UME/MESS emulation state

[twistedsymphony]

Any recommendations for scanlines and other CRT effects in NES, SNES, and Genesis emulators?

[cools]

Use UME

[twistedsymphony]

last time I looked at it they were still having problems with Sega Genesis/CD/32X stuff is it actually comparable to other emulators now?

[cools]

Shrug, everything I've tried has been fine, albeit admittedly that's not a huge amount. I like just having 1 executable, 1 ROM audit database, 1 configuration.

[bulbousbeard]

cools is right. I'd rather play most SNES and Genesis games in MESS/UME than BSNES/Kega Fusion just because the MAME core tends to have the best video output and lowest latency of the emulators.

Even though MESS can't run every single SNES and weirdo 32X CD game, for the "standard" games that don't use extra chips, the emulation is actually pretty good. The only game I can think of that MESS can't emulate properly that I'd actually want to play is Yoshi's Island. MESS is even on the cusp of having good Saturn emulation. It's not quite there yet, but it will be within the next few years probably. I hate SSF...such a terrible windows program. Can't wait to flush that turd.

I haven't tried it lately so I can't confirm, but I think that MESS is actually a pretty good PC Engine emulator now, too. It's inevitable. All those standalone emulators are fated to be lost to time due to attrition. One person simply can't maintain a project forever. They always burn out. A large team like MAMEdev with a revolving door for developers can keep things going, though.

I remember when people were saying that MAME sucks and would never be as good as Callus or Neorage, and look at where we are now. Everyone will be using MAME/MESS/UME for everything eventually.

[Andypc]

Am using GroovyUME for SNES, NES, Megadrive, and Master System and the only issues I've had are with SNES games using extra chips. From what I have read the Mess team claim the NES, Megadrive and Master System emulation is as good as any of the other emulators.

[bulbousbeard]

Am using GroovyUME for SNES, NES, Megadrive, and Master System and the only issues I've had are with SNES games using extra chips. From what I have read the Mess team claim the NES, Megadrive and Master System emulation is as good as any of the other emulators.

I think I noticed some odd background tearing problems in Shinobi 3 that are fine in Kega Fusion (note this is not the kind of tearing you get when vsync isn't on).

Other than that, Genesis seems good.

[twistedsymphony]

Looking at the actual supported system list MESS claims that:
Genesis is 100%
SegaCD emulation is "preliminary"
Sega 32X emulation is "preliminary"

NES works but has some graphical issues
SNES works but has some graphical issues.

http://www.progettoemma.net/mess/sysset.php

That'd be great if they got Saturn working... but MAME still seems to have problems with ST-V games so I'd suspect it's still a ways out. 

--------------
I tried playing with MESS over the weekend but I couldn't for the life of me get it working. it complains that it doesn't know where my roms are, despite the fact that they're in the roms folder and the ini is pointed to the roms folder and I can't seem to find any good documentation on how to set it up for the first time.

I'm suspecting that it's expecting the roms to be in a specific sub folder or have specific naming or of a certain type but again none of the documentation I've found seems to explain what format and naming MESS wants for roms.

[cools]

Learn clrmamepro and MESS software lists.

[Calamity]

AFAIK, basically you can use MESS/UME in two ways:

- The "difficult" way, where you use your existing romset, and you need to help the emulator a bit more. There's a crude how-to here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=120331.0

- The proper way. This involves using software lists. You need a specially structured romset for this (you need to download it). Once you have it all set, launching a game is as easy as this:

ume.exe genesis sonic

[twistedsymphony]

Thanks for splitting this into it's own thread, i felt bad for derailing the CRT discussion 

I found a proper "software list"; for the cart systems I'll try it out tonight. Thanks for the help.

Out of curiosity how do Disc based games work. does MESS use CHD images like MAME? is it even possible to use ISOs or bin/cue images?

[Calamity]

Out of curiosity how do Disc based games work. does MESS use CHD images like MAME? is it even possible to use ISOs or bin/cue images?

I don't emulate any disc based systems myself... anyway, yes, MESS uses CHD images. I guess it should be possible to force it to take an iso image by using the manual method, though.

[bulbousbeard]

Thanks for splitting this into it's own thread, i felt bad for derailing the CRT discussion 

I found a proper "software list"; for the cart systems I'll try it out tonight. Thanks for the help.

Out of curiosity how do Disc based games work. does MESS use CHD images like MAME? is it even possible to use ISOs or bin/cue images?

Creating CHDs from any bin/cue is easy anyway and it saves space because they're compressed, whereas your bin/cue isn't.

