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

[emphatic]

snip

Thanks for that. It was equally entertaining and informative.

[Subterranean Sun]

I think savestate on PGM games is not working properly in v3.0b. If you make a savestate, then quit MAME and then reload, the game will suddenly switch to Back Label. Anyone else having the same problem?

[Treasurance]

Wow, this is amazing, an emulator that works one day and next doesn't because of some fixable unfixable error that happens for no good reason.

[AWJ]

(snip)

Anyway, what's interesting is the performance difference between MAME .99 and the more recent versions. It's at least twice as fast and I doubt "emulation accuracy" is all there is to it even if the above log did not describe all the changes made to the cave.c driver.

The new rendering system does have slightly more overhead, but it's not correct to say that pre-0.106 MAME is "twice as fast". Try a game that runs at only 200% or so on modern MAME (if you can find one that was supported in 0.99); I doubt it'll be anywhere near twice as fast in 0.99. It's more that the rendering overhead overwhelms the actual emulation speed when the actual emulation is trivial for your CPU (which describes pretty much any single-68000 game on a C2D)

It's like (foolishly) using glxgears as an OpenGL benchmark. Just because tweaking some driver setting increases your glxgears from 15000 to 30000 FPS, doesn't mean that your games will also run twice as fast.

TL;DR version: using obsolete MAME versions mainly gives you more performance where you don't need it--namely on games that your CPU is capable of running at many times full speed regardless of what MAME version you use.

[third_strike]

I think savestate on PGM games is not working properly in v3.0b. If you make a savestate, then quit MAME and then reload, the game will suddenly switch to Back Label. Anyone else having the same problem?

I played only DDPBL in this version, all this problens happen plus sound stop and c button is not enabled when you start a replay (the nadest problem). Because this I go back to 2.2

What I would like to know is how many people would actually like to see a 141 based version and if they are willing to make it worth my time (since I wont even use it).
Another option is to find someone who wants such a version and who is able to port all the stuff to 141. I can provide help to anyone willing to do that.

I prefer the 141 version because it is easy to configure (mainly the video opitions since I play in a crt monitor) and have not that annoying bugs). I only would like play DOJBL whit decent sound, but sadly I know nothing about programming

[austere]

The new rendering system does have slightly more overhead, but it's not correct to say that pre-0.106 MAME is "twice as fast".

I meant in this test in particular, it's twice as fast. I obviously didn't mean twice as fast in general, it'll vary depending on how much time is spent in each core and the overall MAME layer/main loop.

It's like (foolishly) using glxgears as an OpenGL benchmark. Just because tweaking some driver setting increases your glxgears from 15000 to 30000 FPS, doesn't mean that your games will also run twice as fast.

TL;DR version: using obsolete MAME versions mainly gives you more performance where you don't need it--namely on games that your CPU is capable of running at many times full speed regardless of what MAME version you use.

I think that you've employed a weak analogy. The maximum frame rate you get with something like glxgears depends on a whole range of OS layers as well as the driver. The graphics accelerator driver interface gets called on every command, a small change which is otherwise insignificant to most apps will suddenly get exposed by such a small test. With MAME, the main loop runs the CPUs, audio, VDP, etc., in their timeslices. Its overhead can be significant, but it's hard to trace down unless the core overhead is smaller (i.e. if it gets called less often). Even though we can't conclude what is slowing things down, there is indeed something meaningful in this test unlike glxgears which tests one infrequently called part of the system. This tests the entire system with a typical application (glxgears is far from a typical call order in a game). The numbers and the relative values themselves don't actually matter much. I repeat, I'm not saying "MAME .99 is twice as fast as the latest version", I'm just trying to point out that it's faster for ddonpach (single ROM test) and I did point people towards what they can investigate.

Besides, this machine is moderately fast (Q6600/4GB), which is why you're seeing such high percentages. Scale the speed down and the percentages will drop likewise. You'll still be able to play DDP in MAME on a netbook, perhaps even at 250%, but the Cave PGM games might shave things close.

