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Main => Software Forum => Topic started by: aae on November 03, 2007, 11:17:15 am

Title: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: 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 (http://pages.suddenlink.net/aae)  :)
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: SavannahLion 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?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: aae 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!
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: SavannahLion 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.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: mcfreak on November 03, 2007, 04:58:39 pm
Site down?
EDIT:  Nevermind... Seems I am having issues with the "internets"
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Chunce DeLeone on November 06, 2007, 08:17:46 am
Try to run it and it says "EXT Framebuffer object support needed"
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: mcfreak 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.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: ahofle 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!
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: ahofle 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.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: aae 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
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: ahofle 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]
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Chunce DeLeone 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?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: 2600 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.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: shardian 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.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: ahofle 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
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Darth Nuno 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
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: ChadTower 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.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: aae 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
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Chunce DeLeone 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:
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: shardian 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!
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: 2600 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.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: mcfreak 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://s3-external-1.amazonaws.com/wootsaleimages/ATI_Radeon_X600SE_128mb_PCI_Express_CardxzjDetail.jpg)

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

Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Tiger-Heli 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 (https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/Catalyst_611_release_notes.html) 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!!!! 
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: crisalan44 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?? ??? ???
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: ChadTower 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.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: AE35 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
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: AE35 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:
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: csa3d 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
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Tiger-Heli 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.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: aae 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
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: AE35 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
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: aae 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.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Tiger-Heli 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!!!!
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Tiger-Heli on November 12, 2007, 07:31:01 am
More on Red Baron ...

See (http://www.mameworld.net/mrdo/mame_artwork/redbaron.png) 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.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: AE35 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!!!!

Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Tiger-Heli 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.
Title: Reply to Tiger-Heli !!!
Post by: aae 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
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Havok 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...
Title: Re: Reply to Tiger-Heli !!!
Post by: Tiger-Heli 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!!!
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Chunce DeLeone 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
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Tiger-Heli on November 13, 2007, 09:33:25 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
I assume you are running it from a command line - try double-clicking AAE and launching the game from the GUI.  You should see an error message then.  My guess would be either bad roms or bad rom paths.

Disabling FSAA won't cause it, I had to do that also, and it works for me.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Chunce DeLeone on November 13, 2007, 10:10:54 am
I've tried it from CMD line and the exe,  and both have a quick flash and then nothing,  also in the log the Rom path is verified,  however if I have bad roms would that cause this error, I'm not even getting into the gui, not even able to choose a rom, just a quick please wait screen pops up and goes away,   :banghead: :censored:
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Tiger-Heli on November 13, 2007, 11:27:21 am
Odd - no it should come up to the GUI whether the ROMS are good or not.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Chunce DeLeone on November 15, 2007, 08:19:44 am
Maybe its because I didn't register MSVCRT71.dll, and just placed it into the AEE directory?  I tried some different roms and I get a loading screen then it dissapears, its weird.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: aae on November 18, 2007, 08:59:07 am
Chunce,

Are you running XP or Vista? You should get something on the screen no matter what. Can you send the aae.log file to my email address on the webpage?

Thanks!
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: aae on November 18, 2007, 09:00:29 am
BTW, Update 5 is now out, and if anyone likes battlezone, or red baron, you need to update to this version!  ;D

Thanks!


Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Chunce DeLeone on November 19, 2007, 08:45:46 am
AAE,
I have TinyXP Beast Edition,  I will copy the log and post tomorrow.  thanks
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Chunce DeLeone on November 20, 2007, 11:15:27 am
I forgot sorry, I will paste tommorrow,  this is very important to my cab, 
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Chunce DeLeone on November 26, 2007, 07:51:08 am
Keys Save not found! - Setting Defaults
Setting timer resolution to Min Supported: 1 (ms)
Number of supported joysticks: 0
Number of supported games 60
Paths are aae:C:\Vector\aae.ini game:C:\Vector\cfg\aae.ini override val: 0
Starting
Loading configuration information for aae
Configured Mame Rom Path is C:\ROMS\MAME\roms
Available Screen modes for ATI2DVAG
640x480x16-bit color (30 Hz)
640x480x16-bit color (60 Hz)
640x480x32-bit color (30 Hz)
640x480x32-bit color (60 Hz)
720x480x16-bit color (30 Hz)
720x480x16-bit color (60 Hz)
720x480x32-bit color (30 Hz)
720x480x32-bit color (60 Hz)
720x576x16-bit color (59 Hz)
720x576x16-bit color (60 Hz)
720x576x32-bit color (59 Hz)
720x576x32-bit color (60 Hz)
800x480x16-bit color (60 Hz)
800x480x32-bit color (60 Hz)
800x600x16-bit color (56 Hz)
800x600x16-bit color (60 Hz)
800x600x32-bit color (56 Hz)
800x600x32-bit color (60 Hz)
848x480x16-bit color (60 Hz)
848x480x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1024x768x16-bit color (43 Hz)
1024x768x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1024x768x32-bit color (43 Hz)
1024x768x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1152x864x16-bit color (43 Hz)
1152x864x16-bit color (47 Hz)
1152x864x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1152x864x32-bit color (43 Hz)
1152x864x32-bit color (47 Hz)
1152x864x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1280x720x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1280x720x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1280x768x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1280x768x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1280x800x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1280x800x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1280x960x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1280x960x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1280x1024x16-bit color (43 Hz)
1280x1024x16-bit color (47 Hz)
1280x1024x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1280x1024x32-bit color (43 Hz)
1280x1024x32-bit color (47 Hz)
1280x1024x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1360x768x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1360x768x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1360x1024x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1360x1024x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1400x1050x16-bit color (30 Hz)
1400x1050x16-bit color (41 Hz)
1400x1050x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1400x1050x32-bit color (30 Hz)
1400x1050x32-bit color (41 Hz)
1400x1050x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1440x900x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1440x900x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1600x1200x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1600x1200x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1680x1050x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1680x1050x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1792x1344x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1792x1344x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1800x1440x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1800x1440x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1856x1392x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1856x1392x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1920x1080x16-bit color (30 Hz)
1920x1080x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1920x1080x32-bit color (30 Hz)
1920x1080x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1920x1200x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1920x1200x32-bit color (60 Hz)
1920x1440x16-bit color (60 Hz)
1920x1440x32-bit color (60 Hz)
2048x1536x16-bit color (60 Hz)
2048x1536x16-bit color (66 Hz)
2048x1536x32-bit color (60 Hz)
2048x1536x32-bit color (66 Hz)
2560x1600x16-bit color (30 Hz)
2560x1600x16-bit color (41 Hz)
2560x1600x16-bit color (60 Hz)
2560x1600x32-bit color (30 Hz)
2560x1600x32-bit color (41 Hz)
2560x1600x32-bit color (60 Hz)
Current res is number 6
Current res is number 7
FSAA DISABLED!!!!
Max Texture Size supported by this card: 4096x4096
ARB_Multisample Extension Supported
Anisotropic Filtering Supported
Your video card supports vysnc, Excellent!
EXT_Frambuffer Object Supported, good as this is required ')!.
Successful .png upload: error.png
Successful .png upload: info.png
Successful .png upload: buttons.png
Successful .png upload: joystick.png
Successful .png upload: spinner.png
Successful .png upload: settings.png
Successful .png upload: video.png
Successful .png upload: sound.png
Successful .png upload: gamma.png
Successful .png upload: ship.png
Successful .png upload: shipeng.png
Successful .png upload: explosion.png
Successful .png upload: star.png
Successful .png upload: font1.png
8cd5

