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Author Topic: Feature request: autofire  (Read 4269 times)

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donluca

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Feature request: autofire
« on: January 27, 2016, 02:45:51 pm »
Title.

I'd love to have an option where I can configure any button to work with autofire and, if possible, put the number of input per seconds (say, I want to have the button 1 pressed 5 times per second, button 2 normal, button 3 pressed 2 times per second).

This is mainly for old shmups which don't have the autofire option.

Thanks!
On a scale of fakeness, from more genuine to more fake, we'd have:

1.- Plastic plants (cf. Fake Plastic Trees)
2.- Inflatable dolls
3.- Arcade cabinets with LCD monitors

haynor666

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #1 on: January 27, 2016, 02:53:03 pm »
Autofire You can get from http://mame32fx.altervista.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=252&start=10

It's now up to date.

donluca

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #2 on: January 27, 2016, 08:44:32 pm »
So I have to recompile GroovyMame with the autofire support taken from mameuifx?
On a scale of fakeness, from more genuine to more fake, we'd have:

1.- Plastic plants (cf. Fake Plastic Trees)
2.- Inflatable dolls
3.- Arcade cabinets with LCD monitors

haynor666

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #3 on: January 28, 2016, 03:51:24 am »
Exactly

schmerzkaufen

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #4 on: January 28, 2016, 06:19:16 am »
I was going to as about autofire as well. This really should be included to all existing MAME builds (GM too of course) by default as it's no gimmick at all, many games that are otherwise borderline unplayable with most non-arcade controls, greatly benefit from it.

haynor666

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #5 on: January 28, 2016, 07:04:41 am »
To be honest I prefer official mame stay away from hacks and additional features. Even effects should be deleted from official mame and move to some fork/branch.

As for groovymame - is intended to allow playing games on arcade monitors/TV and any additional feature will might complicate it's dev.

If You need I can upload my source changed, not only autofire but taoplan samples supports and some fixes for games - all imported from mamefx source.

schmerzkaufen

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #6 on: January 28, 2016, 07:17:04 am »
Well I can imagine there are all sorts of opinions about 'features', I think I might have a little idea why people (mainly devs & contributors I guess) want to keep the base MAME build kind of 'pristine', but in my opinion it's become way too bare with time, to the point it's useless compared to alternative builds like GM or FX etc.

Anyway let's skip a debate  ;D, I'd greatly appreciate to try you personal build indeed, thanks in advance!  ;)

I plan to learn how to modify, compile, patch my own build so I won't bother people with requests every release.  :laugh:
Want to try a few things. But I'm starting from scratch so I'm very lost (I will do it! though)

Calamity

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #7 on: January 28, 2016, 07:25:36 am »
I second haynor666's view on this.

I don't have anything against things like autofire, but I hope you understand the difficulties implied in mantaining a fork of a complex project like MAME. It's completely different from mantaining a normal project where you have full control on the changes. Any point where I change the baseline code is a potential source of troubles, whenever that part of the code is slightly modified in mainline for whatever reason: refactoring, redefinition of structures or function parameters, even new coding style rules. The more changes I do, the more chances that important stuff will fail and the time to update would grow exponentially, something that can truly compromise the viability of GroovyMAME altogether, considering the current monthly update policy of MAME. Anyway I'm happy with the idea of indepent forks of GroovyMAME being released.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2016, 07:33:27 am by Calamity »
Important note: posts reporting GM issues without a log will be IGNORED.
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 - Attach resulting romname.txt file to your post, instead of pasting it.

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Doozer

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #8 on: January 28, 2016, 07:50:38 am »
To be honest I prefer official mame stay away from hacks and additional features. Even effects should be deleted from official mame and move to some fork/branch.

[...]

If You need I can upload my source changed, not only autofire but taoplan samples supports and some fixes for games - all imported from mamefx source.

