MAME .107 released!

[NightGod]

http://mamedev.org/release.html

The biggest news is obviously the fact that MAME now actually uses video card acceleration-wonder how this is going to change the dynamics for some of those recent games that have trouble running on existing systems.

0.107
-------

NOTE: This is the first full release of MAME with the new rendering system. Before freaking out that things don't work the way you expected, please read the docs/newvideo.txt file that gives some suggestions for how to set up your base configuration. If you still encounter issues, then run your system with the -v option and post about your problem at http://mametesters.org.


MAMETesters Bugs Fixed
---------------------------
xxmissio0106u12yel [quzz]
laser0106u10ora [gregf]
kof10th0106u1ora [f205v]
pignewt0106u3gra [Machone]
cheatwatchpoint0106u11ora [ShimaPong]


Source Changes
------------------
Fixed keyboard inputs in the Taito Wolf driver. [Ville Linde]

Added tile flipx to tilemaps in yunsung16.c (bomb kick needs it) and changed the DIP switches used for protection to real DIP switches. [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]

Fixed crash in the PGM driver. [David Haywood]

Properly emulated the sprite overdraw effect in ninjakd2. Now you can see the "opening" effect and the previously 2 bugged levels are fixed. Converted the driver to use tilemaps as well. [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]

Additional updates to the magicfly driver. Improved documentation and input port mapping. [Roberto Fresca]

Fixed gamma and brightness ranges in the UI to match the limits from the command line. [Aaron Giles]

Fixed default flicker value to 0. [Aaron Giles]

Fixed scrolling in the palette view. [Aaron Giles]

Fixed assertion when the MAME window was minimized. [Aaron Giles]

Fixed bug that prevented resizing of secondary windows. [Aaron Giles]

Rewrote Missile Command driver from schematics: [Aaron Giles]
* CPU speed now correct (slows down for lower 32 scanlines)
* proper frame rate and IRQ signal timing
* service mode works on some sets, fails on others due to 6502 bug
* accurate bitmap mapping and cycle counts for 3-bit accesses
* using bitmap access PROM for bit mode writes


New clones added
--------------------
Head On (Sidam bootleg) [David Haywood]
Super Crash (bootleg of Head On) [David Haywood]
Borderline (Sidam bootleg) [David Haywood]
Lunar Rescue (Model Racing bootleg) [David Haywood]
Agent X (prototype) [Aaron Giles]


New games marked as GAME_NOT_WORKING
--------------------------------------------------
Ripper Ribbit [Guru]
Chicken Farm [Guru]
Crazzy Clownz [Guru]
Super Bubble 2003 [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]
Legend of Heroes [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]
Hidden Catch 3 [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]
Pro Golf [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]
Midnight Landing [David Haywood]

[NightGod]

And this is the TXT file (newvideo.txt) about the new render that is included in the mames107/docs folder:


This article originally appeared in a slightly different form at
http://aarongiles.com. You should read this if you are used to how
MAME's video system worked prior to 0.107 and you want to understand
how you should configure MAME with the new rendering system in place.


The New Video Landscape

Since its inception 9 years ago, MAME

[Fozzy The Bear]

The biggest news is obviously the fact that MAME now actually uses video card acceleration

About time too!! 

We've had stable Direct3D acceleration available for years. It's well overdue for inclusion as the primary MAME video driver. Lets just hope it's not too bug infested. 

At last we'll be offloading a large chunk of the graphics work to the video card and freeing up the main processor, instead of wasting all the processing power that we have built into our video cards.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[pcates]

Do you know if our old ROMs will work (from 1.03 or something) or Do I need to use clrmame to fix them??
Thanks, Patrick

[Minwah]

Do you know if our old ROMs will work (from 1.03 or something) or Do I need to use clrmame to fix them??

As a rule some roms change with every new MAME version, so I would say you certainly need to check your roms.

This version looks interesting, I hope to catch up a bit soon (still on v0.101 ish).  Last time I looked at mame.ini it looked a bit alien to me, probably more so now 

[MaximRecoil]

I don't get the whole "ROMs changing" thing. Certainly the real ROMs never change, the ones that are stored in chips on original boards, why would a dump of that ROM ever change? If you were using MAME ROMs to repair a real board, i.e. burn a new ROM to replace a faulty one, what version of MAME ROMs would you use?

