Hardware 3D Acceleration In Mame

[Fozzy The Bear]

OK so, I know that the Mame Devs don't have much interest in adding propper 3D hardware support to Mame. Why that is, beats the hell out out of me I just don't understand why they can't grasp that using the capabilities of the up to date hardware we have is a good idea. Right now, in my humble oppinion, running Mame is a bit like running windows 3.11 on a quad core. It doesn't make sense to me. 

I know that they claim the purpose of Mame is to archive the original software for the future, but IMHO if we didn't play it, then nobody would much give a damn about that and it would end up being up to museums and national archives to deal with. That of course is not what we want.

So..... What do all of you think.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[nipsmg]

I have to go with the mamedevs on this one. They're always kind of walking this interesting line of legality with the project, and due to their actions and some of their policies (i.e., not emulating revenue generating games, etc) they have kept themselves from being sued into the dirt by the game manufacturers so far.  I trust in their judgement on this.

If you're going to truly emulate a game, you have to emulate most if not all of the components, including the 3d accelerator used in the game.  This is obviously a bottleneck, but sidestepping it defeats the purpose and starts to poison mame with all kinds of hacks that would get ugly quick.

What i would LOVe to see though, is the ability to offload some of the processing over to the GPU.  I've seen applications for this before and that might be an interesting compromise.

[shardian]

I can't really think of any non-playable 3-d games that I really want to play that bad. Once you get into that era, there are arcade perfect ports on consoles and PC. The only thing you wouldn't have is coin-op.

Also, adding that kind of support to MAME would more than likely bog down and bloat the code, and cause problems with the 4000 other games that are already perfectly fine.

[Fozzy The Bear]

I can't really think of any non-playable 3-d games that I really want to play that bad. Once you get into that era, there are arcade perfect ports on consoles and PC. The only thing you wouldn't have is coin-op.

True... but when games like Daytona, Manx TT, Time Chrisis 2, Virtua Cop series, House Of The Dead etc etc  are now falling out of the time limits, isn't it time that Mame could run them?? Or is Mame really just about running 80's and very early 90's stuff??

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[shardian]

Or is Mame really just about running 80's and very early 90's stuff??

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

I believe "running" is the key word there. They'll document the new stuff, but it is just too much work for too little payoff to streamline them to run on current pc hardware. Don't worry Fozzy, once the late 90's early 00's games are 10-20 years old, I'm sure our pc's will run them just fine.

[Fozzy The Bear]

Or is Mame really just about running 80's and very early 90's stuff??

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

I believe "running" is the key word there. They'll document the new stuff, but it is just too much work for too little payoff to streamline them to run on current pc hardware. Don't worry Fozzy, once the late 90's early 00's games are 10-20 years old, I'm sure our pc's will run them just fine.

Manx TT is already 13 years old... Feb 1995.
Daytona similarly more than 10 years. etc etc....

I agree with you that "running" is the key word... and I also agree with nipsmg when he says that the mame code shouldn't be poluted. But I'm not sure it is polution to add a hardware 3D block to handle the output to current hardware. If that's the case then nobody has any excuse for running mame on a VGA monitor or an LCD. Because by that argument you're poluting the original game.

On top of that what about things like "Off Road Challenge" Midway 1997.... That's running on a PC with a Voodoo card in it anyway. Not to mention the fact that 90% of games past that date are running on PC's anyway and only need the protection removed from the CHD to work.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[lcddream]

the mame people are only concerned with running the games the way they were originally run....most if not all cases with cpu power.

they aren't concerned with 3d acceleration.

[ark_ader]

Not a bad idea Fozzy.

Maybe there will be a flavour out there with that in mind.

I agree with with what lcddream said.

Console ports are a good alternative.

[mrserv0n]

Fozzy I have brought this same topic up so many times on forums. I can see why they won't do it, but the point you make is so true that if the games don't play well who the hell cares if they are salvaged.

