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Author Topic: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)  (Read 96231 times)

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aae

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New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« on: November 03, 2007, 11:17:15 am »
Hello,

I have release a new emulator, mainly targeted at vector games. It should look MUCH nicer then mame, especially when running at 800x600 on a D9200 monitor or equivalent.
Give it a shot, and tell me how I can make it nicer!

WARNING - It absolutely requires a decent video card!

Get it here: http://pages.suddenlink.net/aae  :)

SavannahLion

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #1 on: November 03, 2007, 01:54:16 pm »
It should look MUCH nicer then mame, especially when running at 800x600 on a D9200 monitor or equivalent.

What's considered an equivalent to the D9200?

aae

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #2 on: November 03, 2007, 03:02:52 pm »
I was thinking that any 25'' or better VGA montor that can run 800x600 or higher similar to the d9200.

I just know that it looks really, really good on my 1024x768 27'' presentation monitor!!
With the brightness cranked up and the slow phospher of my monitor, it looks very close to the real thing.

Try it, I think you will be impressed. If not, tell me why and I'll try to make it better!

THANKS!

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #3 on: November 03, 2007, 03:40:48 pm »
Try it, I think you will be impressed. If not, tell me why and I'll try to make it better!

I'll have to fiddle with it for a bit. Right now, I'm exclusively using oddball res LCD's at this moment. My CRT computers are in pieces all over the place and, of those, zip use Windows.

I suppose I could try it on my GF's CRT box.

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #4 on: November 03, 2007, 04:58:39 pm »
Site down?
EDIT:  Nevermind... Seems I am having issues with the "internets"
« Last Edit: November 03, 2007, 05:01:36 pm by mcfreak »

Chunce DeLeone

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #5 on: November 06, 2007, 08:17:46 am »
Try to run it and it says "EXT Framebuffer object support needed"

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #6 on: November 06, 2007, 09:26:08 am »
Try to run it and it says "EXT Framebuffer object support needed"

You have to have a fairly new Video Card.  I tried on my laptop first with an Intel G9XX card in it and got the same error.  I am running the $19 Woot Ati PCI Express card on my MAME box and it ran great.

ahofle

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #7 on: November 06, 2007, 12:38:04 pm »
EXCELLENT!!  I'm going to try this tonight on my Betson multisync at 800x600.  The screenshots of the asteroids ship firing look BEAUTIFUL!

ahofle

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #8 on: November 07, 2007, 10:13:35 pm »
Bummer, doesn't work for me either with my ArcadeVGA2.   Is this a particular version of DirectX you are requiring, or hardware?  Just wondering what exactly this needs in a video card that wasn't availble a couple years ago.

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #9 on: November 08, 2007, 07:11:56 am »
HI, sorry for the late response, I have been working 16 hour days this week. When I put this out I realized there may be driver issues, but I did not think that so many people would try to run it on such low spec graphics cards. The rule of thumb that I was using when I wrote it was that if you could run todays games, like Enemy Territory:Quake Wars, or UT2007 you could run this program.

There is a really good reason for this. I wrote several stand alone emulators several years ago, but could never get the graphics to look the way I wanted, with enough realism. I had all but given up when I tried something new, about a year and a half ago, called the EXT_framebuffer_object extension. This is an OPENGL 2.0 extension for offscreen rendering. I was absolutely floored by the result. Asteroids looked nearly perfect, with none of the moire or roping I could never get rid of. I decided to rewrite everything I had ever done, and put it all in one package using this extension. I put a LOT of time and effort into it, learning a lot more about emulation in the process.
The only drawback to this is that only the more expensive cards had OPENGL icd's in their drivers to support this. I had to accept this to get the better quality rendering. I am using a older NVIDIA 6600GT in my arcade machine, with good results. That was the MINIMUM card I am expecting to be used with this program, sorry. I am using an ATI 9800PRO with the 6.14 catalyst drivers with good results, although it will barely run todays games. I have also checked everything with a NVIDIA FX5700 at work, and it runs fine except it can't run full speed on some things.

