Important Discovery... Everyone Read!

[Howard_Casto]

I was mucking around in the Dk code this morning (yes I still work on it) trying to find an easier way to get games with "no good dump known" warnings to auto-launch.  I used to do elaborate checks and such to figure out which roms migt cause problems, but I've found a way to exploit mame to bypass the "press any key to continue"  warning in the dos box. 

Simply add -ftr 1  to your command line arguments to mame.  That's it, the screen is passed!

An explaination:

Ftr is the "frames to run" command for mame.  It's used for benchmarking and debugging.  Because of this any and all warning screens are bypassed to allow the user to simply launch a game for X number of frames, walk away, and then come back with the dos box reporting the average fps. 

Now I'm sure some of you are thinking.  "Wouldn't -ftr 1 make the game run one frame and then quit?"  Well that's what I thought.  Apparently the ftr function doesn't work on the first frame, so setting the ftr to 1 let's the game run as normal, only all warnings are bypassed. 


For you people that are thinking.  "Ok this is useless" or don't have a clue what I'm talking about try this:

Run 64th Street in your favorite fe..... Most likely it'll lock up the system. 


Now run it in the fe with the ftr 1 command.  Poof!  It passes. 

How cool is that?

[Buddabing]

Great discovery!

Here's the lines of code that cause this effect. I don't know if it should be called a bug or a feature............

[code]
frames_displayed++;
if (frames_displayed + 1 == frames_to_display)
{

[Lilwolf]

beyond WAY COOL! 

I hate compiling my own for my cabinet... just to remove it..  1/2 the time I dont and just grab one from optimized mame build site... then forces me to pull out the keyboard control panel whenever I run the wrong game.

[SirPoonga]

So, it actually displays (ftr - 1) frames for any ftr > 1.
If you put in 100 it will show 99 frames.

Hmmm, the if needs to be changed to
if ((frames_displayed != 1)  && (frames_displayed >= frames_to_display))
Which would be more accurate and robust

[Howard_Casto]

Well yes... but regardless, ftr 1 should still either not work or be infinate.

[Buddabing]

Also, the -ftr option is Windows-only.

So both DOS users are out of luck.

[Minwah]

Great discovery Howard, well done

Just to state the obvious, presumably 'frames_to_run 1' in mame.ini would work too...

Strange thing is, I have noticed that some MAME versions auto-skip the bad dump screen anyway.  For example, I just ran 'mame 64street' using standard MAME v0.98, and didn't have to hit a key to go on from the bad dump screen to the game.  I seem to recall this working in some MAME versions and not others over the past year or more - I've never bothered to look into it any more than that tho.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah I've noticed that too... I'm not sure what the deal is with that.

[pointdablame]

I'm running mame .69 and this doesn't seem to work for me.  Perhaps it is like Buddabing says and it is only for .78 and newer versions.  I just figured I'd let ya know.

I tried the command line and switching the mame.ini settings, and neither stopped the bad rom dump on 64street.

This could be great though, and could finally give me a reason to upgrade

[SirPoonga]

What's new 0.79
Warning screens are now skipped if running with -ftr for less than 5
minutes [Aaron Giles]

[2600]

What's new 0.79
Warning screens are now skipped if running with -ftr for less than 5
minutes [Aaron Giles]

That's pretty funny.  The put it in the what's new and we all still miss it.  At least, Howard discovered it for us now.

[Minwah]

What's new 0.79
Warning screens are now skipped if running with -ftr for less than 5
minutes [Aaron Giles]

Awesome...I didn't get from Howards first post (even tho he said it) that ALL warning screens are skipped, even the bad emulation ones.

Wicked 

[pointdablame]

heh I never read that either in the whatsnew.

Hey, at least we know it's there now.... and looks like I should upgrade

[mccoy178]

Okay, okay, I'll be the board idiot for the noobs; in Mamewah, what should this adjustment look like exactly, and where?  Hazing is welcome.