So-called "bad dumps" notwithstanding, I always assumed MAME ROMs were 1:1 dumps of the actual ROMs from real boards. Can anyone explain what changes in a MAME ROM, and why?

[lokki]

The biggest news is obviously the fact that MAME now actually uses video card acceleration

About time too!! 

We've had stable Direct3D acceleration available for years. It's well overdue for inclusion as the primary MAME video driver. Lets just hope it's not too bug infested. 

At last we'll be offloading a large chunk of the graphics work to the video card and freeing up the main processor, instead of wasting all the processing power that we have built into our video cards.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Hi,
Just wanted to point out that this update does not do what you expect.  The only thing that has changed was the OSD (Operating System Dependent) layer no the drivers themselvces. It now can take advantage of the video card capabilities and it uses them for things like artwork.

You will likely see no performance improvements. Infact Aaron mentioned some performance degradation . The only games whose performance has improved is the games that use artwork extensively.  (invaders now runs at a decent speed).

[ahofle]

Hi,
Just wanted to point out that this update does not do what you expect.  The only thing that has changed was the OSD (Operating System Dependent) layer no the drivers themselvces. It now can take advantage of the video card capabilities and it uses them for things like artwork.

You will likely see no performance improvements. Infact Aaron mentioned some performance degradation . The only games whose performance has improved is the games that use artwork extensively.  (invaders now runs at a decent speed).

Well that sucks.  At least the "category 3" has been preserved.  I still don't understand why we can't use the D3D stuff and have the actual resolution preserved without the blurry hardware stretching.  Has anyone seen if there is any performance difference in graphics intensive games like Hard Drivin' with the new D3D stuff?

[wpcmame]

About time too!! 

We've had stable Direct3D acceleration available for years. It's well overdue for inclusion as the primary MAME video driver. Lets just hope it's not too bug infested. 

At last we'll be offloading a large chunk of the graphics work to the video card and freeing up the main processor, instead of wasting all the processing power that we have built into our video cards.

The new system doesn't use any 3d on the graphics card. The only thing it does is to let directx handle the blending of artwork and ui and full screen intensity etc. Games without artwork aren't affected or are slower.

For cabinet use I got mixed feelings on this release. ddraw mode can now handle uneven strething eg. 3x horizontally and 2x vertically (at least it looks that way in the source, havent tested it yet) which is good for powerstrip use. On the other hand is cleanstretch gone so you must always use integer strething in both directions (which makes e.g. tapper  look strange if you have an AVGA).

The new video menu is a bit messed up for cabinet use. By default the games got two views "Standard" and "Native". On a PC monitor "Standard" means: "same aspect ratio as in the arcades" and "Native" means "same aspect ratio as in earlier mame version" (i.e. wrong for most games).
In a cabinet where you got correct screen resolutions "Standard" and "Native" is the same.

Changes in the video menu are saved in the cfg file. I'm unsure how the cfg file is prioritized over command line/ini file. (e.g. what happens if I rotate the game in the video menu and then specifies another rotation on the command line)
(wasn't the reason to remove highscore support that it leads to false bug reports. I can see the same thing coming here. "Why is only this game rotated?")

The artwork seem to still be the wrong size when the game is displayed correctly. So the options for invaders are still to either have an egg-shaped backdrop planet or a wider-than-normal game display.

An inconvenience is that with this release a lot of PALs are added to the roms. With few exceptions they are not used in the emulation but are still considered required to play the game.

I still don't understand why we can't use the D3D stuff and have the actual resolution preserved without the blurry hardware stretching.

I have added back cleanstretch to d3d (and the video menu) in my own u13 build which works fine. I might post a diff file here as soon as I have updated to the 107 source.

[ahofle]

I still don't understand why we can't use the D3D stuff and have the actual resolution preserved without the blurry hardware stretching.

I have added back cleanstretch to d3d (and the video menu) in my own u13 build which works fine. I might post a diff file here as soon as I have updated to the 107 source.

    

[u_rebelscum]

I don't get the whole "ROMs changing" thing. Certainly the real ROMs never change, the ones that are stored in chips on original boards, why would a dump of that ROM ever change? If you were using MAME ROMs to repair a real board, i.e. burn a new ROM to replace a faulty one, what version of MAME ROMs would you use?