With mame being into the 2003ish era for games you are now going to come across more chd titles then rom sets. We can only hope Zinc continues to update there software and use that for our 3d emulation however they don't support Carnevil, gauntlet legends and many other great CHDs that are already out.

As far as the legal issue, look, adding 3d emulation to your software is not going to make or break the legality of your emulator. Im sorry it just isn't.

I think that in time as they begin to dump 2004+ year titles the dev team themselves may sit and think, ok we have added another 10gb of chds that would be playable if we had 3d acceleration.. Whats the point of our project again? Preserve 70gb of chds that don't play and just sit on hard drives...Umm..


Or someone did make the point that in 5 years the chd titles will probably run on cpu power alone since they will be so fast by them, Just a shame we have to wait so long to play a game thats 12 years old

[Fozzy The Bear]

Not a bad idea Fozzy.
Maybe there will be a flavour out there with that in mind.
I agree with with what lcddream said.
Console ports are a good alternative.

I agree with him as well.....

               But I think it's about time they really started considering if it doesn't make much more sense to start offloading the processing to the graphics chips and GPU's. Most of the graphics hardware we have now, even on low end machines is quite capable of producing a staggering performance increase in the code that is running on the main processor, when the load is lifted off it.

               Given the results of this poll so far, it seems that the majority of people using their software would certainly welcome this. I appreciate that Mame is not run as a democracy, but when the majority of your end users are asking for the same thing, then it's really time to start listening to them. Maybe some of the Mame Devs would like to respond to all this. I know at least a couple of them are members of this forum.

If they do respond lets hope it's not with the usual and now a little tired responses, and that they are prepared to listen to what people want from Mame.

And also well said "mrserv0n"

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[FrizzleFried]

Aren't there 3d accelerated variants of MAME already?

[Fozzy The Bear]

Aren't there 3d accelerated variants of MAME already?

None that I know of that actually offload the graphics processing properly. Acellerating the output without actually changing the way the data is initially processed doesn't really achieve a lot.

If somebody has a list of hardware accelerated versions then maybe they could be benchmarked to find out if they run the 3D stuff and CHD's properly.

Aaron Giles did do a stand alone hardware accelerated emululator for "Radikal Bikers" a few years back, which worked! but then said "of course none of this will end up in Mame"  My question is: Well why the hell not!!!

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear) 

[BASS!]

Theres,

MAMEUIFX32 - http://mame32fx.altervista.org/home.htm
Mame Plus Plus (last was .119) http://www.kaillera.com/download.php

one other I cant remember Im going to hunt. I also don't know how much they offload if all, but I know they have dfx effects.

[Fozzy The Bear]

Theres,
MAMEUIFX32 - http://mame32fx.altervista.org/home.htm
Mame Plus Plus (last was .119) http://www.kaillera.com/download.php
one other I cant remember Im going to hunt. I also don't know how much they offload if all, but I know they have dfx effects.

Not quite the same thing... They do have a lot of unnoficial bug fix hacks in them, and are quite often better than the official release, but they don't actually provide 3D hardware accelerated drivers.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[BASS!]

Yeah just get zinc, CrystalEMU, NullDC, model2 emulator etc.... they are playable

[BORIStheBLADE]

I'm with you on this one Fozz....
Mame needs to evolve with the hardware its running on. I can't see it bloating the Mame code.

[Xiaou2]

 Not everybody is going to own the same Graphics card.   And more than likely, each card will vary in its
power and timings.    If thats the case...  then that could throw off the entire timing of the events.  While
it may not be a huge offshift - and probably not even noticeable to anyone...  the things is that it
IS different from the original hardware.    And that is why mame would not do it.

 However, if anyone is interested,  they are free to make their own emulators,  as many have.
Im sure if you are willing to put your money where your big mouth is,  you can buy a programmer
to do whatever your hearts desire.
 

