Pretty specific MAME question

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04 Jan 2010, 02:39 AM
Tain

Pretty specific MAME question

I'm not really confident I'll get an answer here, but can anyone tell me why the two vertically oriented Sega System 24 games (Gain Ground and Scramble Spirits) run very choppy no matter what machine they're on? MAME reports full speed, yet the game seems to run at 30fps.

Thing is, videos and MAME 0.99 have shown me that Gain Ground is definitely a 60fps game. And weirdly enough, Bonanza Bros in the latest MAME has smooth scaling backgrounds, yet choppy sprites. Is System 24 in a weird state right now or something? Because I just realized how awesome the original version of Gain Ground is and I really want to play the arcade version without ancient MAME or weird home ports.
04 Jan 2010, 03:12 AM
Frogacuda

It's a 57.5Hz game, and MAME runs it full speed for me with no dropped frames. Have you checked the game specific options and made sure the throttle is set right?

Now if we're talking about the game's native framerate and not the emulation framerate, that's another thing. I don't think that ever did run at full refresh rate. But the emulation is.
04 Jan 2010, 03:30 AM
Tain

Quote:

It's a 57.5Hz game, and MAME runs it full speed for me with no dropped frames. Have you checked the game specific options and made sure the throttle is set right?

Now if we're talking about the game's native framerate and not the emulation framerate, that's another thing. I don't think that ever did run at full refresh rate. But the emulation is.

Nah, I'm on top of that. Both with throttle on or with throttle off + Sync to Monitor's Refresh on (playing it at 104% speed on your typical 60hz LCD). The issue I'm having is that recent MAME "says" that the game's native framerate is either 15 or 30 (I'm leaning toward 15), where MAME .99 clearly has the game natively running at 60fps. Well, 57.5.

Furthermore, the other vertical game, Scramble Spirits, is definitely meant to natively run at 57.5. MAME right now makes the player's ship invisible when it respawns, though. Logically, it should be flickering.

This is the only time I've seen anything like this, it's kinda weird.
04 Jan 2010, 04:56 AM
Frogacuda

Odd... Seems fine with me, but I'll fuck around with Scramble Spirits since I didn't have that one downloaded.

Obvious thing you probably already checked: You know how to cycle frameskip rates with F9 and F10, right?
04 Jan 2010, 05:30 AM
Tain

Yup. Also, with Scramble, the ship is sometimes invisible when it should be flickering, sometimes visible. Must depend on the frame.

All of this made me wonder if it's just something about the way MAME displays medium resolution stuff, but I'm pretty clueless.
04 Jan 2010, 09:59 AM
arjue

I'll just chime in and say that Gain Ground is balls awesome.
04 Jan 2010, 10:11 AM
Bojack

Hell, I'll jump in and ask a specific MAME Q also,

I play DoDonPachi on mame and when shit gets real hairy there is slow down, just a bit. Is slowdown built into DDP or is the game too tough for my laptop to mame?
04 Jan 2010, 12:04 PM
epmode

Slowdown is actually built into just about every Cave game ever. Your laptop might be making it worse but I doubt it.
04 Jan 2010, 01:54 PM
Frogacuda

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bojack

Hell, I'll jump in and ask a specific MAME Q also,

I play DoDonPachi on mame and when shit gets real hairy there is slow down, just a bit. Is slowdown built into DDP or is the game too tough for my laptop to mame?

Hit F11 to see MAME's framerate. If it's dropping frames and such, then it's MAME. But it's probably not, because MAME gets real choppy before it gets actually slow, and you'd hear the music chopping up too.

Anyway, I tried Scramble Spirits, and Tain is right, it's only rendering every other frame, even though MAME is running at the full framerate. I would report this to MAMEtesters if you want it fixed.
04 Jan 2010, 03:56 PM
Tain

Yeah, submitted. Just wanted to be sure I wasn't overlooking something or not understanding something beforehand.