Framebuffer Complete! A-OK

Finished configuration of OpenGl sucessfully
Opening, aaeres\aaeres.zip
Opening Sample - error.wav
Created AAE Sample - error.wav
Opening Sample - hiss.wav
Created AAE Sample - hiss.wav
Opening Sample - psnoise.wav
Created AAE Sample - psnoise.wav
Opening Sample - flyback.wav
Created AAE Sample - flyback.wav
Opening Sample - opening.wav
Created AAE Sample - opening.wav
Opening Sample - key.wav
Created AAE Sample - key.wav
Opening Sample - idle.wav
Created AAE Sample - idle.wav
Opening Sample - explode1.wav
Created AAE Sample - explode1.wav
Opening Sample - fire.wav
Created AAE Sample - fire.wav
No Game Selected - Running Built In GUI...
MENU SET LINEWIDTH to 2.500000
Closing log
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Darth Nuno on December 14, 2007, 02:53:48 am
I plan to buy a new video card for testing this emulator. What would be the best model to buy... cheap please, because it'll only to run this emulator (I don't want to run latest PC games....). I don't have a PCI Express slot... only AGP model please  ;)
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Minwah on December 14, 2007, 05:17:44 am
This looks awesome...I don't think I can use it in my cab (AVGA) which is a shame, but I look forward to trying it on my desktop!
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Tiger-Heli on December 15, 2007, 06:21:58 am
I plan to buy a new video card for testing this emulator. What would be the best model to buy... cheap please, because it'll only to run this emulator (I don't want to run latest PC games....). I don't have a PCI Express slot... only AGP model please  ;)
I basically posted this info earlier in the thread, but for Nvidia anything newer than an FX5200 should work, for ATI, I think you need newer than a 9550 (verified a 9200 does NOT work and pretty sure a 9250 will not either.)

Both of those are pretty basic and the minimum for not having it halt with errors, but a better card would be recommended.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: dmckean on December 30, 2007, 10:25:21 am
Wow!

This emulator is pretty cool. I've only played Asteriods on it so far but it's the best experience I've had with Asteriods yet! It's not really like a vector but it captures that frantic feel better than the other emulators.

Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Nologic on January 04, 2008, 03:34:39 pm
Anyone have links to a proper clrmamepro dat for this? Heh I like to cross my t's and dot my i's. :)

By the way very nice emulator, I look forward to trying out newer builds.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: telengard on February 27, 2008, 02:36:59 am
aae did you also author the GL emulators from a few years ago?  If so welcome back.  I'm looking forward to trying this out.  Black Widow is one of my favorite games.  I would love to build a vector only cab too, this could be the reason to do it!

~telengard
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Tiger-Heli on February 27, 2008, 08:35:26 am
Dat file is here: http://www.logiqx.com/Dats/

And yes, AAE author = bzoneGL author = Asteroids GL author = ...
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ummon on April 10, 2008, 09:58:39 pm
I'm just bumping up awareness of this project. A recent update on the homepage shows some nice progress.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Farb on May 22, 2008, 09:10:31 am
This is a very cool project! Has there been any update for joystick button support?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Darth Nuno on July 21, 2008, 11:32:17 am
Wow... I finally test this *amazing* emulator. I got on the ebay a graphic card only for this project : a gforce 6600, and it's wonderfull  :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:

(http://www.arcadelifestyle.net/forforum/asteroids.jpg)

Many thanks to the author of this emulator  :applaud: :applaud: :applaud:

I really hope you'll improve more games for it, as you did for one  of the best one : Asteroids  :cheers:
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: TheShanMan on July 21, 2008, 12:52:29 pm
I'm somewhat interested in this project, but it's been a LONG time since the last beta release. I emailed around a week ago with no response. I hope development is continuing and a new release will come soon.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ummon on July 21, 2008, 04:43:29 pm
A long while since that last release, but not altogether that long since the latest development update, which looked promising.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Darth Nuno on July 24, 2008, 03:49:55 pm
A very strange thing.

In many games, the refresh rate (when you press F11) shows very strange values  ???

By exemple, Battlezone gives me 40 / 40 fps ?
Space Wars gives me 38 / 38 fps ?

So I presume that is the reason why these 2 games are not so 'smooth' during the animation.
I'm using a 2.6Ghz processor, so It can't be the reason ..

BUT asteroids gives me something 'normal' : 60/60 fps and looks perfect.

Any idea or tips to improve the animation ?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ummon on July 25, 2008, 10:16:31 pm
I think those are some he's working on. I did a detailed testing of it and found various issues with many games, which is why I'm not using it yet. Sit and wait.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Darth Nuno on September 07, 2008, 01:03:55 pm
I really hope the author of this great emulator won't give up  :o

The work done until the last version is spectacular (Asteroids is incredibly amazing)  :applaud:
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: waveryder on September 10, 2008, 04:10:03 am
Finally updated my cab comp and GCard. I have to say this emu made the job totally worth it! Fantastic. Can't wait to see how far this project goes. But for the love of god WHY NO STARWARS yet! :hissy:
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: 88mph on September 11, 2008, 03:33:17 pm
Finally updated my cab comp and GCard. I have to say this emu made the job totally worth it! Fantastic. Can't wait to see how far this project goes. But for the love of god WHY NO STARWARS yet! :hissy:

So I take it that the description of this emulator over at CAESAR is incorrect?  Darn, I was getting my hopes up that AAE emulates Star Wars...
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: bent98 on September 29, 2008, 08:28:31 pm
looks like a new version came out!!!
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ummon on September 29, 2008, 08:34:49 pm
Apparently, yes. Nice.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: polaris on September 29, 2008, 08:42:30 pm
it says star wars is included now.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: bent98 on September 29, 2008, 10:41:02 pm
Anyone test yet?

My gefore 280gtx runs it fine, but my ATI X1950XT is having issue.