I expect the next release to get even worse, as I am adding pixel shaders to support glowing vectors. This will require rendering to a different offscreen surface up to 16 times to blur it, and then blending it back to the main picture.

Sorry everyone, I can't go back to MAME type vector rendering. When I compare Black Widow on my 25inch presentation monitor to the real machine. It's really, really close. And Asteroids Deluxe at 1280x1024 on an analog pc monitor looks very good compared to my poor cabinet-less asteroids deluxe sitting on my garage floor.  (Except for the lack of shaking vectors).

Upgrade your video card if you can, It's worth it.
Tim

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #10 on: November 08, 2007, 10:56:05 am »
Well you probably know that most people don't run high spec video cards in their arcade cabinets, and it appears that anyone with an AGP ArcadeVGA also won't be able to use it either.  I'll have to try it out on my gaming PC (8800GT!) just to see the difference. 

[Edited to avoid "generically labeling" AVGA users]
« Last Edit: November 08, 2007, 01:25:23 pm by ahofle »

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #11 on: November 08, 2007, 10:58:30 am »
I'm running Tiny XP Beast with a ATI X550,  should be good enough, but getting error MCVCRT.dll not found,  why would that not be in there?  is that a factor of Beast?

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #12 on: November 08, 2007, 11:19:00 am »
Well you probably know that most people don't run high spec video cards in their arcade cabinets, and it appears that anyone with an ArcadeVGA also won't be able to use it either.  I'll have to try it out on my gaming PC (8800GT!) just to see the difference. 

Be careful how you generically label AVGA users.  There are 3 different versions of the card and I bet the PCIe version will run this just fine.

shardian

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #13 on: November 08, 2007, 11:29:00 am »
I just tried it and got the "need ext framebuffer..." error on start up.
My vid card is a SAPPHIRE RADEON 9250 128MB on my work pc.

A general question. Would it be possible to "streamline" the source to allow the use of different vid cards, or is the whole basis absolutely 100%dependent on a new process that has to have certain hardware, etc. Granted, I am no programmer so I am just shooting in the dark here.

I will say that there are more than a few programmers that would probably be more than willing to help troubleshoot your prog. It is a real neat project - wish I could try it out.

ahofle

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #14 on: November 08, 2007, 01:22:56 pm »
I'm running Tiny XP Beast with a ATI X550,  should be good enough, but getting error MCVCRT.dll not found,  why would that not be in there?  is that a factor of Beast?

I was missing a DLL as well.  I found it here:
http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?msvcr71

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #15 on: November 08, 2007, 01:28:41 pm »
I've just tried now... but the emulator doesn't start.
I got the error message : "I'm sorry, but you need EXT_framebuffer_object support to run this program. Update you card or drivers"  :o
My graphic card is an ATI radeo 9250 with the latest Ati drivers...  :dunno

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #16 on: November 08, 2007, 03:02:06 pm »

I don't have a high end video card, but I'm definitely keeping an eye on this... it could be reason to get one.  It is the lack of vector monitors that keeps many people from building a vector multigame cab.

aae

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #17 on: November 08, 2007, 06:21:31 pm »
OK Guys,

I finally got a chance to do a little research:

The ArcadeVGA (1) uses the ATI 9250  Card, R200 Chipset which does NOT! NOT! support fbo rendering,   :censored:

The ArcadeVGA2 uses the X550 chip (R300 series) which DOES! (at least it says so) support fbo rendering.    ;D

So if you have a 9250 based card, im sorry. It only supports pbuffer rendering, which I could support eventually, but it is not that high on the priority list. I spent a LOT of time getting a version of the fbo code that worked the same on both nvidia and ati chipsets, and right now I am trying to work on adding joystick support with what seems like a zillion possible axis's and stick combinations, fixing menus for floating point values, and getting StarWars and Major Havoc working!

