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Author Topic: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?  (Read 18568 times)

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Malenko

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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #40 on: January 28, 2018, 09:50:31 pm »
Nicola, you think a massive exaggeration is saying Frogger has higher system requirements now than it used to?

You don't get to change the definition of trolling, then call people trolls because it fits your obtuse definition.
If you're replying to a troll you are part of the problem.
I also need to follow this advice. Ignore or report, don't reply.

Haze

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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #41 on: January 28, 2018, 09:59:23 pm »
Nicola, you think a massive exaggeration is saying Frogger has higher system requirements now than it used to?

You don't get to change the definition of trolling, then call people trolls because it fits your obtuse definition.

I still think using the word 'obscene' was, yes.  There's nothing obscene about it, not even close.

It was inflammatory.

I suspect a fair bit of this does come from the Pi scene tho.  The Pi gives pretty much all the good emulators, even outside MAME, a bad reputation because it's basically got the PC performance of a machine from 15-20 years ago.  Great devices, but possibly the least suitable thing for emulation you could come up with in today's market.  Maybe a Pi struggles with it (although unless it's even worse than I thought, it shouldn't) however, that just makes the Pi obscenely bad, not Frogger in MAME obscenely slow.

The Pi even gives emulation in general a bad name when the inevitable issues do raise their head, because people running it don't seem to realise that things have move on, significantly.

I hear the Pi3 is better, but still a long way from good for emulation tasks.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2018, 10:01:39 pm by Haze »

Vigo

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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #42 on: January 28, 2018, 10:01:13 pm »
Op has a 1.8ghz processor, I cited a thread much earlier of someone with a 2.0ghz processer unable to run 1942 and Frogger at full speed. I experienced the issue myself. You failed to acknowledge the facts that I based my suggestion on a real issue people have had been dealing with.

You could have acknowledged my facts or debated them but instead you chose to ignore and attack. I think you are fitting the definition of troll much better than I.

Haze

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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #43 on: January 28, 2018, 10:11:21 pm »
Op has a 1.8ghz processor, I cited a thread much earlier of someone with a 2.0ghz processer unable to run 1942 and Frogger at full speed. I experienced the issue myself. You failed to acknowledge the facts that I based my suggestion on a real issue people have had been dealing with.

You could have acknowledged my facts or debated them but instead you chose to ignore and attack. I think you are fitting the definition of troll much better than I.

You could have used less offensive terms.

There's a decent chance it will run 1942, that one got slower for a while, then significantly faster.  It runs about the same speed as Frogger on here.

both ran just fine on a lowly Athlon XP 2400+ last time I tried them (about a year ago) and that's not even 64-bit.  AMDs are rather bad for MAME tho, yes.  There haven't really been any significant slowdowns in MAME in that time.  There haven't actually been any significant slowdowns in MAME for a long, long time except in cases where drivers have had major work done.  If anything this 'MAME keeps getting slower' thing is right up there with 'MAME only bothers to emulate Mahjong games' in terms of things that are overstated and haven't really been true for quite a while (and even the latter was exaggerated, even if there was a period when a lot got added)  There was even a spell when MAME got a bit faster for many drivers as some coding patterns were exchanged for better ones (removal of a lot of runtime string lookups that had crept in etc.)

As I said earlier, the main problem he's likely to encounter is if the video hardware isn't up to scratch, because that would rule the newer versions out straight away, otherwise it really is always worth trying those out first, rather than assuming some prejudice against them.  Even on older hardware, as long as there are no major blocks, the newer versions do a better job than ever with the majority of the classics, if they don't work, sure, try something else, if they do, you've not had to make any compromises at all.

The Atom chips etc. will struggle badly tho, regardless of clock.  You're pushed even running classic MAME on that type of thing.  It's not all about the clock speed but other parts of the design, and generation.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2018, 10:26:31 pm by Haze »

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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #44 on: January 28, 2018, 10:24:25 pm »
I'm sure you know my opinion on the Pi problem, as I've posted elsewhere "I used a Pi" has become the new "I installed an X-Arcade"

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Vigo

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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #45 on: January 28, 2018, 10:53:49 pm »
You could have used less offensive terms.

