Tekken 3 Slow/Choppy on GroovyMAME, what settings need adjusting?

[ArcadeAction]

Hi, it seems when I run Tekken 3 with GroovyMAME/GroovyUME Tekken 3 becomes about half speed. Is there a specific setting I might have wrong or need to adjust? I'm using .149. Regular MAME runs it at full speed.

[Calamity]

Hi ArcadeAction,

If tekken3 runs at half speed, try enabling -triplebuffer & - multithreading for this particular game. The difference between MAME & GM is that the later always tries to enable v-sync, which by definition needs more CPU resources to run. At the same tame, v-sync on means that if the CPU can't maintain the emulation speed comfortably at 100%, you will see the speed halved by 2.

[ArcadeAction]

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it and all your work on GroovyMAME.

I'm not quite sure how to turn on triplebuffer & multithreading for a specific game, but I will try to figure that out. I'm using an i3 3.2GHZ with WinXP 64 bit with I believe a Radeon 4800 series video card.

Hi ArcadeAction,

If tekken3 runs at half speed, try enabling -triplebuffer & - multithreading for this particular game. The difference between MAME & GM is that the later always tries to enable v-sync, which by definition needs more CPU resources to run. At the same tame, v-sync on means that if the CPU can't maintain the emulation speed comfortably at 100%, you will see the speed halved by 2.

[sean_sk]

In your Groovymame folder there should be a folder called "ini". If there isn't, create one.

In that folder create a text file and put the following lines in it:

multithreading            1
triplebuffer              1

Rename the text file to tekken3.ini

and hopefully that should work for you.

[ArcadeAction]

Thanks for the replies, this solution worked and it now plays great! It essentially plays/looks like the Tekken 3 pcb I just had connected through my monitor.

[cools]

Wondering if there is some magic sauce that can be used for all interlaced games?

It seems like they require an inordinate amount of CPU grunt compared to progressive mode games, very obvious in anything that mode switches internally. Cotton Boomerang is a good example, the intro is interlaced and runs terribly despite the game itself running at 300%  unthrottled (progressive)

[Calamity]

Wondering if there is some magic sauce that can be used for all interlaced games?

What I've found to work better is to just force a fixed resolution like:

-resolution 2560x480

This bypasses the slow mode switches in W7 until it settles it the in-game resolution.

However the issue with Cotton Boomerang seems to be that MAME now emulates the interlace effect by itself. I had read about this but hadn't noticed it yet, not I'm seeing it here on the laptop screen. It also happens during the credits in Tekken 3. I don't think there's a way to turn this off.

[cools]

I don't have slow mode switches here (Win 7), I get a short freeze when booting but once that's done everything's fine. Fixing the resolution is a sane way of handling the nasty monitor resyncing, however what you've said regarding Cotton BM isn't great...

Tekken 3 can run progressive or interlaced. In progressive it's fine, in interlaced it's choppy. Forcing it to interlaced internally (test mode) and running it in a progressive resolution (either low or high res) rather than interlaced it's also fine. Cotton BM doesn't get fixed with the same method though. Running it interlaced it's choppy on the interlaced bits, running it progressive it's choppy on the interlaced bits. In game smooth as silk.

[Calamity]

Tekken 3 can run progressive or interlaced. In progressive it's fine, in interlaced it's choppy. Forcing it to interlaced internally (test mode) and running it in a progressive resolution (either low or high res) rather than interlaced it's also fine. Cotton BM doesn't get fixed with the same method though. Running it interlaced it's choppy on the interlaced bits, running it progressive it's choppy on the interlaced bits. In game smooth as silk.

Not sure but I'd say that tekken3 & cottonbm show different problems. In the case of tekken3, are you running it with the latest GroovyMAME version, making sure that ddraw instead of d3d is being used with interlaced modes?

[cools]

That sounds like the magic sauce - ddraw. No, d3d on XP and Win 7

[Calamity]

That sounds like the magic sauce - ddraw. No, d3d on XP and Win 7

It shouldn't be a problem on XP. But on W7 ddraw is preferred over d3d for interlaced modes because these report refresh/2 making syncrefresh to halve the speed of the game unless ddraw (or -frame_delay) is used. Last version of GM already takes care of this, unless you force d3d in any ini file with higher priority than mame.ini.

[cools]

Hmm, its not forced anywhere. I'll do more digging when I have the chance, its running well in progressive and looks so much better than interlaced anyway