SH3 Blitter Delay Discussion Thread

[donluca]

*wall of text*

tl;dr pls

P.S.: you should not use lcd in the mame.ini, you just have to adjust the CRT_range to what your monitor supports.

P.P.S.: GM runs with a graphic card as low as an AGP Radeon 7000 (that's what I used in my first build). Although I've discovered that newer ones have much nicer output, both in colors and sharpness over a CRT. If you need to use GLSL or filters, that's another can of worms, and then you need a decent graphic card.


And yeah, I agree that an updated guide for both CRT and LCD would be nice and should be included with the download, so when people start lamenting issue we can finally reply with the evergreen RTFM.

[Xyga]

for a standard 60Hz lcd - which is what most people own and use - it's fine. this is what Calamity himself has been recommending lately.
of course with hardware/display with superior or particular specs it's better to adapt a number of settings, which is something a beginner's guide should also of course mention.

tl;dr: well don't, this thread's done anyway.

[donluca]

Sorry if I insist on this, but are you 100% sure about the lcd setting?

I admit I've not been following the project closely this year, but I remember that even for LCD stuck at 60hz you have to use the CRT option and set the CRT_range to 60-60 to specify to only use 60hz refresh, otherwise switchres doesn't work.

[Xyga]

Just setting lcd works perfectly for me. I've read people meeting issues with 120Hz+ monitors and neededing to set the range though indeed.
You should ask Calamity the question to be sure.
See why GM needs a dedicated LCD guide ?

[donluca]

I agree on the guide (I edited a previous post just as you posted a new reply! Maybe you didn't catch that ).

I was under the assumption that you need to use the LCD option only when using non-Radeon cards, but at this point I might be wrong.

I'll definitely ask for a clarification on that one, although it doesn't really apply to me (got an arcade cab and slowly buying the boards I like, so I've left the MAME project since quite a bit).

[Xyga]

(we're editing our posts too often ^^)

FYI I've used the setting both with nVidia and AMD cards, and several 60Hz LCD's, it worked fine all times.

I've been wondering if modeline_generation which is ON by default could be the problem for some, although in my case ON or OFF doesn't change the behaviour.

[Bananamatic]

i set it up exactly as everyone said and it still crashes every 20 minutes
it's shit, cry me a river

[Xyga]

you're welcome to troll happily and prosper, do what dumbasses do and chill

[donluca]

(we're editing our posts too often ^^)

FYI I've used the setting both with nVidia and AMD cards, and several 60Hz LCD's, it worked fine all times.

I've been wondering if modeline_generation which is ON by default could be the problem for some, although in my case ON or OFF doesn't change the behaviour.

IMHO that's because you use the lcd option in mame.ini and I'm wondering if you're actually reaping the benefits of GM :/

I'll just shut up for now because at this point I realize I must be missing something and I'll wait for Calamity to reply me in the GM forums.

@banana that's really strange, if you have time/will, can you kindly share the logs so we can see what's making it crash? From my experience, it either works or it doesn't, there's no such thing as "it works for x time and then it crashes".

To produce a log open a command terminal (or command shell or whatever you call the black box with grey characters on ), navigate to your mame folder and do the following:

groovymame.exe -v romname >romname.txt

changing "romname" with the name of the rom you're playing, of course. Then paste it here.

Your efforts would be important to make the project better and more stable!

[Xyga]

IMHO that's because you use the lcd option in mame.ini and I'm wondering if you're actually reaping the benefits of GM :/

It's working fine you can be sure of that lol.

Your efforts would be important to make the project better and more stable!

You either have a short memory or the type who doesn't believe assholes exist.
I've tried, we've tried to help him and explain GM many times over, some you were participating too, his answer was always this, and he never provided useful details.
He uses savestates BTW, and he knows very well those crash GM.
*shrug* it's your time don.

[donluca]

I've got some time to spare today

By the way, this thread is definitely not done, it just needs something to backup your findings.

I think that the best thing would be putting videos of pink sweets from your board and your tweaked GM side by side so people can see the difference.

A triple side-by-side comparison, showing "vanilla" MAME, tweaked GM and X360 would be great so everyone can see the differences with their eyes and make up their mind.

[Xyga]

No for me it's done, really, I don't want to waste more time when there's like 1 person intersted for 9 bashing the thread with literally anything they'd think of.
They know about the method to experiment, if anyone wants to bother continuing here they're welcome.

The pcb I own is Ibara, for PS I've used videos (you'll find some links to replays in the strategy forum, you can download them with Jdownloader if you want to avoid YT player and conversion, there are some more on cave-stg for instance)
I've spent time to compare a bit, although more would be necessary for the purpose of fine-tuning.
I've found some differences between the pcb and 360 that are not too hard to see and experience, but I won't list them here.
PS isn't the most problematic with the settings I have mentioned anyway, there's more interest immediately in studying DFK 1.5 since the hack'll be out probably some time this year.
Anyway doing a full comparison with all three platforms for adjusting is a huge looong tedious task, personally I'll only check a handful of titles over time, probably with long pauses in-between. (note that pcb vs. 360 is already studied by the guys over at cave-stg)
If I share my findings somewhere I'll let you know. ^^

[tzakiel]

Groovymame properly configured with a j-pac and blast city is absolutely fantastic. I get pretty much zero lag and it looks identical to a real cab display.

[donluca]

Anyway doing a full comparison with all three platforms for adjusting is a huge looong tedious task, personally I'll only check a handful of titles over time, probably with long pauses in-between. (note that pcb vs. 360 is already studied by the guys over at cave-stg)
If I share my findings somewhere I'll let you know. ^^

Keep it up, man!

