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

[jepjepjep]

currently pondering if I will make a vanilla mame version with the autofire + custom buttons inlcluded

That would be awesome. I've compiled it on OS X against vanilla mame and it's working great, but it would be nice to have the autofire.

[Ed Oscuro]

Ed: Thanks for the tip of removing extra folders to speed up loading time, I didn't know about that.

Well, that reading is probably an accident due to how I structured my post - all I know is that it makes the UI more responsive. I don't know if it makes it load faster - it's possible it would be marginally faster, but the main benefit of removing folders and columns from the list is that the UI is faster to scroll, resize categories, and search.

A MAMEUI with autofire...that would be pretty novel!

[nimitz]

Apparently the problem with D3D is that it fails to terminate the last "session" correctly and tries to start a new one which makes it crash... Using the command line version and specifying a game in the command line (ex: shmupmame4 batsugun) will actually work

I added a "New GUI" (Qt) version to the download page and since this version basically calls the command line with a specific command every time you launch a game this version works perfectly with all rendering methods. So if you want to use D3D 9 for now, just get the Qt version. The Qt version also happens to have some advantages: It loads up *much faster*, It has hlsl setting avaible and it lets you emulate most of the popular consoles directly from there (2600, 5200, 7800, nes, snes, game boy, sms, megadrive, game gear, pce, msx, msx2, wonderswan).

Now that I know what the exact problem is I might be able to fix it for the other versions sometime this week.

[O. Van Bruce]

will the next shmupmame version support SH3? will someone, some day continue to develop a good SH3 emulation?

I can only have hope...

http://shmupmame.wordpress.com/2011/11/ ... ka-cv1000/

But this isn't forever(?)... it has been 2 years since that post.

[z0mbie90]

But this isn't forever(?)... it has been 2 years since that post.

Well some of the games are still available on Xbox 360 so CAVE still make money on them. I would guess 3 years, but then again everything can happen!

[Klatrymadon]

Still no luck here (same "unable to initialise D3D"/"unable to complete window creation" messages in the Qt version), but if it's of any interest or help, I did manage to start one game using GDI before the usual behaviour resumed. Progress!

[shmuppyLove]

will the next shmupmame version support SH3? will someone, some day continue to develop a good SH3 emulation?

I can only have hope...

Cave UI mate, keeping the dream alive!

[null1024]

But this isn't forever(?)... it has been 2 years since that post.

Well some of the games are still available on Xbox 360 so CAVE still make money on them. I would guess 3 years, but then again everything can happen!

Yeah, I'd give it another year, minimum.

it would be really nice to have fast Cave-SH3 emulation because that means savestate practice

[z0mbie90]

Can't wait for it to run well myself. I wanna play Ibara and the first mushihimesama, I dont have a jap PS2 or arcade cab so no luck for me with those games.
We just have to smile and wait for the time being.

On topic, Shmupmame still crash for me, and when I change to directdraw it lags like hell. I bet I wouldnt have problems if I still had Win XP installed

[OmegaFlareX]

I honestly can't remember the last time I posted on the shmups forum... anyway, I was messing around with this last night (the QT version), and it was amazing, although I encountered a crash bug when setting up the rom paths. I've started storing all emulation stuff on an external drive attached to my desktop. It is accessible on my laptop via my wireless network. Browsing for the folder using "Network" in the Windows folder dialog crashes the program. However, mapping it as a network drive first to My Computer works fine. I realize now that using the latter method is preferable anyway, but hey, bugs is bugs.

E: I should probably mention that my laptop runs Vista x64 Ultimate, and my desktop Win7 Pro x64. Router is a Cisco/Linksys E2000 (on the 5Ghz band). Any other hardware details are available upon request.

[TrippyCake]

I have one question about this new QT build: Where did Bitmap Prescaling go? "Scale Screen" does exactly nothing.

Edit: Now it worked, I had to restart it apparently.

[z0mbie90]

Installed new DirecX and now the QT build runs well. Sometimes it feels like it maybe slowdown a bit, but I think that can be my imagination

The QT build is also faster then the regular one on my pc to. Great work nimitz, now I can play some shmupmame again without intall XP again!!

[Ed Oscuro]

I have one question about this new QT build: Where did Bitmap Prescaling go? "Scale Screen" does exactly nothing.

Edit: Now it worked, I had to restart it apparently.

This new style UI gives me fits too. When disabling "bilinear filtering" (yuck) it's not enough to uncheck the property, apparently - you need to hit the little enter key button graphic as well, it seems, to make it stick.

[BPzeBanshee]

Turns out the D3D 9 bug is mameplus related, currently pondering if I will make a vanilla mame version with the autofire + custom buttons inlcluded or try to figure out whats wrong with mameplus.


CV1000 is still being worked on. Some of the games now have pretty much accurate slowdown (thanks to trap15)

Might start phasing in some of the older sets in once the games are old enough.

I once tried to put in Custom Buttons and autofire into a standard MAME build. As I recall trap15 had a patch put on pastebin somewhere for real basic autofire, but the configurable type (ie. autofire rate) and custom buttons seemed quite built-in to MAME Plus, at least it was above my knowledge. Maybe you'd have better luck.

[Drachenherz]

I'm using shmupmame GUI QT on my win 7 laptop with an additional external screen hooked up.

Now, the screens are displayed as display 1 (intern) and display 2 (extern), I can choose them and all, but the image is allways displayed in the internal display.

I'm using direct x 8, btw, as direct x 9 doesnt work. (funnily, I have a GT 555 m card in there, which should run direct x 9 just fine...).

Any ideas what I could do to keep my dual screen setup, but being able to play on the larger external screen au lieu the internal one?

