Slowdown in MAME - driving me CRAZY. Yes I have searched.

[indstr]

I have searched this forum for about an hour, and google for about an hour, and i can't find any references to the type of problem I'm having. I've spent about 3-4 hours trying different versions of MAME, different MAME config settings, different graphics driver settings, and even several driver versions... still get the same problems.

so i solved it by running FinalBurn Alpha for a while, which was great ... until now it's having crap slowdown too ...

let me start with my system specs:

intel core 2 duo e4300 clocked to 2.5ghz
1GB DDR RAM
Asrock 775dual motherboard
nvidia geforce 7800 AGP.
windows xp sp2

so obviously the comp is fast enough for MAME

the problem i'm having:

cave games are slowing down, but only when there's a lot of bullets on screen. mostly during bosses. this is most quickly noticeable in guwange, on level 1 where all the bats fly across the screen and drop gold, right before you get to the boss. the whole game slows down a ridiculous amount. i have been using guwange to test. so far i have tried many versions of mame including:

advancemame
mame32
mame0116b with mame classic frontend
mame plus 0.114
mame plus 0102u2
mame plus 0120u3

i think i might have tried a couple others, wolfmame included.

i have tried EVERY POSSIBLE COMBINATION of graphics settings between MAME and my graphics drivers ... in graphics drivers, i have tried forcing vsync, forcing refresh rates, leaving all settings at default, forcing triple buffering, etc. in mame versions i have tried vsync, "sync to monitor refresh", frameskip options, etc. i have not been able to find a single combination that has fixed this problem with mame.

i also tried different versions of the nvidia drivers, that didn't help either.

however, finalburn alpha ran everything OK for a while. it didn't look quite as smooth, but it didn't give a crap about the amount of bullets and doesn't choke at all during the bats on guwange. now i came back to finalburn alpha this week and it's just generally choppy. i didn't change any settings in it and i can't remember changing anything in my system except for getting a new soundcard a couple weeks ago. (m-audio delta 44).. but, i've tried mame and finalburn with sound disabled and it still does this crap - finalburn is just generally chunky and mame is still slowing down at the bats


i feel like i'm missing something here. is there something obvious (or not so obvious) that i am ommitting that i should know about to get MAME to work without slowing down like this? i would like to avoid running the DOS or Linux versions if possible

thanks for any help

[shoe-sama]

cave games r supposed to slow down

[Arvandor]

Yeah, Cave games slow down in their arcade versions, much like they do in MAME =P

If you want to play a Cave game without slowdown, go play the PSX version of Dodonpachi and don't turn wait on. Good fucking luck if you try this though =) Game is hard enough as is.

[indstr]

WHAT !?? that is ridiculous

i'm not sure they should slow down this much though

that makes it too easy :-\

i much preferred it in finalburn

guess i'll have to figure out how to tweak it back to how it was

[shoe-sama]

iirc guwange doesn't have slowdown though (there's the shiki for that)
I really haven't played it much though so maybe bad memory

[indstr]

sorry, this failed going onto youtube but i put it on my webspace ...

http://djiomusic.googlepages.com/guwa0006-1.avi

i made a little video of me playing the last part of level 1 in guwange. i have no idea why it recorded upside down. but you get the idea. you can see where lots of the bullet patterns are slowing down, especially when i am using the special power. i just can't imagine this being the "normal" amount of slowdown ... but i don't understand why it is happening only when there is a lot of stuff on screen.

i also can't see how it could possibly be a RAM issue. the slowdown is predictable i.e. it always happens at the same places when you do the same types of things. also everything else on my system is stable, i play modern 3d games all the time with no problems.

[Mortificator]

First of all, you could check a replay to see if you are indeed getting more slowdown than you should.

Second of all, you can eliminate even the slowdown that would be present on real hardware by overclocking. Make sure cheats are enabled, start the game, and press the ` (~) key. Use the up and down arrow keys to navigate through the settings until you reach CPU0, then use the right arrow to increase it. I use 200% for the Metal Slug games and they run silky smooth, though I leave it set to normal for scrolling shooters.

[Frederik]

http://djiomusic.googlepages.com/guwa0006-1.avi

Looks like the typical slowdown in this game to me so far.

[worstplayer]

Try overclock in Finalburn. If that doesn't help, your Windows reached critical mass. Time to reinstall.

