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

[Jeneki]

This is probably not new to version 4.2, but I recently got a Sky Adventure pcb so I was checking out the mame version:

Sky Adventure is a 3 button game, however I can only assign the first two buttons. The third button is used to switch ship type on the fly, which makes the game much cooler (different weapons are helpful for different parts of the game).

[Kabal2X]

Hello all, and thanks for shmupmame - hopefully I will be able to finally 1cc Dodonpachi - not an easy task!

I was wondering this (and it has nothing to do with shmups, I'm sorry)
In Mame, while playing Super Street Fighter II X, and I think most of the CPS2 fighting games, there's input delay (maybe 1 frame lag?).
While reading the changelog, it is listed CPS2 as a fixed driver (no lag). But before that post, when explaining the shmupmame 3.0 version changes, it is said this:

Lagless drivers list, this list is for version 3.0 (inludes 31 modified drivers):
cps2 (Progear, Dimahoo, Mars Matrix, 1944)

Does this means that only these games from CPS2 are modified and will play with no lag on shmupmame?
Thanks for any help

[trap15]

Should be fixed; the way the MAME code works would make it hellish to just be for a single game. The whole driver should be lag-fixed.

[Edmond Dantes]

Version 4.2 is giving me a weird issue.

When I use the included GUI, I can't adjust the volume from the tab menu (it'll detect up-and-down keystrokes, but not left and right. and sometimes it won't detect the pressing of the Enter key either). Also when I exit a game, I can't scroll down or highlight a different game.

None of these issues happen if I don't use MameGUI tho.

Also, the Undercover Cops background layer is still out of whack, but I assume its not gonna be an issue for the developers since that's not a shmup. I'll be sure to point it out if I ever see a similar issue in a shmup though.

[BuckoA51]

Shmupmame 4.2 refuses to run any games on my primary monitor

No matter what I set Physical monitor to in Options->Screen it always renders on monitor 2

If I disable monitor 2, it just pops up with a window telling me it can't initialise Direct3D...

Utterly baffled, can anyone help?

[DrTrouserPlank]

I've kind of asked this before but I'll try again.

Is there any way to play these games in MAME (don't care which version) without 95% of ROMs failing to run, even though they are good?
AS far as I remember, people have renamed so much shit in mame that half of it doesn't work unless you know what needs renaming again... is there any way around this? anything that can do it automatically.

[matrigs]

I've kind of asked this before but I'll try again.

Is there any way to play these games in MAME (don't care which version) without 95% of ROMs failing to run, even though they are good?
AS far as I remember, people have renamed so much shit in mame that half of it doesn't work unless you know what needs renaming again... is there any way around this? anything that can do it automatically.

download the latest romset. done.

[DrTrouserPlank]

I've kind of asked this before but I'll try again.

Is there any way to play these games in MAME (don't care which version) without 95% of ROMs failing to run, even though they are good?
AS far as I remember, people have renamed so much shit in mame that half of it doesn't work unless you know what needs renaming again... is there any way around this? anything that can do it automatically.

download the latest romset. done.

That doesn't seem so simple because as far as I can see every romset is an update of the previous. So even if I could find the latest one, I need every other set before it in order to get the games I want.

[Aquas]

I've kind of asked this before but I'll try again.

Is there any way to play these games in MAME (don't care which version) without 95% of ROMs failing to run, even though they are good?
AS far as I remember, people have renamed so much shit in mame that half of it doesn't work unless you know what needs renaming again... is there any way around this? anything that can do it automatically.

download the latest romset. done.

That doesn't seem so simple because as far as I can see every romset is an update of the previous. So even if I could find the latest one, I need every other set before it in order to get the games I want.

Welcome to effeciently using MAME for games. You gotta dig around for the correct versions of MAME and roms in order for some games to work. Most people use multiple rom sets and MAME versions to accomodate accordingly. It's annoying but it's how it is. Unless you're really OCD you'll probably have to be snoopy.

[Jeneki]

If mame gives an error that says it's missing a specific file, paste that filename + the game's name into your favorite search engine. That's worked for me when I need a specific version.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

I can't get g-stream or ketsui to run on this. It takes forever to search for games also.

[Ed Oscuro]

The only time you would want to update an old MAME ROMset is if you already have the previous set and want to use ClrMAMEpro to update that set to the latest. I don't do it because I don't like thrashing hard drives when I can just sacrifice a bit of bandwidth (downloading over the old set) to get the new set.