So-called "bad dumps" notwithstanding, I always assumed MAME ROMs were 1:1 dumps of the actual ROMs from real boards. Can anyone explain what changes in a MAME ROM, and why?

Case 1: bad dump
Case 2: incomplete dump (X chip now emulated now needs Y ROM not needed before)
Case 3: new dump confirmed source, old dump unreliable/unknown source
Case 4: new dump real release, old dump hacked board
Case 5: new dump real release, old dump prototype
Case 6: new dump wider release, old dump local release

The first three add/replace to a ROM, the last three usually involve renaming.

[lettuce]

So does this mean progs that changed all the roms to there correct resolutions wont be any good now??

[ahofle]

So does this mean progs that changed all the roms to there correct resolutions wont be any good now??

Not sure I understand your question, but if you are asking if you'll need to revisit your frontend/MAME configuration with v0.107 then the answer is probably 'yes'.

[jcrouse]

So does this mean progs that changed all the roms to there correct resolutions wont be any good now??

He is asking about apps like the AVGA Res tool and such that automatically create cfg files containing the proper video setting for all your mame game.

John

[Minwah]

He is asking about apps like the AVGA Res tool and such that automatically create cfg files containing the proper video setting for all your mame game.

Well I am not 100% sure yet, but my prog should work to some extent with Krick's new 'xml2info', by creating a dat file.  However I think I read about some change with the way vertical resolutions are now represented in Mame...I am not totally sure of the details but this may mess up the vertical games side of things.

I really need to sort out xml parsing in Mamewah, so when I have done that I will add it to the Res. Tool...

[krick]

my prog should work to some extent with Krick's new 'xml2info', by creating a dat file.  However I think I read about some change with the way vertical resolutions are now represented in Mame...I am not totally sure of the details but this may mess up the vertical games side of things.

In the pre-107 XML output, the width and height were reversed on vertical games.  This is no longer the case. In the 107 MAME XML output, the resolution specified for each game is the unrotated resolution.    However, in my xml2info, I swap them back for vertical games to match the way the info format has always been.

http://mame.3feetunder.com/xml2info/

If you want to use the XSL version of xml2info, you might be interested to know that in addition to the way mentioned in the readme, you can also run it this way....

mame.exe -listxml | xsltproc xml2info.xsl − > listinfo.txt

(the minus sign indicates that the input comes from the output of the previous command)

I'll be adding this to the readme shortly.

[Minwah]

my prog should work to some extent with Krick's new 'xml2info', by creating a dat file.  However I think I read about some change with the way vertical resolutions are now represented in Mame...I am not totally sure of the details but this may mess up the vertical games side of things.

Thanks for setting me straight on that, and for your xml2info

So to confirm, my Res. Tool will work fine with Mame v0.107 with Krick's xml2info

[lettuce]

what actually is Krick's xml2info ??

[krick]

what actually is Krick's xml2info ??

I just took xml2info.c that was removed from mame 107, modified so that it works with the new 107 XML format.

This is a temporary solution and it's not perfect as there's some things like controls that can't be properly output in a single pass of the XML without substantially re-writing the code.  I'm not really interested in doing that.

I also wrote an XSL transformation that actually produces more accurate listinfo output than my xml2info.  I did this as an excercise to teach myself XSLT and to show what can be done with the mame XML if you have the right tools.

There's no guarantee that these utilities will remain compatible with future versions of mame, especially xml2info.exe since it's already pretty hacked up to handle the recent XML changes and I'm sure there will be more XML changes in the future.

The listinfo format is officially dead and everyone should begin using XML in their frontends and other utilities asap.

http://mame.3feetunder.com/xml2info/

[MKChamp]

Forgive me if this is already addressed...

Is there a way to get MAMEWAH to generate lists with 107? I'm running the latest beta and as we all know, if generates an error now generating lists.

[jcrouse]

I think Mini addressed this a few replies above. Thry using the file and method he suggested.

John

[MKChamp]

I think Mini addressed this a few replies above. Thry using the file and method he suggested.

John

Ahhh yes...worked like a charm. Thank you krick...and, of course, Minwah...

[Fozzy The Bear]

The biggest news is obviously the fact that MAME now actually uses video card acceleration

About time too!! 