After I rewrite the rendering chain to support monitor screen burn and (finally) glowing vectors, I may then be in a position to go back and support pbuffers.

Thanks to everyone for trying this emu, and I will do my best to fix any other rendering problems people have, and to try to make the emulation more accurate (visually).

Tim

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #18 on: November 09, 2007, 08:03:54 am »
Ok so with X550 and xp beast i found the needed dll file but could not resgister that file because it said couldn't find the output path.   But after that I didn't get the error anymore, however when I double click the program the Please wait screen just blinks and then nothing????  so basically the thing won't start,,,,,I gotta tell ya i haven't been so excited about an emaulator in a long time, not getting this thing to work right away is killing me, please help :notworthy:

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #19 on: November 09, 2007, 08:51:56 am »
OK Guys,

I finally got a chance to do a little research:

The ArcadeVGA (1) uses the ATI 9250  Card, R200 Chipset which does NOT! NOT! support fbo rendering,   :censored:

The ArcadeVGA2 uses the X550 chip (R300 series) which DOES! (at least it says so) support fbo rendering.    ;D

So if you have a 9250 based card, im sorry. It only supports pbuffer rendering, which I could support eventually, but it is not that high on the priority list. I spent a LOT of time getting a version of the fbo code that worked the same on both nvidia and ati chipsets, and right now I am trying to work on adding joystick support with what seems like a zillion possible axis's and stick combinations, fixing menus for floating point values, and getting StarWars and Major Havoc working!

After I rewrite the rendering chain to support monitor screen burn and (finally) glowing vectors, I may then be in a position to go back and support pbuffers.

Thanks to everyone for trying this emu, and I will do my best to fix any other rendering problems people have, and to try to make the emulation more accurate (visually).

Tim


I guess that answers my question then. Your emulator has the ability to eventually support older video cards, it is just not in the cards until the current bugs are worked out. Thats cool. Hope it eventually gets to that point so the whole community can enjoy your work!

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #20 on: November 09, 2007, 09:28:32 am »
OK Guys,

I finally got a chance to do a little research:

The ArcadeVGA (1) uses the ATI 9250  Card, R200 Chipset which does NOT! NOT! support fbo rendering,   :censored:

The ArcadeVGA2 uses the X550 chip (R300 series) which DOES! (at least it says so) support fbo rendering.    ;D


Tim


Slight correction,

The AVGA (1) uses the ATI 7000 series chip and the ATI 9250 series chip.
The AVGA (2) uses the ATI 9250 and the X550 series.

In any case, from your post before about the 9800 series.  I imagine the specs would be 9800 or higher (maybe even 9600).  These aren't exactly the latest and greatest cards, 5 years old?, so you aren't asking for unreasonable system requirements.

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #21 on: November 09, 2007, 11:43:00 am »
Here is the card I am using in my mame machine.  Works just fine with AAE and it was $14.99.  It shows up about once a month on Woot.

ATI Radeon X600SE 128mb PCI Express Video Card



http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=1602925&count=203



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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #22 on: November 09, 2007, 12:36:41 pm »
Slightly OT - how does woot work, and does anyone know of similar deals on AGP cards?

I may be able to make a little bit more sense of the graphics card Q's for you.

Reference link here: http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/12/29/vga_charts_iii/index.html

For ATI - I have a 9200.  The R300 card supports FBO.  The 9200 is an RV280.  (DX8.1 vs. DX9, but I'm not sure that's the defining point.  The 9250 would be the same class.  ATI stopped providing driver support for this card with Catalyst 6.5 (May 2006).  The release notes for Catalyst 6.11 and later which dropped support for this card show the 9500 card as the last supported model, which is by chance an R300 chip.  The 9550 is a later stripped down version of this card, so I suspect that is the cheapest model that will run AAE without crashing, whether it will run it at full-speed, I can't say.