I agree on the simplicity approach avoiding the complication introduced by collateral patches. Despite this, I am interested to know which game fixes you brought from mamefx.

schmerzkaufen

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #9 on: January 28, 2016, 08:38:13 am »
In all honesty, a simple user such as me obviously would never understand what it implies, this has always been one of the key friction elements in the relationship between the millions of MAME users, and the developers + contributors crowd.
Sorry for the term it's not intended as pejorative at all; but one has to be a genuine computer nerd to put himself in the shoes of devs/contributors.
I've read enough threads of conflicting opinions on mameworld in the past decade to know for sure there's a huge understanding rift, and that building a bridge between the knowledgeable and clueless (whose primary interest is only to play games in the best conditions) is almost impossible without great, great effort. The controversy addition from my part would be that the effort would need to come from both sides.

It's not the policy of alternative builds makers I criticize, BUT from my point of view and what I understand you guys (or other builds dev's) besides the essentials of your own creations, are also wasting time and effort doing the menial stuff that should be in base MAME (well, only when it applies I mean, since several of those things are still left out anyway).
If you say it's additional effort and trouble to add those little things later, wouldn't it be better if it wasn't removed from base MAME to begin ?
I mean when it's removed from base MAME it's naturally removed from the most known/famous UI builds too, and users more and more find themselves in the position to either mourn, beg alternative builds developers to bring the features back, or the much harsher way: to learn how to modify and compile their own builds.
As I've mentioned another time; please realize that for a peasant-level user getting into just GM is already headache-inducing, people already struggle with UI builds after all, so stuff like compiling or even coding is almost beyond their imagination (it is still beyond mine atm but I'm working on it ;D).

Again I insist; don't take it as a criticism towards you all great alternate builds developers and contributors, I'm glad you are here, but please understand that in the eyes of a clueless user, this 'process' taking place over time makes little to no sense (base MAME stripped of everything useful and nice to players, leaving them users in the hopeful/beggar position).

I have one example for you related to something I've come here to request in the beginning; the case of integer scaling.
It's something more people you could imagine wish for (even excluding individual wishes it makes games look better anyway in many cases if you have the choice), and when they go to mameworld to ask why it hasn't been working since some update (don't remember the v.) members, as far as actual mamedev members afaik, first state it's still working because they're not aware it's gone, then they say mildly irritating stuff like 'why do you care?', followed by hermetic project language that don't really give the outsider any answwer to 'why?', and finally some dev saying "oh the guy who was in charge of the new d3d probably just forgot to implement it, then it was on mametesters or something, and the entry was removed before too many people asked about it because it's troublesome", and it's been broken/hidden for many years according to RB, with no one indeed caring.
Can you believe that ? It is unfortunately true, when you're a user it's just impossible to understand.
So today if one wants to play games with clean scaling he's got to go to GM, or RA, thankfully those exist even though it's done in different ways.
But to sustain my point again; wouldn't have been much more simple it it had never been removed ? (I think I read it's SS or you Calamity who brought it back, well cleanstretch I mean).
I'm quite far from a computer geek myself (like most users of whatever software in the world) so the reasons why good features get killed are beyond me, unless I dedicate myself to this world and bring myself to a developer's level with time and effort, I cannot understand what this kind of project is, the implications of every bit etc, I can only see a vague, blurred image of it from very far just taking the word of developers and contributors who have more experience and understand.

Er...sorry I said I wouldn't turn this into a debate, ha ha.  :lol
PS: + apologies for hijacking your thread Donluca.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2016, 08:44:52 am by schmerzkaufen »

donluca

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #10 on: January 28, 2016, 09:33:41 am »
No problem at all! I always enjoy discussing those kind of matters, especially because I'm a developer and I kinda need those posts to better understand the "non-developer" mentality.

Here's the problem in putting more "unofficial" features in a software, put in a very simple example.

Let's say that a developer releases a software to do math calculation and it only has two values: 1 and 2.

You know that 1+1=2, 1+2=2+1=3 and 2+2=4

You want to take this further and implement a new function.