[Hurray Banana]

The reason you won't see proper 3D support in MAME anytime soon is because the coding is far beyond the capabilities of the MAME developers.  Anyone that can do it and has any interest in doing so has already contributed to other software.

I'm assuming you're being sarcastic, as setting up the core hardware emulation in mame is a more complex job than sorting out a rendering pipeline for the 3d games. I think quite a few of the devs would be capable. IMHO

[ahofle]

I'm assuming you're being sarcastic, as setting up the core hardware emulation in mame is a more complex job than sorting out a rendering pipeline for the 3d games. I think quite a few of the devs would be capable. IMHO

He's just being a ---tallywhacker---, as his avatar indicates.  Reverse engineering encrypted roms is probably 100 times more difficult than 3D programming..

[headkaze]

Absolutly, emulating a 3d game in a 2d API is far more complex than using any sort of native 3d platform be it Direct3d or OpenGL.

[BASS!]

I know a lot of people have talked about this. Many people have taken the code and gone many ways to play their favorite games

Raine
Zinc
Kawaks
Cps3
Crystal system
etc

I like that Mame emulates everything. I just filter the mame games I can't play and just use the various emulators from my frontend. Now that I have a better computer, I no longer use Raine, Kawaks, Cps3. As the hardware evolves I will stop using other emulators. I don't want them to bloat the code too much just to play a soccer game I myself will never play, or in that case 75 new japanese 3d mahjong games. Just get it to archive everything, and the clever will figure out how to bring the newly surfaced ripped roms to a emulator near you
Just my opinion

[u_rebelscum]

If it was easy, mame might have it already.
It's not easy.  A couple dozen arcade 3d hardware systems, running on a range of PC hardware, emulated so it's cross platform-ish. 

If the speed increase was huge for most games, mame might have it already.
It would be no increase for 90-95% of the games in mame*, and mame would still not be as fast as the other emus in those games that would speed up.

If people who don't code stopped bugging MameDev about using 3d HW, mame might get it.


It's going to happen, but not soon, and a lot more not-sooner if they are bugged about it.


*How calculated: 6948 games * 5% = ~347 games, 10% = ~694 games.  I don't think mame has 700 3d hardware games yet, and am thinking 5% is closer, unless you include games like Irobot and HardDrivin' and others that 3d in software in the original machines.

[Fozzy The Bear]

If people who don't code stopped bugging MameDev about using 3d HW, mame might get it.

I do code!....... I don't code Mame, I do code 3D... So! by your logic that entitles me to.

In any case, this is not bugging the developers, if I wanted to do that I'd go do it on their forum and repeat it persistently. I didn't.

It's a question to see what people here actually want in Mame, in the hope that knowing it's what people want to see in there, the Devs will start to take notice of the apparently 75% of end users on here that want to see that happen. That's just a bit more subtle and polite than bugging them about it, which is not being done here.

Not everybody is going to own the same Graphics card.   And more than likely, each card will vary in its
power and timings.    If thats the case...  then that could throw off the entire timing of the events.

3D Acceleration doesn't work like that. Yes people have different graphics cards, but so do people running commercial PC games. 3D acceleration is about running speed and frame rates of the graphics, not the timing rates coded in the game. Those are separate entities and have separate timing cycles.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[nipsmg]

Regardless of the "demand" of users here, I don't see 3d acceleration anytime soon.  Mame has been able to keep its purity for some time now.  Sure there were a few missteps, but they've pretty much kept to their original plan.

If the "demand" is high enough, I'm sure some other standalone emulators (i.e. ZINC, etc) will come out to give you 3d accelerated versions of these games. 

Dont' forget, MAME is a project that is built on the backs of tons of volunteers, people who take their time for free and, for the most part, do this for the love of the hobby.  I've teen plenty of emulator authors quit coding their projects due to the "demands" of end users.  Nobody is entitled to anything.

I'm sure someone will do something.  If not, get a book, learn some ASM and c/c++, and start coding!

