Getting Back Into Shmups - Mame Version?

[Xyga]

[clippa]

Tradeoff is screen tearing.

Get yourself a 144hz monitor if screen tearing bothers you. You won't notice it at all.
If you've got a game running at 60fps on a 60hz monitor with vsync off, because the framerate is matching refresh rate but isn't syncing, you'll get almost constant tearing, but it's still by far the lesser of two evils in my opinion.

[pmp]

well for starters shmupmame never crashed on me
unlike groovymame

I have to agree on this. I tried using groovymame for a month, but found it too unstable even after I tried fiddling with the settings a few times. Had to go back to mamedev.

[Xyga]

Tradeoff is screen tearing.

Get yourself a 144hz monitor if screen tearing bothers you. You won't notice it at all.
If you've got a game running at 60fps on a 60hz monitor with vsync off, because the framerate is matching refresh rate but isn't syncing, you'll get almost constant tearing, but it's still by far the lesser of two evils in my opinion.

IMHO a freesync/gsync setup is the best solution to all of that, but of course it's expensive...

well for starters shmupmame never crashed on me
unlike groovymame

I have to agree on this. I tried using groovymame for a month, but found it too unstable even after I tried fiddling with the settings a few times. Had to go back to mamedev.

some possible causes for crashes have been attended to in recent months, but of course if some of the settings are incorrect crashes and ill-behaviour might still happen.
hopefully the clarification about proper settings might happen in the near future

[clippa]

IMHO a freesync/gsync setup is the best solution to all of that, but of course it's expensive...

Most shmups have a 60fps lock, gysnc/freesync would force your refresh rate down to 60hz, you'd lose all the benefits of having a nippy panel. Just save your money and get a 144hz monitor without the syncing tech. Syncing isn't necessary at high refresh rates.

[Calamity]

So I did some tests and here are the results. I've tested this on a Dell LCD monitor using a JPAC wired to a LED. This Dell has 2 frames of latency. Because the recordings are captured at 120 fps I need to substract 4 video frames from the latency count in order to get the actual latency, and divide by 2. Be aware that I've done the counting very fast so I may have made some mistakes.

The game I tested is batsugun. This game responds on the second frame. It means that expected latency is 1 frame, by design.

The videos can be downloaded https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing


*groovymame 0.197 -d3d9ex - vsync ON - frame delay 8

8 9 7 7 9 9 10 8 9 8..............8.40->(8.40 - 4.00)/2 = 2.20

*shmupmame vsync OFF

7 9 9 8 8 9 9 8 8 9................8.40
10 7 6 8 12 7 6 6 7 7..............7.60
9 10 - 9 7 7 7 8 9 9 8..............8.30

average 8.10->(8.10 - 4.00)/2 = 2.05

*shmupmame vsync ON

12 11 10 11 14 12 12 13 11 13..............11.90->(11.90 - 4.00)/2 = 3.95

I took 3 videos for the Shmupmame vsync off case because the first result was so identical to GM that people would think I was cheating. As you can see, the results for Shmupmame are a bit erratic, this is expected because vsync off introduces artifacts in frame counting, depending on where the tearing is happening on the screen.

On average, Shmupmame with vsync OFF has just slightly less latency than GM, by a fraction of frame (0.15). This comes at the cost of terrible tearing.

GroovyMAME's latency, 2.20 frames, is exactly what's expected for frame delay 8 (input captured on time for 80% of frames). I can't raise frame delay any higher on this hardware for that particular game.

On the other hand, Shmupmame with vsync ON lags nearly 2 frames compared to GM. This is expected too. Those are the 2 frames that D3D9ex removes.

The conclusion is GroovyMAME and Shmupmame are almost equivalent in terms of latency, with a very slight advantage for Shmupmame, but GroovyMAME does this with proper vsync and unhacked emulation.

Now you have the information, use whatever suits you best.

EDIT: The most probable reason that GM crashed for you is having it configured for CRT so it was trying to switch resolutions. Just use "-monitor lcd" and it won't crash.