Next, the developer decides to shake things up and 1+1=3, 1+2=4, 2+1=2 and 2+2=5.
Now you're royally screwed because your new function is broken and the main developer couldn't care less about your modification, so you have to understand what has changed and fix your mod.
This is also why MAME should and *must* remain as simple as possible. MAME has one goal: document and reproduce as faithfully as possible arcade games.

Filters, integer scaling and other features are beyond the goal of MAME and thus other developer have decided to add those features, at their risk.
This, imho, is the right course of action.
If MAME started getting in lots of features, bugs and issues would arise everytime they change something and MAME is a *HUGE* project which gets contribution from lots of different users, so the simpler it is, the better.


Back on topic: I don't have a windows developer environment set up on my Mac (or my virtual machines, for that matter) , so I'd greatly appreciate if anyone could provide a GroovyMAME compiled with autofire patch! ^^
(unless I can compile it by simply declaring a different target platform)
« Last Edit: January 28, 2016, 09:35:45 am by donluca »
On a scale of fakeness, from more genuine to more fake, we'd have:

1.- Plastic plants (cf. Fake Plastic Trees)
2.- Inflatable dolls
3.- Arcade cabinets with LCD monitors

schmerzkaufen

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #11 on: January 28, 2016, 09:49:44 am »
Said like that it makes sense indeed, thanks for the simple example, so this is why mamedev have removed more and more little things over time ?

Well understandable. But if it's obviously a better method for developers, it will always leave the users who want something more (or back) in an uncomfortable and inferior situation though, when it comes to requests for features: to beg or expect.
Because you know it's kind of obvious that the less features we have, the more we'll come to annoy developers and the more likeky they are to lose temper, or if they lose patience they will simply put more distance between them and us (I don't throw the stone: if I was one I think I would have gone furious mad a long time ago :lol)

Yup back on topic: for I who's on Windows; can I just use that Mame Compiler 64 software ? it seems a million times easier than the stuff I remember from year ago.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2016, 09:51:57 am by schmerzkaufen »

Calamity

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #12 on: January 28, 2016, 11:16:18 am »
You can use MAME Compiler 64 just fine. Make sure it's updated because there have been very recent changes in MAME tool-chain.

------

Regarding the off-topic, when judging things always, always, keep in mind that MAME's own nature is "problematic", to say the least. Presenting itself as a game platform is not viable.

Second, always remember MAME is free. It doesn't own us anything as "customers". No need to mantain a platform specific graphic user interface that's the nightmare of any developer, dead weight that's a hell to keep in sync with any new feature (a GUI is the kind of thing you do for $$).

That said, there's ideology in every aspect of life, and this couldn't be an exception. There's ideology in GroovyMAME too, a lot, and proud of it. I'd say much of the stuff you're complaining about (e.g. lack of integer scaling) has nothing to do with current devs, but with Aaron's refactoring of the video layer back in 0.107. I wrote about that here. My understanding is that Aaron believed that the increasing resolution of display devices would make integer scaling unnecesary in a very short period. The fact is resolution has only increased at a decent rate on mobile phones. The average budget laptop is stuck with a crappy 1366x768 still in 2016, which is less than what we had in 2001.

With regards to being a genuine computer nerd, honestly that's what I'd want to be when I grow up  ;)
Important note: posts reporting GM issues without a log will be IGNORED.
Steps to create a log:
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 - Attach resulting romname.txt file to your post, instead of pasting it.

CRT Emudriver, VMMaker & Arcade OSD downloads, documentation and discussion:  Eiusdemmodi

haynor666

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #13 on: January 28, 2016, 11:23:07 am »
Here are patches, apply those after official groovymame diffs.

Note that order is not important - you can add autofire then fixes or fixes then autofire.

Those fixes are taken from MAMEUIFX 170 (thanks to MameSick)

List of fixes:

Correct sound tempo in Vapor Trail and Dark Seal
Correct (I think) refresh rate in Iron Horse 60,606 Hz
Samples support Fire Shark, Ghox, Teki Paki, Vimana

There also other fixes but I personally need only these.

