Software Support > GroovyMAME

Why use emulators when theres RetroArch?

<< < (6/15) > >>

donluca:

--- Quote from: abispac on August 29, 2022, 06:37:29 pm ---I actually also agree with this, as long as it works, i dont care how its done.

--- End quote ---

I actually have to thank you for making this precise statement because right here we have, in one sentence, all that has gone wrong during the early days of emulation where no one cared about how it was done "as long as it worked".

What happened then is that people started discovering that there were things that weren't working right and two groups emerged: the "I don't care because everything else works" and the "ok, this might affect other parts of the emulation so we have to stop and investigate further".

One of those group eventually went on to sacrifice accuracy for convenience and are now part of the various cheapo emulation devices using Final Burn and other old, unsupported emulators which have thousands of game because they are "good enough" and they "can't tell the difference", the other group is now on the FPGA boat (MiSTer, Analogue, etc.)

The issue with the "as long as it works it's ok" is that when something doesn't work, a ugly hack gets made which eventually may break something else and this goes on and on until the code is such a mess as to be unmaintainable anymore and people stop developing (and some start from scratch).

Saying "I don't care how it's done because it works" is a very poor statement long term, it's like patching a leaking tube with a piece of insulation tape.
Yeah, it works, but for how long will it hold?
What are the long term consequences?
And when it breaks, what are you going to do?

It's better to do things right straight away (and trust me, even if you put all your efforts into it you'll never get it right, it will take years of research, development and testing, to get to a point where you can confidently say "ok, it is done") and invest more time and sacrifice performance and usability (which can always be added at a later time), rather than get out something which "works for now".

I hope we'll not get back to the dark ages of emulation for the sake of convenience.

schmerzkaufen:
Groovy does have an emulation hack feature ;D (OC) but since there's maybe only like 3 people on Earth including me who actually use it there's hardly any danger that it'll do any harm either on the short or long term  :lol
I expected it to be popular with the shmuppers, RA stole the spotlight again with an old mame core and a feral supporter impossible to reason with. if RA and its minions even overshadow builds better for hacking, there's really not a single area left protected againts its influence.

IMO the dark ages of emulation never ended, rather we're still in the middle of a 'golden dark age', because I think there's a clear majority of users who for already a long time have experienced emulation only through RA, while more sound devs and users have been living in thinning niche communitites with almost no influence, no voice left.

Well no, sorry, again MiSTeR is the exception, it's rather well known and popular for the good reasons, I think.
And Groovy's pretty well rounded and healthy after all, MAME's not dead even if it's in a bubble.
There is still hope.  :'(

Trnzaddict:

--- Quote from: schmerzkaufen on August 30, 2022, 02:43:46 am ---
--- Quote from: Trnzaddict on August 29, 2022, 04:53:09 pm ---
Meh, I don’t care if input lag reduction is done right or wrong.

I care more about pressing a button and saying “Wow, just as responsive if not better than my genesis in my den”
--- End quote ---

Yeah that's the problem. It's wrong af and inaccurate, and you don't care, RA's users and heralds, because they don't see understand the problems with it, are a different culture than MAME and Groovy.

It's mindboggling to me that ppl don't care about anything related to accuracy yet praise the quality of a software like RA, which encourages people to use obsolete builds and lossy, incaccurate lag reduction that allows to cheat reality by making games more responsive than the originals.


--- Quote from: Trnzaddict on August 29, 2022, 04:53:09 pm ---Somebody saying that stand alone emulators other than GM offer better input latency than RA is capable of is absolutely mind boggling to me - sorry.

--- End quote ---

I defend Groovy's lag reduction and not randomly 'stand alone emulators' lag reduction on that topic (how many standalones feature lag reduction anyway?). My focus is on what Groovy's best for which is arcades emulation thanks to it's indeed overall more correct video/input/sound lag reduction vs. RA's run-ahead.
Groovy's method gets rid of all the unwanted lag generated by suboptimal sync, input and hardware, not the legit one that's part of the game.



EDIT: something I read once that made me raise an eyebrow, is ppl praising MiSteR over MAME after having basically used RA with many years-old cores and romsets found on archives.org Right, so they praised fresh development vs. very outdated. Well, Captain Obvious and friends ?
"well than sounds logical but why don't you use the up-to-date MAME core for compare?" "it doesnt work with my roms" "savestates dont wonrk with it" etc etc

Other example: RA user dragging Groovy through the mud while they were using again an old-af build; all issues and much more were actually fixed in the at the time current build, but their excuse for not using it ? the up-to-date Groovy build didn't match the old romsets they owned.

Or the heroes who 'beat' a number of longstanding high scores with technically 2 to sometimes maybe 3 frames faster response than even the pcb in a cab, thanks to RA. Yay, what heroes...

I think people just see and hear what they wanna see if that's convenient to them and ---fudgesicle--- reason.
I remember ppl on shmups debating the issue of RA allowing lower lag then the original and the legitimacy of the high scores achieved with that, in short the party defending RA first acted innocent, then admitted they knew it's lower than the real, and proceeded to basically say 'why should it matter, it's better this way', calling the original game's lag 'arbitrary' then making up narratives to try and make defendants of accuracy look like the bad guys.
Alternative thruth is clearly the winner broken logic of this century.