Also, I went back a little and found that the games work fine in 0.129, which is plenty recent enough (newer renderer and I can use my 360 arcade stick without joytokey). So I'm pretty set!
04 Jan 2010, 05:34 PM
gameoverDude

Crack Down is great on System 24. The Genesis one unfortunately doesn't show anything other than bomb locations on the map - on the arcade one you can see where items & enemies are also. One level has been changed on the Genesis version. Sadly, CD does have speed drops and some graphics issues in game play in MAME at this time. Too bad the supposed XBLA version is a no-show.

I haven't had any trouble with Scramble Spirits.
04 Jan 2010, 07:29 PM
FPM

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but anyone know MAME's progress on Cave's PGM-based games?
04 Jan 2010, 07:42 PM
Frogacuda

Quote:

Originally Posted by FPM

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but anyone know MAME's progress on Cave's PGM-based games?

Very interesting timing to ask this. There has been zero posted progress on this until just yesterday, when Ibara was shown working.

http://www.lucaelia.com/mame.php
http://www.lucaelia.com/images/mame_...ibara_0012.png

They're not going to actually include this until Cave officially stops producing games for the hardware (which looks to be happening finally with Deathsmiles 2) and a couple years go by, though.
04 Jan 2010, 07:46 PM
Tain

They did just announce Daifukkatsu BL, but yeah, that's probably the last.
04 Jan 2010, 07:47 PM
Grave

Good news... for someday!
04 Jan 2010, 08:30 PM
FPM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frogacuda

Very interesting timing to ask this. There has been zero posted progress on this until just yesterday, when Ibara was shown working.

http://www.lucaelia.com/mame.php
http://www.lucaelia.com/images/mame_...ibara_0012.png

They're not going to actually include this until Cave officially stops producing games for the hardware (which looks to be happening finally with Deathsmiles 2) and a couple years go by, though.

Well that is pretty awesome news, but isn't Ibara an SH-3 game? When will we get to see the progress on DDPDOJ, Ketsui, and Espgaluda? That, and why do they wait until the company stops producing games on a specific hardware? I remember playing Neo Geo games on MAME before SNK stopped supporting the MVS.
04 Jan 2010, 08:37 PM
Grave

I thought I recalled MAME keeping the newest NG games out over the years, even when other emulators supported them. Still, it's hard to compare Cave to SNK. They have a whole lot less going on than SNK ever did in terms of non-arcade things bringing in money. Despite the nonstop fan-hating decisions they seem to make (moreso if you're a round-eye), the author of these drivers is right to withhold them until some time after Cave has moved on from these titles.
04 Jan 2010, 08:41 PM
sedition

MAME wasn't running Gain Ground a few years ago.. maybe more like 7 years ago.. It's always been a traumatic memory for me. I was playing the arcade game when it first came out at Aladdin's Castle and got ass grabbed by some old pervert in there.. I didn't really know what was going on. :lol:
04 Jan 2010, 08:56 PM
FPM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grave

I thought I recalled MAME keeping the newest NG games out over the years, even when other emulators supported them. Still, it's hard to compare Cave to SNK. They have a whole lot less going on than SNK ever did in terms of non-arcade things bringing in money. Despite the nonstop fan-hating decisions they seem to make (moreso if you're a round-eye), the author of these drivers is right to withhold them until some time after Cave has moved on from these titles.

I understand and agree with you that Cave should be able to make money on their games, be it through arcade or home releases. But once they stop producing a game, they stop making money on it. They don't get anything from the [rip-off] used market. All I'm wondering is, is there a set amount of time after a games ceases production that a game is released, or is it up to the driver author's discretion?
04 Jan 2010, 09:32 PM
Grave

re: Cave, do they lease hardware? I'd swear I heard that somewhere but I might be making that up. I don't know a lot about how arcade sales work, heh.

If there's a standard to how people in that scene work, it's news to me. While it's up to the driver author when to hand that code off, I'd be curious to know who calls the shots on what goes in MAME and when in situations like this. I bet Frog knows! He knows things!
04 Jan 2010, 10:00 PM
FPM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grave

re: Cave, do they lease hardware?!

