Too close for comfort? the revival?

[IseeThings]

Havent tried any of these SH-3 games yet but Im a bit surprised when I read about how stressful the emulation is for the cpu? This could easily be the most demanding non-3D game in mame. But why is that? I read that apart from the Sound its pretty much optimized as much as possible. Gpu is not a factor In mame right, so its All down to the cpu. Looks like you need a dual core 3ghz to hope to get 100% emulation? Thats pretty wild considering cps3 ans killer instinct runs fine on a single core amd 2000+

CPS3 is a 25Mhz SH2 with 'tilemaps' and sprites, and a sparsely used palette value addition blending system, basic DAC style sound system, and games which demand little in the way of CPU power on the original system

Cave CV1000 is a 102Mhz SH3, a framebuffer and blitter with a whole array of blending modes, meaning the entire content of the screen has to be sent and redrawn every frame with per pixel mixing for every pixel drawn, plus 8 channel sound system which is borderline MPEG in complexity as well as games which in extreme cases will make full use of the CPU power of the original system.

Killer Instinct is just a CPU + framebuffer, no dedicate video or sound hardware and again, a rather simple game. (Also the MIPS has a recompiler, which helps)

CPS3 might have native hardware zooming (which Cave CV1000 lacks) and CPS3 might also be of a higher resolution, but it should be clear just from the basic stats above why Cave stuff requires several magnitudes more CPU power. CV1000 isn't fancy hardware by a long shot, but the sheer CPU speed and GPU fillrate + blending complexity far exceed that of CPS3.

It might be nothing compared to real 3D systems, and it's certainly 'cheap' hardware in many senses, but even the most basic facts make it demanding to emulate.

I'm surprised this stuff runs as well as it does.

[1up]

Thanks for enlightening me

[BeruBeru]

First time compiling mame, I never imagined it would take so much time

[kevenz]

a quad core really helps compiling mame, it took 12mins on my quad... and 30mins on my dual core laptop.

[gct]

Thanks to all the MAME devs for a nice u8, it is the first time I have seen MMPork and it was a joy to play.

Running on this little guy, , you can tell just by looking it's not any beastly desktop. CPU is i3-2105 which is basically exactly the same as the $100 i3-2100 but with better onboard graphics, spec-wise this is a pretty cheap build but made more expensive due to the premium on tiny form factor.

MMPork with sound, 100% with rare drops to I guess 80% when the screen is filled. Typical load on the physical cores at about 30% + 60%. Looking forward to playing this on my 2500K

[ptoing]

a quad core really helps compiling mame, it took 12mins on my quad... and 30mins on my dual core laptop.

I tried to compile it some time ago, worked, but it too ages. Got a quad core as well. Is there some special command which enables MT for the compiling?

[moozooh]

you can tell just by looking it's not any beastly desktop. CPU is i3-2105 which is basically exactly the same as the $100 i3-2100 but with better onboard graphics, spec-wise this is a pretty cheap build but made more expensive due to the premium on tiny form factor.

Hey, not fair! You're making i3-2105 look worse than it really is. :) In fact, it leaves stuff like Core 2 Quad Q8200, which was among the best CPUs of 2008, in the dust, and generally outperforms every consumer-grade Intel CPU from up to 2008 (2009 for AMD) with ease. I'm sure most people here actually have way less powerful computers!

[joeboto]

a quad core really helps compiling mame, it took 12mins on my quad... and 30mins on my dual core laptop.

I tried to compile it some time ago, worked, but it too ages. Got a quad core as well. Is there some special command which enables MT for the compiling?

make -j5 ?

[ptoing]

Ah, I just used make. Will try that next time. Thanks

[Barrakketh]

Ah, I just used make. Will try that next time. Thanks

It's generally recommended to use the number of cores on your machine + 50% (quad-core would be -j6). Not if you'd want to use a higher value on Intel CPUs with HT.

[captpain]

has anyone written an authoritative or particularly good noob's guide to compiling mame? if so, could you help a shmupper out with a link

[TheSoundofRed]

If anyone is interested, I have a mame64 OS X binary optimized for dual core processors that I compiled. It works great, except for a bug that prohibits the use of fullscreen that stems from SDL somehow... You can change your screen settings in the mame.ini or preferences if you use a GUI frontend.

Link below:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=72MAZ21G

[BPzeBanshee]

has anyone written an authoritative or particularly good noob's guide to compiling mame? if so, could you help a shmupper out with a link

mamdev.org has a page if memory serves (mightve got the site wrong, its MAME's official site), if you have trouble I can probably help you out given time.

[KNTain]

Just played Mushi Futari Black Label back to back between the 360 port and U8 and noticed a ton of missing slowdown in MAME. I'm assuming it's still not implemented?

Either way, thanks so much to the MAME team for the awesome work.

[Vamos]

Just played Mushi Futari Black Label back to back between the 360 port and U8 and noticed a ton of missing slowdown in MAME. I'm assuming it's still not implemented?

Either way, thanks so much to the MAME team for the awesome work.

Mame doesnt emulate slowdown in sh3 yet which i actually prefer for mushi and futari original modes i always do better never liked slowdown programmed or not, for ultra though yeh thats gonna be for the bravehearted.