Try a game that runs at only 200% or so on modern MAME (if you can find one that was supported in 0.99)

Well, for example, ddp3blk (two processors, the 68k running at 20MHz rather than 16MHz) actually does run at around ~210% without throttling in MAME .141. In MAME .99 with nimitz's fixes (so you can still argue the emulation accuracy isn't the same I suppose), it's running at ~270%. So the main loop overhead (and possible Z80/68k improvements?) isn't nearly as significant but it's there.

Now, scale the speed down and you can see why some people are complaining. Doesn't take much to hit the critical 100% mark. To be frank though, perhaps it's time for some people to buy a new machine.

[IseeThings]

Sadly the MAME SVN history only goes back as far as .121 which is when MAME started using SVN, however even changes like

" - 0.123u6: Aaron Giles fixed terrible slow down in some scenes of Air Gallet and Mazinger Z."

can have an impact on performance. Note, that this is a performance *increase* for the worst case scenes in Air Gallet and Mazinger Z. However, that performance increase was done by removing some really nasty colourtable abuse. It's possible that by doing that there was a slight drop in performance for the other games, at the same time as a huge increase for Air Gallet.

I'm not saying that in this case there was, but changes LIKE that one can do that, and yes, they build up over time. I know in really old versions cave.c really abused some MAME systems in ways that it shouldn't have been doing, causing it to eventually break, again such code had to be fixed / cleaned up.

Not everything is mentioned in the whatsnew / public logs.

There is SOME core slowdown, but again most of it is related to actual improvements, even if they might not affect a specific game *directly*.

Somebody was saying that ThunderForce AC was much better in the older versions, but that's simply because it's based on MegaDrive/Genesis hardware, and the compatibility rate for that was somewhere in the low 20% back then, to emulate it properly requires a much better degree of accuracy, and it now has closer to a 98% compatibility rate. The changes might not benefit TFAC directly, but the code is much more trustworthy now, and if TFAC does pull some weird VDP tricks somewhere that nobody noticed they're far more likely to be correct now.

Likewise, Toaplan2 will have slowed down significantly last year when I added proper per-pixel mixing, replacing all the priority hacks, and ensuring that the priority is ALWAYS correct, especially on Batsugun which has a crazy mixing scheme of 2 VDPS. It got slower at that point, significantly. It got slower again in u1 when the sound was emulated, for obvious reasons.

PGM slowed down a lot when zoom and priority were fixed, .99 shows the same slowdown with that code backported.

For people to blame C++ is silly.

I can understand people complaining that the new versions are slower, because they are, but a large amount of that slowdown is unavoidable, and if you port exactly the same fixes back to 0.99 you're going to get about 90% of that slowdown in 0.99 too, and in addition to that, all the problems people are reporting here.

Sounds like you forgot to port the cavepgm save states too...

[IseeThings]

Anyway...

If you want FAST, and fancy you might actually be better ditching MAME altogether

Port everything you want to Final Burn Alpha, most of their code is ported from MAME, but they have a lot less 'core' (you have to do more stuff manually) It's also less likely to undergo heavy rewrites / revisions which break your code.

They could do with a few extra developers.

Won't be as easy of course.

[lunarCaffeine]

Hello gamers!
As you can see this is my first post. I've been reading information that you guys post in this forum for quite some time, being the great majority of it enlightening and entertaining.
Recently I've come across this thread and downloaded this promising configuration of MAME. After some runs of the Black Label version of Dodonpachi Daioujou I wanted to dump a video (from the .inp file) of the last run I've made, but I noticed that none of the command line options (-aviwrite, -wavwrite, -mngwrite) to dump the video seem to work. It appears that the command prompt just ignores the input command.
Here follows the input:

Code: Select all

mame32p.exe ddp3blk -playback daioujou.inp -wavwrite sound.wav -mngwrite Daioujou.mng

Strangely, without the added options the emulator starts properly:

Code: Select all

mame32p.exe ddp3blk -playback daioujou.inp

What configuration I have to add to make the dump work?

PS: My thanks to the developer to having the initiative to start this amazing project!

