MAME 0.205 Released!

[Tafoid]

MAME 0.205

With Christmas just over, it’s time for the final MAME release for 2018, and what a year it’s been!  Before we move on, let’s pause and recap some of the significant milestones from the past twelve months:

• We’ve emulated a steady stream of hand-held games from Nintendo, Tiger and others.  Our Tiger Game.com emulation now runs all released games.
• Acorn computer emulation improvements have been too numerous to count.  In particular, MAME now supports a huge array of peripherals.
• Emulation for home systems based on the SSD XaviX, SunPlus µ'nSP and V.R. Technology VT platforms has really advanced, bringing a generation of TV games to life.
• MAME now runs CLIX on InterPro and HP-UX on HP9000/300, both with graphical desktop environments and networking.  MAME will also run SunOS with the SunView desktop environment on some SPARC workstations.  Additionally, the SGI Iris Indigo R4000 shows its boot menu.
• Long-standing graphical issues have been fixed, including priorities in Pac-Land and Moon Patrol, row scroll effects on Capcom CPS-3, and numerous glaring errors on Tatsumi games.
• Hit detection on the now-infamous helicopter in Time Crisis has been corrected, rear-view mirrors work in Ridge Racer 2, Rave Racer and Ace Driver, track mirroring works in Rave Racer, and graphics have been improved across all Namco System 22 games.
• Taito C-Chip emulation finally allows Bonze Adventure to play as intended, solving all the persistent gameplay issues.
• Games with Capcom QSound and Taito Zoom ZSG-2 hardware now provide a far more enjoyable auditory experience.
• Rare arcade systems keep getting dumped and emulated, including Tom Tom Magic, the original Gigas Mark II, Last KM, Night Mare, El Fin Del Tiempo, a prototype of Led Storm Rally 2011, and the Pac-Man hack Titan.  Some of these were thought to be lost to time.

MAME 0.205 is no different.  Newly supported arcade systems include Unico’s Magic Purple, and Visco’s never-before-seen prototype Pastel Island.  The latter ties in nicely with improved video emulation for the SSV platform (yes, this fixes other long-standing glitches, too).  Newly playable machines include Konami’s Tobe! Polystars, Evil Night and Total Vice.  Yes, Konami M2 emulation is finally here!  Be aware that there’s still a lot of room for performance optimisation on this system.

Putting arcade systems aside for a moment, this release includes support for Dance Dance Revolution Strawberry Shortcake, and the Nintendo Game & Watch titles Oil Panic and Squish.  Interestingly, there are no other emulators or simulators for Squish, and it hasn’t been included in any of Nintendo’s Game & Watch collections.  It seems to draw inspiration from the Famicom game Devil World.

There are hundreds more Commodore 64 cassettes in the software list now, and quite a few more BBC ROMs as well.  Software lists have been added for the Nascom computers, along with updates to the boot ROM choices and better keyboard emulation. We’ve also created a skeleton driver and documented the known software for the Chinese Monon Color console.  In a last-minute addition we added support for new version 2 .WOZ floppy images on the Apple II family.

Of course, there are lots more additions and improvements that you can read about in the whatsnew.txt file, or you can get the source and Windows binary packages from the download page and try it out yourself.  Enjoy the rest of the year, and all the best in 2019 from all of us at MAMEdev!

[oldschoolplaya]

*Yawn*

Another year down the drain and no working status of Sega model 2 and 3 games. Still no Laserdisc games due to nontechnical politics.  Just dump the damn discs!  How hard is it, really?  The Daphne emulator did it years ago.

HPUX?  Who cares, this is an arcade forum, we only care about arcade games.

Really starting to lose interest in this hobby.

[keilmillerjr]

*Yawn*

Another year down the drain and no working status of Sega model 2 and 3 games. Still no Laserdisc games due to nontechnical politics.  Just dump the damn discs!  How hard is it, really?  The Daphne emulator did it years ago.

HPUX?  Who cares, this is an arcade forum, we only care about arcade games.

Really starting to lose interest in this hobby.

Mame does currently support 6 laser disc games.

[ark_ader]

*Yawn*

Another year down the drain and no working status of Sega model 2 and 3 games. Still no Laserdisc games due to nontechnical politics.  Just dump the damn discs!  How hard is it, really?  The Daphne emulator did it years ago.

HPUX?  Who cares, this is an arcade forum, we only care about arcade games.

Really starting to lose interest in this hobby.

Mame does currently support 6 laser disc games.

When are you guys going to tackle Laseractive?  I know it is something that is rather complex, but it is something you guys can chew on and accomplish than all this random crap.  Who the hell has a Sparc lying around?  I dumped all that crap in the last move including a MIPS, Lisa  and a SGI.  IF I had a warehouse to keep all that old crap in, fine, but I fear those inclusions were made to satisfy a 3rd party like all those mahjong games that suddenly appeared.  I know the Laserdisc community has dumped all the discs, and we have palcom emulation for several years, why not the Laseractive and all its modules?