 :dunno Didn't mean to upset, but I am citing a guy who had it clocked at 40%. I had about the same. It's obviously a ymmv situation as you pointed out, but I personally feel that frogger or 1942 running 40% on a machine that should be able to run certain 3d games as "obscene". That is less than half speed. You can definitely call me ill informed, cuz that is likely the case, but I wasn't out trolling.


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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #46 on: January 29, 2018, 12:29:07 am »
The wording was poor perhaps, but he's not wrong.    Mame has added a lot of things that I love over the years, but I don't quite understand how some of these new features have led to the slowdowns we are seeing.  Mame has always had a slowness problem, but I accepted that because the emulation was more accurate than other emulators at the time.  I don't get why the golden age roms, which should run on virtually anything, have gotten so slow relative to older versions though.  It seems like an optimization problem to me, but I very well could be wrong.

I think arguing with Haze is a waste of time, he dug his feet into the sand some time ago and I don't see his opinion changing anytime soon.  Instead of that, if someone wants to work on a flag system and a list printing function (we might be able to modify the one that'll print just a rom already in use) I'll be glad to help.  Too many projects at the moment to do it myself, but this is important.... I'll make time to do entries if I have to. 

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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #47 on: January 29, 2018, 07:30:55 am »
I think this issue does illustrate one of the main strengths of the open source / GPL model of software development. The current version of MAME is not just competing against other emulators, but also against all previous versions of MAME. So, if users don’t like the direction the current developers are taking the project, they’ll simply keep on using (or fork) earlier versions. What could be more democratic than that?

Contrast that with say Windows where Microsoft is slowly forcing everyone to adopt Windows 10 even though the majority of users prefer Windows 7 and earlier versions. Most of the so called ‘features’ added to Windows 10 have been introduced not to improve the user’s experience, but to support Microsoft current business model. But there’s not a damn thing most users can do about it.

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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #48 on: January 29, 2018, 07:45:22 am »
Emulation of the sound created by discrete components uses a lot of processing power because it's not digital.  Analog contains way more information whether useful for getting the job done or not.  The slowdowns in old games is because they were playing sound clips before instead of emulating the discrete circuits.  I'm not a programmer, but I get it.

This thread is a rollercoaster.  Vigo is a nice guy.  I was down on Haze, then he redeems himself in full by dissing RPis.  To me MAME will always be something to make use of an old computer which is no longer useful for much else.  Old versions are good because they provide the most bang for the buck (more games playable without spending money on hardware).  To me it's simply not worth the expense of building a new PC for the emulation to be "more accurate".   Still though, I accept that newer software usually requires a faster PC so even though it sucks that I can't use the latest version, I don't expect low system requirements to be a priority of MAMEDev.

I don't get the resistance to internal flags to categorize stuff.  I would think it would be useful for plenty of things beyond front ends or arcade games.

I also don't get why there aren't arcade only/working only romset torrents.  I expected the All Killer/No Filler list to imeddiately result in a torrent of just those games.  Haven't checked in a while, but it didn't materialize like I expected. 

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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #49 on: January 29, 2018, 07:49:32 am »

I suspect a fair bit of this does come from the Pi scene tho.  The Pi gives pretty much all the good emulators, even outside MAME, a bad reputation because it's basically got the PC performance of a machine from 15-20 years ago.  Great devices, but possibly the least suitable thing for emulation you could come up with in today's market.  Maybe a Pi struggles with it (although unless it's even worse than I thought, it shouldn't) however, that just makes the Pi obscenely bad, not Frogger in MAME obscenely slow.

The Pi even gives emulation in general a bad name when the inevitable issues do raise their head, because people running it don't seem to realise that things have move on, significantly.

I hear the Pi3 is better, but still a long way from good for emulation tasks.

FWIW my Pi (which is only a Pi2) runs almost every 2D game I’m interested in (both Arcade & console) at full speed with no noticeable glitches. I wouldn’t use one in a cabinet, but for playing old games on a TV they’re hard to beat.

And I suspect Nintendo would agree with me given that they based their (S)NES Classic units around hardware that is even less powerful than a Pi. I don’t hear anyone complaining about the quality of emulation on those devices.
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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #50 on: January 29, 2018, 12:41:58 pm »


I also don't get why there aren't arcade only/working only romset torrents.  I expected the All Killer/No Filler list to imeddiately result in a torrent of just those games.  Haven't checked in a while, but it didn't materialize like I expected.