I have enclosed pics and logs
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Havok on September 30, 2008, 01:06:06 am
Just grabbed the latest build: Star Wars works perfect for me! Asteroids is a bit slow, but playable, Battlezone is in between, but I am totally loving Star Wars! This is so going on my cab. My test rig is a P4 2.5GHz, 1GB Ram, ATI Radeon 2400HD
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: waveryder on October 01, 2008, 02:50:01 pm
Starwars looks just amazing. This is just a fantastic emu! Hope the author keeps workin on it. Just wish I had a starwars yoke to match the fantastic visuals  :hissy:

Just wanted to add specs:
P4 2.8ghz 1gb ram and nvidia 6600
Works fantastic
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ummon on October 01, 2008, 07:09:06 pm
I have forgotten to set it up. I do have a yoke. Must get a CP built.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ninten-doh on October 01, 2008, 10:47:33 pm
So bummed.  I tried installing it, and when I either double-click aae.exe in Windows, or try to run it from the command prompt, I get the same error...

"Application failed to initialize properly (0xC0150002).  Click on OK to terminate the application."

I'm running Windows XP.  Any ideas?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ninten-doh on October 01, 2008, 11:37:11 pm
BTW, I'm still on service pack1 with XP.  Could this be an issue because I haven't installed SP2 or SP3?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ummon on October 02, 2008, 12:31:21 am
Looking good so far, though I'm having controls set-up issues that are pretty upsetting. Will post later.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ummon on October 02, 2008, 02:32:42 am
Okay, here's some stuff. Comments are a combination of praise and issues. Anything not commented on was either okay or not played :


asteriods deluxe: ---smurfin--- awesome. Transparency and brightness are just killer. Perhaps this game's qualities could be a model for games in this emu.

bzone: KB LEDs off, but still blinking when coined up


bwidow:

- aspect - it's not accurate, though it's interesting, why did you choose that?

 -transparency, particularly of lines on lines, could perhaps be a little better

- flash bug sound is wrong

- controls are still backwards

- game doesn't automatically go to 'start' when coined and start pressed


red baron:

- looks good

- sensitivity at 1 and still too high (I seem to remember this was the same last time).

- KB LEDs off, but still blinking


Star Wars is pretty nice. Good transparency.


Tail Gunner looks good; sorta similar to red baron in quality.


Tempest:

- looks pretty damn good. (Note edit below for neat settings I found.)

- Locks up on level 14 during warp to next level: stops, vector lines go white, and the sound repeat-skips.

- request: need higher mouse sensitivity setting


The Cinematronics games look good.

Some games just look brighter than mame, but not startlingly different: Star Trek, Space Duel, Zektor, Asteroids


GUI suggestion:

- make game settings available from here

- make global settings

- make mouse independent of list; make GUI settings


Overall issues - intermittent, takes emu restart to fix:

- games not starting once coined

- not being able to navigate game menus in general

- controls: when pressing enter, no input for particular keystroke recognized, though menu can still be navigated and tabbed.

- controls: setting, say, 'fire: enter pressed and both it AND 'start 1' go to 'none' and then no keypresses register on 'fire'.


*I kind of forgot to mess with things in these games, but just now I did with Tempest and I got what I think is pretty neat. The settings are:

gamma 0
brightness 0
contrast 3.5
draw lines disable
phosphor trail more
phosphor glow 25
line width 1.1
point size 1
monitor gain 25
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ummon on October 03, 2008, 05:27:34 pm
Just wanted to add: this looks better on a PC CRT than my arcade multisync. The multisync is nice, but the higher resolution of the PC CRT makes for better quality lines, as well as better translucence. The games mentioned above with translucence 'issues' are still the same, but they look better. It's interesting, it seems some colors provide better translucence than others, with the brighter the color the less there is.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: aae on October 07, 2008, 07:03:44 pm
Ummon,

Glad I looked at this again! Thank's for the feedback, and I will try and address all I can in the next version. I am in the middle of rewriting all of the input code, (something I have put off for a while) and should have most of the issues with the controls fixed next release, along with Joystick support.

As to losing the controls for a game, that's an occasional bug that I haven't been able to track down. If you delete the default key config file and the one for the game, it will be fine.

As for Black Widow, it's a little embarassing since that's the game I used to test all of the new atari vector timing code, I'm not using mame's but I think it's pretty accurate nonetheless.
I THOUGHT that was the correct aspect, at least it fits in test mode.  ???
I'll get the controls fixed, I honestly hadn't tested it in my cabinet yet.

Your comments on Tempest upset me a little.  :angry:
I patch all of the protection code out at runtime because my pokey code is a little rough.  I tested the level 14 bug and was CERTAIN I had it fixed. I'll try it again tonight and see if I can reproduce it.
What rom version were you playing?

Thanks!!
Tim

Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ummon on October 09, 2008, 06:00:02 pm
Hey, Tim.

- Black Widow: well, except for the flash/stink bug sound, it seems to run/play fine, it's just the coining up is delayed. The web is circular in yours but in Mame, and in Starcade episodes, it's oval. Doesn't bother me, I was just mentioning it.

- roms: I think I'm using the most current ones for all games tried. It seemed they had to be current.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Chunce DeLeone on October 10, 2008, 09:24:18 am
Anthalon XP 3800+  ATI Radeon X550, TinyXP Beast,  Finally got passed the errors to load the GUI but when it loads the screen is very choppy and you can barely see what is going on, everything is thin white and balck lines.  What is causing that?   
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: bent98 on October 10, 2008, 11:17:19 am
it will be fixed. I spoke to Tim about this very issue.  He did give me a test build that works. It has something to do with the texture sampling I think.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Chunce DeLeone on October 10, 2008, 02:18:57 pm
Very Cool,  would you want to pass along that test build? 
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: bent98 on October 11, 2008, 07:58:56 am
That not my call. Talk to Tim.

Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: M37R01D on October 20, 2008, 07:36:12 pm
I'm still testing but so far it seems to work pretty good on the new ArcadeVGA2 :)
I'll post back with some results after more testing.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: bent98 on October 28, 2008, 07:39:30 am
Check the website

A new version out to fix ATI bug and a few other small fixes
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ninten-doh on October 28, 2008, 10:24:07 pm
I can get an Nvidia 6600 with 128mb RAM.  Does the RAM amount matter for this emulator?  For those of you (Darth Nuno, Waveryder) using an NVidia 6600 successfully, how much RAM does your card have?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ummon on October 29, 2008, 08:52:15 pm
I have a 128mb 6200 on a 2.8 P4 with a gig of ram and it's slow.