[KenToad]

That's truly incredible, Howard.  I'm so sick of seeing that Galaga error screen.  I'll give it a go tomorrow morning.

Cheers,
KenToad

[M3talhead]

Okay, okay, I'll be the board idiot for the noobs; in Mamewah, what should this adjustment look like exactly, and where?  Hazing is welcome.

Ditto.

[pointdablame]

Okay, okay, I'll be the board idiot for the noobs; in Mamewah, what should this adjustment look like exactly, and where?  Hazing is welcome.

It has nothing to do with Mamewah.  It just gets rid of all the error/warning messages that pop up before a game.

If you want to test it with mamewah, load a game that gives an error message (try galaga or 64street)

Now make the changes and load up the same games in Mamewah... it should load up immediately without any error message.

[mccoy178]

You have to idiot it down for us.  Where exactly do you add that adjustment and exactly what should it look like? (i.e.   -ftr 1,  ftr 1, ftr1)  We need some idiot vision on this one.

[loadman]

I love that discovery! By chance I use Mame .79 because any version beyond that won't load Galaga (Fastshoot) without resorting to a tacky cheat option.

I just changed my mame.ini line to

[darthbane2k]

woah woah woah! Hold up a sec..

So this will enable me to disable those "this game has no sound / inaccurate video emulation/wiggle OK to continue" messages on my .89 version of mame32 WITHOUT having to recompile it?


will this have any side effects on working games etc?

[Minwah]

So this will enable me to disable those "this game has no sound / inaccurate video emulation/wiggle OK to continue" messages on my .89 version of mame32 WITHOUT having to recompile it?

Yes

will this have any side effects on working games etc?

No

[darthbane2k]

sweet as Candy! 

[Tiger-Heli]

Howard, great find, I can't believe it got missed in the Whatsnew.txt file.

BTW, I can confirm that adding "Frames_to_run   1" to the gamename.ini file works as well.

Also, this does not bypass the initial copyright warning screen or the game info screen, but these could be bypassed from the mame.ini file anyway.

Mccoy178 - I don't have MAMEwah set up on this computer, but if you are using my batch file, you would just edit it to change the line

MAME %1

to

MAME %1 -ftr 1

In MAMEwah, in it's MAME.ini file, change:

commandline_format                        [name]{autodosbox}{nosafelaunch}

to

commandline_format                        [name] -ftr 1{autodosbox}{nosafelaunch}

Blue elements are added, and red elements are optional, may not match your settings, and shouldn't be changed.

Minwah - pls comment if I got it wrong.

Try Lunar Lander with and without the fix to veryify it works.

[mccoy178]

Nice Tiger!  I was doing that yesterday, but I had ' or something else going on, so it wasn't working.  That is pretty cool Howard.

[Minwah]

commandline_format                        [name]{autodosbox}{nosafelaunch}

to

commandline_format                        [name] -ftr 1{autodosbox}{nosafelaunch}

Minwah - pls comment if I got it wrong.

I'd recommend you leave Mamewah alone, and do as you (Tiger-Heli) did and just set frames_to_run 1 in mame.ini - that's what I've done today 

Edit: what you said is right and will work fine tho, I just think it's neater to use mame.ini.

[mccoy178]

I'd recommend you leave Mamewah alone, and do as you (Tiger-Heli) did and just set frames_to_run 1 in mame.ini

Just for the idiot in me, I applied this in my mame.ini within mamewah.  It works, but is it correct?

[Tiger-Heli]

I'd recommend you leave Mamewah alone, and do as you (Tiger-Heli) did and just set frames_to_run 1 in mame.ini

Just for the idiot in me, I applied this in my mame.ini within mamewah.  It works, but is it correct?

No - if I understand you correctly.

There are three ways to run this (and it would help if everything didn't use the same names).

You can add -ftr 1 to the commandline format in the Mamewah\ini\mame.ini file - simple and direct, but not elegant.

