Games with ISSUES: report here!

[schmerzkaufen]

Seems they are taking rewards lately for "issues" submitted through Bounty Source:

https://www.bountysource.com/teams/mamedev

So if they need the motivation (and they obviously do -- the aforementioned Garou glitch, for instance, makes of MAME the only NG emulator which doesn't run this game properly after all these years), there's that now. Hopefully this gets at least as popular as Retro Arch's Patreon and we can see some progress on drivers which seem to be long forgotten because they're "good enough" (and the devs start getting some well-deserved money in return).

If money is what it takes to motivate them to work on games that actually matter to droves of players, instead of obscure whatever electronics most would only consider for the garbage dump, then I have no problem with that.

Off the top of my head, capcom and cave timings/waitstates, some much-needed improvements to the UI+options and related issues for useability, that sort of stuff.
edit: rewrite popular drivers to be line-accurate and therefore eligible for Calamity to implement frame_slice. :p

But I have to contribute to GM as a priority, after I'd done recovering from the end-o-year taxes that is.

[Paradroid]

Off the top of my head, capcom and cave timings/waitstates, some much-needed improvements to the UI+options and related issues for useability, that sort of stuff.

Yes! Definitely! SF2 Hyper Fighting is such a classic but feels real wonky in MAME.

Do they need access to PCBs or just someone to implement what they already know? I have 5+ working SF2HF PCBs that came as part of a bulk PCB purchase.

Sorry, not up-to-speed on where it's all at...

[schmerzkaufen]

Just guessing but I think it's more like they don't know how to do it, or don't have the right person with the know-how to simulate in-game timings accurately, and they'll serve the ususal narrative that as long as the dump and driver code are right their job is done, even if the game doesn't play rigth.

By ourselves we can somehow tweak the game's behaviour using cpu underclocking, blitter delay, and adjust the framerate (well with Groovy tthe latter is not our concern), but they've specifically made it so some of these tweaks don't save and are a pain to set again every time, the excuse being that it's hack~ish and not true emulation, plus hacks = bad bug reports.

Ultimately a build with modified drivers could make the tweaks default, but they'd have to be featured in a specific one the likes of ARCADE for instance. Such  project would require the cooperation of a number of people who own the pcb's to help compare, or an already good amount of trustable documentation (including enough good quality gameplay videos) and of course some with the ability to mod MAME where it applies.
Then unless it follows official MAME's evolution for the concerned drivers, and re-adjust the values every time there's a change, that hacked build might remain a one-time only thing.
And still this would be only hacks, which means somehow, more or less close to the real thing but not exactly the same, not like completely R&Ding and rewriting the drivers adding the missing stuff. It's not completely worthless though, some games like a number of the later Cave ones are only playble this way.

I wasn't serious regarding the bounties, chances mamedevs would consider taking paid jobs like that are probably extremely low, for the PITA development reasons, but also because in the event that would actually happen, they'd expect way more money than we're ready to pay.

Some things will just never be, or like it's sometimes the case with MAME; maybe they will but many years or decades in the future.
Alternative scenario: people writing arcade emulators that go the extra mile beyond MAME and focus on achieving playability accuracy for a select number of the most popular systems. Welp.

[Calamity]

Just guessing but I think it's more like they don't know how to do it, or don't have the right person with the know-how to simulate in-game timings accurately, and they'll serve the ususal narrative that as long as the dump and driver code are right their job is done, even if the game doesn't play rigth.

I believe I read that implementing wait states involves a non-trivial overhaul of MAME's architecture. It's not a matter of improving a couple of drivers. Based on that I guess that fixing those games without hacks means emulating the hardware at a much lower level, which also translates into more cpu intensive emulation. We can bet it'll be done at some point.

[schmerzkaufen]

I believe I read that implementing wait states involves a non-trivial overhaul of MAME's architecture. It's not a matter of improving a couple of drivers. Based on that I guess that fixing those games without hacks means emulating the hardware at a much lower level, which also translates into more cpu intensive emulation. We can bet it'll be done at some point.

I suspected it was something heavy in any case yeah. An important overhaul probably won't happen just for better timings emulation anyway.