There were a few, but much like doing an external ini file, the upkeep was just too great so pretty much all of them have fell off the planet.  Again, this goes back to my point.... it's much simpler to take care of some problems within mame as any rom or naming changes won't effect an internal database.


Grasshopper:  Actually people complain about the accuracy of the classic systems constantly.  Mind you a lot of it is unwarranted, but there are some extremely insignificant emulation issues... they aren't perfect. 

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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #51 on: January 29, 2018, 01:17:58 pm »
Emulation of the sound created by discrete components uses a lot of processing power because it's not digital.  Analog contains way more information whether useful for getting the job done or not.  The slowdowns in old games is because they were playing sound clips before instead of emulating the discrete circuits.  I'm not a programmer, but I get it.

This thread is a rollercoaster.  Vigo is a nice guy.  I was down on Haze, then he redeems himself in full by dissing RPis.  To me MAME will always be something to make use of an old computer which is no longer useful for much else.  Old versions are good because they provide the most bang for the buck (more games playable without spending money on hardware).  To me it's simply not worth the expense of building a new PC for the emulation to be "more accurate".   Still though, I accept that newer software usually requires a faster PC so even though it sucks that I can't use the latest version, I don't expect low system requirements to be a priority of MAMEDev.

I don't get the resistance to internal flags to categorize stuff.  I would think it would be useful for plenty of things beyond front ends or arcade games.

I also don't get why there aren't arcade only/working only romset torrents.  I expected the All Killer/No Filler list to imeddiately result in a torrent of just those games.  Haven't checked in a while, but it didn't materialize like I expected.

There is arcade only torrents. :dunno

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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #52 on: January 29, 2018, 01:24:36 pm »

I suspect a fair bit of this does come from the Pi scene tho.  The Pi gives pretty much all the good emulators, even outside MAME, a bad reputation because it's basically got the PC performance of a machine from 15-20 years ago.  Great devices, but possibly the least suitable thing for emulation you could come up with in today's market.  Maybe a Pi struggles with it (although unless it's even worse than I thought, it shouldn't) however, that just makes the Pi obscenely bad, not Frogger in MAME obscenely slow.

The Pi even gives emulation in general a bad name when the inevitable issues do raise their head, because people running it don't seem to realise that things have move on, significantly.

I hear the Pi3 is better, but still a long way from good for emulation tasks.

FWIW my Pi (which is only a Pi2) runs almost every 2D game I’m interested in (both Arcade & console) at full speed with no noticeable glitches. I wouldn’t use one in a cabinet, but for playing old games on a TV they’re hard to beat.

And I suspect Nintendo would agree with me given that they based their (S)NES Classic units around hardware that is even less powerful than a Pi. I don’t hear anyone complaining about the quality of emulation on those devices.

RPI does 15khz composite, and can now switch modelines on the fly if implemented. I’ve posted speed test results on newer mame running on rpi and people still argue. RPI isn’t perfect, but it’s not as bad as people say. Just ignore all the retropie fans. Use retropie if you want to make the rpi slow as ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.

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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #53 on: January 29, 2018, 02:34:32 pm »
There is arcade only torrents. :dunno

Out of curiosity, what is the total romset size compared to the full set with all the mechanical and fruit(slot machine) stuff in it?

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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #54 on: January 29, 2018, 04:20:32 pm »
Well, the avg Mame user is more a player than a historian. I know mame devs often refer to the "documentation" as the main goal of mame, but that's not what the mame audience cares about

I don't mean this as a diss on Mame, its devs or the way it goes about it's business. if mame doesn't do what it does the way it does, we don't get to where we are nowadays in the emulation world.  I'm forever thankful to all mame devs including Haze for the 20 years of enjoyment, still remember trying mame 0.10 back in the day. 

In saying that, there's always ways to improve things and the present system ensures the avg user IGNORES the newer versions and instead seeks out older ones.  That's not on the user and it's something the devs should think about and maybe ask themselves: what can we do that will motivate people to try out the new version?  The proposition put forth in this thread could go some way towards this

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Re: Using a Laptop for a MAME build.....good idea/bad idea ?
« Reply #55 on: January 29, 2018, 05:36:15 pm »
Yes, because no users means no developers, which means mame dies.