iMAME!!

[Soldato J]

http://toucharcade.com/2011/12/21/get-i ... app-store/

So lets start testing Shmups!!! If Ketsui runs on this thing I will FREAK

It'd be nice to play a little Dangun/ESP.Ra.De, etc.....

[fagin]

It's based on a version of Mame that's older than God's Dog..... so it won't run Ketsui.

[Soldato J]

Well can god's dog play any other notable SHMUPs?

There is a bigass back catalog of shmups and pseudo shmups, not to mention other arcade-y goodness! Cant wait to get home to try to fiddle and see what I can get to run......

Edit: there's a list of working titles in the comments on the toucharcade page.....just dont want to violate any rom posting rules here

[Skykid]

Nothing Cave works and a lot of 90's stuff isn't recognised. Tried DDP, Esprade - neither load. Xexex doesn't appear.

Got 1941 working (CPS - bit slow) and R-Type 2 is ok and so is Image Fight. As you can imagine, playing any of these with touchscreen controls is woeful.

Best I tried in usability terms were Smash TV, Star Force and Xevious. The oldies seem to run alright.

[Raytrace]

THIS is something which REALLY makes me want to get an iCade now - the absolute ultra would be some sorta dongle to accept input from a PS2 or similar Joystick connection then I could rock my HRAP on my iPad (kinda ironic seems as how its about 5 times the size of the iPad :p)

[Soldato J]

Hmm among that list after a quick skim:

Area 88
Dangun
Dodonpachi
Dogyuun
ESP.Ra.De.
In the Hunt
some Metal Slugs
Robotron
Shippu Mahou Daisakusen

and others "supposedly" work......can anyone confirm? Skykid reported that ESP.Ra.De./DDP didn't work for him.....

[Skykid]

Hmm among that list after a quick skim:

Area 88
Dangun
Dodonpachi
Dogyuun
ESP.Ra.De.
In the Hunt
some Metal Slugs
Robotron
Shippu Mahou Daisakusen

and others "supposedly" work......can anyone confirm? Skykid reported that ESP.Ra.De./DDP didn't work for him.....

Robotron works, Dogyuun, Rade and DDP didn't.

[1up]

I would be happy with just early to mid 80s. Stuff like 1942, Galaga, Gradius etc.

[MathU]

People are excited to play high-skill arcade games on a crappy touchscreen with no buttons? Seriously?

[Skykid]

People are excited to play high-skill arcade games on a crappy touchscreen with no buttons? Seriously?

Yeah, it really doesn't work at all. Cave sorted the best setup for their ports.

Oh, and Blade Dash of course, which is optimised perfectly.

[CMPXCHG8B]

It's based on a version of Mame that's older than God's Dog..... so it won't run Ketsui.

"based on"... No kidding.

It looks like all the files have been renamed by hand (*.c -> *.cpp), but why this was done I don't know- the source for the version of MAME that they're using appears to be pre-C++ conversion. There's no PGM, NeoGeo, or Cave drivers. A good portion of the individual game settings are hardcoded in software.

I'm not really sure how well these games would run even if they did- there's no DRC backend for ARM. I suppose it would run just as well as MAME does on a PowerPC computer, since the generic backend that gets used is the same (AFAIK) in either case.

THIS is something which REALLY makes me want to get an iCade now - the absolute ultra would be some sorta dongle to accept input from a PS2 or similar Joystick connection then I could rock my HRAP on my iPad (kinda ironic seems as how its about 5 times the size of the iPad :p)

The iCade is almost as big of a hack as iMAME appears to be. It doesn't actually send key press and release events (like every other HID device on the planet). It sends /different/ momentary key presses for each button state (push down = one letter, release = another letter).

I'm guessing they did this to save on battery juice somehow, but I'm not sure why. I just know that handling that in software when you're dealing with something that expects actual keyboard input is a total PITA (I was trying to get it working in the Tyrian iOS port).

Kinda sucks the camera connection USB adapter for the iPad/iPhone doesn't support HID devices. Because that would rock. Then again, there might be a hack to get that working on a jailbroken device.

-CMPX

[Raytrace]

The iCade is almost as big of a hack as iMAME appears to be. It doesn't actually send key press and release events (like every other HID device on the planet). It sends /different/ momentary key presses for each button state (push down = one letter, release = another letter).

I'm guessing they did this to save on battery juice somehow, but I'm not sure why. I just know that handling that in software when you're dealing with something that expects actual keyboard input is a total PITA (I was trying to get it working in the Tyrian iOS port).