*Geez, I obviously am not thinking fully in things. Yes, it runs slow.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Texasmame on December 14, 2008, 06:48:39 pm
When using Bzonegl.exe, I get CANNOT LOCATE SELECTED ROM SET even though I have every version and have them in the proper folder.


Help???

 :dizzy:
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: aae on December 14, 2008, 07:23:41 pm
It's been a LONG time since I looked at that one.  :-\
It's really outdated and not very good. It requires unzipped roms in the directory \roms\bzone

You really should try the latest version of AAE. It finally is similar to MAME (tm) in emulation quality, at least for the atari games. Once I get the input system rewritten it will be even better.  ;D

I believe right now battlezone emulation is just about perfect. 

If the emulator is too slow, turn off the Phospher trail effect and bezels, then it will run on just about any nvidia 6200 and above at %100 speed, with Vista and XP. (At least with the latest NVIDIA or ATI drivers)

I wish people would experiment with all the options, with the glow set right and extra ambience sound effects enabled, it really adds to the experience.

Thanks!
Tim

Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: TheShanMan on December 14, 2008, 10:25:02 pm
What would be cool is if there was a config tool (or installer) that would allow the user to pick a configuration based on how powerful of a system they have, such as "best experience", "balanced experience and performance", and "best performance" (and maybe "custom" for picking each desired option) so users wouldn't necessarily need to figure out and experiment with each setting too much.

Just a thought. I haven't done too much with aae yet because it doesn't handle my vertical monitor very well in the current build (I think I already reported that to you), so I'm purely reacting to your post as opposed to anything I remember about setting aae up.

Looking forward to the next version. I've got Multimame all set up to have aae take over for vector games whenever I decide it works well enough for my needs! ;D
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: jukingeo on December 15, 2008, 10:05:29 am

just about any nvidia 6200 and above at %100 speed, with Vista and XP. (At least with the latest NVIDIA or ATI drivers)


I have an ATI 9600XT which has 256meg ram and it is roughly twice the speed of the Nvidia 5200FX of which this card replaced.

I read earlier in this thread that Tiger-Heli tested the 5200FX to work with AAE.   I don't really consider the 5200FX a fast card at all.  But I am wondering if you may know if the ATI 9600XT will work fine with AAE, if not then I just have to wait until I get a more powerful machine.

Full specs:

Dell Dimension 4600
2.8ghz w/2 gig ram
500gb Seagate SATA 7200rpm drives
ATI 9600XT 256meg ram

Speaking of system power, what are the requirements of AAE?  Would it work on a machine slower than this?  Mostly it seems that the video card capabilities were stressed, but what about the rest of the system?

Thanx,

Geo


Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Tiger-Heli on December 15, 2008, 12:55:38 pm
9600XT is quite a bit better than a 5200FX.

That said, on the 5200, a lot of games only really run well at 640x or 800x resolution, and that was with an earlier version of AAE.  The thing is AAE will run on the FX5200, it won't even load on my ATI 9200SE.

FWIW.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ummon on December 15, 2008, 07:44:36 pm
Hey, Christmas is early again. There's a new version.

AAE, I did as you said but noticed very little if any improvement. I actually already had all artwork off for Tempest. I dunno.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: aae on December 16, 2008, 07:09:33 am
Hi again,

Well, I have looked at the above comments, and I was not sure what to say, but I'll give it a shot.  :P

For my emulator, all of the CPU code except for the 6809 in star wars is x86 assembly, so it's much faster then what's in mame. Less then 10% of the CPU usage in fact. The video requirements are due the large textures that I am creating, scaling and mixing in the system for display. With vector games, you can't cache anything in the background, everything must be drawn realtime unfortunately.

In order to get any acceptable speed at all in this worst case scenario, I'm using many newer video functions that help make these large texture transfers much faster. Unfortunately, only newer video card designs support these advanced features.

I have been strugging with peoples issues on this, because I really don't understand I guess.   ???
Here in the US, cheap fast video cards go for about $50 (an up) at places like newegg.  Any of these cheap cards, such as a low end 8600 can run my program with all options enabled and not break a sweat.
Admittedly, I have a decent job and am not affected by any economic downturn (yet) and I can afford to spend $50 on a video card. Actually right now I'm using a used 7600GT that I bought from a friend for $30 a year ago to write this program, and it runs everything with no problems either.
Even as a college student working at a fast food resturant, I could save my beer money and have $50 saved up in a few months. 
So I honestly have a hard time worrying  about trying to support really old, low end video cards when such fast new cards can run this and more.
I am not trying to flame anyone or such, I just can't spend hours trying to tweak the graphics system for low end support when I just spent the last three days getting analog input scaling to work so I could finally play major havoc with a mouse.

Let me know your opinions and I'll listen, and even try to make things better, but with everything else that I need to finish and the little time I have available to work on this it may not happen any time soon.

Thanks for all the support and input,
Tim


Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Tiger-Heli on December 16, 2008, 04:58:59 pm
Don't take this as a flame, but perhaps I can help you with the logic from my personal experience.

I have an AMD XP2800 with DDR1 memory and an AGP motherboard.

I had a ATI 9200 graphics card in it and I swapped it with an FX5200 from another PC we have, just so I could run AAE.

The machine is old, but it plays MAME and office apps fine, so I don't see a real reason to upgrade it.

The $50 graphics cards like you mention from www.newegg.com are all PCI-e versions.

I could find a $50 6200LE or a used 9600XT card in AGP, which would run AAE, but not well (and when I upgraded the PC in the future, any modern mobo will not have AGP support, so that money is wasted) - or I could spend about $350 on a $50 PCIe card, PCIe motherboard, Core2Duo processor, fan, and new memory.

Cheap for the performance boost, but a lot of money to run one emulator.

Again, I am not asking and don't expect you to write new code to support archaic vid cards, but I thought you might like a different perspective.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: TheShanMan on December 16, 2008, 05:57:23 pm
My opinion is you can't worry too much about older obsolete systems unless it is cheap to handle those scenarios. There's always MAME which can handle those situations - it's not like aae is the only option for vector games.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Space Fractal on December 17, 2008, 06:29:01 am
He have warn about it in his first post. Either you want to have a nice render using AAE with require a newer graphics card, but if you can't, go for MAME which fine emulate all games.

That it, its was choice by design, and hence it not a flaw in the code.

