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MAME 2020 vs 2002

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SteveJ34:
I joined this forum in 2002 and built a cab a long time ago that was based on MAME .79 at the time.

The cab was scratch built following design by LuSiD's Arcade Flashback, Windows XP, MAME .79 and is still in operation today at my youngest son's place.

Fast forward and its suddenly 2020....

I have a nephew interested in taking my help in a build project, probably a pedestal. This would be PC based system likely driving a LCD on the wall.

I am also intrigued by what has been done with the Raspberry PI and may dabble in a bar top unit or portable 2 player control panel.

My question is, what are the best resources to review in order to understand the games that are emulated and playable today using latest MAME as compared to what I originally built 18 years ago? The suggested hardware in terms of CPU etc given the emulation requirements for more recent games, etc.

Add to that, what is actually feasible to run on Raspberry PI.  I assume there is a specific MAME port for this hardware. (Also reading what I can in the PI forum).

I have been out of the arcade for a long time so I am more of a "classics" man from the 80s but nephew may have interest in much more recent games given his generation.

Thanks in advance for suggestions on how this old man can get back up to speed on the software side of things as well as educate myself on the hardware components mentioned above.

Haze:
If you use a Pi you're basically still stuck in 2002, as that's where the support scene is for them as most of the earlier ones can't run anything newer at any playable speed.

In terms of proper MAME, there have been an astronomical number of improvements to the emulation of everything from the late 70s games to the early 2000s stuff; just the other week late 70s / early 80s games that have never had sound emulation finally got it, and a large amount of protection devices have been dumped for 80s/90s Taito games in that time, meaning they actually play properly now.  Bugs like the ones that exposed BMs Donkey Kong high score tapes as being emulation based have been fixed too.  Even the like of the QSound emulation used by a lot of high profile Capcom games is leagues ahead of what it was just 2 or so years ago.

I'd say the project has seen a real improvement in the technical ability of those involved since around 2015, and a lot of what was considered impossible at that point has now been done.  The differences might not be obvious at first, but our confidence in things is much higher, and the longer you spend with the things the more you notice how much closer everything is to hardware these days.

You may, or may not agree with MAME doing a lot more than arcades these days (and I'll be the first to say a lot of what I've worked on recently is absolute garbage) but that's where a lot of the new talent has come from; people with backgrounds in technical computing seem to make far better devs than those with backgrounds only in arcades so by branching out and appealing to both groups MAME has benefited greatly.  It should be noted that many of these improvements do have a performance cost, the aforementioned sound emulation for the late 70s / early 80s games requires a good machine, but gives a quality the old samples (where they even existed) can't match.

Kingcade:
Haze, do you foresee a point where the Pi and MAME might converge again? While it seems unlikely that the Pi will ever be able to keep up with emulating the more modern systems, it would be great if it could benefit from updates to emulation to older systems.

Haze:
You can run a lot of things in current MAME on a Pi 4.

The problem is mostly RetroArch / LibRetro's making.  They offer various old MAME builds that everybody has stuck to, rather than people still doing native ports, or hand picked-ones closer to what each specific piece of hardware can run.

Aside from 'current' (which nobody using RA seems to bother with as it's an always changing version) the newest 'named' version anybody uses is from over 10 years ago, and a butchered one at that.

As a result, rather than using something suitable, or a mix of suitable builds, people end up using 2002/2003 builds 'because everybody else is'  It's a sad state of affairs really, and a major regression from times before RA existed, when people were starting to do native ports of the most suitable versions for each platform.  RA presented an 'easy option' and the masses took it rather than trying to do things properly anymore.

Even on a PC RA really messes up some MAME features, and inexplicably kills performance in certain drivers.

MAME can't fix what is basically a problem that's now part of the culture / scene surrounding those things.

In terms of MAME's requirements we will continue to move forward, within the envelope of what current PC hardware allows.  Some other projects have been held back by about 15 years due to trying to keep within the performance envelope of those devices, but when good emulation (eg the discrete sound sims) really can't be done properly without high requirements MAME isn't going to ignore the advances in hardware that make things possible; we'd rather be giving people reasons to use MAME over something like a MiSter than looking at the trashcan end of the market, and the discrete audio stuff is an area MAME can offer something the MiSTer struggles with.

There will always be things in MAME that are actively improving that are going to be out of reach of whatever the latest Pi is, because the simple fact is a $30 machine is always going to be lagging significantly behind the curve.  As I mentioned tho, plenty does work, not every improvement shoots the CPU requirements up significantly (eg. most of the proper protection emulations are fairly lightweight) and people using old builds for games where newer ones would work better is a scene problem (always trying to accommodate the lowest common denominator) not a MAME problem.

mameotron:
Wow, does this mean the sound for Vanguard is finally emulated properly?  I'm a llittle more ahead of Steve, I have MAME .92 in my cab.

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