You can add "frames_to_run    1" to your mame\mame.ini file as MAMEwah recommends - a little more straightforward but changes (not noticeably) games that don't require it.

You can add "frames_to_run    1" to your mame\ini\gamename.ini file - direct but requires you to individually figure out what games require it.

HTH

[darthbane2k]

Okay just want to clear something up
This works for the black box 'press OK to continue warnings' but it doesnt work for the bad ROM dump window that 64th street for example brings up.

Am I missing something?

[Sonic Smash]

cool im trying it!

[M3talhead]

[Howard_Casto]

Okay just want to clear something up
This works for the black box 'press OK to continue warnings' but it doesnt work for the bad ROM dump window that 64th street for example brings up.

Am I missing something?

No it works just fine.... the message still is rendered in those cases but you don't have to "press any key" which is impossible when a fe is launching.

[Howard_Casto]

What's new 0.79
Warning screens are now skipped if running with -ftr for less than 5
minutes [Aaron Giles]

That's pretty funny.

[SirPoonga]

What's new 0.79
Warning screens are now skipped if running with -ftr for less than 5
minutes [Aaron Giles]

That's pretty funny.  The put it in the what's new and we all still miss it.  At least, Howard discovered it for us now.

But ftr 1 is not 5 minutes, so there has to be more to this.

[Tiger-Heli]

What's new 0.79
Warning screens are now skipped if running with -ftr for less than 5
minutes [Aaron Giles]

That's pretty funny.  The put it in the what's new and we all still miss it.  At least, Howard discovered it for us now.

But ftr 1 is not 5 minutes, so there has to be more to this.

But it's definitely less than 5 minutes, although Aaron's original wording makes me wonder if something strange will happen AFTER 5 minutes. . .

[2600]

What's new 0.79
Warning screens are now skipped if running with -ftr for less than 5
minutes [Aaron Giles]

That's pretty funny.  The put it in the what's new and we all still miss it.  At least, Howard discovered it for us now.

But ftr 1 is not 5 minutes, so there has to be more to this.

I totally missed the minutes part when I first read it.

[Buddabing]

There are two bits of code here. The first bit is what I posted earlier which will not terminate MAME if -ftr 1 is selected. The first bit of code is much older, it goes back to at leat v0.69, the earliest version I checked.

This second bit of code is what Aaron added in v0.79. Before he added this bit, you would have had to hit ok if you wanted to benchmark Galaga.

[code]
frames_to_display = ftr;
if (frames_to_display > 0 && frames_to_display < 60*60*5)

[darthbane2k]

just noticed that if you use mamescreensaver , when you add this setting it does not allow you to leave the game when run in screensaver mode. pressing escape only switches game and not exit back to front end.

Because of this issue I have now disabled the setting. I NEED my Mamescreensaver

[mccoy178]

Wow I crack myself up.  Now that I have read the mame doc, I figured out that in the mame.ini in my mame folder (not mamewah mame.ini for the rest of us idiots), that there is an option called Frames_To_Run.  Go figure!  And better yet, it was set to '0'.  Amazing!  And when I changed that to '1', you all won't believe it...........it worked! 

Now, I have been through that damn file about a half a dozen times looking at where to add this 'ftr 1', just like in mamewah's mame.ini.  So, in closing, for all of us non dos, command line, programming minded individuals in the world, in the mame.ini, in the mame folder, there is an option more than halfway down, properly named Frames_To_Run, and it has a '0' to the right of it.  Change that to '1'.

  Okay, okay, idiot police may now arrest me.  I surrender in peace.

[darthbane2k]

just noticed that if you use mamescreensaver , when you add this setting it does not allow you to leave the game when run in screensaver mode. pressing escape only switches game and not exit back to front end.

Because of this issue I have now disabled the setting. I NEED my Mamescreensaver

anyone wanna address this problem?