[cools]

I have a "complete" path set I could post that you can find/replace on and insert into the clrmame settings and mame.INI. It takes an awful lot of time to do manually. One or two systems auditing in clrmame is easy but beyond that it gets tedious.

[twistedsymphony]

I don't suspect I'll need to do much for disc based systems anyway since once you reach that era of games is when MESS support starts to drop off. I think CD-i and NeoGeo CDZ are the only two I saw that were both supported and on the list of systems I want to run on my setup and both of those have small and easily manageable game lists.

One system I didn't see listed on support list at all is the NEC TurboDuo/ PC-Engine CD... emulation wise is this just considered to be the same as a normal cart based TurboGrafx-16/PC-Engine?

[B2K24]

Thanks for splitting this into it's own thread, i felt bad for derailing the CRT discussion 

I found a proper "software list"; for the cart systems I'll try it out tonight. Thanks for the help.

Out of curiosity how do Disc based games work. does MESS use CHD images like MAME? is it even possible to use ISOs or bin/cue images?

MESS does support ISO or BIN/CUE if you don't wish to convert to CHD

Here are some examples if your comfortable using command line

 mess64.exe -rompath "J:\MESS\roms" -hashpath "J:\MESS\hash" psu -mc1 "J:\MESS\software\psu\card1.mc" -cdrom "J:\Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA).cue"

mess64 pce -cart scdsys -cdrm "D:\PCE torrent\Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo (SCD)(JPN)\Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo (SCD)(JPN).cue"

mess64.exe -rompath "J:\MESS\roms" -hashpath "J:\MESS\hash" -samplepath "J:\MESS\samples" saturn -cdrom "J:\Virtua Fighter (USA) (DW0657).cue"

mess64.exe -rompath "J:\MESS\roms" -hashpath "J:\MESS\hash" -samplepath "J:\MESS\samples" fmtmarty -cdrom "J:\Raiden Trad [Raiden Densetsu].cue"

[Calamity]

Hi B2K24,

Thanks for those commands, they're of much help.

[twistedsymphony]

Thanks B2K24.

I got MESS setup and working last night. SNES and Genesis emulation seems good but I was a bit disappointed with NES emulation it seems to play too fast and the colors all look washed out. Also for some reason the bios pack I downloaded didn't include Atari 2600 and none of those games would run (kept saying missing rom files) 5200 and 7800 both ran find though.

Is there anyway to launch games from within the normal MESS interface? selecting a console there just launches the console as if you never inserted a cart... I've been using the command line but for testing things out it's a bit of a slog.

--------------

I also came across this: http://nonmess.retrogames.com/ which seems like an excellent resource. it seems like RetroArch is arguably the better choice for a lot of systems... based on that my layout for emulated systems looks like this:

Atari:
Atari 2600 - MESS
Atari 5200 - MESS
Atari 7800 - MESS
Jaguar - RetroArch (Virtual Jaguar Core)
Jaguar CD - ? (RA?)
Atari Lynx - MESS


NEC:
NEC Turbo Graphx 16 - MESS
NEC Turbo Graphx CD - MESS
NEC Super Graphx - MESS
NEC Super Graphx CD - ? (MESS?)
NEC PC-FX - RetroArch (Mednafen PC-FX Core)


Nintendo:
NES - RetroArch (Nestopia Core)
SNES - RetroArch (bSNES Core)
GameCube - Dolphin
Wii - Dolphin
GameBoy - MESS
GameBoyColor - RetroArch (Gambatte Core)
GameBoyAdvance - RetroArch (VBA-M Core)


Sega:
Sega Master System - MESS
Sega Genesis - MESS
Sega CD - RetroArch (Genesis Plus GX Core)
Sega 32X - RetroArch (PicoDrive Core)
Sega Saturn - SSF
Sega Dreamcast - Demul
Sega GameGear - MESS


SNK:
SNK Neo Geo AES - MESS
SNK Neo Geo CD - MESS
SNK Neo Geo Pocket - RetroArch (Mednafen NeoPop Core)


Sony:
PS1 - ePSXe
PS2 - PCSX2
PSP - RetroArch (PPSSPP Core)


Other:
FM Towns Marty - MESS
Philips CD-i - CD-i Emulator
Panasonic 3DO - RetroArch (4DO Core)

RetroArch seems like a great platform, I just need to get it figured out.

[B2K24]

Thanks B2K24.

I got MESS setup and working last night. SNES and Genesis emulation seems good but I was a bit disappointed with NES emulation it seems to play too fast and the colors all look washed out. Also for some reason the bios pack I downloaded didn't include Atari 2600 and none of those games would run (kept saying missing rom files) 5200 and 7800 both ran find though.