And yes, there are places where you can download the full sets.

Downloading individual ROMs from ROMsites with captchas is for the birds, a colossal waste of time especially if you like to try out many ROMsets.

I can't get g-stream or ketsui to run on this. It takes forever to search for games also.

Are you using shmupmame42_64bit (for example, on 64-bit systems)? No problems with either of those games, here. This is using the newer style of GUI, which is fast to search and start up.

If you want to use the old-style GUI, you can make searching (and anything that refreshes the GUI) a wee bit faster by disabling categories and folders from the GUI (right click on them).

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

The only time you would want to update an old MAME ROMset is if you already have the previous set and want to use ClrMAMEpro to update that set to the latest. I don't do it because I don't like thrashing hard drives when I can just sacrifice a bit of bandwidth (downloading over the old set) to get the new set.

And yes, there are places where you can download the full sets.

Downloading individual ROMs from ROMsites with captchas is for the birds, a colossal waste of time especially if you like to try out many ROMsets.

I can't get g-stream or ketsui to run on this. It takes forever to search for games also.

Are you using shmupmame42_64bit (for example, on 64-bit systems)? No problems with either of those games, here. This is using the newer style of GUI, which is fast to search and start up.

If you want to use the old-style GUI, you can make searching (and anything that refreshes the GUI) a wee bit faster by disabling categories and folders from the GUI (right click on them).

No, I tried the 64 bit version also but it gives me a is not a valid win32 operation error. I don't get it. I can run Ketsui and DDP DOJ in MAMEUI32 0.140U2 just fine. I'm using the same roms and bios, but they don't load in at all into shmupmame 4.2. Haven't been able to get G-Stream to run at all on any version yet. I'll try to find a full mame romset and try again. What a pain. Seems like Mame used to be a lot easier to use. I used to just drag and drop the rom in and it would always work.

[DrTrouserPlank]

[quote="Ed Oscuro"]The only time you would want to update an old MAME ROMset is if you already have the previous set and want to use ClrMAMEpro to update that set to the latest. I don't do it because I don't like thrashing hard drives when I can just sacrifice a bit of bandwidth (downloading over the old set) to get the new set.

And yes, there are places where you can download the full sets.

Downloading individual ROMs from ROMsites with captchas is for the birds, a colossal waste of time especially if you like to try out many ROMsets.[/quote[

All I know is that my experience of mame has always been

Download ROM
85% chance it doesn't work.
No indication why (assuming not bad ROM) with no way of fixing it other than
a) Trying ROM with every version of MAME under the sun until it works
b) trying to find another version of the ROM which probably has about a 5% chance of being the one that works with your MAME

Unless there is genuinely a way to get better compatibility that what I've experienced, I'm inclined to say that the whole MAME project is an immense waste of time and effort. If you are going to spend all that time developing something then why have such a sloppy system for naming and updating everything? Every new version of MAME breaks compatibility with hundreds of ROMS each time. Am I the only one who sees how ridiculous that is?

[Vamos]

The only time you would want to update an old MAME ROMset is if you already have the previous set and want to use ClrMAMEpro to update that set to the latest. I don't do it because I don't like thrashing hard drives when I can just sacrifice a bit of bandwidth (downloading over the old set) to get the new set.

And yes, there are places where you can download the full sets.

Downloading individual ROMs from ROMsites with captchas is for the birds, a colossal waste of time especially if you like to try out many ROMsets.[/quote[

All I know is that my experience of mame has always been

Download ROM
85% chance it doesn't work.
No indication why (assuming not bad ROM) with no way of fixing it other than
a) Trying ROM with every version of MAME under the sun until it works
b) trying to find another version of the ROM which probably has about a 5% chance of being the one that works with your MAME

Unless there is genuinely a way to get better compatibility that what I've experienced, I'm inclined to say that the whole MAME project is an immense waste of time and effort. If you are going to spend all that time developing something then why have such a sloppy system for naming and updating everything? Every new version of MAME breaks compatibility with hundreds of ROMS each time. Am I the only one who sees how ridiculous that is?

Ive never had any problem with mame so im guessing its just you unsurprisingly.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

All I know is that my experience of mame has always been

Download ROM
85% chance it doesn't work.
No indication why (assuming not bad ROM) with no way of fixing it other than
a) Trying ROM with every version of MAME under the sun until it works
b) trying to find another version of the ROM which probably has about a 5% chance of being the one that works with your MAME

Unless there is genuinely a way to get better compatibility that what I've experienced, I'm inclined to say that the whole MAME project is an immense waste of time and effort. If you are going to spend all that time developing something then why have such a sloppy system for naming and updating everything? Every new version of MAME breaks compatibility with hundreds of ROMS each time. Am I the only one who sees how ridiculous that is?