EDIT: One of things MAME especially hates are various sound enhancers. So if you have SRS or some other software 5.1 decoder try turning it off.

[Zebra Airforce]

Looks like the typical slowdown in this game to me so far.

Yup. Looks normal.

[PROMETHEUS]

Don't worry, cave games are nothing too easy with this slowdown ^_^

They'd probably be impossible without it actually. Slowdown allows to make more complex and interesting patterns with more bullets that would otherwise be unplayable. Of course stage 1 is ridiculously easy played for survival but try playing for score / playing the other stage and you'll see slowdown is a necessary gameplay element to danmaku games.

[elfhentaifan]

http://djiomusic.googlepages.com/guwa0006-1.avi

Looks like the typical slowdown in this game to me so far.

that gives me a total flash.
Is there any shmup in the world of this style (upside down) ?
Makes me pretty curious to play one

And turning the tv upside down is not an option

[freddiebamboo]

Yeah, looks like the game is running fine indstr.

I wouldn't worry about the game becoming too easy because of this, things get pretty hectic in later levels

EDIT: For playing upside down, I can't recall anything. Ketsui scrolls down for a bit if that helps.

[indstr]

Looks like the typical slowdown in this game to me so far.

Yup. Looks normal.

:-\ that just makes me sad. it is really distracting to me when it slows down and i play worse. i guess that explains why Dangun was the only one that didn't seem like it was slowing down in MAME, because it's not supposed to. hmmph

i actually had my finalburn overclocked to 300%, that was the only time i was ever happy with the gameplay

i got to 5th stage of ddp on 1st credit like this (fast), so it's not "impossible". but i was wondering how people who can 1cc ddp are so unbelievably good to get past all this stuff so fast ...

so now i have a dilemma... to play the games how they "should" be played, or to fix finalburn back to how i like to play them

ok i have another question now .. is ddp doj on ps2 supposed to have a lot of slowdown? i played it in pcsx2 and it's pretty much fullspeed except for occasionally on later levels it will slow down quite a bit

[indstr]

Yeah, looks like the game is running fine indstr.

I wouldn't worry about the game becoming too easy because of this, things get pretty hectic in later levels

EDIT: For playing upside down, I can't recall anything. Ketsui scrolls down for a bit if that helps.

i actually was practicing up through level 4 of guwange at "fullspeed" in finalburn , using savestates to reload at the beginning of certain sections so i could practice. man, it was hard but it was fun

[freddiebamboo]

Looks like the typical slowdown in this game to me so far.

Yup. Looks normal.

:-\ that just makes me sad

i actually had my finalburn overclocked to 300%, that was the only time i was ever happy with the gameplay

i got to 5th stage of ddp on 1st credit like this (fast), so it's not "impossible". i was wondering how people who can 1cc ddp are so unbelievably good to get past all this stuff so fast ...

so now i have a dilemma... to play the games how they "should" be played, or to fix finalburn back to how i like to play them

Dangun Feveron will be right up your alley - it's blindingly fast. Also, try Dragon Blaze for fast bullet mayhem, it has a good port that can be had for cheap as well.

ok i have another question now .. is ddp doj on ps2 supposed to have a lot of slowdown? i played it in pcsx2 and it's pretty much fullspeed except for occasionally on later levels it will slow down quite a bit

DOJ does slowdown (simulated) in parts, but its linked to rank. For example, the beginning of stage 5 will slowdown a lot on low rank, but if you have been hypering a lot then the game barely slows and bullet speed is much quicker than normal.

Here is a video of stage 5 in the loop with high rank:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtFkpldJSpY

DOJ can fairly chuck bullets around when it wants to

[indstr]

i guess i will mess with the mame overclocking tonight when i get home. i'm in some kind of denial about this. i just can't believe though that nobody else thinks it's odd that these games slow down so much. i certainly can't be the first person who has thought MAME was rendering it incorrectly, but i can't find any other references to this anywhere.

i have heard people mention "slowdown in cave games" but i never thought it was this severe

edit again:

i guess i thought, after seeing the infamous mushihimesama last boss video, that all the games are that hard/fast and i just needed to get better before i even had any kind of chance at the last level

[wiNteR]

I don't get it. From what I remember there wasn't any slowdown on ddp, except if you use shot on the second part of the 5th stage. Also, ddp is one of the easiest games to single loop if you are generous with using bombs.

