Recommended non-HyperSpin frontends for GroovyMAME with arcade monitor

[krick]

I saw this in another thread, and I think it deserves more attention.   Maybe if it proves useful, this can become a sticky thread...

This is the main reason I disabled -mt by default in GroovyMAME: HyperSpin users massively complaining about stability issues that do not occur with other frontends. On the other hand, now that we have -mt disabled by default all users are massively complaining about vertical games running slow. The dilemma is, if I want to release GroovyMAME with all the options set by default to provide the experience as it is intended to be, then I kill HyperSpin users. Then I think about it and since the release of CRT Emudriver several years ago I've been fighting with issues directly related to this frontend, and I'm a bit tired of it. I'll end up advising specifically against HyperSpin if using GroovyMAME. Emulation quality must be the priority IMHO, not frontend cuteness.
...
In other words, in order to have vertical games like Galaga running at 100% you'd need -triplebuffer which also requires -mt enabled, but because you can't enable it due to HyperSpin then the suboptimal solution is to force everything to be synchronized regardless of the speed variations.

So, given the limitations and annoyances of HyperSpin (and there have been more than the particular issue above), what should we be using instead?

Back in the day, when I was running Windows 98, I used MameWah as my frontend, but I understand that development on it stopped a long time ago.

I'm currently running GroovyMAME on a 15KHz arcade monitor with a Radeon x600 (I also have a Radeon HD 4550 available).  My OS is Windows XP x64 Edition.  I believe that the highest windows desktop resolutions I can use are 640x288 (non-interlaced) and 640x480 (interlaced).  I think that back when I was using an ArcadeVGA, I was able to run 512x512 (interlaced) on my monitor and it actually looked better than 640x480 (interlaced) but it's not a 4:3 aspect ratio, so if the frontend displays artwork, it may look weird.  Personally, I'd be happy with a text-only frontend at 512x512.

[cyb]

I use attract mode. It works perfectly with groovymame. I used to use Mala and it was pretty good too, but I definitely prefer attract mode. I use a layout cools made and with a few tweaks I'm set.

http://attractmode.org/

[krick]

I use attract mode. It works perfectly with groovymame.

Does it have layouts for low-res 15KHz arcade monitors?

[adder]

im using mamewah but feel it may not be too good for the future (eg. beyond xp) as mentioned already.
also interested in opinions.

[Sledge]

There is also GameEx. http://www.gameex.com/
And the soon to be released GameEx Evolution.

[cyb]

I use attract mode. It works perfectly with groovymame.

Does it have layouts for low-res 15KHz arcade monitors?

Yes. I use it with a 15khz Sony PVM.

[Jollywest]

I've just made the move to MALA from HS and it works great with GM on a 15khz arcade monitor.

I have MALA running at 320 x 240 and the artwork looks fine (see pic).

Vertical game snapshots/videos can be set to keep aspect ratio, so they aren't stretched in MALA.

[Sledge]

I just find things like Mala etc to be too 'static'
I like the themes etc that HS has. And i'm looking forward to seeing what GameEx Evolution can do...

[xga]

Not to get too off topic from the Ops thread, but I thought I would chime in with my recent experience.  I've recently finished building a WinXP x64 system with an ATI 4350 video card running Groovymame 64bit and Hyperspin as the frontend.  Once I'd set-up VMMaker to use magic resolutions and disabled Flash hardware acceleration, Hyperspin became rock solid.  I did notice sound stuttering from some vertical shmups when they were rotated to work on a horizontal monitor set-up.  Calamity advised to enable multithreading in the mame.ini and that fixed the problem right up.  Problem games like R-Type and some of the Cave shooters perform flawlessly with no slow down too.   Perhaps I'm just lucky, but since those changes I have had zero problems with Hyperspin.  I had friends over the other day and the cabinet was given a solid work out for several hours without a single issue.  I'm really happy with the entire set-up and would struggle to change front ends now after experiencing how good it looks and performs.

Anyways, just my 2 cents...

[u-man]

I also use GameEx, never had problems with GroovyMame, everything works as intentional.