If you try and load a PAL version of a game using the NTSC version of the driver, you will get the too fast effect. It's not the fault of the emulation.
I can understand why people say the defaulted look seems rather "washed out" however, there are alternatives to fix that. You can either enable and use HLSL or GLSL using SDMAME/MESS/UME builds.

I've never even bothered with retroArch because what available in the official builds are good enough for my needs. I don't like the idea of being locked into a specific emulator version without the ability to pick and choose what I want to use. That's pretty much the reason why I've never bothered with it.

Is there anyway to launch games from within the normal MESS interface? selecting a console there just launches the console as if you never inserted a cart... I've been using the command line but for testing things out it's a bit of a slog.

You can actually do that, but it's really not optimal. For a system like Nintendo it won't know what mappers to use and systems that require BIOS files won't work if doing it that way.

You might consider looking at QMC2 for your MESS needs. It has a file chooser option which is similar to what you might be looking for and you can migrate yourself over to softlist loading, which really is the way to go IMHO.

Maybe these links can be of help too you

http://wiki.batcom-it.net/index.php?title=The_%27ultimate%27_guide_to_QMC2

http://www.mess.org/

[twistedsymphony]

If you try and load a PAL version of a game using the NTSC version of the driver, you will get the too fast effect. It's not the fault of the emulation.
I can understand why people say the defaulted look seems rather "washed out" however, there are alternatives to fix that. You can either enable and use HLSL or GLSL using SDMAME/MESS/UME builds.

hmm I just ran: mess.exe nes smb and a few other games that I figured were the US version, unless the default "nes" driver is setup for European region? I don't know. I probably wont use it anyway as even the mame dev blogs I was reading were stating they didn't feel the NES and SNES emulation was up to snuff compared to other options out there. Supposedly bSNES is near flawless in terms of architecture accuracy.

I've never even bothered with retroArch because what available in the official builds are good enough for my needs. I don't like the idea of being locked into a specific emulator version without the ability to pick and choose what I want to use. That's pretty much the reason why I've never bothered with it.

maybe I'm missing something but when I looking at it last night there were several "cores" for each system basically allowing you to choose which emulation engine you wanted to use for which console.

Personally what appeals to me most is the fact that I'll be able to use similar looking shaders across all of the supported emulators and have a single connection setup to launch and quit the emulator and a single source for control mapping. As it is now I feel like every emulator I run into a some controls that don't want to map properly, or the scanline emulation looks like crap, or it runs in the wrong resolution and wide-screen and I have to futz with the settings on each and every emulator... with something like RetroArch I'll have to do all that it once and that's it..  I'd stay 100% MESS if I could but if I'm going to have to use a 2nd emulator for some stuff RetroArch seems like the next best thing.

You might consider looking at QMC2 for your MESS needs. It has a file chooser option which is similar to what you might be looking for and you can migrate yourself over to softlist loading, which really is the way to go IMHO.

Maybe these links can be of help too you

http://wiki.batcom-it.net/index.php?title=The_%27ultimate%27_guide_to_QMC2

http://www.mess.org/

thanks I'll give those a look

[B2K24]

If softlist loading you have to run "mess64 nes smb1" or alternately you can run "mess64 nespal smb"

While I understand and respect your position regarding RetroArch, that does not save you any trouble with having to resort to using/mastering bunches of different Emulators and having to worry about getting proper controls established plus other things to give you that gaming experience all ready to go that you're  looking for.

In my case, I've familiarized myself with a lot of what MAME/MESS can do from a users/gaming perspective and I find it much easier to tweak a few things to get the visual result I'm looking for rather than resorting to a setup that you've outlined. If you wish you can create different .ini settings with the drivers name to have a permanent visual look after you learn what settings to adjust to get yourself to that finalized end result.

Of course I fully realize that I can't play N64 at 60 FPS or play those SNES games that use the special DSP chips right at this moment. What it does correctly is more than enough to keep me busy with the time I have to dedicate to emulation/gaming when you combine what's possible with MAME/MESS

I had an enjoyable experience going through Lunar Silver Star Story using the PSX driver and the abilty to fast foward slow combat was really nice. I haven't actually looked if epsxe could actually do that.

[cools]

Far easier to just run on a CRT

[twistedsymphony]

Far easier to just run on a CRT

On this, I agree. However I'm setting this up to run on a Kraylix cab. I build the cab to play modern LCD based fighters and shmups but I'm also loading up classic console and arcade stuff as a lot of my friends seem to enjoy that during parties.