[IseeThings]

if you're recording a video you might want to try and play it back with a normal verson, to avoid the horrible graphical glitches this introduces, or at least a version of this without the sprite buffers removed (replys from such an old version probably won't sync properly on newer builds..) .. The DDP3 videos made with this look horrific on YouTube due to the layers breaking up.

[lunarCaffeine]

That's bad...
But thanks for the information!

[IseeThings]

That's bad...
But thanks for the information!

On the new versions you'd use -aviwrite anyway... (then aspect correct it in vdub, there are far too many uploads with broken aspect ratio too!)

I've also found that by interpolating to 30fps (Frame blending) and massively overscaling it with VDub YouTube handles it a lot better too. I did that for the FixEight video (400% scale) and the lower quality versions of the video (IMHO) look much better after YouTube have done their business. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ijz3-7l_A4 )

Reasonong: YouTube seem to reduce everything to around 30fps anyway, so flicker effects break if you don't interpolate the frames (they appear as transparency effects if you do), and their compression doesn't seem to destroy the image as badly if you upscale it first.

I don't know if 0.99 supported -aviwrite tho, I'm guessing not.

Again this is why these things should really be based off current versions, not ancient ones. You'd have no issues playing it back with a normal build, without glitches, and with the full -aviwrite functionality offered now.

[Lance Boyle]

There sure is a lot of pebkac in this thread! Guess I'm not the only one, lol.

If you make a savestate, then quit MAME and then reload, the game will suddenly switch to Back Label.

It's a hidden feature

[Zeron]

There sure is a lot of pebkac in this thread! Guess I'm not the only one, lol.

If you make a savestate, then quit MAME and then reload, the game will suddenly switch to Back Label.

It's a hidden feature

No need to be mean

[Lance Boyle]

No need to be mean

<LanceBoyle> Hey I'm having issues with the latest version of your Shmupmame pack. Can you help me?
<nimitz> pebkac

As for 99 running slower, pebkac as i said.

[nimitz]

IseeThings (aka Haze) : You might want to start another thread, while I understand you being not so favorable to this build, there are people who actually care about having reduced lag and this is what this thread is about. Your constant badmouthing (mixed with slight fallacies) can go elsewhere.


Lance Boyle : please do not forge IRC logs, I helped you privately for 10 minutes before finally giving up.

[lunarCaffeine]

I don't know if 0.99 supported -aviwrite tho, I'm guessing not.

I tested it. It doesn't work too.
The tips you gave about editing the video will surely be helpfull! Thanks!

[Paradigm]

there are people who actually care about having reduced lag and this is what this thread is about.

Exactly. If people want to use a newer version of MAME, that's their choice, there's no need to keep going on about it. This thread is for those of us (most of us here it seems) who want as little input lag as possible.

Cheers nimitz, your work is very much appreciated.

[IseeThings]

IseeThings (aka Haze) : You might want to start another thread, while I understand you being not so favorable to this build, there are people who actually care about having reduced lag and this is what this thread is about. Your constant badmouthing (mixed with slight fallacies) can go elsewhere.


Lance Boyle : please do not forge IRC logs, I helped you privately for 10 minutes before finally giving up.

I'm giving people advice. In most cases that advice ends up being 'use a current version' because the problems they're having were solved years ago.

The fallacies are coming from other people (C++ killed performance!! etc.) as well as statements made on your site about the build, for example the claims about Save State support.

If you want to try and argue facts with people who have been working on the project for 10+ version you can try, but I've written, and introduced slowdowns in, enough shmup drivers to know that the _major_ slowdowns have all been due to added features, not core changes, and (with the exception of a few odd cases like the PSX driver) not compiler changes.

It was your choice to base off 0.99, and yes, some people like that, and are thanking you for it, but you'd also seen the sheer number of issues introduced by taking such an approach, and if your main reason for doing it was speed you'll quickly find out that you lose a lot of it when backporting all the fixes. Likewise, simple core features like -aviwrite are completely lacking in such old versions.

