MAME Software Upgrade - Worth the Hassle?

[wcndave]

I am currently running on 0.146 and am mostly content.

There are quite a few games that don't record high scores when you leave, there are a large number that don't work, a few of which would be great to have, I never quite got my head around controls.dat and other things one could do on the side, but in the main it works ok.

Is there enough difference in the latest version 0.179 at the moment, to consider rebuilding?  Is it too bleeding edge and there's a known good stable version say at 0.170 or something, which is still work the upgrade?

Or is it more a matter of, once it works mostly ok, leave it?

Interested in peoples opinions on this.

Thanks

Dave

[burn_654]

What games are giving you trouble?

Some games have been troublesome in Mame for quite some time and may still not be up to par, depends how popular it is really. Generally if you have a good working setup it can be more trouble than it's worth to switch if those few games still aren't going to work for you.

Performance is definitely moving towards improvements towards Windows 7 with a DirectX 11 card and up so if not now you would see performance benefits along the way if you keep more current. XP support is gradually being phased out if that's important to you.

Just some food for thought!

[ivwshane]

I don't know if its worth it or not because I don't know how much you value your time but there are a couple of things to think about.

Upgrading mame also means upgrading your roms and that can either be a pain or simply take a lot of time and storage space. I've also heard that the newer versions of mame are slower because they are now more focused on accuracy rather than performance. I don't know when things started changing but if your computer isn't up to snuff then it may not be worth it.

Personally I'd do a test run using a couple of games you always play and a couple of games you want to be able to play that are only available with the newer versions of mame.

[wcndave]

Thanks for replies.

I have a core i5 overclocked to 4GHz with 16GB RAM and an SSD.  So I think my performance should be quite good, the only thing I don't have is dedicated graphics card, I use the onboard.

My time is quite valuable, who's isn't, however there are some like NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, which I'd quite like to see working, and after my windows 10 update, a few seem to have stopped that were working before

I am happy to set up a virtual machine, and give it a go, however I did a lot of tweaks with MaLa, custom graphics and settings etc, so I want to avoid wrecking that.  At the same time this may be an opportunity to do it properly documented, as I can't remember a lot of what I did, and also include other emulators which might be fun.

Is there some list somewhere of what games work with each version of MAME?

[ivwshane]

Don't use a virtual machine, simply run mame from a different folder. If those games are playable then you can worry about updating mala.

I too have a complicated mala, led blinky setup and for me it wasn't worth the upgrade.

Also, as far as I know, mame has never taken advantage of a discrete video card.

[shaolindrunkard]

Thanks for replies.

I have a core i5 overclocked to 4GHz with 16GB RAM and an SSD.  So I think my performance should be quite good, the only thing I don't have is dedicated graphics card, I use the onboard.

My time is quite valuable, who's isn't, however there are some like NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, which I'd quite like to see working, and after my windows 10 update, a few seem to have stopped that were working before

I am happy to set up a virtual machine, and give it a go, however I did a lot of tweaks with MaLa, custom graphics and settings etc, so I want to avoid wrecking that.  At the same time this may be an opportunity to do it properly documented, as I can't remember a lot of what I did, and also include other emulators which might be fun.

Is there some list somewhere of what games work with each version of MAME?

NBA Jam works perfectly on my old cabinet with a pentium 4 in it so something is wrong if that's not working for you. Also do your self a favor and get a graphics card. Any graphics card would likely be better than onboard...

[harveybirdman]

I just recently upgraded from a pentium 4 to an i3 machine and I'm running a no nag cave sh3 build of 150.  Changing machines is a super pain and I think I may scrap Mala altogether this time, but I'm super happy with the uptick in speed from 32 to 64 bit and from single core to dual core.

I'm happily playing Ibarra and even Muchi Muchi pork now, the ST-V games work (except Cotton Boomerang but it's still playable), and many of the 3D fighters are now playable along with Blitz and Gauntlet legends, even if the later are still a bit labored.

[8BitMonk]

Is there some list somewhere of what games work with each version of MAME?

The whatsnew.txt file in each version of mame shows what games were promoted to working etc.

Also, recently a guy on YouTube (DefinitelyRussian) has been posting vids of new working games in each version:

[wcndave]

Thanks.  Interesting that one reply says a graphics card is a good idea, and one says they're not used.  I've never encountered any problems without one, Tekken require me to upgrade to a better PC.  In the early days I thought all this old stuff must run on any old (15 year old) computer I had.  However now it's one of my best.