Nvidia added support for this earlier than ATI and their drivers support older hardware better than ATI as well.  I saw on another forum that Nvidia added FBO support beginning with the NV30 chipset, which is the FX5800 series.  I am not sure how this scales downward.  (i.e. I have a FX5200 card, which should be not as good as an FX5800, but is NV34.  I will test it out, but no promises when, and expect it will work but can't say).  In any case for AGP, a Nvidia 6200 card is only a few dollars more, supports Shader Model 3.0, and is based on NV44, so it is likely the best minimum choice for an Nvidia card if you are buying new and don't have an old FX5200 or between card to fall back on.

Hope This Helps!!!! 
It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you, it's what you leave behind you when you go. - R. Travis.
When all is said and done, generally much more is SAID than DONE.

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #23 on: November 09, 2007, 05:00:21 pm »
Hello
I got this emulator running I just have trouble with asteroids it won't let me add credits or play the game and I am using the default settings of 5 for credit 1 to start??? Any Advice or known issues with this?? ??? ???

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #24 on: November 09, 2007, 06:34:39 pm »
Nyeh, I got the "get some fbo support, a-hole" error message.   :laugh2:

Using a Radeon 7000/VE card.
« Last Edit: November 09, 2007, 06:36:24 pm by ChadTower »

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #25 on: November 09, 2007, 06:44:39 pm »

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but will Tac/scan and Tempest work on this emulator??

Thanks,

Nicholas

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #26 on: November 10, 2007, 04:57:47 am »

I just tried the emulator, absolutely amazing!! WOW Asteroids look GOOD!!!

Thank you great work! :cheers:

...but I really need Tac/Scan and and Tempest to work...you see, I'm about to build a
machine based on a spinner...and those are the main games :cry:

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #27 on: November 10, 2007, 05:23:18 pm »
is it possible to launch a game via command line with your new application?  I'd like to bypass the whole wizzy menu and enter strait into the game.

Thanks!
-csa

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #28 on: November 10, 2007, 05:45:44 pm »
is it possible to launch a game via command line with your new application?  I'd like to bypass the whole wizzy menu and enter strait into the game.

Thanks!
-csa
From the included README.TXT file:
USAGE:

AAE gamename

Running AAE from a command prompt with no game will bring up the builtin GUI. This is a simple select screen, and by pressing "Start 1" (usually 1 on the keyboard) you can start the selected game.

From aae's Homepage:
USAGE:

Unzip AAE to the root of your hard disk, and either copy your current, split full mame romsets to the ROMS directory, or hand edit the aae.ini (sorry) to point to your mame rom directory. Run AAE.EXE to start the built-in GUI, or aae  gamename to run a specific game. See gamelist.txt for a full supported gamelist.

***

So yes, it is simple to do.

Having said that, running the game from Windows at a command prompt with the game at a different resolution than the desktop results in the display "jumping" quite a bit, as it appears to me to scale from 1152x864 to 800x600 to 1600x1200 before the game launches (not a huge deal), and then the screen goes black and a white "Please Wait.  Booting" message comes up before the game loads.  I could do without the Please Wait Booting message, or at least a way to disable it, but its not a big deal.
It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you, it's what you leave behind you when you go. - R. Travis.
When all is said and done, generally much more is SAID than DONE.

aae

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #29 on: November 11, 2007, 06:35:51 pm »
Hmm, the resolution switch at startup is a little disconcerting. It shouldn't be doing that.  I will investigate when I have time.

The "Please Wait, Booting" is there to cover up the long, single threaded hang while loading big artwork files.  If someone wants to make a cool graphic in place of it, i'm game.

Yes tempest and tac/scan work!

I made a little bugfix/update today, should make some people happy....

Tim

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #30 on: November 11, 2007, 06:57:26 pm »

Hey Tim!

I can't get TAC/SCAN(and Tempest) to work...

Here's what the aae log said when I tried TAC/SCAN:

Opening, roms\tacscan.zip
file not found in zip,1711a.cpu-u25
Rom loading failure, exiting...

Any advice?