Kinda sucks the camera connection USB adapter for the iPad/iPhone doesn't support HID devices. Because that would rock. Then again, there might be a hack to get that working on a jailbroken device.

-CMPX

aww thats a shame - I was kinda wondering how it worked

[BPzeBanshee]

This sounds just as bad if not worse than MAME Wii. Nothing '90s' works on that either, hell even Mahou Daisakusen is missing a sprite layer.

[MathU]

There's really no excuse for the Wii's SDL MAME conversion to be so bad. I wish someone would work on it a bit more.

[KidQuaalude]

I've been using iMame4All on my jailbroken iPad and iPod touch for ages (with wiimote and tatsuonoko vs capcom arcade stick)

I can confirm that DDP and ESP Rade work but ESP Rade displays upside-down right now. You'll need an iPad 2 or iPhone 4 (or upwards) to run them without frameskip/slowdown tho.

Most shooters made before the late 90s work perfectly and it works fantastically with the iCade If they are not working for you, its beacuse you are using the wrong version roms. iMame is based on Mame 0.37b IIRC.

[CMPXCHG8B]

iMame is based on Mame 0.37b IIRC.

lolwut?

http://mamedev.org/oldrel.html

0.37b -> late 2000/early 2001.

I know the source is a third of the size of the modern releases and all, but the iMAME tree doesn't even contain the entire 0.37b source tree. It has maybe a third of -that-, if even. But is there some reason why all these mobile releases are: A) based on decade old source code, and B) slimmed down even more beyond that?

Is there something compelling about the performance of the old code? It doesn't even support SDL, there's no OSD API. I would have thought that if anything, maintaining a modern day copy of MAME for iOS would be infinitely easier once you've written your own replacement code for all the SDL stuff (that's what the OSD API is for, anyways).

-CMPX

[cools]

Is there something compelling about the performance of the old code?

Yes.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.p ... c=111602.0

[IseeThings]

A (modern) mobile device would be perfectly capable of running something several generations newer, even if not the latest code.

The simply reason is the people doing the ports are lazy. Somebody already ported 0.37 to mobile devices as MAME4ALL so people just re-port that.

Anyway, this has been reported to Apple by Mamedev, and some of the copyright holders alike, I hear it's already been pulled from the UK Apple store. Thanks for the notification.

[fishinant]

I've managed to get DDP and Esprade working well, along with gunbird, raiden, twin cobra and a heap of older shmups. They aren't the most playable with the virtual controls, but can still be fun if you aren't to serious about it.
More fun are other arcade games like bubble bobble and black tiger, which are very playable with the controls.

[joeblade]

With icade the titles that play are perfectly acceptable.....

just to confirm.....

DDP and EspRade do indeed work on an iPad 2, to correct the screen orientation just assign the test switch to another one of the buttons and change the configuration in the test/service menu.

Shame.... Fantasy Zone works, but only for a minute and then bombs!!!

Just a bit of fun more than anything....

[Stealthlurker]

With icade the titles that play are perfectly acceptable.....

just to confirm.....

DDP and EspRade do indeed work on an iPad 2, to correct the screen orientation just assign the test switch to another one of the buttons and change the configuration in the test/service menu.

Shame.... Fantasy Zone works, but only for a minute and then bombs!!!

Just a bit of fun more than anything....

Or you can copy the nvram file from another cave game that simply works and rename it to the game that's stuck in test mode or inverted.... or you can copy the nvram files from a PC installation of MAME over (that's what I did) for whatever game is misbehaving.

Been running DDP, ESP Rade, etc etc for a while now via jailbreak on iMAME4All. Very nice on the iCade. Rockin one at home and one at the communal area at work. Multiple people on my team w/ iPads, so I let them walk up slide theirs in and start jamming. Introduced a few people at work to shmups this way.

If you jailbreak you can run SNES, Genesis, TG16/PC-Engine, NES, etc emulators on the iCade as well. A buddy of mine also modded his iCade to use Sanwa buttons... had to do a little sanding though on the button hole openings on the panel.

SNES: http://www.youtube.com/user/Stealthlurk ... p-LxKt8Afo
Genesis: http://www.youtube.com/user/Stealthlurk ... azn7TTP4jc
MAME: http://www.youtube.com/user/Stealthlurk ... IzxWt9bfik

For the iPhone/Touch, the iControlPad is on sale at ThinkGeek.com... significantly cheaper for those of us in the US vs ordering directly from Europe. Ordered one a few days ago.

The "official" version of iMAME is still nice though because I haven't jailbroken my 4S yet. Don't think there's a non-tethered jailbreak out yet for the OS version that came with the phone and up.






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