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

[Jeneki]

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).

I have to admit, playing the Dreamcast version with multiple buttons really spoiled me on this game.

[ReiKusanagi]

Does the upgrade process go smoothly?

But I'm glad to hear Stikers and Gunbird will run smoother.

I didn't think I was crossing any lines, oh well.

[BPzeBanshee]

Excellent news indeed!

Should I find a way to upload the NeoGeo.zip I currently have so I can make it easier for others?

Not for discussion:
No ISO trading, ROM begging, bootlegging, modchip sales, copyright infringement, or assistance with any of these – for example warez FTP site details. It doesn't matter what is legal in your country, although discussion of emulation is not a problem. An exception is made for sales of old (15 year+) bootleg arcade hardware, as long as these are not a conversion or multigame. Region swapped, de-suicided and "phoenixed" PCBs are fine if advertised as such.

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 removing of the sprite buffer).

Would this be a possible alternative to porting the Batrider/Bakraid fixes from v3.0b, or are those games a lost cause for newer versions?

[Edmond Dantes]

Code: Select all

Galaga 88

I love you.

So I'm not the only Galaga 88 fan ^__^ (Although I thought the PC Engine version was better)

[Ed Oscuro]

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.

Another dumb legacy of the coders of the original UI distribution, unfortunately.

It would be cool if some of the fixes being made here could be submitted to the original projects. I will laugh if they get rejected, but they really shouldn't.

[nimitz]

Added proper "autofire rate" saving/loading for up to 3 players. I don't think there's a single shmup in mame that supports more than 3 players so that should be enough.

[DocHauser]

Shmupmame 2.2 had 'enable high score support' which retained high scores from one session to the next, but Shmupmame 4 isn't doing that for me. I had a look at the options but I don't see anything in the miscellaneous options (which is where it was in 2.2). Is there any way to turn it on?

[AntiFritz]

Doesn't that feature only work if you have a hiscores.dat file with info for the game in question?

[DocHauser]

Hmm...I don't think so. I didn't have to do anything to enable it in 2.2, it was enabled as default (as far as I remember). There's a 'hi' folder and all the games have separate .hi files. I don't see any .dat files.

[Mortificator]

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.

Another dumb legacy of the coders of the original UI distribution, unfortunately.

It would be cool if some of the fixes being made here could be submitted to the original projects. I will laugh if they get rejected, but they really shouldn't.

I believe it's only recently that storing autofire rates was broken in MAME Plus. It was around .145, give or take a release.

[nimitz]

After fixing autofire rate saving and loading, I thought it would be a good idea to improve on it a bit. So I added instant conversion to Hz (which makes more sense than frames of delay) and added a feature I had wished for a long time, customizable delays for both main buttons autofire and custom buttons autofire, this way you can have slow and fast autofire for games that have limited shots on screen.

Here's what it looks like in the menu:

[Mortificator]

One speed for clearing popcorn, the other for point-blanking.... nice idea.

[Ed Oscuro]

Flying Shark, a great choice for the variable autofire demo!

I believe it's only recently that storing autofire rates was broken in MAME Plus. It was around .145, give or take a release.

Yeah, you're right. I believe I noticed it mainly on some MAME Plus derived builds, rather than the main MAME Plus build, so I'm not sure why I blamed the main release. I thought it was a decision because this doesn't seem like the kind of thing that should be broken by core MAME updates, and they haven't been adding other features to MAME Plus (that I know of) that I would suspect break autofire saving. But then again, I don't dig in the code, so this doesn't mean much. The maintenance of MAME Plus has obviously gone south though (at least until Nimitz has started poking around in it!).

[BPzeBanshee]

Flying Shark, a great choice for the variable autofire demo!

I believe it's only recently that storing autofire rates was broken in MAME Plus. It was around .145, give or take a release.

Yeah, you're right. I believe I noticed it mainly on some MAME Plus derived builds, rather than the main MAME Plus build, so I'm not sure why I blamed the main release. I thought it was a decision because this doesn't seem like the kind of thing that should be broken by core MAME updates, and they haven't been adding other features to MAME Plus (that I know of) that I would suspect break autofire saving. But then again, I don't dig in the code, so this doesn't mean much. The maintenance of MAME Plus has obviously gone south though (at least until Nimitz has started poking around in it!).

I think you and I noticed a bit of this glitchy madness a while back with MAME Plus! Extended and with the main build as well. I actually think core updates may indeed be breaking it, as MAME core updates happen and the MAME Plus! stuff gets put onto it there's bound to be issues when thorough checking doesn't happen. When I've tried to compile MAME Plus for instance I've found that it has quite a few more pedantic intricacies than standard MAME, which doesn't help for testing purposes.

I'm just very glad that Nimitz is active with these things again, with these updates and possibly a forwardport of the lagless Batrider/Bakraid drivers we'll pretty much have the Ultimate MAME right here.

(edit for better usage of words and elaboration)

[Stevas]

Is there some strange quirk in M+GUI to do with displaying roms? It sometimes seems to need a refresh to display correctly. Seems to happen most when I flick around between different views (Available and All, mostly).
Sorry, realised this perhaps isn't clear. What I mean is, I'll go to "Available" and then back to "All", and it doesn't actually display all, seems to just refresh the screen and stay on showing what's available.

Also, is there some way in this GUI to just display the roms I actually have? That is, zips that are in the roms folder.

[Ed Oscuro]

I default to showing All ROMs and remove the Available folder from the view, since as you say it serves no purpose, especially if you have a full ROMset to work with.

About general glitchiness I can't say, since I haven't noticed any problems (I don't use the custom folders much though).

[Stevas]

That's just it, I don't have the full pack of roms. I tend to only have the shmups (and most fighties).
The "Available" view would be useful to me, if it didn't only show what I had that was working.
I can't see a way of me seeing what I have that isn't working.
(Which is useful if you want to just go grab those roms only.)