We've had stable Direct3D acceleration available for years. It's well overdue for inclusion as the primary MAME video driver. Lets just hope it's not too bug infested. 

At last we'll be offloading a large chunk of the graphics work to the video card and freeing up the main processor, instead of wasting all the processing power that we have built into our video cards.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Hi,
Just wanted to point out that this update does not do what you expect.  The only thing that has changed was the OSD (Operating System Dependent) layer no the drivers themselvces. It now can take advantage of the video card capabilities and it uses them for things like artwork.

You will likely see no performance improvements. Infact Aaron mentioned some performance degradation . The only games whose performance has improved is the games that use artwork extensively.  (invaders now runs at a decent speed).

Well... that sucks bigtime then. What is it with the Mame Devs, that every time they update, they like to add stuff to the software, that actually makes it perform worse than it did in the last release.

Yeah! new features are great. New features are always welcome. However when they actually just clog the software up and slow it down even further they don't really do anything for anybody. 

It's kind of like, they spot a bit of technology they want to play with and just bung it in there regardless of the consequences. Consequences like all of the front ends suddenly have to be re-written again, many of the utilities we use now won't work (yet again).... Screen res problems for most vertical games... etc etc etc   Advantages... ermmm nope sorry can't think of any right now.

If this doesn't make mame run faster, OR it doesn't actually make more ROMs playable.... I personally fail to see the point of doing it.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[Santoro]

You must know this by now having been here for a while, but performance is not the primary driver of the MAMEdevs.  It's all about preservation and accuracy.  That we happen to be able to play these games is just a side benefit.


edit: fixed inaccurate spelling of the word 'accuracy'

[Fozzy The Bear]

You must know this by now having been here for a while, but performance is not the primary driver of the MAMEdevs.  It's all about preservation and accuray.  That we happen to be able to play these games is just a side benefit.

Yes.... Noted and appreciated.  They do have quite different aims and goals to the majority of people on here.

I for one am thankful that they do spend so many hours, selflessly working on Mame.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[lettuce]

So its best to sick to .106 at the moment then? seeings as no major games have become playable since this update, and most of the new features dont do sqwot??

[krick]

So its best to sick to .106 at the moment then?

I'm at a crossroads.  I'm going to stick with 106 in my cabinet for the moment because I don't think the new changes in 107 are completely arcade monitor friendly yet.  However, I'm seriously considering moving to an alternate build in the future.  DOSMAME and AdvanceMAME are definite contenders, but I'm hoping there will be a derivative MAME build that keeps the old ddraw renderer as primary but otherwise sticks close to the stock Win32 MAME build.

[ahofle]

So does this mean the command line switches to use the old legacy ddraw stuff do not work the same in v0.107 as before?

[krick]

So does this mean the command line switches to use the old legacy ddraw stuff do not work the same in v0.107 as before?

If you read newvideo.txt that comes with 107, you'll see that things have changed quite a bit.

I think it will be at least 109 before all the kinks are worked out and I don't know if the ddraw stuff will ever work exactly like it did in the pre-107 builds.  I'm definitely adopting a "wait and see" attitude on this one.  I have my fingers crossed.

[ahofle]

So does this mean the command line switches to use the old legacy ddraw stuff do not work the same in v0.107 as before?

If you read newvideo.txt that comes with 107, you'll see that things have changed quite a bit.

I think it will be at least 109 before all the kinks are worked out and I don't know if the ddraw stuff will ever work exactly like it did in the pre-107 builds.  I'm definitely adopting a "wait and see" attitude on this one.  I have my fingers crossed.

I did read it and it sounded to me like Aaron left the old stuff in for backwards compatibility:

"Category 2: Like the old days. I really didn

[krick]

Sounded to me as if it should work just like before with this and the category 3 switch, but you are saying otherwise?

I think I fall into category 3 since I use an arcade monitor and an ArcadeVGA with tweaked modes.  I specifically asked Aaron in his blog about some of the options I use...

I currently run MAME 104 on an arcade monitor with the following settings

[Minwah]

I'm curious as to what the downside to using Direct3d is?  From reading I don't really see any reason why D3D and 'category 3' shouldn't be fine for arcade monitors...aside from perhaps the artwork issue Aaron mentioned.  Is that the only thing?