Personally I'm ok with hacks as temporary imperfect solutions, because better that than no change for 10, 20 years and beyond, you know I'm not exaggerating the lenghts. MAME never take that as a vital factor but alternative builds and heretic frontends featuring hacks and mods exist because people's lives aren't stretchable so that they'll have this much patience.

Ok just pushing sliders and turning knobs doesn't work with every game that has timing issues, of course.

For those games that can use adjustments with benefits though, just reanabling settings that fell under the cheats category to save would do, in fact it would be better than editing the drivers since we could readjust the values manually when for instance a change in a driver version that impacts perfomance occurs.
I've seen that savestates can be a workaround but it's kind of messy (the state 'remembers' your cheats settings, but only after you go and tickle them by a value of 1 and back)

In any case as long as it's away from the official MAME, and people provide logs where the active cheats settings appear, there shouldn't be any problems with reporting in this thread (right? or...)
In fact I wonder why this hasn't been a thing in ARCADE ? something like that could then land in GM by haynor's vector.

[Recapnation]

I recall someone looking into CP-S speed issues recently, though? Don't know how it ended or if it did.

I wasn't serious regarding the bounties, chances mamedevs would consider taking paid jobs like that are probably extremely low, for the PITA development reasons, but also because in the event that would actually happen, they'd expect way more money than we're ready to pay.

You should check Retro Arch's Patreon to get an idea on the numbers. But it's just a matter of they asking for once. There's interest. Garou (be it wait states or whatever the cause), Hyper Fighting, Progear no Arashi, CV-1000... Too many significant (and popular) games now not to get many people aboard, even if it' just for historical reasons. But they need to explain it properly. A hidden webpage in a site called "MAME Testers" where the subjects aren't properly addressed, reports are kept open when they shouldn't, the search system is nuts for non-testers, language gets too technical to explain elementary bits related to performance... isn't obviously the best place to make this stuff visible.

CP-S issue, for instance:

https://mametesters.org/view.php?id=408

Not to mention the uncountable places where these subjects are discussed by the people involved -- impossible to keep track.


The discussion belongs elsewhere (places where it sadly wouldn't be that welcome, on the other hand, I'm afraid), but there's an even bigger argument laying down there within Schmerzkaufen's diatribe -- by offering an imperfect-though-palatable emulation for so many years despite having the tools to get a much better approximation (call them "hacks" if you will) the people are endorsing it as if it were the original behaviour, so it goes against the "telling the history as it was" argument MAME Dev claim once and again. Especially when most of the timesthe issues aren't documented when you run the emulation or even in the emulator's texts. The "flag" system of course doesn't suffice, but there's isn't one for the CP-S issue, for one. So it's fair enough that they advice against using hacks and offer a "pure" version of MAME so that proper emulation gets done some day (despite they admitting it won't happen for reasons) but persisting on feeding this unnatural dichotomy between devs and users isn't helping the project. MAME may well be the very first cause of the Retro Arch phenomenon.

[schmerzkaufen]

Personally I'm fighting that dichotomy but I doubt anyone's getting my positioning. Specifically I disagree with the careless hacking camp on the one side and the too-final radical no-no-no mamedev's on the other.
In short I'm in favor of seeking compromises, like more warning messages, indeed flags wehre possible, but I'm thinking more of a an in-game OSD feature that displays how the gam's running and what's active along with it during gameplay.

Like we press F11 but we only have that poor refresh speed % meter, my idea is that it could show more information, like if lag reduction is used, cpu or refresh sliders, other 'cheats' like autofire or savestates, etc.

Imagine you press F11 and this appears, just to illustrate;

[SPEED100%, FD 8, CPU 74%, AF]

translated: game running at its normal refresh speed, frame_delay on set to 8, CPU underclocked @74%, AutoFire ON

Of course ideally the band would be moveable around the gameplay screen area maybe with smaller fonts too, in order to not get in the way.

This would also be a new and ideal way to confirm the validity of some videos, if for instance a wolf~ish variant of it would make that on-screen ingame info always-on

A build like that, unless it's stolen by RA again, would be a sort of permissive and restrictive one at the same time, useful for tweaking and cheating via hack~ish solutions, but also able to show that you're not using any - or specifically which one - during your run recording.