It even I would like to see a OpenGL version of this emulator.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: aae on December 17, 2008, 07:17:03 am
Tiger - Heli

Thanks for the input, I do see what you mean. I had to do the same thing, and it's a hefty charge to swap everything. I know I can squeak some more performance out of the video code, when I get done with the input I have to revisit it anyways to try to add yet another layer to it for monitor mask effects.   :banghead:

Thanks again,
Tim
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Todd H on December 17, 2008, 07:29:41 am
I FINALLY got multimame set up with Maximus Arcade and can't wait to use AAE in my cabinet. Thanks again Tim for the hard work.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ummon on December 17, 2008, 03:43:39 pm
Don't fret, aae. I wasn't complaining. I was just sharing my experience. In my case, I'm using a 6200 because I prefer Advancemame for mame, and the fairly powerful ATI X800 I got to be able to run things like AAE, as well as have better VP peformance with higher-end tables, isn't working with it. Since mame is my main concern, and I haven't been able to acquire an Nvidia 6800 for a reasonable price to see if it will work with Advancemame, I'm kinda stuck.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Space Fractal on December 21, 2008, 08:11:26 am
I have finally tested it, it a darn cool emulator which need to been directly support in my frontend yet. There is only one request which is not have any graphics or emulation to due:

In -listromstotxt commandline argument does only show rom and its required files. Would it been possible to add company and full title (which is allready used in its nice inbuilt GUI, which doesn't need changing that) in the file as well, so it doesn't need to been have a updated nms/dat file, when this emulator got updated?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Todd H on December 21, 2008, 09:59:46 am
AAE was working fine for me until I applied the latest AAEU2 patch. Now I get a white screen when I select a rom. This is on my core duo machine with an ATI Radeon X1600.

Also, I have a feature request. My front end runs at 1280x720. When I select an AAE game in my front end and launch, I get a dialog letting me know that AAE is switching resolutions since the game is running at a resolution different that my front ends. It would be nice to disable this notification.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ummon on December 21, 2008, 03:01:49 pm
Todd: I've had no problems with the new build on my old, and too slow, 6200. Could be specific to your system. Try a fresh directory and only transfer roms over. Also, if you set the games in AAE to the same as your desktop, there should be no issues.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Todd H on December 21, 2008, 06:02:04 pm
Tried it and still get the white screen.

Unfortunately, Maximus Arcade won't do the same resolution as my desktop. And AAE doesn't seem to do a 1280x720 resolution.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Havok on December 21, 2008, 09:04:15 pm
Is there a way to remove the title bar at the top while the game is running?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: TAG on December 23, 2008, 12:23:54 am
Is there a way to remove the title bar at the top while the game is running?

Check the AAE config file and make sure that "windowed" is set to zero.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Havok on December 23, 2008, 12:44:07 am
Thanks - one last question: is there a way to edit the game list?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: 9innail on December 23, 2008, 01:29:35 am
I think I missed something. How do I use this with Maximus Arcade? :cry:
I love this emulator and I would like to have it on my arcade cabinet. 
I have a 256mb nvidia graphics card so I think it should run well.:applaud:
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Todd H on December 23, 2008, 07:36:55 am
I think I missed something. How do I use this with Maximus Arcade? :cry:
I love this emulator and I would like to have it on my arcade cabinet. 
I have a 256mb nvidia graphics card so I think it should run well.:applaud:

I've got it running under Maximus Arcade using Multimame.

http://multimame.wikidot.com/
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: richyrich888 on January 05, 2009, 07:52:20 am
Hi, have got aae up and running on p4 3.0ghz thinkcentre 2g ram with ati radeon x700 agp card.  Did have an 9600xt card in machine which would run aae, but it was a bit slow (even when overclocked to max using powerstrip). so off to ebay for a faster card! the x700 runs asteroids fine, (slight understatement ..it looks GREAT ! )  have o'clocked it just a tiny bit to bring the speed up a fraction.
My fav vector game is Starwars my Cab Controller is Ultrastick 360. have got starwars running in AAE but can't see anyway to get the mouse or the u360 to control the game.   ...is analog control supported by AAE yet ? (mouse works in menu selection screen)  or have I missed something ?

Ps keep up the good work, AAE fantastic emu.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: SavannahLion on January 06, 2009, 01:07:04 am
Grabbed the AAEu2 release and I get the following error:

Quote
This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

I tried extracting AAEu1 into my AAE directory followed by AAEu2. Also tried to extract AAEu2 into a fresh copy of my AAE directory. Also tried it by itself in case I misunderstood the directions. Still no luck. Is this a Vista only app? Seems kind of strange to force Vista for this type of emulator.

My best guess is a dependency problem somewhere. I'm in zero mood to go hunting down which dependency I need to fiddle with, so I'll just leave it at that. The last version I have is Beta Version 1. It seems to run OK. I haven't tried to run a lot of ROMS with it however.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: aae on January 06, 2009, 07:40:33 pm
Hi,

People have been getting this with XP 64bit and Vista 64bit, otherwise it has been working fine. If you feel like fixing it, just download this:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9b2da534-3e03-4391-8a4d-074b9f2bc1bf&displaylang=en

and install it. The error you are getting is due to a dll conflict, and I will fix it in a new release later.

Thanks,
Tim
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: aae on January 06, 2009, 07:43:25 pm
richyrich888:

The current version has limited, poor analog input support. The new version in a couple of months will have proper, configurable analog input.

Sorry!
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: richyrich888 on January 07, 2009, 05:40:50 pm
Hi aae,
  just glad i hadn't overlooked/ missed something. your hard work is much appreciated. totally loved the glow of the vectors in starwars. ..used to work in a amusement park /  arcade when i was 16/17 and we had a starwars cockpit cab there, my mate and i used to compete on. I thought mame was good, but this blows it away. have been building my multi emu cocktail table for over a year !! (most of the work gone into learning about batch files, aspect ratio / rotate and command line stuff ...(trying to get everything to work slick and in the background, so the whole thing just seems simple ....and a key board is never seen! (perfectionist)) so will be looking forward to your next release , doesn't matter how long it takes for you to get it us guys.

PS.  here is a link i thought you might like, to a vid about a retro arcade in the usa. there is a good close up screen shot where the guy plays an original asteroids and talks about how "you just can't create this effect on a raster monitor ....."   ;)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qRTruDjAeaI

(asterodis  bit is almost exactly 15 min into the video, about 3/4 of the way through.)

pps do you think it might be possible to work-in some hi score saving, like when mame is recompiled with the hiscore.dat files ? 

-all the best, -Rich.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: SavannahLion on January 08, 2009, 03:12:10 pm
Hi,

People have been getting this with XP 64bit and Vista 64bit, otherwise it has been working fine. If you feel like fixing it, just download this:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9b2da534-3e03-4391-8a4d-074b9f2bc1bf&displaylang=en

and install it. The error you are getting is due to a dll conflict, and I will fix it in a new release later.

Thanks,
Tim


I have Ol' Fashion XP SP2. I'm at work so I'll try it again when I get home. If it fails, I'll drop by with hardware specs. I don't think my hardware is an issue since I tried it with the first Beta version I have and it worked OK.