[PROMETHEUS]

i got to 5th stage of ddp on 1st credit like this (fast), so it's not "impossible". but i was wondering how people who can 1cc ddp are so unbelievably good to get past all this stuff so fast ...

When I'm saying "impossible" I mean impossible to complete each part of the game without using bombs and while scoring properly. I don't think 2-5, 2-6 and Hibachi would be possible without slowdown :p While the first loop could probably still be completed in one life and no bomb even without slowdown, as it indeed doesn't slow often in it.

[indstr]

While the first loop could probably still be completed in one life and no bomb even without slowdown, as it indeed doesn't slow often in it.

so i'm still concerned, then, that i'm getting unnatural slowdown. fuck it, i'll either make a video of ddp, or see if overclocking mame fixes it

[PROMETHEUS]

uuuh, you mean you think your DDP does have more slowdown that normal ? Try the KO video on superplay.co.uk and compare. I heard older versions of MAME slow down too much. This version shouldn't slow down "unnaturally" (wolfmameplus99).

[lawnspic]

These games slowdown on there native hardware. I always had the opposite problem with them running to fast because i want accurate timing. If its slowing down than its the emu being faithful to the original hardware (and still they run too fast). For example you can overclock neo hardware in Kawaks. The results in a slowdownless version of Metal Slug 2. The only thing that pisses me off is the input lag on some games. FBA never could get that right with Cave and Raizing games no matter what, Mame was better though

[Zebra Airforce]

i just can't believe though that nobody else thinks it's odd that these games slow down so much. i certainly can't be the first person who has thought MAME was rendering it incorrectly, but i can't find any other references to this anywhere.

Well, I've been dealing with slowdown since the NES. Also, the TLB of mushihimesama has ridiculous slowdown.

[wrdaniel]

You maybe could check your mame performance with "F11" key. if it slows down but still shows 100% it SHOULD be like the original version.

[kengou]

the problem i'm having:

cave games are slowing down, but only when there's a lot of bullets on screen.

I thought you were joking before I read the rest of the thread.

Cave games are supposed to slow down. A lot of shmups have slowdown. In fact it is rare to play a shmup without it, in my opinion.

[indstr]

no, it's really not a joke. i live in north carolina, so i've never even seen a cave game cabinet, much less played one. gimme a break

[Ex-Cyber]

You don't have to have played Cave games to understand slowdown. Almost any pre-1995 (or so) game that pushes a lot of sprites will do the trick. Slowdown was just a fact of life on old-school hardware, which is why some people are so surprised at your surprise.

[zaphod]

slowdown ahppend when the game is pushing too many pixels at once to manage the entire update in one vblank.

Where many other type of games woudl skip frames to maintain speed, this is not acceptable in a shmup. every frame MUST be displayed.

When a developer is developing, they usually, by trial and error, find out the limits of what the hardware can push without slowdown,and then placea check in the game. when they know the game is pushing too much, or is abour to, they will deliberately slow down in predictable spots, and try to speed backup at times where it would be least inconvenient.

DDP DoJ is abit of an anamoly. MOSt of it's slowdown is intentional;y coded in. The hardware can actually push that many bullets at full speed if it wanted to. However, there are a few spots where the hardware actually cannot handle the load, and there you have REAL slowdown. WHen they ported the game to ps2, they tried to get these parts right too. the intentinal slwdown was easy to put in.

[Ex-Cyber]

slowdown ahppend when the game is pushing too many pixels at once to manage the entire update in one vblank

It's generally not the video hardware lagging, it's the CPU. The CPU is running some part of the game logic that's taking longer than usual (in a shmup, this is almost certain to be collision detection), and it's still chugging through that when vblank goes by, so the video hardware is not updated (as there's not yet a new state to update it with) and displays the same thing it did on the previous frame.

[D]

Speaking of slowdown. What actually happens?
A shmup that runs at 60 fps, will suddenly run at 30 fps? slowing down 50%
Or perhaps it is stil 60 fps, but two of the same frames are shown is after one another?
Is slowdown always 50% or can you code what the slowdown will be like?
Are there games that have 2 stages of slow down?
like when there are lots of bullets 50% and if the screen is filled 25%