I wish I had the time, or I would too

[CheffoJeffo]

As much as I don't always agree with the MAMEDevs, I almost always disagree with folks who think the Devs should place priorities on playing games as opposed to what they do.

At the very least, they have to choose what to do with their time.

As we all know, time can be hard to come by. Otherwise we would all have shiny repro Tron sticks and StarWars yokes coming out our collective ying yangs ... 

[u_rebelscum]

If people who don't code stopped bugging MameDev about using 3d HW, mame might get it.

I do code!....... I don't code Mame, I do code 3D... So! by your logic that entitles me to.

Cool.  So.... are you going to add the feature, and prove my forecast wrong?   

In any case, this is not bugging the developers, if I wanted to do that I'd go do it on their forum and repeat it persistently. I didn't.

Nothing wrong with the post, as long as nobody refers to it when bugging mamedev.  This has been requested so many times, and I hope this post won't add to it.  And mamedev has said the more they are bugged about something like this, the longer they will put it off.  So it's more a warning to all readers to not bug mamedev about this.


We as users, freeloading on other people's free time and effort, have no, zero, zip, zilch, nada, nien, say in what those people should or should not do.  (We can say what we do, of course.)

[Fozzy The Bear]

As much as I don't always agree with the MAMEDevs, I almost always disagree with folks who think the Devs should place priorities on playing games as opposed to what they do.

I do agree with you on that.... This was not about making demands and I wouldn't presume to do that. I'm well aware and very appreciative of the efforts that do go into coding Mame.

This has always been an issue though..... What I do find odd is that Mame's original developer didn't set out with the aim of preserving the purity of the hardware. He wrote it, as even he will admit, so that he could play a few games of Pac-Man for free on his university computers. The priorities have, it seems, changed.

When we, the end users, have entirely different priorities to the developers, their right to do whatever they want and take their software in whatever direction they wish, is of course absolutely respected and so it should be.

This has been requested so many times, ........................

If it's been requested so many times that they're fed up of hearing it, you'd think they might take the hint that it's what the majority of people want to see happen?? yes??

At the end of the day as I said, it's their choice to make, but they shouldn't be upset by people asking for things to be included, because it means people are using their software. If there were no end users then the software would have no point.
 
Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[Hoopz]

This has always been an issue though..... What I do find odd is that Mame's original developer didn't set out with the aim of preserving the purity of the hardware. He wrote it, as even he will admit, so that he could play a few games of Pac-Man for free on his university computers. The priorities have, it seems, changed.

IMHO, as Mame developed and became more popular, it became more of a target.  With it's stated objective and by sticking with it, it may help explain what Mamedevs are doing and why.  That, in turn, keeps the wolves at bay.

When it was one person writing the emulation to play a few games, who cared?  Certainly not the manufacturers who were still creating cabinets for arcades.  But once it became a global product, it gained a lot of publicity. 

[CheffoJeffo]

As much as I don't always agree with the MAMEDevs, I almost always disagree with folks who think the Devs should place priorities on playing games as opposed to what they do.

I do agree with you on that.... This was not about making demands and I wouldn't presume to do that. I'm well aware and very appreciative of the efforts that do go into coding Mame.

 

Cool with me Fozz ... I don't think that your appreciation is always shared by the whole user base (e.g. paper-pushing twerps who say stupid ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- like the MAMEDevs lack the skill, when they themselves have never written code more sophisiticated than "Hello World"), though, so I wanted to make the point.

For my part, the hardware for those games is still readily available, so I am far less concerned about playability than I am with finding solutions for gameboards that I can't fix.

 

[Fozzy The Bear]

For my part, the hardware for those games is still readily available, so I am far less concerned about playability than I am with finding solutions for gameboards that I can't fix.