[wpcmame]

I'm curious as to what the downside to using Direct3d is?  From reading I don't really see any reason why D3D and 'category 3' shouldn't be fine for arcade monitors...aside from perhaps the artwork issue Aaron mentioned.  Is that the only thing?

Direct3d will always stretch the image to use the full height or width. It works fine on PC monitors where you normally use high resolutions (stretching 4x or 4.2 times doesn't make much of a difference). With an AVGA, 224 line games will be stretched to 240 lines which looks really bad.

ddraw always stretches with integer ratios.
Unfortunatly there are games like popeye which uses a resolution of 512x448. There is no matching AVGA resolution so normally you want to use 640x480i or 800x600i and use integer stretch vertically and not horizontally

I have no idea why integer stretch is connected to ddraw/d3d. As I said in another post I added cleanstretch to d3d without much trouble.

Currenctly looking into a newly discovered syncrefresh problem: in mame107, interlaced modes are considered to have 30Hz refreshrate which means that games run half speed if you use syncrefresh in an interlaced mode.

[2600]

ddraw always stretches with integer ratios.
Unfortunatly there are games like popeye which uses a resolution of 512x448. There is no matching AVGA resolution so normally you want to use 640x480i or 800x600i and use integer stretch vertically and not horizontally

FYI, unless I'm missing something both AVGA's support 512x448.

[Minwah]

Direct3d will always stretch the image to use the full height or width. It works fine on PC monitors where you normally use high resolutions (stretching 4x or 4.2 times doesn't make much of a difference). With an AVGA, 224 line games will be stretched to 240 lines which looks really bad.

Thanks, that makes sense (literally, but not technically!)

I just realised what I said earlier was a load of rubbish....you cannot use D3D for Category 3....which kindof explains things.  So is the only problem with using Category 3 (with AVGA) that artwork cannot be used properly?

Lets hope this new video system is finished properly and covers all issues...it seems to be a slight step back in functionality currently.

[rdowdy95]

I have a question and Minwah you might know the answer.  I downloaded the new Mame update the .107 one.  I don't know if I did it right.  I had the .106 version before.  So I extracted all files to the mame directory, and then I went into MAMEwah and tried to generate a list for my games, and it came back with an error??  Do I need to do a fresh install of both of these programs to get it to work?  Why does it give me the error?  I also backedf up my original mame folder with .106.

[MustardTent]

This was already answered above...

my prog should work to some extent with Krick's new 'xml2info', by creating a dat file.  However I think I read about some change with the way vertical resolutions are now represented in Mame...I am not totally sure of the details but this may mess up the vertical games side of things.

In the pre-107 XML output, the width and height were reversed on vertical games.  This is no longer the case. In the 107 MAME XML output, the resolution specified for each game is the unrotated resolution.    However, in my xml2info, I swap them back for vertical games to match the way the info format has always been.

http://mame.3feetunder.com/xml2info/

If you want to use the XSL version of xml2info, you might be interested to know that in addition to the way mentioned in the readme, you can also run it this way....

mame.exe -listxml | xsltproc xml2info.xsl − > listinfo.txt

(the minus sign indicates that the input comes from the output of the previous command)

I'll be adding this to the readme shortly.

[rdowdy95]

I thought Min was talking about some kind of res tool?  I have no idea what that is, but I am a noob when it comes to MAME.  So would it be better to just stick with the .106, and then let Minwah update his MAMEwah program to work with the never versions of MAME?

[Fuzzguitar]

In a word, yes.

That's what I'll be doing.

I just upgraded from .88 to .106 so I could easily setup two spinners and it seems to be the best recent build before the changes came in.

I plan to wait a few versions until it all settles down before I upgrade mame again.

Only problem is I now have an enormous number of missing games...doh

[Minwah]

I thought Min was talking about some kind of res tool?  I have no idea what that is, but I am a noob when it comes to MAME.  So would it be better to just stick with the .106, and then let Minwah update his MAMEwah program to work with the never versions of MAME?

Same applies to Mamewah   Just use Kricks xml2info (place it in your MAME folder), and Mamewah will work as normal.

Also, note that you must also either use Mamewah v1.62b10, or use v1.61 with this wrapper: http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=81224&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1