The reason I am using a vritual, is so I can do it on my main computer in my office without uploading a load of rubbish onto my computer as i try all the various add ons etc.  I would do side by side on my MAME arcarde machine, however 1) it's quite full, 2) I don't want to wreck it in any way, 3) I want to document a "from scratch" for when I inevitably have to rebuild, 4) I don't want things I don't realise are there, eg old DLL files to mislead me or make it not a fair fresh install - ie i might miss a step without realising, or have an old file make new stuff not work, and finally, and probably most importantly, it's about -5 deg C in my man-cave at the moment, and I don't want to stand there shivering, nor do I want to heat 40sqm for a few hours here and there...

What I guess I am really interested in are any opinions you may have such as "179 is Waaaay better than 146, loads of stuff is fixed", or "performance is much better", or "the new debug features make it great", or "integration with a ROM checker is now so easy... do it", and so on...

Useful feedback so far!

[ivwshane]

I don't know if its still true but johniv of mame32 used to run benchmarks on various versions of mame. You might want to ask him his thoughts on the various versions.

http://www.mameui.info

[8BitMonk]

What I guess I am really interested in are any opinions you may have such as "179 is Waaaay better than 146, loads of stuff is fixed", or "performance is much better", or "the new debug features make it great", or "integration with a ROM checker is now so easy... do it", and so on...

Don't think you'll get any responses that clear cut, the differences aren't quite that easy to distinguish.

That said, there are some cutoffs. I don't have the exact version numbers at the moment but big breaks that come to mind below. Others can chime in.

• If you just want to run classic games you only need version xx.
• HLSL and GSL screen effects were incorporated at version xx and above and have gradually improved.
• Mame and Mess converged at version xx.
• Mame UI changed in version xx. Includes filtering and it shows intro screens, cab art, marquees etc. 

[harveybirdman]

If I'm not mistaken MAME got much more processor demanding around 158 or 159, but I might be telling lies....

I think I'm going to build GroovyMame 155 for my next build and add sh3 support.  Only thing that's been added after 150 that I really want is theglad

[JDFan]

What I guess I am really interested in are any opinions you may have such as "179 is Waaaay better than 146, loads of stuff is fixed", or "performance is much better", or "the new debug features make it great", or "integration with a ROM checker is now so easy... do it", and so on...

Don't think you'll get any responses that clear cut, the differences aren't quite that easy to distinguish.

That said, there are some cutoffs. I don't have the exact version numbers at the moment but big breaks that come to mind below. Others can chime in.

• If you just want to run classic games you only need version xx.
• HLSL and GSL screen effects were incorporated at version xx and above and have gradually improved.
• Mame and Mess converged at version xx.
• Mame UI changed in version xx. Includes filtering and it shows intro screens, cab art, marquees etc. 

I think you are talking about the Mame Major Changes Category on the mamedev wiki - which lists 15 major mame update versions with major changes to the program  ( http://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/Category:Major_Changes )

[BadMouth]

I'm holding steady at v.146, but my hardware is outdated compared to yours.
Some snazzy newer looking PGM games were added that build, so I think it is a good one.
I tried running v.170 on an identical PC and a lot of the games that I like to play choked and were unplayable due to later versions being more demanding.

I believe the Cave SH3 shmups were still removed in MAME v.146
I'm using a shmupmame build from around that time for those games.
They were added back to MAME later, but I don't know the exact build.  (they were in v.170 when I tested it, but my pc choked on them with that version)

So you'd gain those games which are all pretty cool.

The only other important game to me that wasn't working in v.146 is Raiden II.
The way I have my front-end set up, I can add another version of MAME just for that one game and still have it show up in my main MAME gamelist.
I plan to do it that way rather than updating the primary MAME install.  Haven't gotten around to it though.

Overall, I'm reluctant to update.  I went from 128 to 138 to 146. 
Right now, I'd only consider updating if I built an entirely new bleeding edge PC.
With my current one, it's only going to result in less games running full speed.

EDIT: about the graphics card...it's not currently used by MAME for anything other than HLSL effect.  People are trying to find a way to utilize the graphics card in a way that fits with MAME's philosophy.  They submitted an example to MAMEdev, but I haven't heard anything more about it.  So the answer to "do I need a good graphics card" is....not yet, but maybe in the future.
I do enjoy Sega Naomi games on Demul emulator, which does use your video card.  I upgraded to a 750ti so I could play Mortal Kombat X on the cab.

