The State of Emulation topic

[Xyga]

I switched to mameui after hearing about mameuifx's developer giving up because mame drama.

The 'mame drama' is ages old and never stopped him from releasing UIFX, he gave up because he lost his job and doesn't have enough time for it anymore.
(also even though he didn't state it like that, the recent many, many changes from baseline probably made the thing a pain to maintain)

I'll give Robert's build a try too, although I still favour Groovy and well, I got used to doing all the shit editing tons of files and stuff without a GUI.

[soprano1]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016- ... re-library
Great news, i guess?

[soprano1]

I switched to mameui after hearing about mameuifx's developer giving up because mame drama.

The 'mame drama' is ages old and never stopped him from releasing UIFX, he gave up because he lost his job and doesn't have enough time for it anymore.
(also even though he didn't state it like that, the recent many, many changes from baseline probably made the thing a pain to maintain)

I'll give Robert's build a try too, although I still favour Groovy and well, I got used to doing all the shit editing tons of files and stuff without a GUI.

Yeah, your right about that, my bad. I tried out ARCADE64, the posted mameuifx derivative. Much better than mameui for me, i'll use it.

[Ed Oscuro]

Just a note on Dolphin (seems I've been camped out on their GIT builds page the last week, same as for pcsx2, and didn't realize the change was quite THIS big): The article is wrong, it's just booting all the games. That doesn't necessarily mean they're playable. Here's the link straight to the Dolphin Blog:

https://en.dolphin-emu.org/blog/2016/09 ... ame/?cr=es

Also worth noting that they recently stripped out the Triforce emulation, because it was old and probably didn't work well. Ultimately that might help the current emulation, and Triforce may well be added in again someday and work much better for it.

Some rambling: I almost want to go on the PCSX2 forum and ask if anybody's been looking at PS4 emulation of the PS2 to see what they're doing, but I know I shouldn't because that kind of reverse engineering may cause legal problems. There are some questions to ask - is PS2 emulation on the PS4 incomplete for running the full library? Better designed? Simply doing things differently to reduce the PS4 requirements? I hope that eventually PCSX2 will start to run much better, but from what I've read it is heavily dependent on assembly and that may be a big problem for code review and refactoring.

[soprano1]

I switched to mameui after hearing about mameuifx's developer giving up because mame drama.

The 'mame drama' is ages old and never stopped him from releasing UIFX, he gave up because he lost his job and doesn't have enough time for it anymore.
(also even though he didn't state it like that, the recent many, many changes from baseline probably made the thing a pain to maintain)

I'll give Robert's build a try too, although I still favour Groovy and well, I got used to doing all the shit editing tons of files and stuff without a GUI.

Yeah, your right about that, my bad. I tried out ARCADE64, the posted mameuifx derivative. Much better than mameui for me, i'll use it.

On the subject of this emulator, what is exactly a nonag patch? Is it basically skipping the screen when loading a game in MAME, where you have to press left and right to continue?

[BPzeBanshee]

Exactly right, which is stupid not only because it isn't really a nag but also because its already removed from official builds iirc (maybe it was just the left/right, I could be wrong). :p

[soprano1]

Another question on ARCADE64, it seems it's not possible to play the Metal Slug 2 Turbo hack, made by trap. I tried renaming and replacing the p1 file, game doesn't appear in the list. Tried placing mslug2 and mslug2t, only original game appears on the list. Anyone has a clue?

[Shepardus]

Have you tried renaming mslug2t to mslug2 and running it like that? MAME only recognizes a set list of rom names. If it appears but complains about files being missing or corrupted or something then you can try running it through the command-line, that apparently skips the checksum check so you can run hacks named the same as one of the recognized games.

[Obscura]

Metal Slug 2 Turbo definitely works in MAME. Just be sure to rename System11's fixed files to their equivalents within the zip file.

[soprano1]

I tried both your suggestions, but no dice. I read that this derivative removes hacks that mamuifx had, could that be it?