That's true for me as well at times..... I have to admit to having fixed an Area 51 cab using a Mame chd image, after the original HD failed. The upside to that one was that it ended up with a later revision of the software as well 

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[BORIStheBLADE]

 mamedev has said the more they are bugged about something like this, the longer they will put it off.  So it's more a warning to all readers to not bug mamedev about this.

So are these guys gods or something?

[CheffoJeffo]

mamedev has said the more they are bugged about something like this, the longer they will put it off.  So it's more a warning to all readers to not bug mamedev about this.

So are these guys gods or something?

Since these are the guys that YOU are bitching about ... YES, they are Gods to those of us who simply leech off of their efforts.

If you want to write the code or pay somebody to write the code (AND get it included in the project by those who carry this important work on), then either step up or shut up.

I have no problems with asking the MAMEDevs to do things. While I don't think that they should change their course, if they choose to, then cool.

If you are someone who has never actually contributed to the project, then you don't really have leg to stand on with your smartass, do you ?

 

[BORIStheBLADE]

mamedev has said the more they are bugged about something like this, the longer they will put it off.  So it's more a warning to all readers to not bug mamedev about this.

So are these guys gods or something?

Since these are the guys that YOU are bitching about ... YES, they are Gods to those of us who simply leech off of their efforts.

If you want to write the code or pay somebody to write the code (AND get it included in the project by those who carry this important work on), then either step up or shut up.

I have no problems with asking the MAMEDevs to do things. While I don't think that they should change their course, if they choose to, then cool.

If you are someone who has never actually contributed to the project, then you don't really have leg to stand on with your smartass, do you ?

 

You might want to double check my post before you assume mine are bitching.
This is the first time I have made a comment on mame's usability. I don't have a problem with Mame for starters.
As far as I'm concerned getting mad and putting the brakes on software because user suggest certain features is childish. Thus the comment.

Its just like what you see on tv, if you get offended you can turn the channel.

If everyone was truly concerned with "running the games the way they were originally run" then no one would be using any of the LED stuff and encoders now would we.

[CheffoJeffo]

If everyone was truly concerned with "running the games the way they were originally run" then no one would be using any of the LED stuff and encoders now would we.

Sorry if I misjudged your post, but your closing kinda makes my point ... you seem more concerned about what you want than about what the people actually doing the work want ...

[WaRpEd]

Iam more than happy to let the mamedevs decide what is a priority or not.
The legal tightrope they walk to keep free emulation and games working and working quite well IMHO is something I wouldn't attempt to code in my wildest dreams.
Would 3D acceleration change some read Small percentage of games faster, Yes.
Would coding drivers for every type of graphics cards take forever, Yes.
In the end we are NOT paying for other peoples time and expertise.
Just my 2 cents

[Fozzy The Bear]

.
Would coding drivers for every type of graphics cards take forever, Yes.

No it wouldn't!! That's the point. You don't code drivers for every graphics card. That's why you use an API (Application Programing Interface) Like Direct-X or Open GL. You code for Direct-X or Open GL, and each graphics card's drivers support that.

And no! it wouldn't change the running speed of a small percentage of games, it'd change the stability and running speed of a very large number of games. Because, for ALL games that you run through the API, you are taking away excessive workload on the processor and giving it to the graphics GPU to handle.

My point being... what's the point of having graphics GPU's if they refuse to use them. That's what they're there for.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[ark_ader]

I think where the guys are coming from is this:

People who live in greenhouses do not throw stones.

Personally I do not really care past version .84.  I would like to see the laserdisc thing come out, but will gladly glide on with Daphne.  I just want to play the old classics.  Not Daytona or any of the crap games now residing in a local Game Works requiring oodles of Quad core processing for a ditsy 68K game.

If the mamedev team closed its doors, I would still be happy.  I would like to see a stable release every month or so instead of these weekly ones.  That way I would know which day of the week to rename the roms....

Lets all agree that Fozzy has a good point, and we look forward to the prospect of the Mamedev team pulling off some 3D stuff in the future.  When?  Who knows?  Maybe you can donate some $$$ to motivate them to your cause.