Thanks,

Nicholas

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #31 on: November 11, 2007, 09:24:12 pm »
I am starting to think that the hours I spent making sure that my romsets were synced with the current version of Mame may have been a bad idea.  :-\

You need the current (Mame 117+ or so) romset for tac/scan either in the roms directory, or in the path that you hand edited in the aae.ini file.

It works quite well, with a little static in the samples when switching. I will get that fixed, and soon.

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #32 on: November 12, 2007, 06:44:19 am »
Synching with the current version was likely a good idea - it is a lot easier to find a current ROM than one for R36 or R65 or so - The question is five years from now, when someone picks up AAE version 3, what tells them that they need MAME 0.120 Roms?

Don't worry about the mode switching - see below ...

***

Okay, I got AAE working with a FX5200 card.  More on that below …  (This is update 3 BTW).

I briefly tried Asteroids Deluxe and the vector effects are incredible.

Problems with the emulator (and workarounds) -

The emulator does not scale graphics properly if you are using the GUI.  For example, if I set the GUI to run at 1024x768 and launch my game and tell the game to run at 640x480 - the game runs in a little 640x480 Window at the bottom-left of the screen.  If I set the GUI and the game both at 640x480, all is fine.  If I set the GUI at 640x480 and the game at 800x600, the game displays in at 800x600 in the 640x480 resolution, so you only see the lower third of the game on-screen - again running at 800x600 in the GUI and the game also fixes this.

Running from the command line does not have any problems even if the game is at a different resolution than the desktop (despite what I posted previously - I was using AAE basic and running on a slower card (Quadro) with more background task running).  Command line works fine.

If you wanted to run AAE from the GUI and run different games at different resolutions (for instance Bzone runs much slower and needs a lower resolution than astdelux for me), you need to create say an AAE800 folder and an AAE1024 folder with a full copy of the emu in each one, and even then, you have to remember which games work and only put those roms in each folder, and then you could pick a wrong game and not know until the ROM loading failed.

There is also a slight glitch in Battlezone in that if you disable the single stick hack (I used the MAME trusted E,D,I,K,Space mapping), the right-stick up-down settings are still ignored, and you have to use and invert the single-stick up-down settings from UP and DOWN to K and I and then it works fine. 

I take that back, the single stick hack is working, the dual-stick mode does not work.  Actually, I think many of the inputs are just mapped wrong - it plays fine if you set the following mappings:
Left/Up = Normally should be E, but needs to be I  (This seems to be the right up input)
Left/Down = Normally should be D, but needs to be K  (This seems to be the right down input)
Right/Up = Normally should be I but is ignored, I set it to E or 9 and pressing 9 did nothing.  This seems to be a dead input - it has no effect in single stick mode.
Right/Down = Normally should be K but is ignored, I had it set to D, then changed it to 0 and pressing 0 did nothing.  This also seems to be a dead input and also has no effect in single-stick mode.
Fire = Is mapped correctly, need to be changed to Space instead of L Ctrl for keyboard play, but works fine.
Single Stick Right - I left set to Right - it has no effect, this seems to be mapped correctly.
Single Stick Left - I left set to Left - it has not effect, this seems to be mapped correctly.
Single Stiick Up - Normally should be mapped to UP, needs to be mapped to E.  This works in single stick mode also.  The input seems to be mapped to both single stick up and left stick up.
Single Sitck Down- Normally should be mapped to Down, but needs to be mapped to D.  This also works in single stick mode also.  This input seems to be mapped to both single stick down and left stick down.

There is a very minor glitch in Bzone that if you pause the game, it drops back to a 640x480 window inside the current desktop resolution and then restores when you unpause.  This would be fine if all games did this, but astdelux pauses at the same resolution, so I think it’s a bug.  Llander has this bug also - I didn’t test all the games.

To get the RADAR text in Battlezone, you have to enable bezel artwork.  This is not considered bezel art in MAME, so it confused me for a while.