[Bananamatic]

had it set to lcd, crashed with the following error

Exception at EIP=000007fefd6b1207 (register_frame_ctor+0xf606a0d7): ACCESS VIOLATION
While attempting to read memory at ffffffffffffffff

[Calamity]

Did you download it from my site on google drive? D3D9ex? Latest version?

[Xyga]

Thanks Calamity!

I assume in the scenario where both emulators have sync on but on the GM side you don't use frame_dealy (just have it running on d3d9ex) the advantage of GM would be of only about 1 frame?
Like
GM d3d9ex sync on = 3.20 (2.20 + 1.00)
Shmupmame sync on = 3.95
is that right?

EDIT: that makes baseline MAME ridiculously high btw.

[Bananamatic]

Did you download it from my site on google drive? D3D9ex? Latest version?

yes, yes and yes

that makes baseline MAME ridiculously high btw.

any shmup with vsync on is ridiculously laggy
which is why people play always with vsync off

[Xyga]

any shmup with vsync on is ridiculously laggy
which is why people play always with vsync off

not if they know about GroovyMAME, obviously

[Bananamatic]

tell me how to play all those doujins and steam games in groovymame

[Shepardus]

People find screen tearing that bad? For me it's usually unnoticeable and at worst an interesting phenomenon, hardly anything gamebreaking or even less enjoyable.

[Xyga]

@banan: I thought we were talking about emulation/mame here?

[Bananamatic]

People find screen tearing that bad? For me it's usually unnoticeable and at worst an interesting phenomenon, hardly anything gamebreaking or even less enjoyable.

I don't see it at all after I got a new monitor for some reason

@banan: I thought we were talking about emulation/mame here?

point was that regular mame with vsync on really isn't worse than doujins/pc ports with vsync on

[Calamity]

I don't see it at all after I got a new monitor for some reason

Is yours a 120 Hz LCD?

[Xyga]

@banan: I thought we were talking about emulation/mame here?

point was that regular mame with vsync on really isn't worse than doujins/pc ports with vsync on

well in the case of mame there's the driver's lag + the video lag (vsync)
in the case of doujins there's many and I don't know if they all use the same api's and sync methods, but most of the lag should come from the video I assume
for those a gtnc/freesync setup would be ideal

but then back to the main topic: is there still a point in using Shmupmame ?
I know about the lack of good autofire settings (soon solved apparently), and the issue with button input settings not saving (although I think this is a MAME issue not specific to GM) I think there a fix though
as for the time played and lack of old style GUI, well...what else? you don't like hte name maybe ? (groovymame)

but for playing mame with reduced lag, I reiterate my question to you; is there any point in still using Shmupmame over Groovymame?

[qmish]

People find screen tearing that bad? For me it's usually unnoticeable and at worst an interesting phenomenon, hardly anything gamebreaking or even less enjoyable.

Depends on game. Can't stand it in Zeal titles, for example.

[Bananamatic]

regular cheap benq 60hz evo monitor

but for playing mame with reduced lag, I reiterate my question to you; is there any point in still using Shmupmame over Groovymame?

ease of use, way more stable
more like there's no reason to use groovymame if you don't care about visuals or adjusting stuff to be as close to the pcb as possible

[Xyga]

I've never seen anyone being so panicked about being wrong and running in every possible direction hitting wall after wall

[pmp]

is there any point in still using Shmupmame over Groovymame?

Until someone puts together a convenient package for playing shmups with groovymame, people will keep using shmupmame. The few extra steps involved, particularly searching for the manual configuration needed on an lcd, etc., is more than your average person is willing to do. So they will settle with shmupmame as good enough.

If you feel so strongly about getting people onto groovymame, then writing a basic setup guide for getting started would go a long way.

[Xyga]

I agree with that completely, i've said over and over the issue with mame and even more so groovymame is accessibility/useability

[blackrabite]

but for playing mame with reduced lag, I reiterate my question to you; is there any point in still using Shmupmame over Groovymame?