If you manage to get very close to X360 versions in GM that would be a huge win!

Futari, pls

[Xyga]

Have you tried blitter 63% ? this was commonly accepted as relatively correct for Futari and DeathSmiles. There were comparison videos on YT but I cannot find them anymore.
That was quite a while ago with an old build though, dunno if it's still valid since as Shepardus reminded a cv1k performance improvement was applied @ 0.191

[donluca]

I tried all kind of blitter settings and in the end I would just go back to the x360 version.

But I haven't tried meddling with CPU downclock.

[spmbx]

This was one for futari, guy has a few other stages too. But yes based on old version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UUODS2IEJ0

[Pearl]

63% proved too slow for God mode (specifically stage 3 & 4 boss), so I fiddled and compared back and forth with 360 and PCB videos until I reached a pretty ok conclusion with 57%.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz53LWg49QA

It may not be 85-90% accurate but its as good as I've managed to get while making sure some sections dont have too much, hell 56% made some attacks far faster than they should be so it's very finnicky.

It is not 100% perfect as Larsa 3rd phase doesnt trigger the slowdown at this low a percentage, while putting it higher would add slowdown on parts where it shouldnt.

also stage 3 boss opener has slowdown but its not like its that hard.

[donluca]

I mainly play Futari Black Label at Original and Maniac, should I use 63% for correct slowdown? I'd rather have slightly more slowdown than less.

[Pearl]

Im not sure about Orig/Maniac, I havent tested them. What I did to test was play the game and make savestates at every stage and boss then compare between videos to see how 63% would fare

[donluca]

for a standard 60Hz lcd - which is what most people own and use - it's fine. this is what Calamity himself has been recommending lately.

Alright, Calamity replied to using GM on an LCD with a very detailed post – and Xyga was right, my bad, I must have remembered something from *very* old days

Should you set monitor lcd in the mame.ini file if you're using an LCD?

Yes, definitely.

By using the lcd preset you're telling GM to stop video mode switching and stick to desktop's resolution only.

This assumes the user already has the desktop set to its native (optimal) resolution. E.g. you can't switch from desktop at 60 Hz to GM at 120 Hz, or from desktop at 1920x1080 to GM at 1280x720 to say making hlsl more fluent. If you'd like to do such things, then yes, you'd need to create a custom crt_range and do everything manually.

Default lcd range is defined to work between 59-61 Hz. If your LCD supports 120 or 144 Hz, you need to manually extend the lcd_range option accordingly, otherwise GM will fail to find a valid video mode.

Internally, GM creates a crt_range to fit your LCD resolution. It forces the -resolution option to be that of your desktop, and locks everything else.

The typical problem with uneducated people from of other forums is downloading GM to run on an lcd without any further configuration. This sets the default "monitor generic_15" which tries to set 640x480 @15 kHz, which obviously fails on their crappy laptop lcd, so -switchres is set to 0, and everthing else: scaling, autosync, etc. gets disabled.

Of course I could make lcd the default option to avoid that, but that would make nice people from this forum having to do specific configuration to just enable basic mode switching at 15 kHz on their cabinets.

Or find a decent solution for everybody...

Wondering if all those people having issues have ever done these steps...

[el_rika]

So, i'm going a liittle off topic here (not by much).

I recorded Espgaluda 2 level 1 demo mode (30 seconds) on my girlfriend's new S9 plus (Exynos) which is an amazing phone, and quite powerful it seems. It is played in Mame2014 Retroarch core, which is the fastest cv1000 driver available for android to my knowledge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqDTZQuxIQc

What we can observe here is that the game runs full speed 90% of the time, except for the end, when it stutters a bit. That moment in the game probably has slowdown on the PCB anyway, but here the sound also goes choppy and the overall framerate is down 10%. The obvious question is, what tweaks, if any, can be done to achieve full speed on this hardware, seeing how it's so close? Cpu underclock..? Blitter delay?

[poptart]

cpu underclock obviously.

[el_rika]

cpu underclock obviously.

i was afraid you were gonna say that. As far as i know, you can underclock the CPU in Mame only by enabling cheats and modifying a certain value in an .ini file, right? Thing is Retroarch in Android can not access those files. Is there other way (keyboard commands?) this can be achieved?

edit: ...and, as a rule, Blitter Delay makes the game more demanding at lower or higher values? or regardless?

[Goompaolo9500]

This was one for futari, guy has a few other stages too. But yes based on old version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UUODS2IEJ0

That’s actually black label.

So, i'm going a liittle off topic here (not by much).

I recorded Espgaluda 2 level 1 demo mode (30 seconds) on my girlfriend's new S9 plus (Exynos) which is an amazing phone, and quite powerful it seems. It is played in Mame2014 Retroarch core, which is the fastest cv1000 driver available for android to my knowledge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqDTZQuxIQc

What we can observe here is that the game runs full speed 90% of the time, except for the end, when it stutters a bit. That moment in the game probably has slowdown on the PCB anyway, but here the sound also goes choppy and the overall framerate is down 10%. The obvious question is, what tweaks, if any, can be done to achieve full speed on this hardware, seeing how it's so close? Cpu underclock..? Blitter delay?

Incredible. Not so sure about the other CV1000 Games...

[tnc]

Guys what does it mean if in GroovyMame it shows 101% when I press F11?

edit: It means if vsync is on, the game is running 1% faster to adapt to your refresh rate.