Mame supports all laserdisc games.  You guys didn't flinch to include systems that still has an active IP, why stop now?  Probably due to the fact the missing games is actively protected.  Laseractive is fair game. Or is it too hard to amass the technical knowledge to attempt it?  I bet Phil Bennet could do it, and do it well.  He managed Cube Quest, right?

[Moksi]

[

Mame does currently support 6 laser disc games.
[/quote]

may i ask which ones ,
i like daphne for the dragons lair when it comes to american laser games, the crosshair when invisible the aim is off which results me dying at certain points not fun to play with the blocky crosshair
would be awesome if one day they work on Mame, since i like how accurate it is when playing shooters without crosshair

[Haze]

*Yawn*

Another year down the drain and no working status of Sega model 2 and 3 games. Still no Laserdisc games due to nontechnical politics.  Just dump the damn discs!  How hard is it, really?  The Daphne emulator did it years ago.

HPUX?  Who cares, this is an arcade forum, we only care about arcade games.

Really starting to lose interest in this hobby.

You do realise there is movement (mostly by people outside of the team) to dump the LDs at an acceptable quality, including being able to dump discs that were previously in no condition to be dumping
http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=380259&page=0&view=expanded&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1

until that work is finished there's literally no point in dumping the existing laserdiscs, the quality of the results makes it look like 2 entirely different generations of technology.

MAME will do this stuff when it's feasible to do it properly, the old way of doing it was abandoned because the results simply weren't up to scratch, not even close.

Also a number of Model 2 games were promoted to working this year, now, if you actually consider them working or not once you factor in system requirements and graphical issues is another issue, but again the trolling on this forum / by this community is just unbelievable, just because the devs dare to work on things they actually want to work on, and I can't really blame them for shifting priorities either given the attitudes around here.

[oldschoolplaya]

Trolling?  I hardly consider what I said to be trolling.

I have complete respect for you and the other Mame devs, you do work that few people can.  All I’m saying is why wait until something is up to your set of quality standards before release?  Release the best LD stuff you have  now and improve it later.  That pretty much is the formula you’ve followed for other arcade releases, right?  It not like you waited until the emulation of MK4 was perfect before you added it to Mame.  It was improved over several versions.

 As a long time user of Mame, long before the merge with Mess, I could care less what non arcade systems it supports.  The bloated exe size now exceeds 230 MB, with long load times.  I don’t have an SSD drive and the wait loading all the code into memory is painfull, knowing I will only ever use a small gaming portion.  So this is another question only a Mame dev can answer - why is the architecture that way?  Why not put each driver into its own dll and only load what is needed for the current running machine?

[Haze]

Trolling?  I hardly consider what I said to be trolling.

I have complete respect for you and the other Mame devs, you do work that few people can.  All I’m saying is why wait until something is up to your set of quality standards before release?  Release the best LD stuff you have  now and improve it later.  That pretty much is the formula you’ve followed for other arcade releases, right?  It not like you waited until the emulation of MK4 was perfect before you added it to Mame.  It was improved over several versions.

 As a long time user of Mame, long before the merge with Mess, I could care less what non arcade systems it supports.  The bloated exe size now exceeds 230 MB, with long load times.  I don’t have an SSD drive and the wait loading all the code into memory is painfull, knowing I will only ever use a small gaming portion.  So this is another question only a Mame dev can answer - why is the architecture that way?  Why not put each driver into its own dll and only load what is needed for the current running machine?

I don't have an SDD either, 230MB is almost nothing for any modern system and Windows already has ways of on-demand loading built in (and after the first time, almost always has it all in cache anyway)  I run MAME literally hundreds of times per day when developing.  There are single games with main exe files far bigger than MAME (it can actually be a lot more efficient than trying to parse hundreds of tiny files, the main problem is usually AV software which insists on loading the whole thing to scan it before allowing you to execute)

Users can't even manage to update the MAME installation properly with the HLSL files, screaming that us how it's broken rather than acknowledging that they broke it by trying to just copy a single .exe instead of actually updating.   The absolute mess that would result in people not updating driver DLLs or trying to mix and match is not something anybody on the team wants to support.  Knowing exactly what people are running, and minimizing the ways they can mess things up by thinking they're smarter than the developers is important in terms of being able to provide user support.

The laserdisc stuff that's out there for the most part is unsuitable, it doesn't actually capture a whole bunch of data the games need without faking it, a lot of it is also encoded in problematic ways.  At best the laserdisc emulation that exists outside of MAME could be described as 'high level' and it's simply not worth going down that route as it's a dead end.  Use the other emulators, be patient, and eventually something better will come along when MAME does emulate them.  Right now it's far better use of our time working on the things we are working on while others take care of creating a genuinely high quality solution that will make it actually worthwhile.  It's simply logic that nobody wants to invest a ton of time into solutions that are known to be wrong, and will have to be removed again; writing code you know is going to last is more productive, which is why the basic framework of the laserdisc emulations are in there, just without any of the LD parts.

[oldschoolplaya]

Thanks for the explantions.  I now have a better understanding from the devs point  of view, which is a good thing!

