How to set MAME Blitter Delay ?(Saidaioujou)

[with5exys]

Hi everyone!

I was trying to play Saidaioujou on MAME. I managed to make it run and to enable the CPU overclock option through the cheats (though I don't know how to save the setting or if it possible at all) but I have absolutely no clue on how to manage the Blitter Delay.

There is no Machine Configuration option, no version of MAME I tried had it (tried the latest and 0.256 which I've seen some people use) and I even tried some other CAVE games (Deathsmiles in particular) with both MAME versions and still had the same issue. What am I missing? I know that some time ago there was some blitter improvement announced that supossedly removed the necessity to modify anything, but I wanted to be sure and still I don't know if that applies to Saidaioujou given the very particular circumstances.

I'm running the game through console commands making MAME think it's Daifukkatsu Black Label, in case it helps.

Thanks in advance.

[blazinglazers69]

Don't have an answer to your question, but when I looked for similar information I couldn't find anything indicating that you could tweak MAME accurately enough to get the slowdown right unfortunately.

However, 360 emulation via Xenia is supposedly pretty solid if you have a decent PC. I'd imagine there's gotta be at least a frame or two of lag added?

If you have a 360, I'd wonder if actually burning the game to a disc could be a viable solution. It's such an archaic workaround, but the 360 still cannot be soft-modded AFAIK and requires soldering in hardware to mod.

Anyone here have experience burning discs for 360 or even PS2 by chance?

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Running Dodonpachi Sai Dai Ou Jou with a Raspberry. Pi 4B+ with 2gb of ram (that's been overclocked) + a Crown Arcade "Raspberry to Jamma" pcb (sold on eBay) & using the latest version of Final Burn Neo to run it, you can play it in tate. Does require a usb keyboard to "insert a coin" hooked up to the RPi 4B+ pcb itself. Looks awesome on a low-res 15kHz arcade crt monitor setup indeed.

Or you can buy an "Recalbox Jamma RGB" pcb with FBN installed , either a RPi 4 or RPi 5 pcb setup and running DDP-SDOJ is another 100% workable/playable solution -- it ships directly from France with worldwide shipping available is "a plus in my book."

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[with5exys]

Don't have an answer to your question, but when I looked for similar information I couldn't find anything indicating that you could tweak MAME accurately enough to get the slowdown right unfortunately.

However, 360 emulation via Xenia is supposedly pretty solid if you have a decent PC. I'd imagine there's gotta be at least a frame or two of lag added?

If you have a 360, I'd wonder if actually burning the game to a disc could be a viable solution. It's such an archaic workaround, but the 360 still cannot be soft-modded AFAIK and requires soldering in hardware to mod.

Anyone here have experience burning discs for 360 or even PS2 by chance?

I am trying with xenia right now and it seems alright but it is quite hard to find the patch that suposedly improved input lag and slowdowns, plus, I don't know how to apply updates on xenia, even more on the old canary build that suports SDOJ and I don't know how to apply the 480p resolution (I think it was that one) that seems to make the game more accurate to the arcade.

I wanted to try MAME with some of the settings that have been tried and discused around, just to compare at least.

As for FBNeo, I tried a bit but it ran really bad, didn't really mess around a lot so I'm open to hear ideas about that.

[Bassa-Bassa]

Latest versions of Mame indeed don't need blitter adjustments as the fix you mention made it worthless. Anyway, to access them pre-0254, you should enable them first in Machine configuration, then go to the Silders controls menu.

Groovymame is the only build which will let you save CPU adjustments, as well as optimizing latency without messing with the games' logic. A Raspberry is just not powerful enough for this, particularly on something as demanding as CV1k games.

[with5exys]

Latest versions of Mame indeed don't need blitter adjustments as the fix you mention made it worthless. Anyway, to access them pre-0254, you should enable them first in Machine configuration, then go to the Silders controls menu.

Groovymame is the only build which will let you save CPU adjustments, as well as optimizing latency without messing with the games' logic. A Raspberry is just not powerful enough for this, particularly on something as demanding as CV1k games.

I see, I was a bit confused since I saw some people playing in later versions without specifying the config and some other people specifying blitter and CPU settings. Will check on Groovymame, I guess it won't help much on the latency since as far as I know that is optimized for CRTs, but the CPU config being saved is more than enough, thanks!

[Bassa-Bassa]

LCDs do also benefit from Groovymame's latency features actually. Check how frame delay works, it's not a CRT-only thing anymore.

[Creamy Goodness]

I've played SDOJ in Retroarch using the FB-Neo core. You can go into the dipswitch settings of the game to change the blitter settings there.

[with5exys]

I've played SDOJ in Retroarch using the FB-Neo core. You can go into the dipswitch settings of the game to change the blitter settings there.

I tried Retroarch with FBNeo but ran really bad, I'll check again just in case, maybe I had some weird setting. Did you use run ahead?

[grendelrt]

Latest versions of Mame indeed don't need blitter adjustments as the fix you mention made it worthless. Anyway, to access them pre-0254, you should enable them first in Machine configuration, then go to the Silders controls menu.

Groovymame is the only build which will let you save CPU adjustments, as well as optimizing latency without messing with the games' logic. A Raspberry is just not powerful enough for this, particularly on something as demanding as CV1k games.

So if you compile your own version of mame 270 with DDPSDOJ re-enabled you do not have to worry about any blitter adjustments, they are already enabled?

[Bassa-Bassa]

You'll still have to worry about CPU settings. However, according to the fix author:

There is no point in trying to tune CPU numbers to that exact values (less than a percent), it doesn't really reflect the real SH3 hardware CPU slowdown anyways, so might as well just use 45% or 50% or whatever for all games (something that feels vaguely right).

While some games probably miss the cache more frequently than others due to how their engine works, using the CPU slider to approximate wait state behavior is still just a massive hack, so no real reason to overthink it.

viewtopic.php?p=1524324#p1524324

[sunnshiner]

I've played SDOJ in Retroarch using the FB-Neo core. You can go into the dipswitch settings of the game to change the blitter settings there.

I tried Retroarch with FBNeo but ran really bad, I'll check again just in case, maybe I had some weird setting. Did you use run ahead?

I found that CV1K games run better with run ahead disabled on borderline hardware.

For what it's worth you can get an RGH3ed 360 for not very much at all and just stick whatever games on want on the HDD, there's no need to be burning discs.

Piracy's bad though, mmkay. Just say 'no'.