Moving along, I was looking around on the website and I realized that the working Beta copy that I have isn't actually the same file that's available for download. In fact, what you have there is an Alpha build ??? dated 09/28/2008. I'll talk to PEBCAK and let him know to stop trying to install AAEu1/AAEu2 into the Beta directory. I'll go home and download the Alpha release, install and report back.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Paul Olson on January 13, 2009, 04:26:02 pm
Hi, I will need to buy a new video card to try this, mine won't run it. I am running a standard res monitor in my cab; am I going to notice a big difference over MAME on this monitor? My video card works great for everything else, so I want to make sure I will see a difference by upgrading. all of the comments I have seen talk about tri res monitors.

Assuming it will be better than mame, I will be looking for a card that will be future proof at least as far as this emulator is concerned, and also work well with soft-15khz. Does anyone have any recommendations in the < $100 range?

Thanks
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ummon on January 13, 2009, 10:29:47 pm
Hi, I will need to buy a new video card to try this, mine won't run it. I am running a standard res monitor in my cab; am I going to notice a big difference over MAME on this monitor? My video card works great for everything else, so I want to make sure I will see a difference by upgrading. all of the comments I have seen talk about tri res monitors.

Assuming it will be better than mame, I will be looking for a card that will be future proof at least as far as this emulator is concerned, and also work well with soft-15khz. Does anyone have any recommendations in the < $100 range?

Thanks

Um, as high res is always the choice for vector games, I'm betting it'll be the same here.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Todd H on February 26, 2009, 07:59:37 pm
Hey aae.

Any news? Looking forward to the next version with joystick support. Thanks.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: H4CK3R on April 17, 2009, 09:38:07 am
Heres my Comparison  Will make a better video...

AAE Rocks.. now to get it tow ork in Hyperspin.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G_DoN_SFv0[/youtube]

Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Ummon on April 19, 2009, 04:12:28 am
It looks brighter, but you can't see the glow on your video. Just the lines are more distinct. As for the aspect ratio, you can adjust that in mame.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Witchboard on April 19, 2009, 09:03:40 pm
I just downloaded this to try out.  I must say that I think it's great.  I love the HV Chatter option in the sounds settings as well.  Great job!  I also like the mouse (trackball, spinner) navigation.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: aae on April 24, 2009, 09:16:08 pm
I just want everyone to know that no news is not "No work on AAE".

My current (unfinished) allegro based build has "Mame equivalent" mouse and joystick control, with specific support for xbox 360 joysticks, plus rotation for vertical games.

It should be much nicer, at least from a control standpoint. The holdup is from a couple of things, one is that I needed a break and stopped working on it for a couple of months. The menus and input configurations still need totally reworked, and trying to support so many types of input configurations is not as easy as MAME makes it look.
The other holdup is the number of complaints about compatibility, especially 64 bit. My problem is the antique library I built things on, "Allegro" and it's eternal beta cycle. I have decided to write my own GL, directinput and directsoundcode, which has been a slow process.
But things are ramping up again, and the fact that people are trying to use this hacked together emulator makes me want to work on it even more ;)

Look for test versions sometime this summer, with hopefully something nice coming soon.

BTW, Thanks for the youtube video, awsome large screen there!

Thanks!!!!!
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: NIVO on April 24, 2009, 10:00:55 pm
its great work Tim, enjoy it thoroughly. Now get out of here and back to coding :whap   :cheers:
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: H4CK3R on April 25, 2009, 08:00:40 am
Thanks... Brian H turned me onto AAE.  And now I'm addicted, even thinking of making a intro video for it for Hyperspin.   Let me know please if you need some beta testers... I'm game =)

Charles
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Cakemeister on April 25, 2009, 09:08:44 pm
I just want everyone to know that no news is not "No work on AAE".

My current (unfinished) allegro based build has "Mame equivalent" mouse and joystick control, with specific support for xbox 360 joysticks, plus rotation for vertical games.

It should be much nicer, at least from a control standpoint. The holdup is from a couple of things, one is that I needed a break and stopped working on it for a couple of months. The menus and input configurations still need totally reworked, and trying to support so many types of input configurations is not as easy as MAME makes it look.
The other holdup is the number of complaints about compatibility, especially 64 bit. My problem is the antique library I built things on, "Allegro" and it's eternal beta cycle. I have decided to write my own GL, directinput and directsoundcode, which has been a slow process.
But things are ramping up again, and the fact that people are trying to use this hacked together emulator makes me want to work on it even more ;)

Look for test versions sometime this summer, with hopefully something nice coming soon.

BTW, Thanks for the youtube video, awsome large screen there!

Thanks!!!!!

I have found SDL much easier to work with than Allegro. The input stuff in SDL works well. Also, if you need any help with OpenGL, look at the Nehe tutorials.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: isucamper on May 04, 2009, 08:19:17 am
So bummed.  I tried installing it, and when I either double-click aae.exe in Windows, or try to run it from the command prompt, I get the same error...

"Application failed to initialize properly (0xC0150002).  Click on OK to terminate the application."

I'm running Windows XP.  Any ideas?

I am also getting this error message.

I'm running on an Athlon 64 X2 4000+ with on board Nvidia 6150LE.  I'm using 64-bit XP and I have soft15khz installed.

I've gotten the emulator to run this same machine before changing to the 64 bit OS. 

Any ideas?  I've downloaded the C++ distributable thing, and it was no help.  Do I need any .net stuff installed?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: richyrich888 on June 01, 2009, 03:48:24 pm
Hi AAE ,

Good too hear your still working away at this excellent emu of yours, haven't popped in here for a while, but still looking forward to your next update.  :applaud:

-Rich.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: CheffoJeffo on June 18, 2009, 09:39:45 pm
I'll bump this up because I finally got around to trying this out as I have been jonesing for vectors lately -- bloody marvelous!

HV chatter option.  ;D

 :applaud: :applaud: :applaud: :applaud:

Looking forward to the next version.

 :cheers:
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Havok on July 04, 2009, 02:21:46 am
Is there a way to edit the gamelist to only display certain games?

Also, is there a command line option to fire off just one game?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Tiger-Heli on July 06, 2009, 04:00:01 pm
I don't think there's an easy way to edit the gamelist, but I'm pretty sure there are command line options to launch a single game.  I use EmuLoader, so not sure what they are, but I believe it's mentioned in the documentation.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: DolansCadillac on July 20, 2009, 12:49:32 pm
Hey AAE, thanks for the emulator, I really like what you've done with it. I can't imagine going back to MAME to play Asteroids anymore. Unfortunately though I did some adjustments to my cab's setup recently and I think it might have triggered a couple of issues.

