Shmupmame 4.2: Lagless Mars Matrix, Strikers 1945, Galaga 88

[Treasurance]

The DEP fix doesn't work, already tried it many times

[SamIAm]

On the subject of screen tearing:

Most of you probably know this already, but to me, it was like an epiphany. Since I'm not especially knowledgeable about MAME and it took me a while to figure all of this out, I thought I would post the solution to my problem that I just found and hope that other Joes like me will benefit.

My problem was:
1. There was screen tearing in Ketsui that looked ugly and distracting.
2. Enabling the Advanced menu's options (like "triple buffering", "wait for vertical sync" etc) in any combination would cause hiccups in both input and output, and only sometimes fixed the tearing. No smooth playing could be found with this alone.

The solution that worked best for me was:
1. Disabling "throttle" in the Display menu
2. Enabling "wait for vertical sync" and/or "sync to monitor refresh" in the Advanced menu.
3. Accept that the game will run slightly faster (~1% for Ketsui) with these settings.

What I think is happening is:
As long as "throttle" is enabled, the game will run internally at its native speed, which, as is true in the case of Ketsui and many other games, is not exactly 60Hz like your monitor most likely is. Ketsui in particular apparently runs at 59.17Hz. All of the options in the Advanced menu amount to little more than ways to make your computer try to adapt its display to this speed, which is essentially a choice between tearing or dropping frames unless you have fancy customizable video hardware. For those of us with displays that MUST be 60Hz (almost everyone) disabling "throttle" is what lets the emulator bump up the internal speed of the game, and "wait for vertical sync" or "sync to monitor refresh" makes it bump up the speed to exactly 60Hz (or whatever your monitor is).

True, some may find the altered speed undesirable, but I find the lack of tearing and smooth input/output to be far preferable, especially for games that run so close to 60Hz anyway.

Bear in mind, I think this solution only works for games that run at less than your monitor's refresh rate.

[StarCreator]

We should totally have a competition on how well we can play Ketsui at 75Hz.

[Lance Boyle]

What is the difference between "wait for vertical sync", "sync to monitor refresh", "refresh speed", and "triple buffering"?

[SamIAm]

We should totally have a competition on how well we can play Ketsui at 75Hz.

I'm in.

[emphatic]

We should totally have a competition on how well we can play Ketsui at 75Hz.

I'm in.

Sounds like fun. Too bad my laptop only accept 60hz.

[TVG]

Will "sync to monitor refresh" cause lag? That idea seems really good.

I actually set my refresh rate to 59.17 for ketsui trough the nvidia control panel, but even at that refresh the game is not in sync, there must be something else. Also for ketsui, 58 syncs better than 59 for me, it's weird.

[Despatche]

It doesn't want to be seen here, yet it's quite important:

I'd love to see delay tests performed with a high speed camera on some of the PCBs that Shmupmame makes changes to.

As far as I can tell, the whole point of Shmupmame is to remove the frame/sprite buffer in various MAME drivers. It's nice that this is an option, but I haven't seen anything to make me believe that this leads to more accurate emulation. There are drivers that have zero delay in standard MAME, after all, and I can't see the MAME developers including input delay for the hell of it.

[captpain]

It doesn't want to be seen here, yet it's quite important:

I'd love to see delay tests performed with a high speed camera on some of the PCBs that Shmupmame makes changes to.

As far as I can tell, the whole point of Shmupmame is to remove the frame/sprite buffer in various MAME drivers. It's nice that this is an option, but I haven't seen anything to make me believe that this leads to more accurate emulation. There are drivers that have zero delay in standard MAME, after all, and I can't see the MAME developers including input delay for the hell of it.

I would like to see that done.

I'm betting that in most cases (particularly the Cave games), removing the input lag is bringing the MAME experience closer to the real PCBs. Granted, I haven't played these on real hardware, but I've played plenty of arcade games and nothing felt like Batrider before the lag was removed. It just seems like arcade games wouldn't do well if they had 4 frames of input delay.

[Estebang]

The new version crashes immediately upon starting for me, with a 0xc0000005 error. I'm running Win 7 64-bit, and it still didn't work in compatibility mode for XP. Anyone else had this problem? I imagine it's due to the shift to mame99.

[Cugel]

I'm running Win7 64-bit and v3.0b crashes with a 0xc0000005. I've added it to the DEP exception list and it still crashed. I'm back to running v2.2 for now.

Nimitz: Thanks for your fantastic work. Any chance we'll see a 64-bit version of Shumpmame?

[Avatar Ignis]

The new version crashes immediately upon starting for me, with a 0xc0000005 error. I'm running Win 7 64-bit, and it still didn't work in compatibility mode for XP. Anyone else had this problem? I imagine it's due to the shift to mame99.

I'm getting the same error as you. not sure what to do :/

[moozooh]

Nimitz, you should consider putting that DEP fix quote in the first post, because people are going to ask on every page.

[Barrakketh]

Nimitz, you should consider putting that DEP fix quote in the first post, because people are going to ask on every page.

Well, Cugel said he added it as a DEP exception and it still crashes with the same error. Something else might be the problem for some of these users.

[Estebang]

The DEP fix worked fine for me! The only problem is that my Ketsui rom is no longer supported. Don't tell me there's already a different version of it out?

[captpain]

It is really astonishing to me how many problems people seem to be having. Actually it is probably some kind of bias because only the people that are having troubles are posting and those that aren't... aren't!

