh rate possible and don't bother synchronising it to the game's native framerate or vice versa.

Great tip that I didn't even consider. Turning my CRT up to 75hz got rid of the large, noticeable ripple I was getting in games when my monitor was set at 60hz. Thanks!

[Despatche]

is "KKK Tiger" supposed to be Charlie Sheen's new art name or something

[emphatic]

is "KKK Tiger" supposed to be Charlie Sheen's new art name or something

[toaplan_shmupfan]

"KKK Tiger" is a badly written abbreviation for what is supposed to mean Kyukyoku Tiger, the single player Japanese version of Twin Cobra.

[Voxbox]

Yeah, I imagine a title like "KKK Tiger" doesn't go smoothly anywhere.

[TVG]

Um, "kkk tiger" abbreviation was used for a long time. I don't think it sparked anything else other than a few immature jokes. Whathever, I know the internet is serious buisness now.

Anyway, if you want to get actual smooth image you really should try to match the game refresh rate. Altho I know people have various sensitivity to FPS and it's not important to everyone to get 60fps in games so they are fine with setting their monitors to 100hz to get rid of tearing. I can't. Some people are fine playing at 15, other think it's shit. Frankly this has been debated enough on the internet to not go there, just know some people prefer smooth.

I wanted to know if twin cobra ran smoother in the arcade and how to run it smoother on my pc. Since the topic is going nowhere if a mod stombles upon it he might as well close it.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Anyway, if you want to get actual smooth image you really should try to match the game refresh rate.

Meh. Didn't work for you, did it? I'm telling you that background in that game runs at lower framerate than sprites (you can check it out with step-frame method), therefore background scroll won't be very smooth no matter what (it's ~27 fps in the first stage). PCB's native refresh rate might be ~54 Hz, but the game's framerate is something else. Do you think shmups with lots of slowdown constantly change monitor's refresh rate? Hell no. Monitor displays ~60 Hz, whereas framerate dives even below 30 fps. If there's no tearing despite it, it's thanks to the v-sync which adds the input lag.

Altho I know people have various sensitivity to FPS and it's not important to everyone to get 60fps in games so they are fine with setting their monitors to 100hz to get rid of tearing. I can't. Some people are fine playing at 15, other think it's shit. Frankly this has been debated enough on the internet to not go there, just know some people prefer smooth.

I'm sensitive to framerate to the point of wincing at anything below 50 fps (screen tearing doesn't bother me nearly as much), but if the monitor's refresh rate is HIGHER than game's framerate, I see each and every one frame the game displays. Don't know where you got the idea that at 100 Hz you don't get 60 fps. Only when refresh rate is LOWER than framerate you can't see certain frames, not the other way round.
If by "sensitivity to FPS" you meant what I think you meant, then you haven't worded it precisely. Framerate can't be too high and steady for me, but I don't feel like having this discussion right now either.

[TVG]

I'm telling you that background in that game runs at lower framerate than sprites (you can check it out with step-frame method), therefore background scroll won't be very smooth no matter what

That explains the weird scrolling thanks. I guess the game is just old so they had to make some compromises to make it run well on the hardware.

As for the refresh rate issue, yeah I put my monitor in 58 to 60 hz for most games as it makes to image visibly smoother to me and deal with the tearing. Or if it's an old game with no precision dodging I just turn on tripple buffer because I can deal with a frame of lag in those.

[TVG]

I'm telling you that background in that game runs at lower framerate than sprites (you can check it out with step-frame method), therefore background scroll won't be very smooth no matter what

That explains the weird scrolling thanks. I guess the game is just old so they had to make some compromises to make it run well on the hardware. I've never seen the actual game run so I always wondered if it's an emulation issue.

As for the refresh rate issue, yeah I put my monitor in 58 to 60 hz for most games as it makes to image visibly smoother to me and deal with the tearing. Or if it's an old game with no precision dodging I just turn on tripple buffer because I can deal with a frame of lag in those.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

My local arcade known as Cal's R-Cade (with it's cool take of spelling of "arcade") had a Dynamo cab sporting a Twin Cobra PCB conversion kit complete with full sized marquee, control panel and side art. This was back in 1987-1988. Was cool to give it a spin with a pal...was designed to be a quarter-muncher indeed. I did not notice any odd framerate issues when playing it, btw. In fact, I thought it was silky-smooth for it's time when it made it's official debut on U.S. soil despite the obvious name change.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Pulsewidth]

You make it run smooth the exact same way as every other game smooth: by setting "throttle 0" and "waitvsync 1" (or forcing vsync in your graphics driver). You probably also need to disable multithreading. If you care about speed accuracy you need to set your monitor to a custom refresh rate to match the original hardware (or better yet, double the original refresh rate + my black frame insertion hack http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=34212). In the case of games with FM synthesis audio I don't think there's much point slowing the game down (I use Nimitz's sprite buffer hacks too -- I value fun over emulation accuracy), but in games with sample based audio you'll get audio glitching if you run them at the wrong speed. On Windows you can you can use the CabMAME patch set to run the audio at the wrong speed too so it matches, but on Linux there's no easy method to do that. Whatever refresh rate you choose, leave the internal emulated refresh rate in MAME alone.

Twin Cobra background scrolls perfectly smoothly, updating every frame (check horizontal scrolling). The alternate frame vertical scrolling is deliberate and the least worst option to achieve that slow scrolling effect on low res hardware.