The first thing - I installed PPJoy to get Street Fighter 4 to behave with my controls, which is finally working as intended. I noticed afterwards though that AAE was erroring out (right at launch, before the screen mode changes even), and after checking AAE's log, it looks like it detects the two virtual joystick profiles, but it reports the second stick as having something like 145,000 axes (it reports the first properly with 0 axes). It looks like it then tries to catalog each and crashes. I tried adding and removing axes to both joystick's profiles, no difference. Removing both profiles from PPJoy's control panel applet fixes the problem and AAE will start. Is there a way to disable the joystick detection in the .ini?

The other I suspect is related to updating my video drivers recently - AAE now errors out with a message that the opengl_framebuffer_object is not supported by my card (which appears after it changes the display mode). The last line of the log is the 'Vsync is supported' note. No idea what could be triggering this. I'm running an Nvidia 8800GT, using the 182.50 driver with stock settings.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Henrik68000 on July 29, 2009, 01:20:22 pm
Hi Can anyone tell me if an ATI Radeon HD4870 Powercolor HD4870/512M card will work??

Henrik
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Tiger-Heli on July 29, 2009, 02:22:08 pm
Definitely should - I posted at the start of the thread that a 9200 won't work but a 9550 should, but you are several GENERATIONS beyond those cards.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: dirkomatic on July 29, 2009, 03:06:36 pm
Being written in C using OpenGL, is it possible we could get the source or a compiled Linux version?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Henrik68000 on July 30, 2009, 02:43:30 am
I have build a new pc (am3, DDR3) it has a build in graphics card Radeon HD 3200. Should the AAE run with this?


I (still) get the message (as on my old pc): ("Application failed to initialize properly (0xC0150002).  Click on OK to terminate the application.")

Drives me nuts. I use XP sp2.

PROBLEM SOLVED: INSTALLED A CHEAP card ( club  8400gs). The build in card had no open gl.

Henrik
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Tiger-Heli on July 30, 2009, 06:46:28 am
I would think it should - you should contact AAE about it.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Henrik68000 on July 30, 2009, 10:14:32 am
I cant get the AAE to run fullscreen. Nomatter if 0 or 1 its windowed?

EDIT: SOLVED. First i edited the ini file. but this seems not to work. then used the GUI: Worked.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: logan_58 on October 16, 2009, 01:18:23 am
Hi, I was wondering if anyone knew why when I use the 2nd patch I  get this error "aae.exe has encountered an error and needs to close".  I WANNA PLAY MAJOR HAVOC!!!  My PC has DX11 and I tried downgrading it to DX10 and it still doesn't work.  Tried the Omega drivers for my GeForce 8800 GT still nothing.  Tried booting into safe mode and turning off all startup items and no luck.  I can't imagine why the original release and the 1st patch work but not the 2nd one!  This is really strange...Help please!!!   :hissy:
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: logan5 on October 16, 2009, 05:37:26 pm
OK, just in case anyone has the same problem I did, what I did was disconnect my two logitech joysticks and the 2nd patch worked.  Apparently the new patch adds peripheral support but could mess up any joysticks which are connected...
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Gravitar on July 15, 2012, 10:27:54 pm
Sorry for bumping this old topic.

But there is no proper video of the AAE (as far as I know).

Check it out. I made a small YouTube video of the emulator. It can't make it justice as the resolution is rather low on the vid, but at least you'll see the features. Shots on Asteroids & Asteroids Deluxe look pretty authentic don't you think?

AAE Vector Game Emulator (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4lHsVueSj0#)
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: wolfi on July 17, 2012, 12:28:40 pm
look pretty authentic don't you think?

No, have you ever seen a vector game?

Take a look at this: Atari Asteroids Deluxe Arcade Game Review - Vector XY game (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1xFOAKKVW8#ws)
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Howard_Casto on July 17, 2012, 11:29:19 pm
look pretty authentic don't you think?

No, have you ever seen a vector game?

Take a look at this: Atari Asteroids Deluxe Arcade Game Review - Vector XY game (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1xFOAKKVW8#ws)

Have YOU ever seen a vector game?

The phosper glow is cranked up a tad more on AAE, but it's pretty darn accurate.  (Note to noobs, phosper glow doesn't show up well when filmed.)  I believe that setting is adjustable anyway. 

But regardless, looks are subjective so you should be a little more respectful even if you disagree.  ;)
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Gray_Area on July 18, 2012, 06:45:39 pm
Video quality of both vids suck ass. (And that dude is annoying.) Having played with AAE and all, I echo Howard. Given the display technology (LCD or CRT, and I use the latter) AAE looks really good.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: matsadona on July 18, 2012, 07:20:53 pm
Well, my opinion is that "pretty authentic" is a pretty good description of AAE - compared to all other emulators I have ever seen.
Yes, I can have my Vectrex next to the PC monitor and see that it is not a perfect emulation of a true vector monitor, but again - probably as close as we get right now. To bad it isn't supported or maintained anymore.

I would love to see it supported by the MAME Hooker as well for light outputs...
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Gravitar on July 18, 2012, 11:13:00 pm
Inded. "Wolfi" sounds like a real jackass...

I grew up with the vector games, owned a Vectrex and I know how they're supposed to look.

But beggars can't be choosers... AAE is the best substitute.

PS: I try to make better video with better settings & better vid quality later.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Mysterioii on July 19, 2012, 08:45:52 am
Sorry for my cluelessness on what has probably been discussed elsewhere, but what happened with this one?  Did the author just move on to other things in life and lose interest in the project?  Nothing bad happened I hope.  If the project has been abandoned but the author is still around perhaps he'd release the source code to the community if it's not available already?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Gravitar on July 19, 2012, 12:55:35 pm
Sorry for my cluelessness on what has probably been discussed elsewhere, but what happened with this one?  Did the author just move on to other things in life and lose interest in the project?  Nothing bad happened I hope.  If the project has been abandoned but the author is still around perhaps he'd release the source code to the community if it's not available already?

He already released the source code.

Here it is:
http://mirrors.arcadecontrols.com/aae/ (http://mirrors.arcadecontrols.com/aae/)

Topic:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=106287.0 (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=106287.0)

PS: The problem with capturing AAE properly on video is the low 800 x 600 resolution it uses. It doesn't transform very well into a full screen video, especially after YouTube decreases the quality even more (with its automatic compression).
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Gray_Area on July 21, 2012, 04:04:47 am
The problem with capturing AAE properly on video is the low 800 x 600 resolution it uses. It doesn't transform very well into a full screen video, especially after YouTube decreases the quality even more (with its automatic compression).