DOUBLE EDIT: NBA Jam and NFL Blitz run on my old hardware that your hardware should put to shame.  If they don't load, you are probably missing the CHDs.  If they load and just don't run full speed, try disabling HLSL for just those games.

[paigeoliver]

Still using .78 here for most games.

[gildahl]

I did a wholesale update of MAME once and promised I'd never do it again.  However, I absolutely want to be able to play the latest supported games and take advantage of the latest bug fixes without the risk of breaking anything that currently works fine (since 0.146 there have been some important advances: new Cave games, Raiden II, many improvements to sound, much better HLSL vector glow, etc).  So I came up with a very simple method of doing partial upgrades.

My base version of MAME is also 0.146.  It is in a folder called MAME.  When I discover that support for a new and desirable game has been added to mame, or a worthy enhancement has been made, I will install the latest version of mame to a parallel folder called, say, MAME179.  I will then just drop the rom file of the new/fixed game into ithe rom folder of this version of mame.  This first step breaks absolutely nothing.

The magic is in a script.  Whenever a mame game is launched from the front end, it runs an AHK script that searches for the game in the rom folders of all parallel instances of mame from newest to oldest.  This script never has to be modified.  Once the script finds the rom, it runs it in the version of mame it found the rom in.  So if I learn that POKEY sound was improved in Centipede, I just put a copy of centiped.rom into MAME179\rom and it will automatically run using 0.179.  If I decide I don't like the sound, I just remove the rom from that folder, and it automatically reverts back to run in 0.146.  If rev. 0.190 of MAME now adds some new game, then I install 0.190 it into a new folder called MAME190 and put just the rom of the new game in its \rom folder.  The script will now run the new game in 0.190, Centipede in 0.179, and everything else will run in 0.146.  If I move centiped.rom to MAME190\rom and it works, then I can delete MAME179 if I want.

The nice thing about this system is that you can take advantage of new mame features surgically, only ever deal with a small handful of new and improved rom files, and you never break anything that currently works.  Currently, I have about a dozen roms that I manage this way.

[ivwshane]

That setup sounds sweet! Where can I get the necessary files?

[gildahl]

Here's the AutoHotKey script I wrote to do this.

Code: [Select]

;Game specific command line handling for MAME games in GameEx.
;
;Example GameEx Command Line for launching MAME
;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
;mame.exe galaxian -rompath D:\Emulators\MAME\roms -nowindow -joy -skip_gameinfo -autosave
;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
;
;Note: this script relies on the rompath always being the third parameter
;Note: THIS SCRIPT MUST BE COMPILED AS AN EXE AND PLACED IN THE BASE MAME FOLDER
;
;
;Instructions
;------------
;Base MAME folder is D:\Emulators\MAME (for example, version 146).
;Place other mame versions in their own folders with the version as a suffix (ex. D:\Emulators\MAME172).
;The roms for that version should be placed in a roms folder off that directory (ex. D:\Emulators\MAME172\roms).
;------------

MAMEPATH := "D:\Emulators\MAME"

GAME = %1%

;--------------------------------------------
;Search for game in all versions of MAME
;Launch the game in the newest version
;it is found in.
;--------------------------------------------
MAME_FOLDERS := "D:\Emulators\MAME*"

Loop, %MAME_FOLDERS%,2
{
  CURRENT_FOLDER := A_LoopFileFullPath
  Loop, %CURRENT_FOLDER%\roms\*.*
  {
    SplitPath, A_LoopFileFullPath,,,,FileName
    if (FileName = GAME)
    {
      MAMEPATH := CURRENT_FOLDER
      break
    }
  }
}

ROMPATH = %MAMEPATH%\roms

;--------------------------------
;Build the revised command line
;--------------------------------
Loop, %0%
{
   param := %A_Index%

   if param = %3%
      CMDLINE = %CMDLINE% %ROMPATH%
   else
      CMDLINE = %CMDLINE% %param%
}

SetWorkingDir %MAMEPATH%

RunWait %MAMEPATH%\mame.exe %CMDLINE%


[haynor666]

That's very helpfull script

Right now I'm using groovymame 171 as a base and groovymame 179alpha3 as addon. Because  those versions are using different options I was also forced to keep both versions in different directories. But I defined mamewah (also works in F.E.E.L.) exceptions which are quite handy.