I'm convinced that permitting anything tweak/cheat/hack without care nor warning is damaging of course, goes without saying, but forbidding all this stuff absolutely and not pay attention to the fact that it makes people lose patience and interest then opt for the worse solutions is a huge mistake too, no doubt about it we're seeing the results today.

A tentative name for an hypotetical build: compromame? diplomame? middlemame?

EDIT another illustration for fun, with another more complete info band;

[diplowolfmame 0.203 : SPD 101%, FD 7, CPU 60%, AF B1:3Hz, REC 1]

[Calamity]

MAME may well be the very first cause of the Retro Arch phenomenon.

If MAME had better emulation of 16-bit consoles already, RA wouldn't be so relevant. I buy that part of the argument.

[schmerzkaufen]

AND lag reduction, AND more complete saveable settings including those of the all-important shaders. People don't go to RA only because it's a mashup of many systems, but also a lot because it's got these features the official MAME don't, or only partially, or with longstanding issues.

I'm only interested in arcades and dislike several aspects of RA so for me the natural choice is GM, which you make reach significant milestones the one after the other in the right direction.
I would never consider the official MAME for playing, for me now it's almost like it's MAME that's just a necessary component of GM, and the latter is the real deal.

See what I'm getting at ?

Of course I know we owe a pharaonic amount of progress to mamedev's work since I'm following there too, but after I've had a taste of smooth scrollings, correct speeds, and low lag, it's impossible to play without those.
It's the same for many RA users, they've just made the wrong "emulator" choice where arcades are concerned, or they associate MAME to that unwelcoming rigid, spartan thing it tries so hard to be for sometimes good, but also sometimes really poor or not really honest reasons.
Also these users may have not heard of GM or they associate it to baseline MAME which they have already walked away from, which probably doesn't help.

Darn I'm at it again, I'm like Haze now, spamming the same story all over the nets. Anyway yes right, anything that improves the official MAME in the future in these particular areas, as well as consoles emuation of course, will make RA technically less relevant. Yet I can't help but think it's too late (crap I've already said that too, three or four times)

[cools]

but also able to show that you're not using any - or specifically which one - during your run recording.

I'm convinced that permitting anything tweak/cheat/hack without care nor warning is damaging of course,

Anything like this can be patched out and simply not displayed, if one really wanted to cheat in recordings.

I believe I read that implementing wait states involves a non-trivial overhaul of MAME's architecture. It's not a matter of improving a couple of drivers. Based on that I guess that fixing those games without hacks means emulating the hardware at a much lower level, which also translates into more cpu intensive emulation. We can bet it'll be done at some point.

I suspected it was something heavy in any case yeah. An important overhaul probably won't happen just for better timings emulation anyway.

If someone were to put up a bounty for fixing CV1000 properly, I would personally stump up decent cash and I'm fairly sure there would be others that would do the same.

[schmerzkaufen]

Anything like this can be patched out and simply not displayed, if one really wanted to cheat in recordings.

The idea is that it would become a tool required to show for shared run videos or streams to be valid.

Anyway anything can be patched, edited and faked, but if we go by that philosophy and make paranoia the default then we might as well question everything and see fake news/plots everywhere, then stop sharing at all.
There's always been scoreboards where people just post in whatever fashion required, but they've also always been more or less vulnerable to lies and forgery...

It's better to offer the actual possibility to do it a bit more right, offering reasonable solutions, than do everything to limit, fordib and stop.

If someone were to put up a bounty for fixing CV1000 properly, I would personally stump up decent cash and I'm fairly sure there would be others that would do the same.

Yup, I would. Though I might have to sell a pcb for that since I'm broke. 

[cools]

Anything like this can be patched out and simply not displayed, if one really wanted to cheat in recordings.

The idea is that it would become a tool required to show for shared run videos or streams to be valid.

It's better to offer the actual possibility to do it a bit more right, offering reasonable solutions, than do everything to limit, fordib and stop.

If MAMEDEV wanted to mainline the WolfMAME patches and have it as a switchable option (with your aforementioned indicators), i'd not be against it. But I don't think it should be defaulted on for everyone. Waste of CPU cycles.

