Are there any reasons to upgrade from MAME V0.139???

[mark shaker]

Hello Again;

I've had MAME Cabs since 2003. In the "old" days, I used to upgrade MAME every February. But I stopped at V0.139 when it seemed all I was gaining was Fruit Machine games and Mahjong games, neither of which I give a care for.

It's been 6 years, so I thought I would check in: Are there any compelling reasons to upgrade???

I've tried reading the MameDev's release notes, but I can't see the forest for the trees. So I'd rather just have a few opinions. Are there significant new playable games? Significant new features?

BTW: I have a keep-it-simple approach to my cabs. I use MAMEUI64, because it's so easy to set-up and keep going.

Thanks for your help!

   - Mark

[PL1]

You may want to download the latest mameinfo.dat from here.

Open it in Wordpad and search for the names of the games you like (i.e. "$info=robotron" for Robotron) to see what has changed.

WIP:

- 0.158: Tafoid renamed joystick inputs for Robotron.

- 0.145u2: Williams blits with bit 2 set take approximately 2x as long because they are bus-shared with RAM. Should impact some timing behaviors such as later levels in Robotron, where approximately 10% of the blits are done with bit 2 set. Further refinements may be necessary but this addresses the most significant issue [Sean Riddle, Aaron Giles].

- 0.133u1: Renamed (robotryo) to (robotronyo).

You may also want to check the related drivers.

Robotron uses the Williams driver. ("$info=williams")

WIP:

- 0.155: Changed Williams diag AU/MD button to PORT_TOGGLE [joemagiera, hap].

- 0.154: Fixed generic_paletteram regression. Moved blaster-specific and williams2-specific stuff into subclass. Use bankdevs instead of dynamic address map modification. Reorganize code and driver state class [Alex Jackson]. Minor whitespace clean-up for alignment [Brian Troha].

- 0.149u1: Improved Williams blitter logic and timing to match tests run on real hardware [Sean Riddle].

- 0.145u8: Sean Riddle fixed video counter reporting on Williams games (should stay at maximum value until reset). Miodrag Milanovic fixed Williams driver regression.

- 0.145u2: Williams blits with bit 2 set take approximately 2x as long because they are bus-shared with RAM. Should impact some timing behaviors such as later levels in Robotron, where approximately 10% of the blits are done with bit 2 set. Further refinements may be necessary but this addresses the most significant issue [Sean Riddle, Aaron Giles].

- 0.143u4: Williams driver update [hap]: Fixed screen garbage when frameskipping. Fixed blaster background color (eg. screen flashes when hit). Changed M6808 CPU2 clock speed to 3579545 Hz.

Scott
EDIT: It would be even simpler to put the latest MAMEUI into a test folder and use that to browse the latest mameinfo.dat file.   

[brad808]

Cave sh3 games!

[artyfarty]

HLSL if you have an LCD, and a graphics card that supports it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Token]

Golden Tee Fore if you are into that sort of thing.

[haynor666]

Golden Tee Fore if you are into that sort of thing.

Probably his hardware it's not powerfull enough.

[mark shaker]

All;

Thanks for your replys.

 Robotron is one of my personal favorites. Luckily I stink at it, so V0.139 seems to play fine.

My main cab has a 600x800 CRT, a second gen Core I5 PC with an old cheap graphics card (maybe a Geforce 210).

It sounds like HLSL is out.  Would that hardware be enough to handle Golden Tee Fore? (My buddies often play Golden Tee 2K to wind down at the end of the night.)

   - Mark

[gildahl]

In addition to things already stated, Raiden 2 was (finally) added.  Sound was made more accurate on a number of games including Raiden Fighters Jet and Atari Pokey games.  I believe Star Fire also got sound during this period (via samples).  Latest rev. has improvements to voice effects in Berzerk.  I think (though I might be mistaken) that Pong was improved and Video Pinball got a proper background during this period too.

[mark shaker]

I figured that I would "close" this topic that I started.

I finally decided to update my MAME Cabinets a couple months. I went from .139 to .238. Up, I was 99 versions back!

Of course, I'm now already like 3 versions back...

   - Mark

[offset]

I suppose it depends on what games you want to play and the hardware you have?

I found this cool history overview on the MAME page.
https://www.mamedev.org/history.html

Had no idea that Netlist audio started way back in 0.146u4. I myself didn't hear about netlist audio of discrete till MAME .224 - https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/i7dw19/mame_0224_workinprogress_on_netlists_and_70s/

[gildahl]

I'm a little late to this topic...and realize you've already updated, but I'd say that although subtle updates to various games and the Cave game additions are important, sound improvements have been my main reason for updating to more recent versions.  Most significant was the addition of port audio, which was a game changer (pun intended). At least on Windows, the improvement in latency is night/day.