I usually use wolfmameplus-0106gui-vc. It runs most of the games I've tried fine except for newer stuff like Ketsui and G-stream. Which game/s are you having trouble trying to run?

[null1024]

All I know is that my experience of mame has always been

Download ROM
85% chance it doesn't work.
No indication why (assuming not bad ROM) with no way of fixing it other than
a) Trying ROM with every version of MAME under the sun until it works
b) trying to find another version of the ROM which probably has about a 5% chance of being the one that works with your MAME

Unless there is genuinely a way to get better compatibility that what I've experienced, I'm inclined to say that the whole MAME project is an immense waste of time and effort. If you are going to spend all that time developing something then why have such a sloppy system for naming and updating everything? Every new version of MAME breaks compatibility with hundreds of ROMS each time. Am I the only one who sees how ridiculous that is?

I usually use wolfmameplus-0106gui-vc. It runs most of the games I've tried fine except for newer stuff like Ketsui and G-stream. Which game/s are you having trouble trying to run?

I just wish MAME would just look at the checksum of each file and just assume based on that if it couldn't find the correctly named file.

Also, find a site that keeps recent updates, a lot of them only have really old sets [like, .118 old, when we're on .148]. The MAME renaming thing does bother the crap out of me, because it's often really arbitrary. I can understand if they were missing a ROM and were doing some workaround to get the game to boot in earlier versions [so an older set wouldn't work in a newer MAME version because the file simply wasn't in any available dump], but renaming a file to match some new [but still pretty arbitrary] naming scheme is silly.

Worst case scenario: manually rename the roms based on their checksum. I know there's a tool for this [and can batch rename], but I dunno what it's called.

[Squire Grooktook]

Download ROM
85% chance it doesn't work.

Why do I get the feeling you're not downloading the parent rom?

[trap15]

I just wish MAME would just look at the checksum of each file and just assume based on that if it couldn't find the correctly named file.

That's the first thing it does

Only if it can't find a matching checksum will it look for the name.

[ReiKusanagi]

odd as I have the latest shmupmame and Ketsui works pretty well on it (I say pretty well as there's still sound issues related to the board it and DOJ use)

It might be that you have outdated roms or something or missing the parent rom.

[null1024]

I just wish MAME would just look at the checksum of each file and just assume based on that if it couldn't find the correctly named file.

That's the first thing it does

Only if it can't find a matching checksum will it look for the name.

That's not in baseline MAME though [aww], I just did a quick test to see. It just gives up if the name isn't found, even if the correct ROM is there.

[Ed Oscuro]

The only time you would want to update an old MAME ROMset is if you already have the previous set and want to use ClrMAMEpro to update that set to the latest. I don't do it because I don't like thrashing hard drives when I can just sacrifice a bit of bandwidth (downloading over the old set) to get the new set.

And yes, there are places where you can download the full sets.

Downloading individual ROMs from ROMsites with captchas is for the birds, a colossal waste of time especially if you like to try out many ROMsets.[/quote[

All I know is that my experience of mame has always been

Download ROM
85% chance it doesn't work.
No indication why (assuming not bad ROM) with no way of fixing it other than
a) Trying ROM with every version of MAME under the sun until it works
b) trying to find another version of the ROM which probably has about a 5% chance of being the one that works with your MAME

Unless there is genuinely a way to get better compatibility that what I've experienced, I'm inclined to say that the whole MAME project is an immense waste of time and effort. If you are going to spend all that time developing something then why have such a sloppy system for naming and updating everything? Every new version of MAME breaks compatibility with hundreds of ROMS each time. Am I the only one who sees how ridiculous that is?

Look, you're thinking things over too hard.

Like the quote function. Don't replace the final ] bracket with a [ bracket, why would you do that?

MAME isn't a program designed for impatient dumbasses to plug-and-play games in their Windows box. It's an effort to document old arcade hardware. If you get an old ROM from a ROMsite they don't own and don't endorse, that's not their problem. If a third-party build with altered features doesn't work right, that's not their problem. If you do something wrong, that's not their problem.

Now that we've acquitted MAMEdev of wrongdoing, let's get back to Shmupmame. Get a recent ROMset. For Shmupmame 4.2, MAME 0.148 has worked perfectly so far. Nothing I've tried is non-working.