I totally agree with Calamitys statement: Emulation quality must be the priority IMHO, not frontend cuteness.

Never wanted and will never use Hyperspin, because it is a pain to configure, is not flexible and you need a decent system to run it in its full glory.... so a no go for me.

[haynor666]

I probably repeating myself but...

MAMEWAH - good forntend with low memory req. starts fast though you must learn how to configure it (not that hard). Works fine on XP x32, XP 64 and Windows 7 x64, probably others but I didn't test it.
The only feature that I'm really need is switching from horizontal layout to vertical and vice versa.

[Sledge]

Not to get too off topic from the Ops thread, but I thought I would chime in with my recent experience.  I've recently finished building a WinXP x64 system with an ATI 4350 video card running Groovymame 64bit and Hyperspin as the frontend.  Once I'd set-up VMMaker to use magic resolutions and disabled Flash hardware acceleration, Hyperspin became rock solid.  I did notice sound stuttering from some vertical shmups when they were rotated to work on a horizontal monitor set-up.  Calamity advised to enable multithreading in the mame.ini and that fixed the problem right up.  Problem games like R-Type and some of the Cave shooters perform flawlessly with no slow down too.   Perhaps I'm just lucky, but since those changes I have had zero problems with Hyperspin.  I had friends over the other day and the cabinet was given a solid work out for several hours without a single issue.  I'm really happy with the entire set-up and would struggle to change front ends now after experiencing how good it looks and performs.

Anyways, just my 2 cents...

One would assume you have decent hardware? I'm thinking that maybe the issues with HS stem from running it all on a lower end PC.
I also have no issues with HS and GM..... touch wood..

[xga]

One would assume you have decent hardware? I'm thinking that maybe the issues with HS stem from running it all on a lower end PC.
I also have no issues with HS and GM..... touch wood..

The PC was a donor to me as it was going to be replaced by its owner because it was over 6 years old.  It has an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 CPU @ 2.66GHz with 4GB of RAM.  Probably good in its day, but hardly state of the art now.  It only struggles with late 90's 3D games (think Namco's Ridge Racer), but that's not a fault of Hyperspin.

[krick]

The PC was a donor to me as it was going to be replaced by its owner because it was over 6 years old.  It has an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 CPU @ 2.66GHz with 4GB of RAM.  Probably good in its day, but hardly state of the art now.  It only struggles with late 90's 3D games (think Namco's Ridge Racer), but that's not a fault of Hyperspin.

I hear you.  I'm still running a Intel Pentium E5200 (Core2Duo Wolfdale, circa 2008) 2.5GHz (overclocked to 3.5GHz) in my cabinet.

I'm thinking about picking up a Intel Pentium G3258 and overclocking it.  There's reports of it routinely overclocking to 4.5GHz or more.
At 4.8GHz, the single threaded performance is nearly as fast as a Core i7-4790K overclocked to 4.7GHz.
And single threaded performance is what really matters to MAME.

$69.99 - Intel Pentium G3258 Haswell Dual-Core 3.2GHz LGA 1150 Desktop Processor BX80646G3258
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117374

I'd just have to find a cheap, stable, mATX motherboard and some decent memory to go with it.

[Sledge]

One would assume you have decent hardware? I'm thinking that maybe the issues with HS stem from running it all on a lower end PC.
I also have no issues with HS and GM..... touch wood..

The PC was a donor to me as it was going to be replaced by its owner because it was over 6 years old.  It has an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 CPU @ 2.66GHz with 4GB of RAM.  Probably good in its day, but hardly state of the art now.  It only struggles with late 90's 3D games (think Namco's Ridge Racer), but that's not a fault of Hyperspin.