Lets just not try to wind the mamedevs up to the point that they do not release any more binaries to the public. 

If that happens, I bet there will be a mob throwing a different kind of stone. 

[SavannahLion]

I know that they claim the purpose of Mame is to archive the original software for the future, <snip>

Um... apparently it's actually:

MAME is strictly a non-profit project. Its main purpose is to be a reference to the inner workings of the emulated arcade machines.

Unless I'm misinterpreting this incorrectly, MAME's stated goal isn't to archive the original software it's supposedly to document the original hardware.

By this, it is taken that by leveraging hardware acceleration or by splitting the code to run on SMP or some variant (for those that didn't leverage multiple CPU's in the first place) diverges from their stated goal. On this note, I asked the exact same question as Fozzy. For people who already own Voodoo cards (like myself) why not leverage them if they are the same GPU's used in the arcades? The answer that came back, after a lot of argument, is that doing so isn't emulating the hardware in question. Yes it would work, but it isn't, "referencing," the hardware. And when that hardware dies, which it is bound to do, then the Devs are right back at square one again.

Personally, I feel that their idea of "referencing" the inner workings of emulated machines isn't exactly strictly kosher. For instance, as a direct tool for the repair and upkeep of arcade machines, I feel that MAME doesn't exactly qualify as a reference source. Yes, I'm aware that a lot of people leverage ROM's and CHD's to fix damaged software in the main systems, but that's an indirect side effect of MAME. You're not actually using MAME to fix the cabinet.  Come to think of it, I have never heard of anyone actually downloading and examining the MAME code to figure out how to repair or replace some esoteric IC or component on an arcade PCB. For that, people either already know or they leverage some other reference source. Then there's the more esoteric hardware that MAME seems to have a lot of trouble deciding what to do with, such as force feedback. At a very minimum, MAME should be doing something consistent with the force feedback signals and others (the keyboard LED hack is a ---smurfing--- joke) without forcing everyone to apply a patch and recompile so people like Randy, Andy, and the guy reverse engineering the Star Wars yoke can offer working hardware to us.

What about when some of the more recent games hit the market? How could MAME ever hope to properly emulate games like Police 911 (aka Police 24/7)? WTF are they going to do? Assign body movements to keys so people can use their DDR pads for motion? That would be an insult.

While I agree with Fozzy on this, I'm not sure leveraging 3D cards is quite the right solution at this point. I'm more interested in better leveraging of the multiple core CPU's we're seeing or breaking MAME apart into a core engine with a grouped packages that specifically focus on radically different requirements of the hardware they're emulating. For instance, why bloat the core MAME code to support multi-threading that's bound to be required for modern games leveraging multiple CPU's when what Pac-Man really needs is a color fix? By diverging MAME into distinct groups, that would allow Devs to extend MAME in directions they otherwise couldn't go.

[BORIStheBLADE]

If everyone was truly concerned with "running the games the way they were originally run" then no one would be using any of the LED stuff and encoders now would we.

Sorry if I misjudged your post, but your closing kinda makes my point ... you seem more concerned about what you want than about what the people actually doing the work want ...

It might sound like that, but I already said I'm happy with the way Mame is. Alot of people seem to want to emulate with older / slower computers. To get the most they might... be able to benefit from hardware acceleration.

Your right, this might be more of what end users want instead of what the dev teams purpose is. But lets be honest,  alot of the wording Mames dev team uses has alot to do with them not getting in trouble.  These guys found a way to play older arcade games and not get into legal issues, end of story and my hats off to them.

[ark_ader]

What about when some of the more recent games hit the market? How could MAME ever hope to properly emulate games like Police 911 (aka Police 24/7)? WTF are they going to do? Assign body movements to keys so people can use their DDR pads for motion? That would be an insult.

Eye Toy does a pretty good job in that department.