Obsolete emulator builds and lossy-cheaty lag reduction ? harmful to the legit emu dev scene ? smoke and mirrors ? demographics who don't care ? yup that's RA.
Argueably, to make it worse MAME deliberately and stubbornly maintained and even strengthened its position on a policy that didn't please and at times gave finger to the end users base, and they lost massive demographics to RA. And Groovy achieved/finalized its major user-friendly features updates only recently, while that 'war' is technically already over and ppl are now looking up affordable VRR and MiSteR.
But that doesn't absolve RA at all.

--- End quote ---

I’m not denying RA promoted the use of older MAME builds and what not. That is not what my comment was about at all. I’m talking INPUT LATENCY compared to stand alone’s besides GM.

I was simply asking a question to MK3FANATIC as to how one draws the conclusion that stand alone emulators have less input latency than what RA is capable of.

I’m not interested in all the other caveats RA has. You’re writing book responses back about how botched RA is. I’m not arguing over what software is more accurate as a whole. 

schmerzkaufen:

--- Quote from: Trnzaddict on August 30, 2022, 10:21:51 am ---I’m not denying RA promoted the use of older MAME builds and what not. That is not what my comment was about at all. I’m talking INPUT LATENCY compared to stand alone’s besides GM.

I was simply asking a question to MK3FANATIC as to how one draws the conclusion that stand alone emulators have less input latency than what RA is capable of.

I’m not interested in all the other caveats RA has. You’re writing book responses back about how botched RA is. I’m not arguing over what software is more accurate as a whole.

--- End quote ---

Well excuse my bad eyes but it's me you quoted...and unless I hallucinated and copied a cake recipe you pretty much stated what I quoted, and I've answered on-topic.
it's lenghty sure, and yes I've enlarged the topic, but even putting aside the extras; have you ever heard of Brandolini's law ?

It's easy for people to just drop something controversial (to use a polite term) say "I don't care" with that - goto donluca's post no need to repeat - then when they get comprehensive replies from people who don't agree - which here on GroovyMAME forum was bound to come - just say "no need for a wall of text" when it happens.

I mean...idk what kind of reactions ppl expect after coming and dropping bombs like that here of all places, and on an topic that's obviously not a casual one.  :dunno:
It's no discord...


Predictive note: Wait for it gents, next post I'll definitely have the role of the villain. >:D This is the usual process.

If that can help some feeling more comfortable, I can say good things about RA, again its shaders system is absolutely great, and after all we're not forced to use run-ahead, though unlike what we did for Groovy we haven't measured the effects of hard gpu sync and RA's own implementation of frame_delay, together I suppose these features can offer pretty decent results without breaking accuracy. Dunno what the audio lag reduction is worth compared to Portaudio also. And well one can still use an up-to-date MAME core if those are still maintained at libretro.

I would tell more but that would be too long. Maybe in another volume.  :P

abispac:

--- Quote from: Calamity on August 30, 2022, 03:43:05 am ---Why buy eslewhere when there's Amazon?

--- End quote ---
I got the point, im not a fan of RA, i jus thought it was cool it makes things easyer to set up.


--- Quote ---Donluca
--- End quote ---
Well you also have to realize the world is vast and has alot of humans in it. Some are perfecionist, some are not. Some enjoy the games as long as they work, some look for the perfection. Thats why we now have FPGA lover stating that fpga is more acurate, and till this day, my simple mind fails to  understand, how a simple underpowered board would work better than mame that now runs on some most of the powerfull computers and gpus that world offers. Yet they claim  its a lot better, im still trying to get my hands on a mister board to test wheter robotron really works better on fpga than in mame. Maybe one day.

To everyone ealse: This post was meant for me to see what the pros and cons of using RA instead of emulators. Theres no doubt that groovymame is far superior  to use on crt's, but to my simple mind, all other emulators where not created with crts in mind, so setting up multiple consoles within RA and having them using the RA 15khz function,  was way easyer than setting up a bunch of emus. Hey i dont even like RA, im using rocketlauncher with hyperspin , RA is just some kind of man in the middle.
I never though that RA is doing things wrong, and has some developer hate for that, an you are right  mr
--- Quote ---schmerzkaufen
--- End quote ---
using the latest developed software out there would always be better than using the old stuff. Over the years many many talented developers have worked together to make this as perfect as it can. So we should honor those talented guys by testing out what they have done.

So my final word on this matter, as an end user. 

I really hope RA would fix theyr input lag method they way it should be implemented.
Theres public for both things, perfectly working  and as log as it works, (heck, i saw a guy playing pacman on a strech out horizontal image and he was happy with it). So i guess if you having fun with it, then keep going.
I really thank everyone in the world, involved in all of this, from the hardware donors, to developers and even hackers that break protections, ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- , i remembered back in the day when everyone was exited about cps3.
I hope ill get to test fpga vs mame to see if the fuss is true.
Since most console emulators  are abandoned  , then RA its a good alternative to load them up on crts monitors, together with rocket launcher and hyperspin , as RA has a much ugly interface.

Thanks Calamity , and everyone else that comented here, feel free to keep going, maybe ill learn something new.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page