Some of the game settings can be changed in real-time and others cannot - for example I changed the Gamma, Brightness, and Contrast with the attract screen running and could see the effects of the changes as I made them, but I changed line-width from very thin to tubba and could only see the changes when I exited and re-started the game.

Minor Gripe - Some settings like Vector Glow and ScreenBurn are not working yet, but you can change the settings and they will then get changed back and you will think they didn’t work. 

Also, you don’t get error messages - missing roms, unplayable games in command line mode.

Very Minor but important gripe - my monitor only supports up to 1280x1024, although the graphics card will do much higher.  I use Multires to limit the available settings, but AAE doesn’t read this, so it will let you select 1600x1200 and lock up your screen.  If this happens, if you did it in the GUI, you need to manually edit your aae.ini file, or if it happens in the game you need to manually edit your aae/cfg/gamename.ini file.

I am mostly testing Battlezone, but I want to point out some (minor) flaws with the emulator, and some great things as well.

First off, I am running an XP2800 Barton with something like 1.5G of RAM with an Albatron 128M FX5200 Card and DNA Force 94.24 Drivers.  These drivers seem to work very well in general, BTW.  This or an ATI 9550 with Catalyst 6.11 drivers are probably rock-bottom price wise to run this with any success.  My previous card was a 64M Radeon 9200 running Omega 6.5 drivers, which is slightly faster than the FX5200 (I previously tested other games such as Train Simulator with it), but won’t run AAE.  I am using a KDS VS-7e 17” CRT monitor.

I am very familiar with BattleZone as you might or might not know from MAME.net.  I played the game using MAME R36B12 well into the 0.90’s realease of MAME b/c it sounded good and gave me full framerates (and did that when I had a Pentium 200 also).  Discrete sounds in Asteroids has come a long way and it doesn’t bother me anymore but discrete sound in BattleZone still isn’t there despite repeated requests to fix it.  (EDIT:  I should clarify, by that I mean making the game sound like it sounded when you were playing it, not making the game sound accurate - i.e. if the game output a loud whine at 18,000 Hz, but the speakers only went to 12,000 Hz, so you never heard it, but MAME adds the whine and your PC spealers reproduce it, MAME is accurate, but the game is not realistic.  I recently (a couple years ago) switched to BzoneGL by Tim of astgl, and ran it well at 1152x864.

AAE was fairly slow with the game, so I tried BzoneGL and it was dog-slow with the FX5200.  I went into the driver settings and changed Anti-Aliasing (AA) and anisotropic filtering (AF) from Application controlled to off.  Performance then improved to what I was a bit less than what I was used to seeing with the 9200 card.  Later, I set Image Quality from Performance to High Quality - this is a general purpose computer and I type this review on it, and it makes a big difference in Word, looks better in the games and didn’t seem to affect performance.  AA killed performance, even at 2X, and oddly it seemed even disabled in the game and app-controlled in the driver - leave it disabled with this card.  AF didn’t take much of a performance hit, so I set it back to App Controlled:

Performance:

NOTE: I had Word and Windows Explorer open for most of the testing, but when I closed Word it didn’t seem to matter much to the scores.

BattleZone would only run full speed at 800x600 or less.  At 1024x768, it ran at about 25 FPS out of 40 with noticeable slowdowns.  So the options are:
1)   Run AAE at 800x600 (I still have some tweaking to do with the various settings).
2)   Stay with BzoneGL, which will run full-speed at 1152x864.
3)   Buy a better video card, but I am not sure how much better is required, nor whether memory amount, memory speed, or GPU/GPU speed (or AGP/PCIe) will make the most impact or how good is good enough.

Armora ran full speed at 800x600, 28/38 FPS at 1024x and 24/38 FPS at 1152x and 20 FPS/38 at 1280x.

Oddly, Asteroid only ran fullspeed at 640x (it looked good though), it ran about 51/60 FPS at 800x and looked great and played fine, so if you didn’t hit F11, you wouldn’t know the slowdown was there. 