If someone were to put up a bounty for fixing CV1000 properly, I would personally stump up decent cash and I'm fairly sure there would be others that would do the same.

Yup, I would. Though I might have to sell a pcb for that since I'm broke. 
[/quote]

[schmerzkaufen]

Yes something like a switchable 'wolf mode' is another good idea, the flexibility of choice is key IMO, so that means outside of it anything else should be useable, and in any case anything running and influencing the emulation should be displayable in a corner.

I doubt the official MAME would accept the latter in any circumstances considering their overkill inflexibility, but it doesn't have to be the offcial MAME either anyway.

[Recapnation]

I'm only interested in arcades

And the logic behind that would be...?



There's much more to Retro Arch than better emulation of the 16-bit consoles, of course -- FC/NES, PS, PCFX, even SS and N64 have all decent-enough emulation for many people under RA whereas they don't under MAME. The average user is finding less and less reasons to keep using discrete emulators especially when RA's engine and tweaks allows for better perceived emulation and it offers more options and usability as well. Were it not for Groovy MAME we all would be using Final Burn Alpha and MAME through RA (were it not for GM, RA would be today as bad as MAME for our purpose, we all know that, but that's another matter altogether).

[schmerzkaufen]

And the logic behind that would be...?

Just that personally I'm only discussing the arcades-MAME emulation side of things here, the multi-emulators topic when invoking RA is not my focus now. Further than that I was always against the MAME-MESS merge anyway.
Indeed if it wasn't for GM I'd probably look elsewhere, but there's also the ARCADE variant that haynor666 makes from time to time and I really appreciate (esp because to this day I still can't manage to organize and browse my games how I want in the vanilla mame ui/mewui and that's as irritating as ever. ARCADE is a breath of fresh air in that aspect)

But yes for the people who are interested in the entire topic that includes consoles and more, your opinion is certainly right.

[Heian_Shodan]

Does anyone have any idea if there's a workaround to the Apocalypse/Onslaught Sprite problem on Xmen vs SF, Marvel vs SF, and Marvel vs Capcom? It started on Mame 145 and never got fixed. I dont know what they did to the Cps2 code that caused the issue. It was perfect before that version.

Here's a gif:


https://mametesters.org/file_download.php?file_id=3524&type=bug

[Torkyo]

Hello,
I read the procedure to report a game issue but sadly I’m not in front of my cab, just texting on mobile.
Hope to not be ignored though...

The game I’m experimenting issue is moon cresta.
The problem is that strangely intended to be as a 768x224 @60.606061 while as far as I know the resolution should be 384x288 @60.606061
I got a monitor wit horizontal orientation and I rotate the vertical games without any problem keeping their right resolution and timing (I got a polo star 28” modeline 1) but with 768 lines of course my monitor goes to interlace giving the timing problem as the game runs at 25hz probably due to the windows interlacing bug.
Is there any way to let GM to handle moon cresta as the right resolution should be so 384x288?
As far as I concern. The problem should be present in Galaxian too as they share the same resolutions and refresh.

Thanks

[Torkyo]

hello,
to fix the interlace problem I disabled interlace in mame.ini
anyway the problem remain as the switcher works handling a wrong resolution of 768 lines (rotated) instead of 384.
I'm wondering if is there a way to force the correct 384x288 resolution.

attachment follow with required details.

           - mooncrst
           - ATI RADEON HD 4350
           - Hantarex polo star 28" tri-sync
           - CRT Emudriver 2.0 (12.6) Windows 7 64bit

thanks

[Calamity]

Hi Torkyo,

384x288 is not the correct resolution at all.

That game has indeed a resolution of 768x224. But because it's a vertical game, and you want to play it on a horizontal monitor, 768 becomes the height in lines, and that's not achievable for a 15 kHz monitor.

Older GM versions had a patch for those specific games that divided the 768 resolution value by 3, to 256, so they could be played on a horizontal monitor, using a resolution of e.g. 400x256 pixels. This hack was removed because it degraded the backgrounds' resolution for users that intended to play them on their original, legit orientation.