I've encountered and had to deal with enough *REAL* people who think MAME is a trainwreck of a project because their only experience with it is with 0.36 based builds running on handheld devices where the emulation really is still very, very buggy even for common games. I don't see any harm in just letting people know that a lot of the bugs they encounter with this build are actually things that have already been fixed. I think Storm Blade can be added to that list too?

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Im dismayed at the genral tone of this thread with the displays of arrogance towards nimitz that SOME posters have made. There's nothing wrong with contructive criticism just show a little respect for the guy who has been giving free gifts to the community for about a year.

As for me Im very happy with v3 as ive had one or two games with timing problems with the newer build including mars matrix which is the shmup im spending most of my time while on mame (with v2/2.2 it has a nasty habit of speeding up every so often like ild pressed the throttle button, and I have a new i5 PC) Sure there seems to be some compatablity problems for some ppl (inc me) but anyone who plays games on the PC knows that comes with the territory.

Once again my THX go out to you Nimitz

EDIT: this isnt pointed towards anybody like haze who are talking lots of technical mumbo jumbo that flies over my head

[Iori Branford]

Do you mean the new Cave PGM romsets?

Those are easy, as they're now the same in ShmupMAME as in base MAME. I'm thinking of ROM sets with significant changes since .99. CPS2 games in ShmupMAME 3 need you to find the increasingly rare x-roms. The Raizing games had different parent sets then, so someone with only current parent sets will have to do some gathering and shuffling. Not the hardest things I've ever had to do -- in part thanks to RomCenter -- but for average users an uncharacteristically large hurdle for a more play-focused MAME build.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Concerning ppl with the unfixable x0c00005 fault has anyone tried v3 in Safe Mode? Ive just tried my DEP fixed PC in Safe Mode and it does start up (v3a). It wont play any roms (however it might if you select safe mode to boot up in 640x480 using your normal display drivers which win7 is capable of doing). This will at least give you a clue as to if there are any other programs that may be conflicting with v3 and causing it to x0c000005. If it does work then its just a case of trail on error in msconfig to find the culprit.

EDIT

version 3 and 3b won't run on my computer, never had a problem with any other mame versions. I was looking forward to playing Bakraid with less lag, looks like I'm out of luck until I figure out what the problem is.

There seems to be one group of ppl who had problems with all versions of the 99 build (1.5 and 3) and those who are only having trouble with v3. I wonder if those who the DEP fix works are in the first group of ppl like I am and only those who the DEP fix wont work for all belong in the second group. Not that I would know what to do it if turned out right, im sumising

[Matsunaga]

version 3 and 3b won't run on my computer, never had a problem with any other mame versions. I was looking forward to playing Bakraid with less lag, looks like I'm out of luck until I figure out what the problem is.

[autumndrone]

Arcade stick not recognized in 3.0
Sixaxis PCB / Axisdapter via PPJoy


btw any plans for backporting rsgun or cps3 titles?

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Arcade stick not recognized in 3.0

Xpadder?

[Lance Boyle]

Arcade stick not recognized in 3.0

Xpadder?

MAME doesn't recognize XPadder remappings, or any profiling software I've tried for that matter (and I use XPadder with multiple other emulators and it works fine for them).

[TrevHead (TVR)]

thats a bummer, how about some other profiler utility like joy2key? (or key2joy or whatever the fuck its called)

[spl]

Arcade stick not recognized in 3.0
Sixaxis PCB / Axisdapter via PPJoy


btw any plans for backporting rsgun or cps3 titles?

Did you enable "joystick input" in the options? IIRC it was not enabled by default.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

I would advise anyone with a working v3 not to run it in safemode like I have just done cos after doing that the x0c00005 fault returned and wont go away DEP fix or not. I would guess that the DEP fix is just a tempory fix and also advise anyone with a working DEP fixed PC to not "go fiddling under the hood" or make any major changes to the system if they are currently playing an v3 exclusivly optimised game

C'est la vie theres always v2.2 and mame 99, not been able to run v3 isnt the end of the world

[third_strike]

IseeThings (aka Haze)

The poet is here!