[BPzeBanshee]

I find it shows what's available first (as displayed in 'Available'), and then everything else, in All ROMs.

Not sure about non-working games, I thought they did display in Available considering I'm sure it was the Qt interface I ran Raiden II with on that list.

[Stevas]

Nah, they don't display. At least, not for me. I have a bunch of roms sitting in the folder that appear in "All" but won't appear in "Available". As I say, not really too helpful if you want to just go grab those roms...

Edit: to further clarify, "All" does just that, it basically just lists every rom that CAN run in MAME. So if I want to know if a rom I have doesn't currently work, I have to know which rom it is I'm looking for, then trawl through the "All" list to find it. Painful, which leads me to suspect I'm doing something wrong...

Edit2: Another question, sorry. What does the ROMs column refer to?

Edit3: I just realised you referred to "non-working" games. I'm not after that, really. I see those as games that MAME has in it, but it knows they just plain don't work (i.e. red). Yellow is imperfect (will still run, but with problems), and green is "working" - yeah? I'm after somehow being able to easily filter to roms that are in my rom folder, but are (most probably) missing files, or something else has changed between MAME updates with them (so they just won't work with ME, not that they plain don't work in MAME). Does that make more sense?

[BPzeBanshee]

I actually thought at one point Nimitz had ripped out all non-working drivers, but who knows.

I think the ROMs column refers to games that have ROMs, as opposed to CHDs/discrete hardware.

Just to be clear, you ARE doing an audit of all of your ROMs to get them to display in available right?

[Stevas]

Okay, if I hit F5, does that force an audit? Because I'm doing that.

[BPzeBanshee]

Not sure, but if you go to File at the top-left there's a section there for Auditting all ROMs I'm pretty sure. It takes a while so be patient, when that's done it should display what you actually have in Available.

[Stevas]

Hey, thanks for you help man, it only just occured to me that there is an extra submenu for audit, and I see on there that there is an "export incomplete sets" option. Not sure what that does, but it sounds like something I could find useful...

Edit: I will also try using that instead of just hitting F5 and assuming that done the job!
Are you telling me that your incomplete sets (i.e. sets that are missing files) appear in "Available" after a full audit?

[BPzeBanshee]

It won't include incomplete sets but should tell you on the audit screen what's wrong with the files. When I said "not working" before I meant actually "not working" in MAME itself, ie. Raiden II with prelim COP emulation, or the fruit machines.

If you're not familiar with MAMEUI then bells and whistles like 'export incomplete sets' which aren't in MAMEUI by default (as I recall) aren't needed nor should you really muck around with too much. Mind you it probably only puts the filenames of the sets into a text file or something anyway so its not like any harm can be done.

[Stevas]

Yeah, that's what I was assuming (rather than actually doing as it says, and exporting the roms themselves)...

Okay, how long, on average, should a full audit take? I have a "Checking..." dialog which just seems to be doing nothing.

Oh, and even though I get message at the bottom of the screen saying "Auditing..." when I hit F5, this dialog didn't appear, so yeah, F5 is doing... something different.

Edit: you know what, sod it, I just tested it, and export incomplete sets is exactly what I need! Thanks for the help, man.

[BPzeBanshee]

No worries.

[ReiKusanagi]

Depending on game, Red means one or more parts won't really work, such as Fire Shark and its sound, though if you see a shield in the lower right corner, then it might be more of a problem as that concerns protection

[Stevas]

HLSL just forces a hang for me soon as I enable hlsl_ini_read. Windows 7. D3D version 9. I'm up to Directx 11, too.
Works fine in an earlier version of MAMEUI32 (which I use for slowpoke).
Any ideas? Everyone else getting HLSL working okay?

Also, what happened to 1945kiii?

Thanks for the info ReiKusanagi. How does one tell if it'll run, is that only if the little mame symbol don't have the red X?

Edit: if it helps anyone to help me, I get a sizeable dialog after it hangs telling me stuff like:
Invalid language value en_CA; reverting to English (US)
Exception at EIP=[memory address]: INTEGER DIVIDE BY ZERO
Stack crawl info.

Edit2: okay, you know what, it's late, ignore me. I got it working now. What does hlsl_ini_read even do? Merely enabling hlsl didn't do anything at first, so I assumed this needed setting to 1. (Also, in my defence, I was copying some values across from the mame.ini I had in MAMEUI32, and hlsl_ini_read=1 WORKS THERE).
Guess I've been fiddling too long, time for bed.

Erm... let me rephrase that...

[ReiKusanagi]

HLSL just forces a hang for me soon as I enable hlsl_ini_read. Windows 7. D3D version 9. I'm up to Directx 11, too.
Works fine in an earlier version of MAMEUI32 (which I use for slowpoke).
Any ideas? Everyone else getting HLSL working okay?

Also, what happened to 1945kiii?

Thanks for the info ReiKusanagi. How does one tell if it'll run, is that only if the little mame symbol don't have the red X?

Edit: if it helps anyone to help me, I get a sizeable dialog after it hangs telling me stuff like:
Invalid language value en_CA; reverting to English (US)
Exception at EIP=[memory address]: INTEGER DIVIDE BY ZERO
Stack crawl info.

HLSL??

No idea bout 1945kiii but i think that's a bootleg game anyways.
if something has red text or has a red x by the M that's a pretty big flag, though it might also occur with games with red x's in protection. A green check means it works pretty well.

[Stevas]

Re: HLSL - see my edit, above. I'm still not entirely sure what I was doing wrong, but this is what happens if you fiddle too much, you end up with a mess all over your hands...

Huh. Didn't realise that it was a bootleg. what of, 1943kai?