Portability & ease of configuration seems to be what comes up most. I liked Shmupmame a lot and it was def my go-to for a while. When I got a CRT, I was keen on setting up GroovyMAME and I'm glad I did that too. I don't have a strong rig, but just having "frame_delay 1" and "video d3d" using d3d9ex build and I get movement on the second frame w/ DDP DOJ. And no tearing. And perfect fit for all the games' resolutions. But, I'll admit that in the past week, I messed with something in the .ini and now I'm getting sporadic crashes, where there once was none. Anyway, my case may be user error.

GroovyMAME is also cool 'cause I can play, like, Ibara Kuro. My old machine only gets input response in three frames for cv1k games though (tested with pause, hold movement, and then advancing frame by frame.) So I think that you need to have the right setup (monitor/video card/cpu) and motivation to mess with the .ini to really leverage what it has to offer. But, it's been rewarding! If a friend was watchin' me fuck up Dai Ou Jou and wanted to try playing, however, I'd throw a Shmupmame archive their way.

Also, thank you for taking the time to produce the above results, Calamity.

[Bananamatic]

My old machine only gets input response in three frames for cv1k games though (tested with pause, hold movement, and then advancing frame by frame.) So I think that you need to have the right setup (monitor/video card/cpu) and motivation to mess with the .ini to really leverage what it has to offer.

cv1k games have lag by default, even the ports and the pcb have 2 frames or so of lag

[BareKnuckleRoo]

*shmupmame vsync ON

This is called using Shmupmame wrong,

On average, Shmupmame with vsync OFF has just slightly less latency than GM, by a fraction of frame (0.15). This comes at the cost of terrible tearing.

"terrible tearing", lol

As we've been saying, Shmupmame works as a simple input lag reduction build with efficient features for autofire. It's older, but it's reliable and stable, and it still gets the job done for shmup purposes where input lag has a major impact compared to other game genres, and even if it's not 100% accurate in terms of what it's doing, its emulation is quite accurate for many games and is generally comparable to the PCB experience when playing as far as gameplay goes.

Tearing just isn't a big issue to players when they understand what the tradeoffs are without tearing. GroovyMAME is certainly an admirable project for trying to get the best of both worlds with lower latency and accurate v-syncing to eliminate tearing, and we're not shitting on the project goals. I get that you hate tearing, but the reality is that a lot of players have learned not to mind it, because the alternative is input lag which is infinitely worse. Because of the nature of GM being designed around specific monitor and GPU hardware, as well as the much more involved setup that appears to go into tweaking it before using it, I'm afraid to say that Shmupmame is still the more general-purpose build for recommending to folks who are new to emulation and looking to play the games as well as for folks who play it regularly on a suboptimal computer.

It's like choosing a Linux distro to install. The average user who is new or wants an easy, "out of the box" experience isn't gonna pick a Linux flavour that is crazy customizable and powerful but requires a very complex setup and specific set of hardware to run optimally. That's the sort of thing you research and plan out.

but for playing mame with reduced lag, I reiterate my question to you; is there any point in still using Shmupmame over Groovymame?

Here's your answer:

On average, Shmupmame with vsync OFF has just slightly less latency than GM, by a fraction of frame (0.15).

[Xyga]

Well, you're just being as dishonest as banana and that is funny.

It doesn't matter, people can see the results. They will know better. I won't argue against the acessibility issue because I agree, but that's the only thing you guys have.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I won't argue against the acessibility issue because I agree, but that's the only thing you guys have.

Even if it were true that it were the "only" thing, that's still a pretty darn major hurdle.

If you feel so strongly about getting people onto groovymame, then writing a basic setup guide for getting started would go a long way.

This.

[Xyga]

It is true, that's the only correct argument against GM.

Calamity and contributors I hope will come around a solution for this.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

One thing I am genuinely curious about: if Groovymame implemented Shmupmame's latency hacks, would it be possible to get it down to ~1 frame of lag (as in arcade accurate for games that have 1 frame of delay for input normally)?

[Xyga]

Their point is to not disrupt the driver's correct emulation, but hey have something they're working on called 'frame slice' which apparently can achieve further lag reduction without messing up the game internally.