Right now in addition to the modern stuff I've got MAME, NES (via NEStopia), SNES (via ZSNES) and Genesis (via Gens) and the halloween party I had a couple of weeks ago there were people basically lining up to play Super Mario Brothers and TMNT... hardly anyone cared about the modern stuff   

Honestly I LOATHE the way most classics look on an LCD, I was going to just leave it all off of this cab-altogether until I discovered HLSL in MAME, so now that I know I can get similar results with other console emulators it really goes a long way to making the graphics look right to me. I still prefer a CRT but at least now everything looks right.

[bulbousbeard]

it seems like RetroArch is arguably the better choice for a lot of systems... based on that my layout for emulated systems looks like this:

RetroArch seems like a great platform, I just need to get it figured out.

RetroArch is actually a huge pile of crap. You will never get smooth scrolling in that awful "platform." It's a bloated, pointless middleman. You're better off just using the emulators that RetroArch butchers than it.

RetroArch doesn't work worth a crap with CRTs, and it doesn't work worth a crap with G-Sync monitors. It's offensive to anyone who actually wants to run games at the correct refresh rate.

[twistedsymphony]

RetroArch is actually a huge pile of crap. You will never get smooth scrolling in that awful "platform." It's a bloated, pointless middleman. You're better off just using the emulators that RetroArch butchers than it.

RetroArch doesn't work worth a crap with CRTs, and it doesn't work worth a crap with G-Sync monitors. It's offensive to anyone who actually wants to run games at the correct refresh rate.

RetroArch ended up being a complete non-starter for me. none of the filters would load properly and even after remapping the controls it didn't accept the remap of button #2 for certain emulators. so I ditched it...

it's a shame, it seems like a solid concept, just really crappy execution.

I'm really liking MESS so far now that I've got it figured out. I'm eagerly awaiting better support for more systems especially Saturn and Jaguar so I can ditch the poorly designed emulators that are currently available.

The only supported system I've been unable to get working in MESS is TurboGrafx-16... any of the roms I try to load just sit at a black screen and it wont play any CD games unless they're in CHD format and I've yet to find a CHD set.

[B2K24]

I'm really liking MESS so far now that I've got it figured out. I'm eagerly awaiting better support for more systems especially Saturn and Jaguar so I can ditch the poorly designed emulators that are currently available.

The only supported system I've been unable to get working in MESS is TurboGrafx-16... any of the roms I try to load just sit at a black screen and it wont play any CD games unless they're in CHD format and I've yet to find a CHD set.

You can either launch tg16 using softlist loading or full path loading. Here's a full path example just in case you don't have softlists set up.

mess64.exe -rompath "J:\MESS\roms" -hashpath "J:\MESS\hash" -samplepath "J:\MESS\samples" tg16 -cartridge "J:\MESS\software\tg16\bonk's adventure (usa).pce"

For the Black screen issue when loading CD games. When you hit the black screen press TAB then access File Manager. Pick the second option [PCE & TG16 Cartridge slot (cart) scdsys (cart) <--- press enter on that

Then press down 3 times and press enter on option scdsys cart. You'll see a reset happen then you'll be at the CD-ROM System screen which you can press run.

I forget why this happens and I'm not sure if an easier way exists to get to the system screen. The method I listed above works for me and hopefully for you as well 

[twistedsymphony]

For carts I'm using the command line loading similar to what you've got I'll need to double check that I'm using the same syntax that you are.

I can't even get that far with CDs because as I said, I don't have any in the right image format.

[B2K24]

I can't even get that far with CDs because as I said, I don't have any in the right image format.

google *[ROMsite redacted per Rule 5]* and they have a NEC Turbo Grafx 16 CD (TG16CD) section. Now lets use Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo (SCD)(JPN) as an example to help get you something running. Note that I have extracted that to the root of my J:\  and also you must have scdsys.zip which contains a file named [cd] super cd-rom system (japan) (v3.0).pce inside the archive named scdsys.zip

Next you need a software to decompress the APE files to WAV. I've chosen to use Monkey's Audio to do this.

After all that is out of the way execute the syntax below to run an image. Adjust paths as necessary.

mess64 pce -cart "J:\MESS\software\pce\scdsys.zip" -cdrm "J:\Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo (SCD)(JPN)\Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo (SCD)(JPN).cue"

[twistedsymphony]

I finally got it working thank you!

i was missing the scdsys file once I got that sorted everything started running properly... including non cd tg16 games  in any case that's one more  system to cross off the list... thanks again