AstDeluxe ran full speed even at 1280x1024 (highest my monitor supports (and looked great)

Invaders ran full speed at 640x, at 800x it ran 42/60 but with some slowdown.

Llander ran full speed at 1280x and looked great.

Red Baron still needs some work I think.  At 800x it is running at 50/40 FPS (which I thought was supposed to be prevented), and the artwork does not look like the MAME art (which is very good) and there is no way to have the bezel art shown but the game still full-screen edge-to-edge regadless of the crop setting.  (Runs at about 32/40 at 1024x.

Spacduel ran full speed at 800x and 32/45 at 1024x

Starcas ran full speed at 800x and looked incredible, it ran about 28/38 at 1024x but I didn’t try to play it

Tempest only ran at 640x - at 800x it ran at 45/60 with noticeable slowdowns, however, oddly it looked better at 640x to me (but I also didn’t tweak the line widths).

The Good:

Bzone looks better in AAE at 800x600 than in BzoneGL at 800x600.  BzoneGL is sharper at 1152x864 than AAE at 800x600, but I have more adjustments to make.  I decided I like the following settings for my monitor at 800x600:
   Windowed - No
   Gamma - Negative 5%
   Brightess - Negative 3%
   Contrast - 0
   Vsync - Enabled
   FSAA - Disabled
   Smoothing 4X
   Phosphor Trail - Little
   Vector Glow - N/A
   Linewidth - Very Thin
   Pointsize - Bigger (Might need to increase this more)
   Monitor - Analog
   All other settings Yes, except Screenburn is N/A.

Asteroids Deluxe has never looked so good.  (even at 800x600).

I have been using the R36 Bzone artwork with all emulators and am using it with AAE, but the newer MAME-based and AAE artwork finally looks good with this emulator and I may switch it back.

The sound is the best I have heard, with the tank motion clearly present when the tank is turning.  The shots sound a bit weak, but much better than in MAME.  I don’t know if the three volume settings have anything to do with this or not, and I haven’t played with the settings to find out if it can be improved.

Thanks AAE for all your hard work on this!!!!
It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you, it's what you leave behind you when you go. - R. Travis.
When all is said and done, generally much more is SAID than DONE.

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #33 on: November 12, 2007, 07:31:01 am »
More on Red Baron ...

See from Mr. Do's artwork page.

AAE is missing the overlay art that includes the gunsight (not sure if I can just add this from MAME and have it recognized - haven't tried.

Also, the crop option should clip the bezel so I only see the video screen on the monitor and the part of the bezel art that covers it (basically the machine guns).  It doesn't do that.
It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you, it's what you leave behind you when you go. - R. Travis.
When all is said and done, generally much more is SAID than DONE.

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #34 on: November 12, 2007, 10:31:23 am »


aae, I got it to work with the new set!

Thanks!

I don't think that TAC/SCAN look that much different than the mame version, but
I just played it briefly. Maybe it looked like that in the arcade

But Asteroids....wow!!!!


Tiger-Heli

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #35 on: November 12, 2007, 10:41:37 am »
I don't think that TAC/SCAN look that much different than the mame version, but
I just played it briefly. Maybe it looked like that in the arcade
But Asteroids....wow!!!!
That was my take on Tempest as well.

Asteroids, and Astdelux and Star Castle look terrific (although maybe MAME improved Star Castle a bit recently, but it looks great in AAE.

I'm thinking the color vectors may look better when AAE adds "glowing vector" support, whatever that is.
It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you, it's what you leave behind you when you go. - R. Travis.
When all is said and done, generally much more is SAID than DONE.

aae

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Reply to Tiger-Heli !!!
« Reply #36 on: November 12, 2007, 06:03:54 pm »
Hey, thanks for trying the program out, and especially taking the time to test things so thoroughly.

I obviously have some problems with the GUI, I will try to make some corrections later this week, and address some of the things you found. The gui was kind of an afterthought, and I need to rewrite it to make it act more like a game driver. Switching resolutions per game from the GUI definitely needs supported, but is difficult with the code framework I am using.