[system11]

That hack was never supposed to go near emulators to begin with, I'm the one who commissioned and paid for it to be made. It was intended for cart upgrades only for actual owners.

[Shepardus]

If you're emulating you can always just overclock the CPU, it's pretty simple in MAME.

What's the best SFC/SNES emulator besides Higan? Higan struggles on my computer with some games.

[tomwhite2004]

What's the best SFC/SNES emulator besides Higan? Higan struggles on my computer with some games.

Not sure what version of Higan you are using but v098 and below all have performance and balanced options if your machine struggles with the accuracy profile.

[copy-paster]

If you're emulating you can always just overclock the CPU, it's pretty simple in MAME.

What's the best SFC/SNES emulator besides Higan? Higan struggles on my computer with some games.

Try Snes9x.

[Gespenst]

The recent PCSX2 SVN build finally allows HW mipmapping which means things like Rachet & Clank and Ace Combat looks glorious now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLQiE70DuyY

[WelshMegalodon]

What's the best SFC/SNES emulator besides Higan? Higan struggles on my computer with some games.

Last week I would have pointed you to SNESGT, but SNES9x v1.54 is finally out, so use that instead.

And of course, there's higan v098-performance.

Speaking of which, byuu recently replaced the servers for his site and, for some odd reason, has opted to deny forum access to non-members, much like a certain someone...

[Shepardus]

Thanks for the responses, I had downloaded Higan v101 and didn't realize the performance and balanced cores were removed after v98. If I can find Windows binaries for v98 (can't be bothered to build it from source) I'll try that, otherwise I'll go with Snes9x.

[soprano1]

What's the best SFC/SNES emulator besides Higan? Higan struggles on my computer with some games.

Last week I would have pointed you to SNESGT, but SNES9x v1.54 is finally out, so use that instead.

And of course, there's higan v098-performance.

Speaking of which, byuu recently replaced the servers for his site and, for some odd reason, has opted to deny forum access to non-members, much like a certain someone...

New SNES9x?! Thanks, i'll go update it.

[tomwhite2004]

I don't think the performance mode is worth the extra cpu overhead as it only fixes an issue in one game, even byuu says to use snes9x instead...

"Snes9X v1.54 is about 80% faster than bsnes' performance profile. Half of that comes from using an opcode-based instead of cycle-based CPU core, and the other half due to design differences required for higan to also support the accuracy profile. The advantage goes up to probably 100% on special chip games due to the use of HLE instead of LLE.
Still, at this point, I'd recommend the use of Snes9X v1.54 over the bsnes/higan performance profile"

I use the balanced higan bsnes core in retroarch, I really like its options to decrease input lag which the standalone lacks, really makes a difference on my setup.

EDIT: Mixed up the names of the performance and accuracy cores, rendering my point above incorrect, sorry!

[copy-paster]

I'm curious about this, but does Ootake (PCE Emulator) have option for bilinear filtering or image scaling?

[WelshMegalodon]

Mednafen's PC Engine core features both and is more accurate to boot.

[copy-paster]

Mednafen's PC Engine core features both and is more accurate to boot.

I have Mednafen before, and I still can't get rid of the screen tearing.

[KAI]

Spoiler

Holy shit Nesica Dumps!!!!
Akai Katana Shin and Daemon Bride Additional Gain

I can almost savour that En-Eins dump!

[copy-paster]

I have Mednafen before, and I still can't get rid of the screen tearing.

Regarding of my post above, how to get rid of mednafen's screen tearing?

[Xyga]

Try enabling glvsync in the mednafen-09x.cfg file maybe ?

Code: Select all

video.glvsync	1

Or the dirty way; if you are on Win 7 and Aero transparencies are disabled, try re-enabling them.
Still no good -> force vsync or triplebuffer in your GPU's control panel.

NOTE: that's from Mednafen's general documentation btw.

[Xyga]

In other news Calamity has made a new D3D9ex -only 0.179 GroovyMAME build.

Oddly while editing the mame.ini you'll have to either leave video on 'auto' or write 'd3d' if it doesn't pick that automatically. Don't write 'd3d9ex'.