Yes, I think they do actually. They take a portion of the profits from arcade operators rather than (or in addition to?) sell them boards. Forgot about that one. But that's Japan only, they definitely don't do that in the US. I guess I'm just feeling a bit like a neglected fan. Importing shouldn't be such a pain in the ass. I'd much rather see Cave release their games on the PS3, since that's what I have and its region free. I've been thinking about picking up a modded X360 just for Cave stuff, but that'll have to wait. Plus Microsoft shouldn't be such a dick when it comes to approvals for XBLA. Didn't Cave submit DDPDOJ and MS said "naaah, we dont want to saturate XBLA with too much arcade stuff"?
04 Jan 2010, 10:10 PM
Grave

Oh, yeah, I know that they neglect us in pretty much every way possible. Considering how they seem to encourage the scarcity and high prices of their titles I honestly wouldn't feel bad pirating them when they cut off all my avenues of buying them direct at reasonable prices. Still too soon for emulation on a lot of these titles though, Mushihimesama leads me to believe that they're willing to learn a tiny bit about the international market... but that limited edition DLC business also makes me think they still don't understand a goddamn thing.

I'm bummed that they're neglecting the PS3 also. At least that way they'd be forced into region-free. There's no good reason for them to region lock the 360 titles so why do they insist on doing it? I've heard that they want insane amounts of money from US publishers to release their games here. They have an odd understanding of this situation, I guess.

Does it really sense to put shooters on the 360? Is that actually what the Japanese hardcore own? Konami put Otomedius there too, and I don't care if that game sucked, I still wanna try it. I just wonder how much overlap there is between terrifying unwashed idolm@ster fans and terrifying unwashed shooter fans is all. A J360 is out of the question, when it breaks (and it will) I'd be fucked. It was annoying enough when my US system went. And as shitty as MS could ever be with XBLA approvals, they'll never, ever be as shitty as Sony with approvals, heh.
04 Jan 2010, 10:22 PM
Frogacuda

Quote:

Originally Posted by FPM

why do they wait until the company stops producing games on a specific hardware?

Because MAME, as an open-source project, is a powerful document, and it would open the door for bootlegging that would actually interfere with the company's business. So for both moral reasons and not wanting to get sued, they maintain a strict 3 year rule on games.

Quote:

I remember playing Neo Geo games on MAME before SNK stopped supporting the MVS.

Neo Geo is a funny situation because the hardware was ancient and already emulated by many non-MAME emulators, so they weren't really breaking down any walls. Even still, they refused to include any Neo Geo games until they were three years old or more, so they observed the rule on a game-by-game basis.
06 Jan 2010, 03:48 PM
MonsterMash

What should one expect out of Radiant Silvergun on a laptop using MAME 0.135?

# Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 / 2GHz
# RAM : 4GB DDR2 SDRAM

Any tricks on getting this to run faster or am I SOL with those specs?
06 Jan 2010, 04:20 PM
Frogacuda

Yeah, download an old version of MAME (0.127 or earlier). They did some stuff to multi-processor systems like STV in the name of "code that more accurately represents how they systems actually work" that slowed it up a lot.

If you have a 64-bit OS, using a 64-bit MAME build can give you like a 25% bump up as well. Dunno if that's an option.
06 Jan 2010, 04:28 PM
MonsterMash

Thanks, mate.
06 Jan 2010, 04:55 PM
Sixfortyfive

You could also grab the Saturn version and run it in SSF in Arcade Mode.
06 Jan 2010, 05:13 PM
MonsterMash

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frogacuda

If you have a 64-bit OS, using a 64-bit MAME build can give you like a 25% bump up as well. Dunno if that's an option.

The only 64-bit MAME I can find on their site is for 0.136, but I'm too dumb to get 0.136 working. The ROMs all seem to be lacking a file that is suddenly required. An .NV file or something.
06 Jan 2010, 11:40 PM
FPM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sixfortyfive

You could also grab the Saturn version and run it in SSF in Arcade Mode.

Do this. The Saturn version is better anyway.
07 Jan 2010, 12:26 AM
Frogacuda

I think SSF can play the arcade roms too, so this might be good advice.
07 Jan 2010, 03:51 AM
Tain

Hold shift when starting SSF to load and STV rom, but Radiant Silvergun didn't work that way last I tried (crashed going in-game). The actual Saturn game is a safer bet.