[SirPeale]

Well...someone posted this @ Mameworld, and Haze states it will be fixed in a future release.

Link

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah I'm going to personally beat the tar out of whoever did that. 

Come on people, use your head....  I found a bug.  Mame-devs lurk at mameworld.  What do you think they do to bugs?

sheesh

[Haze]

Mamedev lurk here too, and believe me this isn't the only place its been posted.  You expect people to keep this a secret?  It spread faster than a 2005 NeoGeo driver.

Its a bug, it will be fixed, we have enough problems with people reporting false bugs without the warning screens being taken away, people turning them off only makes matters worse.

[btoddkelley]

I understand the the dev's reasoning for taking it out but it sure would be nice to have a command line switch that bypasses the screens for cab use. Maybe we need a "BYAOC" mame build.

Todd

[Howard_Casto]

Mamedev lurk here too, and believe me this isn't the only place its been posted.

[Howard_Casto]

I hate to keep ranting on... but something you said keeps eating at me. 

"You expect people to keep this a secret?  It spread faster than a 2005 NeoGeo driver."


You'll excuse me for taking offense to this, but where do you get off making such a comparison?  A 2k5 neogeo driver hurts the arcade industry.  That is something I wouldn't support.  The bug simply fixes a lack of functionaly in mame in which you mamedevs won't accept any submissions for. 

Again let me inject some common sense into some of these rather stupid mamedev arguments that have surfaced since I found this. 

The warning screens do nothing to prevent paying mame cabs.  Why?  Quite simple, the games with warning screens don't work properly.  They would never be put in that environment anyway. 


I can live with the fact that you feel that the warning screens are needed for debugging purposes (they aren't but still) but to suggest that removing them promotes piracy, or even worse  the ability for people to put mame cabs in a paying environment?  I'm sorry, that's just crap.    I mean you can already turn off the disclaimer screen and info screen, those are the one's that helped to prevent piracy. 

The withholding of a method to remove these screens, especially the bad dump message is just another example of the mamedev's being stubborn.. similar to the old "no gambling machines" rule which has finally been lifted.

Also need I remind you that for years, many mame devs said that ALL screens were necessary and removing them would be the end of the world. Well the inital screens have been gone for about a year now.  So far the sky is still in place,  no looting in the streets.  Oh and to be relevant, there isn't a rampant uprising of mame cabs in pay environments, arcade manufacturers haven't tried to sue the pants off of  mame and all in all, absoluely nothing has changed rather than the fact that now the user and the developer, has more control over mame. 


I'm all about being cautious about such situations, but come on, in this case it's just a hollow excuse.

[Haze]

we've already decided long ago that we won't allow these warnings to be turned off.  TBH i wouldn't allow any of them to be turned off myself.

Spreads faster than the 2k5 neogeo drivers?  Well, it seemed to be the same people spreading this news, the same people bragging to me about how we messed up.. The comment was about the speed it spread, not the nature of the change.

We've had first hand experience that the screens do irritate people wanting to put the games in for profit cabs, we've had emails in the past asking us specifically how they can turn them off so they can run their cab in an arcade, people really are stupid enough to ask us.  If it takes money they don't care if the game has bad gfx, they care about ripping people off, while spending as little of their own time/money as they can.  I've seen MAME cabs with all the mahjong games and robotron still enabled, but nothing more than a joystick and 6 buttons + start for the controls.  Unplayable, but do they care? No.   (Also why we don't like people creating builds which strp out mahjong games, non working games etc. it just makes it easier for them)

[Haze]

oh, and the bad dump, bad crc etc. messages are on the command line because we usually copy+paste them when writing drivers.  We can't copy+paste from the UI and I've said before that we will not compromise developer features for user convenience.

[Howard_Casto]

oh, and the bad dump, bad crc etc. messages are on the command line because we usually copy+paste them when writing drivers.