So since you're using super resolutions, the workaround could be forcing them to run on 2560x256 (create a fine named mooncrst.ini and put "resolution 2560x256" in it). However GM is not designed to downscale cleanly and you'll probably notice ugly artifacts when doing that.

[Torkyo]

Thank you very much for your kind reply,  Calamity.
my information about mooncresta resolution was wrong then!
luckily I got a monitor that accepts 15 25 and 31 kHz and the switcher changes resolution to 2560 x 496P 60.606Hz   31.515 kHz
the problem is that I notice a little glitch in the vertical scrolling, I think it is because of downscaling from 768 to 496.
Probably with such hi resolution (768 lines) it is the best possible way to display it in vertical over an horizontal monitor. I hoped to have the perfection like in all other vertical games I tested so far but probably such 768 resolution is too far.
If you have any other idea to improve the mooncresta picture I'll be glad to listen about that!
thanks again.

[folken]

Hello! ^_^
I don't speak english very well so I hope you'll understand everything I say... :-P
Here is my gear:
Groovymame 0.158 with MaLa
ATI X300
CRT_Emudriver 1.4b
Windows XP Pro 64
Sony crt (3431D)
I have 2 problems:
1-Yesterday I played Irem schmup "GALLOP" and I noticed bottom of the screen is cut off (I don't see life bar, score etc...) So I thought I need to change Vfront porch. Basically it's 0.064 so I changed to 0.128 (same result)
At 0.256 (same result)
At 0.512 (I see the life bar and the score but scanlines disapeared...)
After many many tries I found the limit: 0.549. At 0.549 I have scalines but I don't see the bottom of the screen and at 0.550 I see it but I don't have scanlines.
2-NEOGEO and CPS games, and maybe others, don't run with the good resolution (320X224 and 384X224). Switchres runs them at 640X224 and 768X224...
What must I do?
Thank you in advance

[haynor666]

Small grave digging - loosing upper and lower part of picture is Sony Trinitrons fault - look again here -> http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,148828.msg1638016.html#msg1638016

You have to use option v slope in Sony Trinitron service menu to move up botton of picture in 256p modes in 55 Hz. You will have smaller gap in scanlines but that's natural process in shrinking picture.



Each TV I had had two defined service modes parameters one for PAL (50 Hz and close) and NTSC (60 Hz and close). 55 Hz mode is naturally not PAL and not NTSC so when You are changing some parameters TV might just from PAL mode to NTSC and vice versa. I've found to use NTSC mode because it's works better for me - I'm using only v slope to move bottom of picture higher. 55 Hz (and close) modes are used mostly by Midway, Irem, Toaplan hardware, hardly by other manufacturers. Below 55 Hz are some Seibu and Jaleco games. Games close to 50 Hz are rare.

[schmerzkaufen]

Every time I see the FD Trinintron geometry menu I have a PTSD episode.

[Paradroid]

Every time I see the FD Trinintron geometry menu I have a PTSD episode.

Haha! You're missing all the fun with your sanitary and predictable LCDs.

Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk

[schmerzkaufen]

Nah I seriously got fed up with it, fantastic looking 27" but only under the condition geometry's perfect, which can be extremely hard to achieve (the smaller FD trinitrons are ok tho)
Years of battling geometry was one of my main motivations for considering flat panels alternatives. You know it varies greatly of course but some CRTs while often considered the 'best' can also be a MASSIVE PITA, I got cheapo/simplistic low-cost curved sets giving me considerably less trouble and more statisfaction than the usual 'stars' of the CRT world, I don't care if the picture ain't as sharp and all.
But that's off-topic. 

[NinjaZero]

Sega Outrunners runs at about 50% speed on build v.206.  Test against Mame v.206 mainline and have no issues.  I removed Frame delay but that had no effect.  Also tested v.204 and same issue, not sure how long this has been a problem. 

Average speed: 59.74% (10 seconds)
Sound: overflows=1 underflows=408

System Info:
Windows 7SP1
Nvidia 1050Ti
LCD Monitor

[anchounio]

In BREAKOUT the screen goes black when the left side of the screen is hit by the ball or the ship