Code: Select all

video                     d3d

Other settings are the usual, but the BGFX shaders are gone, naturally.

For those who know what it's about D3D9ex is more convenient for experiencing lower lag by default on Windows (Vista to 10, no 32bit) without bothering with per-driver latency tuning (what we normally do with basic D3D) and naturally better for playing on your average desktop/laptop with flat panel.

Don't pick the wrong build, it's labelled groovymame64_0179.016_alpha3_d3d9ex_test (yeah it's preliminary somehow but it works)

Glad to see D3D9ex back, also the first time it's available together with full integer scaling options.

EDIT: normally BGFX offers the same reduced lag, but it's still giving people issues, for some (like me) D3D9ex is still the most stable and flexible.

[WelshMegalodon]

There was a new release of XM6 Pro-68k last week. I don't know how active the X68000 emulation scene is, but good news nonetheless.

I do wish there were more English-speaking representatives for all the PC88 emulators you see floating around. Or emulators for any other Japanese computer, for that matter - is Neko Project II still the best option for PC-98 software?

[Pedro Lambrini]

Nice to see XM6 Pro get a shiny new update. I'll give that a try after work today.

It's also interesting to hear about another version of GroovyMAME. I have to admit, though, that I find the whole MAME thing a bit daunting. As a noob to it all I just downloaded MAME UIFX and dropped in a load of ROMs... I've no idea if my games are lagging compared to the originals or not!

[Xyga]

Yes, MAME at the moment is such a convoluted mess you either take any build with a graphical interface and just be content that your roms actually show something you can play...
...or you go through endless research and documentation, forums help etc, keeping up with the 'news' (disseminated walls of posts and change logs the developers and people orbiting around them care to share in their own fashion, language and...bias) in the hope of setting up things a little more optimal if you have plans to dedicate time to a particlar game or more.

Maybe it's because many of this year's changes were heavy/radical ones that they're a long way from getting all that new stuff wrapped up into something actually useable for the average human being/on the user end...
...but the impression I got is that - at least for now - they don't give a crap about what people think of MAME and they'll keep making it as complex as they feel like even if it means going so far as having a vast majority of the users not really getting how most of it works and just being happy that roms do launch when they click, or that some ugly-heavy filter appears when you press a key.
I insist that I believe it's temporary. Things can, will change for the better, clear useability and accessible performance optimization for anyone should rank rather high on their gigantic todo list (preservation of gam...er...I mean anything electronics is #1), but I've learned that with MAME something you just hope would happen now, might happen, but possibly in a far away future, years, a decade or more. No shit. Because it's huge and they're too busy managing that monster to really listen to anyone who's not involved in the project period.

I might state the obvious/known here but GroovyMAME is something radically different in regards to some of the most important portions of the 'technical settings' as I like to call them.
(originally it's a build dedicated to 15KHz/arcade CRT displays, working with a set of dedicated home-made GPU drivers. But it can also be used with some benefits on any flat panel /pc setup too)
With it you can indeed get the overall lag down to something lower than what the normal/baseline MAME and other popular derivative builds typically produce.
Sometimes just by a little bit, sometimes by a lot, but that also depends on your hardware and your understanding of how GroovyMAME works, there's a learning curve.
Plus Groovy is - of course - evolving along with MAME, and its author's own R&D.

In some way all that shit makes people wish harder for good console ports like M2's. :p

[d0s]

sometimes I feel like the only person on earth who has no problem working with MAME from a user standpoint. you get the latest build and the romset/CHDs/extras that match it and put them where they go. In 2016 with broadband it's really no problem to just download each new set instead of worrying about updating your set, and move your config files over. what complexity am I missing?

edit: I use MAMEUI because I use MAME as a desktop app just to research/try stuff out, I don't care about MAME cabs or HTPCs or anything that would require a controller driven UI or display hacks for arcade monitors so I guess that's some extra added complexity. MAMEUI makes configuring MAME retarded easy.