[ptoing]

DEP fix does not work for me either :/ WinXP SP3 here

[Lance Boyle]

Tried installing XBCD twice and after multiple restarts that profiling software would still not recognize my HRAP EX-SE, let alone MAME. Tried asking nimitz for help on IRC and the answer he gave me was pebkac.

Fun.

[Tyjet]

Tried installing XBCD twice and after multiple restarts that profiling software would still not recognize my HRAP EX-SE, let alone MAME. Tried asking nimitz for help on IRC and the answer he gave me was pebkac.

Fun.

HRAP EX-SE doesn't work with XBCD from my experience. Xpadder or Pinnacle Game Profiler does.

[Barrakketh]

Tried installing XBCD twice and after multiple restarts that profiling software would still not recognize my HRAP EX-SE, let alone MAME. Tried asking nimitz for help on IRC and the answer he gave me was pebkac.

Fun.

Well, nimitz isn't entirely wrong. Just checking, though: you're using 0.2.7 of XBCD? Open the hardware manager and get me a screenshot of your stick like this:



Ignore the yen signs, that's due to Japanese locale (they're actually backslashes). You see that first and seconds lines that have:

Code: Select all

HID\VID_0738&PID_F738

in them? You want the VID_0738 and PID_F738 bits. Yours will be different from mine, and those are important.

In the XBCD directory you'll see a "driver" folder. From the driver folder you'll want to open "xbcd.inf". In it you'll see sections that look like this:

Code: Select all

;Windows 2K/XP/Vista x86
[DeviceList.NTx86]

and

Code: Select all

;Windows XP64/Vista x64
[DeviceList.NTAMD64]

And under them you'll see lines that look like this:

Code: Select all

%XBCD_360.DeviceDesc%			=Install,		USB\VID_0738&PID_F738		; MadCatz Street Fighter IV Fight Stick TE 'S' 

Now, that one happens to be my stick that actually isn't supported out of the box my XBCD. But you remember those VID_XXXX and PID_XXXX values I told you to save earlier? Replace the values from my example with the ones for your stick. Add the name/description of the stick in place of mine (everything after that semicolon is a comment, and that's where I tossed my stick name), and add it under the correct section (either the 32-bit or 64-bit one). Now try to install the drivers for your stick. After they are installed and your stick is detected, odds are your stick in the Game Controllers applet will now look a little like this:

[third_strike]

A Shmupmame v2.2b would be perfect.
Any possibility?

[Zeron]

A Shmupmame v2.2b would be perfect.
Any possibility?

Seconded

[zakk]

I want to try to build an OSX version with the shmupmame changes + whatever makes sense from Mameplus (autofire etc) but I can't find the mameplus 0.99 source/diff anywhere. Where'd you get it?

[Treasurance]

A Shmupmame v2.2b would be perfect.
Any possibility?

Seconded

Thirded

[Lance Boyle]

A Shmupmame v2.2b would be perfect.
Any possibility?

Seconded

Thirded

Fourthed

[Drachenherz]

A Shmupmame v2.2b would be perfect.
Any possibility?

Thirded

Fourthed

Fucked

[IseeThings]

Seconded

Thirded

Fourthed

"Hopefully at some point there will be no question as to which base version is superior."

yep, newer based ones, where the actual development team have made fixes to fix all the issues people list....

I don't mean this in a nasty way, but this will be a good thread to point people at when they try to claim 'older versions were much better'. Things have moved on for a reason guys, MAME 0.99 is ancient, and as you've found doesn't work all that well on current hardware.

[emphatic]

Let's just agree to that older base versions run better (or at least faster) on older hardware in most cases and newer base versions have a higher compatibility with more recent o/s choices.

[Barrakketh]

"Hopefully at some point there will be no question as to which base version is superior."

yep, newer based ones, where the actual development team have made fixes to fix all the issues people list....

I don't mean this in a nasty way, but this will be a good thread to point people at when they try to claim 'older versions were much better'. Things have moved on for a reason guys, MAME 0.99 is ancient, and as you've found doesn't work all that well on current hardware.

On the other hand, there are users like me who have a "modern" PC that Shmupmame 3.0 Just Works™ with (using Vista and a quad-core processor, if that matters).

The people who have problems are naturally going to be the most vocal. I imagine that the silent majority aren't having issues.

[IseeThings]

Let's just agree to that older base versions run better (or at least faster) on older hardware in most cases and newer base versions have a higher compatibility with more recent o/s choices.

I'm not the one making outrageous claims about the older versions tho

How's Cyvern in 0.99, were all the SuprNova fixes backported, or are the later levels still screwed up?

How about the Jaleco MS32 shooters like Game Paradise? shadows are probably completely broken back in 0.99, they're not perfect now, but they're much better.

Striker 1942 II, Last level zooming? Sol Divide last level backgrounds?

Missing tiles / priority problems on the later levels of OutZone? They were all only fixed recently.

By basing on 0.99 you're throwing away _years_ of progress not only on the OSD core, but the drivers, cpu cores, sound cores, you name it... the actual dev team haven't been sat on their arses doing nothing for the last 6-7 years.

Sure you can backport all the MAJOR fixes, but a lot of the minor ones you might fail to notice completely unless you play the games a lot.

As far as trust, and confidence in the emulation is concerned I wouldn't touch such an old version, I've been there, I've seen the sheer quantity of fixes that have gone in over the years, some of which make the old drivers look embarrassingly bad.