Trouble running Salamander 2 in MAME

[Cromarty]

MAME tells me this game's graphics are not properly emulated, but there must be a way to make it run without dropping tons of frames if it showed up as an option in STGT07.
I tried the "overclock CPU0" thing from another topic, but it didn't help at all. One of the older DOS versions (0.113 or so?) ran very choppy, and in MAME32 0.123 it looks the same either way.

How do I make this thing playable?

[Ed Oscuro]

My guess, based on your description: Dropping tons of frames isn't related to an in-emulation setting (making a difference between the internals of the emulated CPU speed, and the "externals" of how MAME processes stuff, which I'm about to talk about); it's related to your computer sucking. Hit F11 to bring up the counter; it should say something along the lines of Auto 0/10 100%. The 0/10 means it's skipping 0 of 10 frames - if you see this number jumping the percentage will also likely be dropping. If the ratio of frames dropped jumps while the percentage remains at 100, try hitting F8/F9 to go through different frame settings (cycle it to 0/10 again). Finally, if the percentage is jumping above 100%, you also aren't getting full performance and there's hiccups being caused by something or other.

[Cromarty]

Okay, at 8/10 it runs at 100% pretty consistently.

I know my machine sucks, it's four years old, but it ran everything else I've tried in MAME without any problems.

[Shatterhand]

My machine is kinda old, but it runs it without any major problems. If I remember correctly, there were a couple of minor GFX glitches, but the framerate was steady.

[Ed Oscuro]

8/10 runs it too fast for me - plus I imagine that setting means it's dropping most all frames. Very shaky, seems unplayable to me.

[Cromarty]

8/10 means it's dropping 8 out of 12 frames, up to 10 of 12 at most, if I read the text files correctly.
Doesn't look terrible, but it's not really fluid.

How is it going too fast at that setting? Is there normally slowdown in places?

Shatterhand: what processor/speed, RAM, video card?

[Ed Oscuro]

I mean the actual game seems to be speeding up. Granted, I'm underclocking my machine - will try it out on full speed later on...

[Cromarty]

Defragged my hard drive yesterday, that didn't seem to be any immediate help. Today I ran it with nothing else in the background (excluding system processes, AV, firewall), frameskip set to 0/10, and it almost got to 100% during the first stage - huge slowdown (60-70%) on the "space worms" bit right at the beginning, then it jumped to 93-95% when Golem appeared.
Not sure what to make of that.

[Ed Oscuro]

Defragged my hard drive yesterday, that didn't seem to be any immediate help.

How would it be, aside from the initial loading?

Today I ran it with nothing else in the background (excluding system processes, AV, firewall), frameskip set to 0/10, and it almost got to 100% during the first stage - huge slowdown (60-70%) on the "space worms" bit right at the beginning, then it jumped to 93-95% when Golem appeared.
Not sure what to make of that.

I get a huge slowdown in Gradius IV when the fire dragons appear, but I've got a Core 2 Duo here...hmm, still wondering what kind of CPU you've got in your system.

p.s. Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del once and see how much CPU usage "Idle System Process" is taking up before you run MAME. You'd like this to be as close to 99% as possible, although killing random processes to bump that from even 90% to 99% isn't going to fix that slowdown on those worms. Only an upgraded computer will do that.

[Cromarty]

I thought defragging to put the free space closer together might help virtual memory/swap file, especially since the drive is almost full.

hmm, still wondering what kind of CPU you've got in your system.

Pentium III, 1200 MHz.

With only system processes, firewall, AV, as in my previous post, the task manager shows 0-1% CPU usage.
That's equivalent to Vista saying the system idle process is taking up 99%, right? (I'm running Win2k.)

At the very least, it looks like I can set frameskip lower than 8/10 if I run nothing but MAME.

[Zebra Airforce]

Have you tried running the game at a lower resolution? That's what most people had to do to get Darius Gaiden to play at an acceptable rate. Aside from the game getting a bit uglier it worked out pretty well.

[lgb]

Try using autoframeskip. They may help. Most importantly, NEVER EVER RUN A LOT OF PROGRAMS IN THE BACKGROUND. It's like a mask.

I got S2 to run just fine on an 800. But check your RAM too. It helps a bit. (That 800 had 512MB of ram)

[Cromarty]

I was hoping to avoid using autoframeskip, because it makes the sound skip sometimes when it adjusts.

Have you tried running the game at a lower resolution? That's what most people had to do to get Darius Gaiden to play at an acceptable rate. Aside from the game getting a bit uglier it worked out pretty well.

Changing the display resolution doesn't make the game go any faster or slower.
I think I'm looking at the wrong setting, though.

Gonna try running Darius Gaiden to see if the problem carries over. [edit: yes, although not as bad]
Also going to look for a high quality video of Salamander 2 to see how it looks with all frames. [edit: not significantly better]

[captain ahar]

you might try using an optimized mame build ->here<-

also, experiment with different versions of MAME

the computer i am on at this moment runs Dodonpachi at 50% speed with the latest version of MAME (command line, v .124a). however, using MAME32+ (v.104) with the GUI and everything, runs the game at full speed (with no dropped frames).

sometimes the builds are just temperamental depending on your setup.

[Cromarty]

P3 optimized build didn't do any better, it skips about the same amounts with auto on as the other version.

I'm just going to deal with automatic frameskip for now, it's playable and I'm bored of trying to make it draw all frames and still play. Some other time, maybe