[ark_ader]

The laserdisc stuff that's out there for the most part is unsuitable, it doesn't actually capture a whole bunch of data the games need without faking it, a lot of it is also encoded in problematic ways.  At best the laserdisc emulation that exists outside of MAME could be described as 'high level' and it's simply not worth going down that route as it's a dead end.  Use the other emulators, be patient, and eventually something better will come along when MAME does emulate them.  Right now it's far better use of our time working on the things we are working on while others take care of creating a genuinely high quality solution that will make it actually worthwhile.  It's simply logic that nobody wants to invest a ton of time into solutions that are known to be wrong, and will have to be removed again; writing code you know is going to last is more productive, which is why the basic framework of the laserdisc emulations are in there, just without any of the LD parts.

Translation:

Yes we have the laserdiscs, yes we can get access to them, yes we have the drivers.  No we do not have the ability to get them working, apart from 5 people (one part-timer), nobody else is competent enough to get the job done.  Four titles are actively IP defended and available on a different simulator (not emulator).  If you want them properly emulated - do it yourself.  Will we ever emulate them?  No.  Last word on the subject was from R. Belmont: "loose lips sink ships".  If you read the thread it shows where Haze was in the discussion at the time. Banned.

[keilmillerjr]

Trolling?  I hardly consider what I said to be trolling.

I have complete respect for you and the other Mame devs, you do work that few people can.  All I’m saying is why wait until something is up to your set of quality standards before release?  Release the best LD stuff you have  now and improve it later.  That pretty much is the formula you’ve followed for other arcade releases, right?  It not like you waited until the emulation of MK4 was perfect before you added it to Mame.  It was improved over several versions.

 As a long time user of Mame, long before the merge with Mess, I could care less what non arcade systems it supports.  The bloated exe size now exceeds 230 MB, with long load times.  I don’t have an SSD drive and the wait loading all the code into memory is painfull, knowing I will only ever use a small gaming portion.  So this is another question only a Mame dev can answer - why is the architecture that way?  Why not put each driver into its own dll and only load what is needed for the current running machine?

Your negative post when your 100% incorrect could be taken as trolling.

[keilmillerjr]

[

Mame does currently support 6 laser disc games.

may i ask which ones ,
i like daphne for the dragons lair when it comes to american laser games, the crosshair when invisible the aim is off which results me dying at certain points not fun to play with the blocky crosshair
would be awesome if one day they work on Mame, since i like how accurate it is when playing shooters without crosshair
[/quote]

Here is a nice comparison against mame and daphne. For more recent changes, I’d just check the source code. The drivers are usually pretty good about commenting on emulation status.

Mame 0.197
Cliff Hanger
Cobra Command / Thunder Storm
Cube Quest
Firefox
MACH 3
US VS THEM
http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Arcade_LaserDisc_emulators

[gildahl]

Given this is an arcade forum, that's all I will concern myself with here.  I don't want to sound like I'm complaining since mame is free and has made some VERY appreciated evolutionary progress lately (port audio in 2017 was huge!); but there are some remaining "big holes" that I'd love to see tackled.  The biggest for me are the discrete games.  Computer Space, Breakout, and Monaco GP in particular are huge huge holes in the library (Monaco GP was probably my first "favorite" game in the arcades).  DICE has helped, but has controller issues (especially paddles) and hasn't seen further development in a while.  I'm well versed in the difficulties in emulating non-CPU titles, so no need to repeat those challenges here, but for mame to bring back some revolutionary excitement, I think attention to these holes would go far--even if it were to add just one of these games a year.

[ark_ader]

Given this is an arcade forum, that's all I will concern myself with here.  I don't want to sound like I'm complaining since mame is free and has made some VERY appreciated evolutionary progress lately (port audio in 2017 was huge!); but there are some remaining "big holes" that I'd love to see tackled.  The biggest for me are the discrete games.  Computer Space, Breakout, and Monaco GP in particular are huge huge holes in the library (Monaco GP was probably my first "favorite" game in the arcades).  DICE has helped, but has controller issues (especially paddles) and hasn't seen further development in a while.  I'm well versed in the difficulties in emulating non-CPU titles, so no need to repeat those challenges here, but for mame to bring back some revolutionary excitement, I think attention to these holes would go far--even if it were to add just one of these games a year.

Don't hold your breath.  Discrete games are very difficult.  Most of the team are maintainers,  and the schedule of work... well.  Maybe you can help out.  It will be quicker. 

[Haze]

Given this is an arcade forum, that's all I will concern myself with here.  I don't want to sound like I'm complaining since mame is free and has made some VERY appreciated evolutionary progress lately (port audio in 2017 was huge!); but there are some remaining "big holes" that I'd love to see tackled.  The biggest for me are the discrete games.  Computer Space, Breakout, and Monaco GP in particular are huge huge holes in the library (Monaco GP was probably my first "favorite" game in the arcades).  DICE has helped, but has controller issues (especially paddles) and hasn't seen further development in a while.  I'm well versed in the difficulties in emulating non-CPU titles, so no need to repeat those challenges here, but for mame to bring back some revolutionary excitement, I think attention to these holes would go far--even if it were to add just one of these games a year.

Breakout has been there for several years now.

The others are varying degrees more demanding to do properly.