Edit: Found a solution... had to change the monitor from "2" to "3" in the .ini file... (don't ask me why, my external monitor is nr. 3 in Mame... (btw, in the gui-version, I couldn't choose a display nr. 3 in the options... I had to go via the .ini.)

It was actually just a shot in the dark - the external monitor is "display 3" in all my other mame-versions, that's why I tried doing this in the .ini...)

Sorry for my english.

[HenAi]

Using the QT version, I've found that alt+tab out and back into the game doesn't work, specifically the game doesn't display anymore when I alt+tab back in.
Otherwise it works great, thanks a lot. Never expected to see this get a new version.

[Edmond Dantes]

This version should work no matter what your windows version is

Finally! A way to play Cosmic Cop on Windows 98!

Hey, you did say "no matter what your windows version is"

[Edmond Dantes]

Posting twice because the OP says "post any bug you may discover" and, well, I've ran into three since downloading shmupmame yesterday.

1. Undercover Cops (this one is persistent) - the top half of the screen is weird. It keeps flickering between different graphics and sometimes animations just disappear in certain areas. It's most notable in the first level after you've picked up the stone pillar.

2. Geostorm - I noticed that for awhile after I turned on "Triple Buffering" there was EXCESSIVE slowdown. However, turning on high-priority mode fixed it, whether I disabled TripBuff or not. I'm also not entirely sure the graphics on the level 1 boss look right.

On a related note, I also noticed that sometimes I couldn't get a setting to stick when I was using the GUI, unless I clicked the box, then double-clicked the name of the box so that the area turns yellow.

3. In the Hunt - This one was weird, but I pulled up the UI (tab button during game) to change my button config, and... for awhile it just stopped seeing my inputs and wouldn't let me do anything, in both the UI and the game. I had to CTRL-ALT-DEL, but when I did suddenly everything went back to normal. This has not repeated since.

[ReiKusanagi]

I've been having a very nice time with it, though I've found a few quirks thus far:

Fire Shark- No sound (very minor considering its age, marked as red on the GUI)
DDP DaiOuJou- Slightly messed up music (noted on the M+ GUI as yellow)
Ketsui seems to be in the yellow with a similar sound warning (seems to be a common trait on games with pgm.c drivers; I'm aware this might be known already)

But I have a question on its suitability for beat'em ups if I should get another MAME for them or not.

[trap15]

Fire Shark has never had sound, and MAME has never had a fully accurate PGM sound emulation.

[nimitz]

The Qt related bugs are out of my hands, I'm not compiling that just using the front end executable for shmupmame.

Apparently direct 3d has some problems even in the Qt version, still haven't spent time on trying to fix the renderer..


Edmond Dantes: Thanks for reporting the bugs.

1. That's probably a side effect of removing the frame buffer
2. Seem like a D3d related problem (using either directdraw or D3D + hlsl works fine)
3. Again, seems like it's D3D 9 related.

[ReiKusanagi]

I stand corrected; thank you for setting me straight.

But on the beat'em matter, can this play them well?

Edit2: I found what I need: A current Neo Geo Bios and The Uni-bios 3.0 rom, which I'm in the process of hunting down. It seems most NeoGeo rom backs lack said rom part as such I had to put that into the one I got.

[HenAi]

I've also found that while closing / opening a game again and soft resetting via f3 both work in the QT version, hard reset via shift+f3 throws the usual Direct3D error.

[Ed Oscuro]

It might be Qt related, but I notice that version doesn't alt-tab nicely. If you get stuck, right-clicking the executable and closing it will end the game (and drop back to the UI). Some programs with this problem are more stubborn, so it's a mixed blessing you can do that much.

[nimitz]

Time for some good news.


D3D is all fixed now, will be in the next version. All 3 version will be fixed that way.


I decided to take another look at namco system 1 and realized it has a MCU to process input, investigated a bit and realized that I could make the input ports available to the CPU faster by sending them to shared ram instead of letting the MCU do it. Result is one less frame of lag for all games on namco system 1, then I decided to try something similar for namco system 2 and it worked...

So pushing the idea a little further I decided to check some other still laggy shmups to see if it was possible to feed the CPU the input port values a bit faster. This is basically a new way to reduce input lag that doesn't have any disadvantage (unlike the removal of sprite buffers).

Here are the games/drivers I managed to fix with that new process (the process is much more time consuming than removing the sprite buffer, so don't expect a whole lot of these):

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Namco System 1 (Dragon Spirit, Dangerous seed, Blast off, Galaga 88, etc)
Namco System 2 (Dragon Saber, Phelios, Ordyne, Cosmo gang, etc)
Psikyo old hardware (Strikers 1945, Gunbird, Sengoku Ace, Sengoku Blade)
Mars Matrix (this was a game specific fix, most of the other cps2 games didn't have input delay)

I also added an autosword feature to Mars matrix (like in the Dreamcast version), button 1 behaves as it always did and button 2 is autosword (You can then use custom buttons to have a 3 button setup: autofire, autosword, shield).


Finally, I added a "cleanratio" option that basically finds the bigest possible stretch with the correct aspect ratio that has at least one axis being integer scaled (while the other axis often ends up being scaled+stretched, unless the game is already correct aspect ratio)

[Ed Oscuro]

That's not just good news, that's double good news. Same low price!

Very great stuff there, looking forward to it. Hopefully it also improves alt-tab behavior (but I'm not holding my breath on that one).

[Erppo]

One thing I noticed: the autofire rates you use for games are not remembered, but always get reset to 3 when you start a game. The other autofire settings are saved properly so I guess the rate should work like that too.

[nimitz]

Erppo: yeah I noticed that, this shouldn't be too hard to fix.

[Hagane]

Psikyo old hardware (Strikers 1945, Gunbird, Sengoku Ace, Sengoku Blade)

[emphatic]

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Galaga 88

I love you.