[charlie chong]

i'm more in the market for a new laptop than a new desktop and know nothing about modern specs etc. are there laptops on the market that will run all this new cave stuff comfortably? and what sort of thing would i be looking at. i am very dumb about this sort of thing.

[Ixmucane2]

Guwange Special Ver. and three revisions of Pink Sweets were added in MAME 0.143u8. I don't think they'll be able to pile up games faster than I can look at them much longer, but of course I hope they do.

[Vamos]

Guwange Special Ver. and three revisions of Pink Sweets were added in MAME 0.143u8. I don't think they'll be able to pile up games faster than I can look at them much longer, but of course I hope they do.

These were added in u7 i think , the roms are out there .

[alastair jack]

i'm more in the market for a new laptop than a new desktop and know nothing about modern specs etc. are there laptops on the market that will run all this new cave stuff comfortably? and what sort of thing would i be looking at. i am very dumb about this sort of thing.

Get one with an i5 CPU.

[Elixir]

Futari has absolutely no slowdown.

Are there any versions of MAME that makes Mushi run properly? Looks great, runs terribly.

[mjclark]

Guwange Special Ver. and three revisions of Pink Sweets were added in MAME 0.143u8. I don't think they'll be able to pile up games faster than I can look at them much longer, but of course I hope they do.

These were added in u7 i think , the roms are out there .

Wooh- this just keeps getting better. Also I notice an Ironclad prototype in the u8 set.
Is Ironclad playable in MAME, cos that is one fantastic hori

Also what's the differences with the Guwange Special Version (apart from the blueness lol)?

[joeboto]

first time playing pinksweets, is the default setting doesnt include extend every so so points, unlike other shmups?

[Gus]

Futari has absolutely no slowdown.

Are there any versions of MAME that makes Mushi run properly? Looks great, runs terribly.

Change the file name to mushisama and it runs perfect.

[Sumez]

Havent tried any of these SH-3 games yet but Im a bit surprised when I read about how stressful the emulation is for the cpu? This could easily be the most demanding non-3D game in mame. But why is that? I read that apart from the Sound its pretty much optimized as much as possible. Gpu is not a factor In mame right, so its All down to the cpu. Looks like you need a dual core 3ghz to hope to get 100% emulation? Thats pretty wild considering cps3 ans killer instinct runs fine on a single core amd 2000+

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011 ... ulator.ars

[Vamos]

first time playing pinksweets, is the default setting doesnt include extend every so so points, unlike other shmups?

Wondering this to i just got a 1 up but have no idea how lol , game runs pretty well here which is nice.

[mjclark]

Also what's the differences with the Guwange Special Version (apart from the blueness lol)?

Lol- it's just more difficult isn't it?

Also is it just me, or is Ibara Kuro a lot more fun than Ibara?

[BPzeBanshee]

Also what's the differences with the Guwange Special Version (apart from the blueness lol)?

Lol- it's just more difficult isn't it?

Also is it just me, or is Ibara Kuro a lot more fun than Ibara?

Guwange Blue Mode is actually more easier if anything. The mechanics of slowing down the bullets are different in that they flash purple (mix of pink/blue) instead of just going back to blue afterwards and they turn into gold when you kill an enemy. There's other less-noticable changes such as the shikigamis moving around the screen faster (I swear Shishin's guy moves around faster since and others have said as much in the Guwange XBLA thread).

As for Ibara Kuro, that uses more Cave influences to change stuff around, but the changability of weapons and rank display meter makes it more fun for me too.

[kernow]

Also what's the differences with the Guwange Special Version (apart from the blueness lol)?

Lol- it's just more difficult isn't it?

Also is it just me, or is Ibara Kuro a lot more fun than Ibara?

Nah, it's just easier.

[Vamos]

Also what's the differences with the Guwange Special Version (apart from the blueness lol)?

Lol- it's just more difficult isn't it?

Also is it just me, or is Ibara Kuro a lot more fun than Ibara?

Nah, it's just easier.

Agreed its really not a patch on ibara although it is very good .

[JOW]

The main reason I buy console ports (or PCBs for that matter) rather than use emulation is not for the extras but avoid issues like input lag, screen tearing, slightly unsynchronised sound and general glitchiness (tearing gets particularly ugly when TATEing).

strange, those are some of the main reasons i prefer emulation and avoid console ports. i find them to be more of an issue there.

if you ask me, on the whole, emulation usually looks better and plays better. it usually just lacks in sound (no arrange soundtracks, slightly lower quality, slightly behind sync etc).

Fair comment but it depends on the quality of the ports - like I said though I wasn't just referring to ports but how emulation stands up against the original hardware and accurate ports.

Over the years I've ended up buying arcade PCBs, an Amiga (Kickoff 2 simply isn't the same in UAE) and accurate ports to get over emulation issues. I don't have anything against using emulation and I do use MAME quite a lot - but I do find your comments surprising

i'm more in the market for a new laptop than a new desktop and know nothing about modern specs etc. are there laptops on the market that will run all this new cave stuff comfortably? and what sort of thing would i be looking at. i am very dumb about this sort of thing.

Get one with an i5 CPU.

...while I've not done extensive testing Mushihimesama appears to run with good FPS on my (works) i5 laptop - however I wouldn't say it's playable in the proper sense as the sound skips quite a lot. With Futari the music skips constantly - practically seizure inducing