Laggy controls in Groovymame 153 (help needed!)

[markc74]

Hi all - I'm having a problem with controls really lagging in groovymame 153 which I think is down to a config issue somewhere but nothing I try seems to sort it out so I'm hoping someone can help.

My setup is windows xp 64 bit running crt emudriver and connected to a scart tv (via scart cable) and an lcd marquee via hdmi.

The controls feel noticeably laggy in most games but especially in analog games like arkanoid.  Wierdly, if I switch to vanilla mame 153 then everything feels perfect again and there is no lag.

I did a search before I posted this and everything I found was related to the frame delay stuff which I'm pretty sure isn't the problem here.

Anyone have any ideas or things I should try? Any help gratefully received!

[Calamity]

Try enabling -multithreading. Besides, increase -syncrefresh_tolerance to 4.0 or 5.0.

BTW your logs are not complete, use the -v option.

[markc74]

Thanks for the speedy response Calamity.

Unfortunately I'm not sure if it made much difference.

I've uploaded the proper logs this time.  I've included Shinobi which oddly seems not to lag at all if that helps?

[Calamity]

Some ideas:

1.- Use -video d3d
2.- Do not force a resolution on the lcd, or
3.- Disable the lcd just to test.

[markc74]

Hi Calamity - Thanks for the reply.  Unfortunately I tried those things and they didn't seem to make a difference.

I did notice that when I was showing the FPS on vertical games I was getting a regular 98% and then a spike of 105% every second on games affected. Horizontal games seem to be working fine.

I went into the mame.ini file and changed the modeline to give me a higher vertical frequency. 16400 was the highest it would go before the screen started playing up and this took my FPS to between 99% and 103% and this *seemed* to reduce the lag.

It's definitely feels pretty nippy now - much better than it was so I'm pretty happy with it. I am still curious if this is something tied into my setup though as I don't remember noticing it before!

[Calamity]

Hi markc74,

It is strange that the speed is not constant and you get spikes, unless your using -frame_delay. If your monitor configuration doesn't allow you to get 100% speed for 256 lines games and above, the game will run slower due to vsync, but at a solid 97%, 98% or whatever. This may be "felt" as the controls being laggy, when it's simply the game running slower. Normal MAME has vsync off by default so you won't see this problem. If you enable -frame_delay in this situation it will make things even worse. I don't mean this is your case, just thinking aloud. If you're seeing genuine input lag, that's a different story. Running with -syncrefresh, -multithreading, -frame_delay, should perform the best on this regard, but this assumes you're achieving the -target refresh rate. Anyway, increasing the HfreqMax value in your particular case seems like the right approach to me.

[markc74]

Hi Calamity. That was what I expected. I'll do some further tweaking later and see what I can do. It *feels* more responsive at the moment but still not quite there.

One thing I was going to try was to rotate the vertical 256 games so see if that made them run at full frame rate and had an impact on the lag.

[Calamity]

One thing I was going to try was to rotate the vertical 256 games so see if that made them run at full frame rate and had an impact on the lag.

Have you tried this already?

[markc74]

One thing I was going to try was to rotate the vertical 256 games so see if that made them run at full frame rate and had an impact on the lag.

Have you tried this already?

I haven't yet but was going to try it tomorrow evening. I've set aside a few (precious!) hours to get to the bottom of it. I was planning on start with fresh 154 build, new ini files etc and see where I get to.

[markc74]

Got a bit of time today to spend on this - I haven't been able to remove the lag but I am at least convinced that it's definitely happening.

I started with a clean install of MAME 0.154. I then made a copy of that folder and installed Groovymame 154 in that one. I generated the mame.ini files for each version of MAME and then created a batch file which repeatedly ran the same rom in each version of MAME. (Vanilla vs groovy).

The LCD monitor wasn't connected during these tests.

I cant say for sure whether I'm getting lag in all games but if the game uses analog controls then it is definitely noticeable. Games like missile command and arkanoid were pretty bad with a noticeable delay and a floaty feeling (cursor would still move after letting go of the controls). This was not happening at all in regular MAME running the same rom.

To see if it was to do with the number of lines I was running I ran the horizontal game Cameltry which uses the spinner and the same problem was happening. So - I'm pretty much out of ideas now.

Any thing left worth trying?

[Calamity]

Are you testing against regular MAME *with* syncrefresh & waitvsync enabled?

[markc74]

Hi Calamity. No they're both set to '0'. I didn't change anything after I ran the -cc command.

[Calamity]

GM enables syncrefresh automatically. Regular MAME doesn't. So you need to enable it in regular MAME too get a fair test.