The battlezone driver is one thing that I never really got around to giving the attention it needed, it was basically the source from bzoneGL thrown into the program.  I'm an asteroids fanatic, and it got all the work.

I pulled out the source from bzoneGL after reading your post, compiled it and compared it to the new code, and your right, there is a lot of room for improvement.  bzoneGL is faster, simply because I am writing directly to the framebuffer there, whereas with aae I am writing to a texture, then blitting that to the screen and scaling it there. If you are using the default smoothing of 4, I am actually blitting it to the screen 4 times slightly jittered, and blending the results.  This is where the major speed hit occurs.  The fact that you got full speed in Asteroids deluxe at a res of 1024+ and not asteroids is really puzzling, they should be exactly alike. I will do some code profiling there and see if I can find out what's up.

Anyways, look for a completely rewritten battlezone driver later this week.  ;D
Try it, and helpfully I will catch all the bugs.

As for what I am calling "glowing vectors", vector monitors are capable of far greater brightness levels then normal pc monitors. When they are cranked up fairly high, the lines bleed over quite a bit, depending on the type of tube and phosphor. This creates a Tron stlye "glow" around the brighter lines. This is what I am going after. I am convinced that it will help create a better level of realism. It won't be quite as bright as the real thing, but it will help give it that arcade accuracy I'm after.

I have a build with it working, but I am not quite happy with the effect yet, and the program takes a good speed hit as well.

Thanks!!
Tim

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #37 on: November 12, 2007, 09:56:40 pm »
This is so going on my cab. In fact, if the support for all the vector games really comes along, I may have to build a vector only cab: those are my favorites anyways...

Didn't work on my test rig with a nVidia Geforce ti 200, but next week a Radeon 2400 Pro HD is going in (just installed a 22" widescreen and the video card can't display the native res) - I can't wait to test this out...

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Re: Reply to Tiger-Heli !!!
« Reply #38 on: November 13, 2007, 06:39:56 am »
AAE - I asked in an E-mail - but from your reply, I'm guessing you might also be the author of BzoneGL?
I obviously have some problems with the GUI, I will try to make some corrections later this week, and address some of the things you found. The gui was kind of an afterthought, and I need to rewrite it to make it act more like a game driver. Switching resolutions per game from the GUI definitely needs supported, but is difficult with the code framework I am using.
Actually, I like the way the GUI works and having it available will make the program more useable by new users.  OTOH, it is much easier for testing and troubleshooting to make short batch files that launch one game from the command line.

Quote
If you are using the default smoothing of 4, I am actually blitting it to the screen 4 times slightly jittered, and blending the results.
Could I interpret this to mean that on the other games that didn't run full-speed, I could maybe stay at the higher resolution and increase speed by reducing smoothing?

Quote
The fact that you got full speed in Asteroids deluxe at a res of 1024+ and not asteroids is really puzzling, they should be exactly alike. I will do some code profiling there and see if I can find out what's up.
One thing I noticed is I don't think Deluxe uses artwork for shots and such, whereas Asteroids does.  I could be wrong about that though.

Quote
Anyways, look for a completely rewritten battlezone driver later this week.  ;D
Try it, and helpfully I will catch all the bugs.
Awesome!!!

Quote
As for what I am calling "glowing vectors" ..."
Cool - I noticed some of the drivers seem to be further along than others - as mentioned Star Castle really looks great whereas Tempest really doesn't look much different than MAME - I'm hoping glowing vectors will improve that.  The work on Asteroids and Astdelux and if Bzone can be brought to or beyond the bzoneGL level is simply incredible!!!
It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you, it's what you leave behind you when you go. - R. Travis.
When all is said and done, generally much more is SAID than DONE.

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Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
« Reply #39 on: November 13, 2007, 08:23:11 am »
When I try to run AAE the sceen pops up for a split second and then goes away, i think it says please wait,  I looked in the log and the only thing that looked off was FSAA was disabled,  would this cause my problems