Here is compiled groovymame 170 x64 - [link removed]
« Last Edit: October 15, 2016, 06:45:52 am by haynor666 »

donluca

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #14 on: January 28, 2016, 11:36:15 am »
Thanks for the patches! I'll try the MAME compiler in my virtual machine and see if that does the trick.
On a scale of fakeness, from more genuine to more fake, we'd have:

1.- Plastic plants (cf. Fake Plastic Trees)
2.- Inflatable dolls
3.- Arcade cabinets with LCD monitors

haynor666

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #15 on: January 28, 2016, 12:11:00 pm »
About integer scalling. I would really like to see such option in mame but right now we have option unevenstretch that at least under windows does do nothing. Right now I have to use ddraw or compile/import fix from cabmame.

schmerzkaufen

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #16 on: January 28, 2016, 12:26:32 pm »
Thank you very much !

Interesting, there are a couple of things I'd like to try myself and with your replies guys I'm starting to believe it's doable even for me.

1 question though; can patches made for a previous version apply to the current ? (say a patch that was made at the time of 0.155)

------

@Calamity: 0.107 yes that was it, it's been a long time. Before it I remember I was still discovering MAME and intensively made use of some of the now ancient features like integrated scanlines both in ddraw and d3d, non-dumb-stretched scaling, more filters like bicubic etc, and I was happy. Imagine my disappointment when most of those were removed and replaced with either barely useable .png effects, less filtering options, also more lag at some point (until 0.14*~something it was a delay monster like never ever).

Since then I've always wished for a return of those things or very similar, unaware such features could get in the way of people actually working on/for the project.
(shaders solutions that were added later are nice but heavy and not always looking good without a lot of tweaking)
I see your point now because it's presented from a person with awareness of the real thing and challenges, but I think some of the aspects you describe regarding the development side of things and what they imply, will never be really clear to the hordes of users, for instance yes we all know it's free, but we don't necessarily know what that means in practice (1st time for me reading that about GUIs for instance).
Although I think most users easily understand and totally approve of the project's mission of cultural preservation (well, a percentage still loathe emulators seeing those only as instruments of piracy, but let's leave them), the thing is after all...it plays games! and I'm afraid this will always be the primary motivation for the masses downloading MAME or any other emulator.
Just a theory but I think it's this gap/rift in understanding and position/perspective between the two 'crowds' I'm talking about, that gave birth to things like RA.

Anyway I should stop making fuzzy theories and get to testing/learning now (too late for wishing myself to become a computer nerd one day, but I'll try to become a mame nerd at least, that should be enough)  :laugh:

@haynor666: I have yet to investigate about a proper fix for ddraw under 8.1, all my emus/games using it are just unplayable. I wish there was a 'dosbox' or 'ddrawbox' software because Window's compatibility tools just don't work ha ha.

EDIT: well, Fire Shark with sound and configurable autofire is something !  :applaud:
« Last Edit: January 28, 2016, 02:42:00 pm by schmerzkaufen »

Calamity

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #17 on: January 29, 2016, 08:16:54 am »
@haynor666: I have yet to investigate about a proper fix for ddraw under 8.1, all my emus/games using it are just unplayable. I wish there was a 'dosbox' or 'ddrawbox' software because Window's compatibility tools just don't work ha ha.

Have you already tried this?: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,148535.msg1548759.html#msg1548759
Important note: posts reporting GM issues without a log will be IGNORED.
Steps to create a log:
 - From command line, run: groovymame.exe -v romname >romname.txt
 - Attach resulting romname.txt file to your post, instead of pasting it.

CRT Emudriver, VMMaker & Arcade OSD downloads, documentation and discussion:  Eiusdemmodi

schmerzkaufen

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Re: Feature request: autofire
« Reply #18 on: January 29, 2016, 08:37:47 am »
Have you already tried this?
Yes I gave it a try before with FX and GM and it won't let me select the executable saying this version only works with 32bit applications.

Maybe that guide is forgetting to tell something important...