[Dav]

This isn't a matter of user convienance, rather useability period.  Like I said... bad dump games lock up a front-end.  I think you'll be hard pressed to find someone other than a developer that regularly use mame straight from the command line. 

Strange, I've been using mame32 for 6 years and never noticed a problem, are you sure it's unuseable?

[SirPeale]

This isn't a matter of user convienance, rather useability period.  Like I said... bad dump games lock up a front-end.  I think you'll be hard pressed to find someone other than a developer that regularly use mame straight from the command line. 

Strange, I've been using mame32 for 6 years and never noticed a problem, are you sure it's unuseable?

It's not a problem with Mame32.  Just command line Mame.

[Minwah]

That's fine if you don't want to take it off the dos box.... but I thought it'd be better for YOU as the user would actually see the message you bothered to put in.

Have to agree with this.  Obviously I'm biased but it would make more sense to me to get the bad dump warning in the UI if only to make it more obvious to the casual user.

[youki]

This isn't a matter of user convienance, rather useability period.  Like I said... bad dump games lock up a front-end.  I think you'll be hard pressed to find someone other than a developer that regularly use mame straight from the command line.

It is not so hard to bypass from an Front End. I don't why this thing is so problematic for you?    I never think about that before you talk of this problem, but i'm going to implement this feature (allow possibility to not lock up the FE in case of bad dump) in my new version of AtomicFE.

[Tiger-Heli]

Okay, this "Exploit" will be removed shortly, probably by 0.100, if not in the next u build.  I posted some comments in the Mameworld thread, but I have some stuff to add here, too.

Fine it's a bug... so give us the option to turn them off officially.

It's not a bug, it's an EXPLOIT.  You can't take something that was officially announced in the whatsnew.txt and call it a bug.

As far as the for-profit cab arguments and the MAMETESTERS arguments - I think I'll just say that you can't make anything fool-proof b/c the world keeps coming up with smarter fools and leave it at that.

[wolfi]

It's not a bug, it's an EXPLOIT.

[Tiger-Heli]

No, its a bug. "-ftr 1" was meant to run 1 frame, but it runs endless. that

[Lilwolf]

The real trouble (imho) is only the screens that don't have a screen....

No known dump exists or whatever.

These are the ones that come up before the driver has formatted the screen... So it happens before the window itself come up.

Give a way to either postpone these to do a normal O-K or left/right and then all would be fine.

Also, it would be nice if there was a mouse only mechanism to get past it.  I have 2 control panels without a left and a right button.  Annoying having to swap control panels just to get past the screens.

Or...

I can just start compiling my own again...  Not really that big a deal really...

[Minwah]

Also, it would be nice if there was a mouse only mechanism to get past it.  I have 2 control panels without a left and a right button.  Annoying having to swap control panels just to get past the screens.

You must have *some* buttons tho?  Just map multiple inputs for UI_Left and UI_Right.  For example on my 360deg wheel panel I have the shifter 1st & 3rd gear inputs setup for this.

[Minwah]

Who said MAMEdev don't listen to us?:

Removed the "Press any key" prompts when displaying ROM warnings. Instead,
a warning about bad/missing ROMs is now displayed on the warnings screen.
Details of the bad/missing ROMs are still printed to the console.
[Aaron Giles]

 

(thanks to Zebulon for the heads up on this one)

Edit: sorry, didn't see the other thread.  Here's the link also:

http://mamedev.com/updates/whatsnew_099u3.txt

[Tiger-Heli]

I bet the -ftr 1 doesn't work anymore, though.

[Minwah]

I bet the -ftr 1 doesn't work anymore, though.

Probably not, but the bad dump thing was the biggest annoyance.  We can't expect everything now can we!

[Tiger-Heli]

Probably not, but the bad dump thing was the biggest annoyance.  We can't expect everything now can we!

But we can hope!

[Buddabing]

I bet the -ftr 1 doesn't work anymore, though.

It doesn't.