Mame 0.153 Cave SH-3 emulation

[Andypc]

Mame 0.153 is out and Cave SH-3 emulation is officially back in the main Mame Build.

I have run the Games on a 3Ghz Core 2 Duo and the performance seems very good. Would be interested what everyone thinks. This is the first time I have tried the SH-3 emulation and it's better than I was expecting.

I know blitter rates have been discussed in detail before, but I would be interested to know the most accurate blitter rates are for each game in Mame 0.153

[trap15]

It's still shit and wrong.

[Cagar]

Hoorray.
When's sdoj?

[Nasirosuchus]

It's still shit and wrong.

They aren't 100% accurate to the PCB and never will be but the same can be said for the ports. That doesn't mean that people can't have fun playing them.

I don't understand why there's so much animosity towards the fact that some people find the games enjoyable in MAME. If this was an issue of freezing, crashing, and/or graphical glitches and enemies, bullets, and backgrounds not being rendered properly then I could understand the lashing out but that's far from the case. Most people just want to be able to play the game from beginning to the end and get a clear which is entirely doable in this case. If you're going for a world record then I wouldn't recommend playing the games in MAME but if that's what you're shooting for then you may as well just buy the PCB.

To the OP: 63% - 65% blitter delay is the best supported after all of the research that's been done.

[Patashu]

Do savestates still mess up if you, for example, make a savestate in stage 1, close the game, open the game and immediately load that savestate?

[endoKarb]

Two questions:

- Is there some particular reason why SH-3 emulation is not very good, or is it just that not enought time and effort went into it yet?

- Will it always be as CPU intesive as it is now, or could improvements in the emulation make things better in that respect?

[Patashu]

Two questions:

- Is there some particular reason why SH-3 emulation is not very good, or is it just that not enought time and effort went into it yet?

- Will it always be as CPU intesive as it is now, or could improvements in the emulation make things better in that respect?

The answer to both is 'more time and effort needed'

Remember, this is an emulation that Cave Cease&Desisted out of being legal to work on for several years.

[Blinge]

Does this mean they'll be working on improving the emulation?

[Jenseits]

Who knows...

Someone will - sooner or later.

[Teufel_in_Blau]

Does this mean they'll be working on improving the emulation?

I hope so. While I have no interest in the emulation atm, since I own all of them aside from Ibara Kuro, I am glad that IF my copies somehow getting lost or whatever I don't have to deal with crazy ebay prices in the future. CAVE via Mame was the reason I started playing shmups and the more people will find out about those awesome games, the better. Sometimes I feel like one of those crazy religious people. "If those poor souls only knew!! Once they will see the light the will understand and come to the right side... of gaming"

[mastermx]

CAVE via Mame was the reason I started playing shmups

Same here. MAME was the gate way drug for me too. MAME has done a great service to the genre.

[kathy]

This is great news which may hopefully encourage further tweaking of SH3

Even with its glitches and bullshit futari on mame somehow feels more like the pcb than the 360 port IMHO.

[Xyga]

Yeah but...

[finisherr]

I've bought just about all of the shooters I'd want to play that are compatible with an American 360. The stuff I will probably emulate includes DOJ, DDP, Ketsui, and Mushihimesama. If there were region free releases of these games, I'd have no problem buying them. But you know...there aren't.

Just bought a Raspberry Pi that I'm going to use for MAME since the Tattieboggle drivers don't work for my stick on the Mac. Pretty psyched. But, when I think about it, I still haven't gotten the 1-ALL on SDOJ, do it doesn't really matter. Although, it is nice to have variety for a quick credit or two.

[Fudoh]

Just bought a Raspberry Pi that I'm going to use for MAME

but SH-3 emulation is rather demanding, so you cannot use those games in MAME running on a Pi. In general MAME got rather CPU-extensive when used with HLSL (CRT emulation).

[PAPER/ARTILLERY]

I tried to use my pi as a mame box but it struggled to run most things at a decent rate and try as I might I couldn't get it to pick up inputs from the buttons on my vx-sa. Stick worked fine but not buttons. Mind you I'm not the most knowledgeable when it comes to Linux and so on.

[nasty_wolverine]

Also, though i may not be right, on linux mame uses a SDL backend, so the final buffer swap is not hardware but software, which on windows is done through hardware D3D. Generally mame feels slower on linux if you have a low powered machine (mines a 1.8 ghz 2 gb ram slow poke, mame runs at probably 80-90% speed in linux on DOJ, while on windows it gives the full mileage)

[Artemio]

I've bought just about all of the shooters I'd want to play that are compatible with an American 360. The stuff I will probably emulate includes DOJ, DDP, Ketsui, and Mushihimesama. If there were region free releases of these games, I'd have no problem buying them. But you know...there aren't.

