Frame delay question

[strontium]

Hi all,

I've been recently playing around with the frame_delay option and slider in terms of input lag and I'm impressed. It mentions that this is seen as a per game setting and I was wondering if there is a way to store this setting in the game cfg file instead of having to set it up every time it loads

The other question was would it be safe to set this to say 6 in the mame.ini which all the games I have played still run at 100% and then tweak on top of that setting. The logic here is that at least all games will benefit from improved input latency and can then be tweaked on top.

Thanks

Strontium

[jimmer]

What I do is:

Just to ensure that it is active and to get the big benefit of no frame buffer queue:
mame.ini  = frame_delay 1

Then individual settings for those games that I have tested/tuned
eg mame/ini/defender.ini = frame_delay 8

You could have a higher standard delay in mame.ini, but you still need to test/check each game either manually or run some sort of auto test to extract the unthrottled running speed.  Or you need to know by some other way that eg all games run at over 200% to use frame_delay 5 as standard.  Until groovymame becomes self-tuning this is.

[schmerzkaufen]

The individual ini system though (per-game, per-driver, etc) has been partly broken since the integration of the new UI (I think). It works as intended on the fist game you launch applying your settings following the hierarchy, but as you exit (esc or tab>select new title) and launch a different game; it's those first game's ini settings that will apply again, they 'stick'.
The only way to 'unload' the first is to restart MAME every time you change games.

This is not immediatly obvious to people who only set specific frame_delay, but if you add to your many ini's various things like individual HLSL, artworks, smoothing, scaling, output resolution etc, then it's clear that this is not fully functional.
I can't think of a workaround until the MAME guys manage to fix it, maybe everything stored in the cfg files would do? but that might mean a much bigger modification than a genuine fix.

edit: note I don't know in which build this issue appeared, for instance I dug up GM 0.179test and it's perfectly fine with multi-ini's. the more recent builds like the current 0.200 have the issue though.

Setting a single (rather 'weak') average frame_delay value in mame.ini unfortunately doesn't grant the best lag reduction performance to one's games folder considering how greatly MAME's performance varies from emulated hardware-to-hardware or game-to-game.

[Trnzaddict]

What I do is leave frame delay at 0 and only enable it for the games that are notorious for atrocious lag, Galaga ‘88 comes to mind, mars matrix, to name a few. Mind you I use the d3d9ex build and I have an 8ms input lag lcd which helps too.

I tried a basic set & forget frame delay of even 1 globally.  Batman Forever Arcade drops to 50% speed after the intro and I run an i7 8700k. I put it back to 0 game plays without a hitch. So it wildly varies.....until GM comes with a self analyzer for this feature, this I think is a somewhat stable method.

[jimmer]

I tried a basic set & forget frame delay of even 1 globally.  Batman Forever Arcade drops to 50% speed after the intro and I run an i7 8700k. I put it back to 0 game plays without a hitch. So it wildly varies.....until GM comes with a self analyzer for this feature, this I think is a somewhat stable method.

You must be doing a lot of video processing to get it to run that slow?
groovy171 frame_delay 1 on i5-2500 = 240%