There are ways to get full ROMset torrents online. I value not being banned more than I value giving you an easy answer, unfortunately, so you will have to do some searching around. Please don't get banned for leeching torrents if you find the right place.

[BPzeBanshee]

That's the first thing it does

Only if it can't find a matching checksum will it look for the name.

That's not in baseline MAME though [aww], I just did a quick test to see. It just gives up if the name isn't found, even if the correct ROM is there.

It checks CRCs first if it's in a ZIP, otherwise it only goes by name. I found when getting Ketsui Arrange to work some time ago that having the backup program ROM file made no difference when the folder was uncompressed (loaded Arrange as expected) but when I ZIPped it up it used CRCs to get the ROMs, used the backup file, and loaded normal Ketsui.

[evil_ash_xero]

I don't know if anyone asked this, but...

I've made a custom button for Mars Matrix, to have rapid fire(not rapid pierce shot). But nothing works. I can make the button, but it just doesn't act any differently than normal. Is there a number on the delay on autofire that would make this work?

[Ixmucane2]

Unless there is genuinely a way to get better compatibility that what I've experienced, I'm inclined to say that the whole MAME project is an immense waste of time and effort. If you are going to spend all that time developing something then why have such a sloppy system for naming and updating everything? Every new version of MAME breaks compatibility with hundreds of ROMS each time. Am I the only one who sees how ridiculous that is?

Yes, you are the only one. The rest of the world has perfectly adequate update tools and isn't too lazy to use them.

[BPzeBanshee]

I don't know if anyone asked this, but...

I've made a custom button for Mars Matrix, to have rapid fire(not rapid pierce shot). But nothing works. I can make the button, but it just doesn't act any differently than normal. Is there a number on the delay on autofire that would make this work?

Have you made custom buttons before?

Make sure you have autofire actually turned on and set to some number. I managed to get a button working myself so it should be more or less fine.

[Ed Oscuro]

Unless there is genuinely a way to get better compatibility that what I've experienced, I'm inclined to say that the whole MAME project is an immense waste of time and effort. If you are going to spend all that time developing something then why have such a sloppy system for naming and updating everything? Every new version of MAME breaks compatibility with hundreds of ROMS each time. Am I the only one who sees how ridiculous that is?

Yes, you are the only one. The rest of the world has perfectly adequate update tools and isn't too lazy to use them.

But if you are too lazy (like me), you just redownload over the old ROMset. This wastes a few gigabytes but doesn't require redownloading everything, just the torrent chunks which have updated information.

[oboewan42]

Just noticed something weird about recording replays that you may want to look into.

On the new GUI, if you try to playback a replay using File -> Play With Options -> Playback Input, it plays the input back with default NVRAM; since I usually have my games set to freeplay and full-auto-C if possible, this causes the replay to desync.

However, if you try to playback a replay using File -> Play With Options -> Command Line, or by using the old-style GUI, it plays the input back with the current NVRAM, which doesn't desync.

(Of course, that's disregarding the possibility that the NVRAM may have changed since the start of the recording - i.e. when you enter your highscore - but I haven't run into any desyncs. Just to be on the safe side, though, I recommend making it so that it makes a backup of the current NVRAM when recording an INP, so that you have it for playback. Alternatively, you could make it so that it ignores NVRAM when you record, but that would mean setting things like full-auto-C back up every time you start playing... or worse, sitting through the entire Raiden Fighters setup sequence!)

Note that games that store their settings in dipswitches don't have this problem, since INP files take dipswitches into account.

Another thing: if you try to record a replay with auto-load-and-save turned on, it's completely broken, since it starts from a saved state and then overwrites it when you're done recording (this happens in both the new and old UIs), causing any and all replays to desync. A suggestion is to automatically make a backup of the first savestate when you start recording a replay, so that a person viewing the replay later can start from the same saved state; alternatively, you can disable auto-load-and-save entirely when recording replays.

[NIK]

Another thanks here. Been using 0.148 Mame quite happily until I tried shmupmame 4.2, now I have an average 1 frame less of input lag across all games. You live and learn...

[oboewan42]

Found another minor issue: it appears that Fire Shark is flagged as the parent set for the Same Same Same 1P and 2P sets, but not as the sample parent. This means that, unless you have its 172MB samplezip in there three times (once under each name), CLRMamePro will think that the samples for the latter two are missing (even though the sound works fine).