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

[Opethian]

This is awesome! I never reaized how much controller lag existed in the vanilla builds of MAME. Truxton 2 is a hell of a lot more responsive with my USB controller. Thanks to all those involved. Any chance to get a build to run with MAME plus gui?

[Square King]

Tried this last night with a quick run through Progear. Made it to stage 4 on one credit! That's quite an achievement for a bottom-rung player such as myself. It felt much smoother. Gonna give DDP and Mars Matrix a try tonight!

[=SNC=]

Now all we need is a Lagless Wolf Mame (and obviously toaplan sound xD) and the world will be perfect .

Thank you Nimitz!

[Raizen1984]

I don't get it. Rayforce still chugs like a bitch.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I don't get it. Rayforce still chugs like a bitch.

If your PC can't run RayForce at 100% speed (press F11 to check this out), you most likely need more powerful CPU. This game is more demanding than most things in MAME.

[Klatrymadon]

Yeah, that's right. I always have to fire up my Saturn because my shitey old PC can't run Rayforce at its normal speed.

[trap15]

These lagless patches have been applied to UberMAME (http://raidenii.net/), which also has WolfMAME patches applied.
Compiled binaries are currently unavailable, but we might start making some if there's enough interest.
Enjoy

[PROMETHEUS]

Yes ! But what is UberMAME ? What's the difference with other MAMEs ?

[trap15]

It's faster than 137+ (they converted to C++ in 137, which caused a lot of speed regressions), and it's where a bunch of other driver work happens (we're working on Raiden II, as an example)
Also, it's less bitchy about missing ROMs (missing any of them will not stop it from attempting to emulate, it just throws a warning) so games that required EEPROMs still run fine without them.

[PROMETHEUS]

Okay that sounds good if it has the WolfMAME patches and runs DDP perfectly I definitely want to see it happen. Definitely wouldn't mind donating a bit too.

[austere]

It's also gluten free and high in fiber! DDP runs fine. We will release a win32 binary shortly, after we fix some non-standard command line behaviour.

[trap15]

We have now posted official binaries for all major Operating Systems on our blog. Go crazy
If anyone would like to compile 64bit Windows binaries for us, drop a PM or join our IRC channel at #raidenii @ EFnet.
Enjoy

[PROMETHEUS]

Thank you guys for doing this.
However I must say I didn't realize this MAME doesn't have a GUI which is definitely a bad point for me. Because of this it's difficult to tell how to do things with it, for example and most importantly, how do you record a replay ?

[austere]

Because of this it's difficult to tell how to do things with it, for example and most importantly, how do you record a replay ?

No problem, I've coded up a little helping file that will automatically run ddonpachj and record an input file for you. This should save you some time since you don't have to specify the filename (it will be in the format ddp_YYYYMonthDD_HHMM.inp). I've included the source code if you wish to modify it. Too bad I can't do much about the legal information screen since the WolfMAME patch will force you to sit through it without skipping!

[PROMETHEUS]

Too bad I can't do much about the legal information screen since the WolfMAME patch will force you to sit through it without skipping!

Yes but that's good that's what we wanted, it's necessary to prevent easy cheating due to the pause and frame advancing functions.

Your exe file doesn't work for me though, I guess it's because you must have written a command line within that loads "ddonpachj" but it's really "ddonpchj" !

[austere]

Actually I've got a question related to that: why disable the frame limit feature for recordings as well? It seems as though it would make things harder, not easier for the player if they use it within the game rather than at the legal information screen. I guess there's not much we can do, except maybe invent another "standard" WolfMAME Lite. =)

Your exe file doesn't work for me though, I guess it's because you must have written a command line within that loads "ddonpachj" but it's really "ddonpchj" !

Oh, it's ddonpachj for me, that's very odd. Let me try to recompile it for you. (I really should be writing a shell script for this sort of thing but I'm lazy haha)

[PROMETHEUS]

Actually I've got a question related to that: why disable the frame limit feature for recordings as well? It seems as though it would make things harder, not easier for the player if they use it within the game rather than at the legal information screen. I guess there's not much we can do, except maybe invent another "standard" WolfMAME Lite. =)

Yeah that would be ideal, I don't know how frame limiting could be abused to achieve lower speeds. But if they disabled it in the original Wolfmame when recording, there must have been a reason ?