If you are considering that path, why not hack your Xbox to play Japanese games and buy them?

[SapphireDensetsu]

I've bought just about all of the shooters I'd want to play that are compatible with an American 360. The stuff I will probably emulate includes DOJ, DDP, Ketsui, and Mushihimesama. If there were region free releases of these games, I'd have no problem buying them. But you know...there aren't.

If you are considering that path, why not hack your Xbox to play Japanese games and buy them?

A ban from Xbox Live Gold, among other things. Never mind the fact that some people don't have the knowledge or resources needed to hack a Xbox 360.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Nowadays that's hardly an excuse. I know when I wanted to play PS2 imports, it was easy to find a local shop that'd install a modchip for a hundred bucks so I could buy Japanese games from Playasia. Now, obviously with Xbox, you couldn't go online with a modded account, but you can always get a separate offline-only Xbox, or import a Japanese Xbox. It's more expensive to get into Cave's games, sure, but it's not an insurmountable barrier.

[Artemio]

I've bought just about all of the shooters I'd want to play that are compatible with an American 360. The stuff I will probably emulate includes DOJ, DDP, Ketsui, and Mushihimesama. If there were region free releases of these games, I'd have no problem buying them. But you know...there aren't.

If you are considering that path, why not hack your Xbox to play Japanese games and buy them?

A ban from Xbox Live Gold, among other things. Never mind the fact that some people don't have the knowledge or resources needed to hack a Xbox 360.

Then as suggested a Japanese xbox is the option. What i mean to say is that there are several better ways to play the games before Emulation.

[Despatche]

- Is there some particular reason why SH-3 emulation is not very good, or is it just that not enought time and effort went into it yet?

no, people are just terribly obsessed with "arcade accuracy" for some reason. right now, mame and those ports are strictly better than a pcb due to not having most/any of that slowdown. that's not desireable as far as mame/ports goes, but it's good by itself.

slowdown is simply a bad thing. games should not have it for any reason, and every game that does should have a "no wait" option somewhere.

[Astraea FGA Mk. I]

I find SH3 emulation to be quite good all things considered. My CPU overclock is actually necessary to run all of them at 100% emulation speed, the Ibaras and Pink Sweets especially would slow down emulation otherwise. Input lag varies from minimal to unnoticeable when v-sync and triple buffering are disabled but at the cost of occasional screen tearing. I don't notice graphical or sound glitches for the majority of the games. I like using the HLSL CRT preset that someone made and posted on the hardware board on my LCD monitor.
Obviously this is not competing with proper ports or actual PCB but fun nevertheless.
For the record I own every Cave NTSC-J 360 title.

[Xyga]

I like slowdowns sometimes, because I'm not - and probably will never be - good enough to get out alive from some of the most stuffy patterns if the bullets go too fast.

After all insane numbers of bullets and reduced hitboxes were meant to give the player a feeling he's great at dodging. Slowdowns in their own fashion can give the player a feeling he's in the middle of an extreme situation à la 'bullet time' when it's actually making the game much easier.

I know it sounds sacrilege but some of these features were intended...

[Astraea FGA Mk. I]

I think we all like slowdown but want it to match the PCB, I'm speaking of emulation slowdown which I don't want. The intended slowdown is existent to a certain extent, tweaking blitter delay may make it closer but I'm not sure if it could ever be accurate enough.

If I couldn't emulate at full speed I wouldn't bother though, I certainly don't want that sort of lag as the sound lags at the same rate and just feels like a futile attempt. My cpu is clocked over a Ghz above stock frequency which makes it possible.

[Jenseits]

I'm not too confident with SH3 emulation too...
But regarding ports:
I'm certainly no pro but slowdown on Daifukkatsu PCB seemed very different to the 360-Port to me.

PCB slowdown is somewhat "pumpy" while on the port it is more "linear" which made the port easier for me (got the PCB later).
Don't know if my senses tricked me there...

[Xyga]

Sure, anyway according to trap15 Mame can't give us pcb-accurate speeds and slowdowns, so... we're stuck.
Personally I don't care to the point I would ditch an emulated or ported game with say, 90% speed & slowdown accuracy vs the pcb.

Duh this topic is now officially a duplicate of that one http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=48859

[trap15]

It can, but I have about a 2% faith that it'll ever be done without someone else giving them patches.

[LRa]

Was Deathsmiles II also added?

[CStarFlare]

Deathsmiles II isn't SH-3.

I'm actually not sure if DSII would belong in MAME or if it would be a cracked executable file.