Yep, for Mame and HS duties that's quite ok..
But some people try to run it all on PC's like a P3-800 or a P4 chip of some sort, and wonder why it's so bad

[cools]

Attract Mode runs in whatever resolution you have the desktop at, and scales the image accordingly. The layout is resolution independent (to a point, at low resolution the font sizes sometimes need tweaking if you're using a resolution dfferent from the intended one)

[8BitMonk]

Not to get too off topic from the Ops thread, but I thought I would chime in with my recent experience.  I've recently finished building a WinXP x64 system with an ATI 4350 video card running Groovymame 64bit and Hyperspin as the frontend.  Once I'd set-up VMMaker to use magic resolutions and disabled Flash hardware acceleration, Hyperspin became rock solid.  I did notice sound stuttering from some vertical shmups when they were rotated to work on a horizontal monitor set-up.  Calamity advised to enable multithreading in the mame.ini and that fixed the problem right up.  Problem games like R-Type and some of the Cave shooters perform flawlessly with no slow down too.   Perhaps I'm just lucky, but since those changes I have had zero problems with Hyperspin.  I had friends over the other day and the cabinet was given a solid work out for several hours without a single issue.  I'm really happy with the entire set-up and would struggle to change front ends now after experiencing how good it looks and performs.

Anyways, just my 2 cents...

+1. Haven't had problems running HS and Groovymame on my setup. AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb Quad-Core 3.2GHz - 8Gb RAM - ATI 4870 1Gb.

[Jollywest]

The issue with HS and GM (quoted in the first post) only happened when multi-threading was required on my setup.

I'm using an AVGA 3000 / E8400 (@3.4ghz) setup, so perhaps that's also the issue... Not enough umph! 

[Sledge]

The issue with HS and GM (quoted in the first post) only happened when multi-threading was required on my setup.

I'm using an AVGA 3000 / E8400 (@3.4ghz) setup, so perhaps that's also the issue... Not enough umph! 

Nope... Mines an E8500 i think.. no issues at all...

[Jollywest]

The issue with HS and GM (quoted in the first post) only happened when multi-threading was required on my setup.

I'm using an AVGA 3000 / E8400 (@3.4ghz) setup, so perhaps that's also the issue... Not enough umph! 

Nope... Mines an E8500 i think.. no issues at all...

Have you got -mt enabled?

[Calamity]

Some random topics regarding problems directly related to HS & GM:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,138494.msg1430581.html#msg1430581
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,106405.msg1154063.html#msg1154063
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,135314.msg1398471.html#msg1398471
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,117935.msg1249754.html#msg1249754
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,106405.msg1179783.html#msg1179783
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,142866.msg1481184.html#msg1481184
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,142742.msg1480069.html#msg1480069
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,140732.msg1457468.html#msg1457468
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,136251.msg1407536.html#msg1407536
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,143190.msg1485733.html#msg1485733

Probably many more out there. I've filtered out hundreds of topics about the specific well-known bug where HS will crash if too many modes are available in the system, which at the time forced the development of GM's "magic" resolutions feature.

I wouldn't say it's (only) a matter of lower end hardware. There's something in the way that HS tries to appropriate the system that doesn't play well with GroovyMAME, which for its part requires to take over the whole system too. For some reason, some configurations are more prone to fail than others.

What makes me particularly uneasy is the way these programs (HS, HL, HP) seem to interfere with the normal flow of emulators. Trying to pause, minimize or kill an exclusive mode application from an external program is the worst idea ever. I mean, we do these things when there's no choice, not just for fun. You don't f*ck with another man's process, it's just against the rules.

However, I'd say that it is possible to configure HS in a less invasive way that allows both HS & GM to coexist. The problem is this is not an obvious task to achieve, specially for a beginner, and the support in HS boards tends to be in the line of "we don't have groovymame here" and I don't blame them for it.

[8BitMonk]

I wouldn't say it's (only) a matter of lower end hardware. There's something in the way that HS tries to appropriate the system that doesn't play well with GroovyMAME, which for its part requires to take over the whole system too. For some reason, some configurations are more prone to fail than others.

What makes me particularly uneasy is the way these programs (HS, HL, HP) seem to interfere with the normal flow of emulators. Trying to pause, minimize or kill an exclusive mode application from an external program is the worst idea ever. I mean, we do these things when there's no choice, not just for fun. You don't f*ck with another man's process, it's just against the rules.

However, I'd say that it is possible to configure HS in a less invasive way that allows both HS & GM to coexist. The problem is this is not an obvious task to achieve, specially for a beginner, and the support in HS boards tends to be in the line of "we don't have groovymame here" and I don't blame them for it.