[austere]

Try this, it doesn't work for me but it uses "ddonpchj" instead of "ddonpachj".

there must have been a reason?

We'll definitely have to look into it, maybe there is a similar feature that can't be abused by slowing down your computer or something.

[PROMETHEUS]

Doesn't work either. I had also tried renaming my rom to "ddonpachj.zip" with the previous mamerec.exe but it didn't work.

[austere]

Hmmm, what I've done is copy all the roms in the ddonpchj.zip file into the ddonpach.zip archive. Can you please try this and run the first version?

Also, run this command in the ubermame directory to make sure it is working:

Code: Select all

mame ddonpachj --lagless --record test.inp

[PROMETHEUS]

Now it works (by moving the rom files into ddonpach.zip and using mamerec first version), but it's not lagless (there is still the old 1 frame lag).

[austere]

Did you try using a frame advancement? Without the patch there is an additional frame of latency. A single frame of input lag is "lagless". We'll check if recording causes a change in behaviour, but this is hard to do with the WolfMAME patch.

[PROMETHEUS]

The improvement of the lagless edition was indeed to remove that one frame of lag. I did use the frame advancement to check and I do get one frame of lag with your uberMAME build. With the lagless MAME I get 0 (acts on next frame instead of second frame).

I guess you're gaining one frame but on a version that had 2 frames of input lag instead of one, like WolfMAME or MAME 99.

[austere]

That's odd because I've tested ubermame with the --lagless switch and it acts on the next frame (which is what I meant by 1 frame of lag) as you described. Without the switch it will act on the frame after it. Perhaps you should test it without the switch to see the difference in behaviour it definitely is at least different. =)

EDIT: Here's a diagram demonstrating latency with and without the switch:

[PROMETHEUS]

I see it's working for you, but for me it doesn't act like lagless, there is a frame of lag in the sense that it acts not on the next frame but the one after that, like on your second example.

[sikraiken]

From command prompt, are you trying "mame ddonpachj --lagless"? It's working fine for me.

[PROMETHEUS]

From command prompt, are you trying "mame ddonpachj --lagless"? It's working fine for me.

Yeah like this it's working. Guess it's working with the recording script that uses the --lagless option then, I was doing the test by just launching Dodonpachi via the menu that opens up when you just run mame.exe. Thought lagless was used by default.

[Obiwanshinobi]

If you had 2 frames of delay in (Do)DonPachi, you must've been using some extra laggy version of MAME. I had only 1 frame in DP, DDP and Feveron WITHOUT the patch. With the patch it's 0 frames (i.e. the ship responds in the very first frame I press the button; I have no idea how much real time lag I experience due to the DualShock(2)-to-USB adapter etc.). Can't say I feel much difference between 1 and zero frames in Feveron (which I play the most), but the difference between 2 and 1 in Guwange is pretty sweet.
I'm still using mameuifx32_0132 with mamefx_lagless137b unpacked straight into the folder. On top of the input improvement, some games (all of them?) look crispier with the patch (1st gen Cave hardware and CPS1 for sure).

[nimitz]

That all depends how you count it, 0 delay in response is impossible, it would mean the game responds before VBLANK, so the games that you say have 0 respond on the next frame, which some people might call 1 frame lag...

Also, in terms of response time percentage the games going from 1 to 0 are more "improved" than the ones going from 2 to 1.


Finally, big thanks to SquidMan for adding the patches.

[Obiwanshinobi]

By "zero frames" I mean the way Metal Black, Gun Frontier and Omega Fighter Special behave in plain, unpatched MAME. In real time they probably still lag one frame or so alright, but I don't quite have means to measure it.

Also, in terms of response time percentage the games going from 1 to 0 are more "improved" than the ones going from 2 to 1.

The "feel" of a game's controls is very subjective after all. I just find 2 to 1 improvement the most valuable. Feveron was pretty good before, and Sengoku Ace still plays better on the PS2. Guwange, on the other hand, after the patch got promoted to a higher rank in my book. If I had a better PC, RayForce would probably be the shit too.
Maybe for expert scorers the difference in DDP is huge.