I think this pinpoints why the issues (or lack thereof) vary. Hyperpause definitely does not play nice with groovymame, don't use it. There are also older and newer versions of Hyperlaunch depending on whether you're using HyperlaunchHQ or not which probably affects results.

Personally I turn off Hyperlaunch for Mame and just launch Mame out of Hyperspin normally, there's nothing Hyperlaunch is doing through it's launch script that is beneficial to me for Mame. 

[bulbousbeard]

What makes me particularly uneasy is the way these programs (HS, HL, HP) seem to interfere with the normal flow of emulators. Trying to pause, minimize or kill an exclusive mode application from an external program is the worst idea ever. I mean, we do these things when there's no choice, not just for fun. You don't f*ck with another man's process, it's just against the rules.

There are some emulators besides MAME that simply suck in arcade cabinets. The M2 Model 2 emulator, for example, can't even close when you press the escape key. MAME is really good and doesn't need a lot of support, but some of the Dreamcast emulators, M2, and others really need process molestation to work properly in an arcade cabinet.

And to throw another one onto the pile, Big Blue works fine with GroovyMAME in Windows 7.

https://sites.google.com/site/bigbluefrontend/

[Jollywest]

I wouldn't say it's (only) a matter of lower end hardware. There's something in the way that HS tries to appropriate the system that doesn't play well with GroovyMAME, which for its part requires to take over the whole system too. For some reason, some configurations are more prone to fail than others.

What makes me particularly uneasy is the way these programs (HS, HL, HP) seem to interfere with the normal flow of emulators. Trying to pause, minimize or kill an exclusive mode application from an external program is the worst idea ever. I mean, we do these things when there's no choice, not just for fun. You don't f*ck with another man's process, it's just against the rules.

However, I'd say that it is possible to configure HS in a less invasive way that allows both HS & GM to coexist. The problem is this is not an obvious task to achieve, specially for a beginner, and the support in HS boards tends to be in the line of "we don't have groovymame here" and I don't blame them for it.

I think this pinpoints why the issues (or lack thereof) vary. Hyperpause definitely does not play nice with groovymame, don't use it. There are also older and newer versions of Hyperlaunch depending on whether you're using HyperlaunchHQ or not which probably affects results.

Personally I turn off Hyperlaunch for Mame and just launch Mame out of Hyperspin normally, there's nothing Hyperlaunch is doing through it's launch script that is beneficial to me for Mame.

I was using Hyperlaunch on my setup, which probably caused more issues then.
After switching to MALA, everything seems to run a lot smoother.
With the HS setup I had seperate scripts running for background music, volume control and CPwizard, but all these things are now run directly through MALA.
I did have HS stripped right down anyway, without any themes or wheel art, so the aesthetic differences for me are minimal.

[Sledge]

The issue with HS and GM (quoted in the first post) only happened when multi-threading was required on my setup.

I'm using an AVGA 3000 / E8400 (@3.4ghz) setup, so perhaps that's also the issue... Not enough umph! 

Nope... Mines an E8500 i think.. no issues at all...

Have you got -mt enabled?

Yes i do, but as Calamity said HS can be configured to be less invasive, which is what i have done i guess... I don't run much else other than Mame and a few PC games.. no other emu's etc..

However, I'd say that it is possible to configure HS in a less invasive way that allows both HS & GM to coexist. The problem is this is not an obvious task to achieve, specially for a beginner, and the support in HS boards tends to be in the line of "we don't have groovymame here" and I don't blame them for it.

[Chainsaw]

I like HS. I had real issues using it with GM at first. Initially I used multithreading with GM which solved the issue, but isn't the preferred method. So now I'm using CPU Controller, which has resolved all issues. I have a preset that loads when the PC boots, setting HS to core 0 and 1 (usually HS uses all cores), and sticks GM exclusively to core 3. I've not been able to test it as much as I'd like, but since doing this I've not noticed any issues whatsoever with GM. Definitely worth a try.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,142866.0.html