AAE can go beyond 1024x768. I would use a camera anyway, like so:

Asteroids Deluxe on AAE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQpSUo6gYzw#)


Edit: note that video was 720x480 because I hadn't set my camera to it's max of 1280x720 [@30fps!], so that was low res and slower motion, and still looked killer.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: lettuce on August 05, 2012, 12:34:26 pm
Anyone have a working rom set for AAE, as cant get current mame roms to work
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Gray_Area on August 05, 2012, 05:23:15 pm
Anyone have a working rom set for AAE, as cant get current mame roms to work

PM me your email.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Nightbring3r on August 05, 2012, 08:59:12 pm
So has anyone ever gotten his code to compile?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Gravitar on August 07, 2012, 07:44:59 am
So has anyone ever gotten his code to compile?

Look a few posts above...!!
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,73009.msg1289437.html#msg1289437 (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,73009.msg1289437.html#msg1289437)
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Nightbring3r on August 07, 2012, 02:06:00 pm
Oh, I know it's been released, I was just curious if anyone has ever gotten it to compile and run. I've never heard of anyone actually doing anything with Tim's code despite the fact that it's been in the wild for quite some time. Of course the "licensing" is kinda sketchy so I wouldn't necessarily expect anyone to release anything.

I wasn't able to compile either version he posted, but I didn't spend a lot of time with it.  I'm not exactly a Windows programmer though so me not getting it up and ready doesn't mean anything.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Gravitar on August 08, 2012, 09:53:45 pm
It'd be great if someone just added a mouse support for Star Wars, added The Empire Strikes Back and fixed all high score saves. They work in some games, some are not working.

That would be just perfect.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Gray_Area on August 11, 2012, 12:46:32 am
It'd be great if someone just added a mouse support for Star Wars, added The Empire Strikes Back and fixed all high score saves. They work in some games, some are not working.

That would be just perfect.

You don't want mouse support for Star Wars. That would just be gay. But I think I understand your intention: get at least decent looking video and still slog over controls.

ESB just blows chunks. And hiscore support is nice but a little whimisical.

The crucial element in AAE is controls support.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Nightbring3r on August 11, 2012, 02:09:40 am
I didn't even notice ESB was missing. Adding it should be trivial assuming someone can get it to compile. I haven't had enough time to do more than add in the Allegro libraries, but I do have some concern that the source released might not be in a usable state even if it compiles. The released source is newer than Update #2.

I'm most interested in seeing mouse input work correctly (so tempest is playable), fixing some of the crashes and the 25 minute screen blank and then adding games. Better handling of odd or vertical screen resolutions and high score save would be nice too!

Not holding out any hopes though. That source has been out there for awhile and I haven't heard of anyone doing anything with it.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: lettuce on August 12, 2012, 04:51:36 pm
Would it not be easier to add the filter that this uses to give the vector glow effect to MAME???
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: matsadona on August 12, 2012, 06:08:19 pm
Would it not be easier to add the filter that this uses to give the vector glow effect to MAME???

There are tons of things that could be better and easier to do in MAME. But as long as those activities are not considered "right" it will not happen. I'm not trying to bash the MAME devs, since we owe so much to them. But sometimes it feels a bit frustrating. The "gear shifter issue" is another good example... The worst thing is that they aren't consistent. Sometimes everything is done only to "preserve" the game as it was intended to run. Sometimes it is tweaked to be convenient for people playing on a gamepad...
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Howard_Casto on August 12, 2012, 06:27:41 pm
There is a grave misconception there. 

For the most part the mame devs are ok with additions like the one mentioned.  People just misunderstand their reluctance to do the jobs themselves with them not allowing changes to the source. 

The reason shifters are in the state they are is because nobody is willing to fix them properly (note the properly part... people often get frustrated when their hacked up code is rejected because it's.... well hacked up).

A few of the core mame devs have stated that the vector rendering could be much improved in mame.... that doesn't mean they are going to do it though.


All of that being said... the new hlsl effects are quite powerful and can do a lot more than just simulate low dot pitch.... I think somebody that knows what they are doing could write a good glow effect script for mame.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Le Chuck on August 12, 2012, 11:30:46 pm
All of that being said... the new hlsl effects are quite powerful and can do a lot more than just simulate low dot pitch.... I think somebody that knows what they are doing could write a good glow effect script for mame.

Got somebody in mind?  Do they need motivation?  :bat

I think your explanation of why it hasn't been done is right on the money, are we just down to finding a concerned party with the chops to execute? 
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Howard_Casto on August 13, 2012, 12:20:18 am
Pretty much. 

There was some source submitted to mame sometime last year that added a lot of improvments to vector rendering....phosper glow was added, flicker and fade were based on actual draw pattern, ect....looked pretty damn amazing... better than AAE, better than any attempt I've seen.  The only problem was it was all done in software and hlsl had just been added to mame. 

I know a lot of people don't realize this, but due to the way vector games are drawn they take a lot of resources to render properly.  Adding these effects on top of already resource intensive vector rendering slowed the games to a crawl at high resolutions... which btw are needed for proper vector simulation.  I believe R. Belmont suggested to the guy that submitted it that he convert it to hlsl so that it would work well.  I don't think anything ever came of it out after that.  The guy probably took his ball and went home, misunderstanding mame's rejection of his code in the current form with rejection of the idea.  I see that a lot.  Somebody that keeps up with mame's inner-workings could give you more info though... I just lurk in the shadows mostly.

This code is what we need to base any vector-based hlsl effects on.  I only wish I could help with it.  DirectX, even unmanaged DirectX is easy... but shader-based manipulation releases the magic blue smoke in my brain and I have to sit in the corner for a few hours.   :dizzy:
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Gravitar on August 15, 2012, 05:31:05 pm
Pretty much. 

There was some source submitted to mame sometime last year that added a lot of improvments to vector rendering....phosper glow was added, flicker and fade were based on actual draw pattern, ect....looked pretty damn amazing... better than AAE, better than any attempt I've seen.  The only problem was it was all done in software and hlsl had just been added to mame. 

Here are the files. The 2nd download probably requires MAMEWORLD membership though.

http://www.robertsworld.org.uk/files/vector_142.diff (http://www.robertsworld.org.uk/files/vector_142.diff)
http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/download.php?Number=256401 (http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/download.php?Number=256401)

I couldn't run this at all on my older dual core machine. The effects were way too heavy for my processor.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Gray_Area on August 15, 2012, 07:44:35 pm
As I recall, that dude said he couldn't do shader stuff, either.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Nightbring3r on August 15, 2012, 10:25:44 pm
His stuff was cool, but I got the impression he wasn't likely to be able to do the shaders either. Unfortunately it doesn't patch cleanly past 0.144u4 so it will eventually kinda fade away I imagine. RobertJ's code didn't do any antialiasing either, so it looks like hell on a lower DPI monitor. I still prefer aae for many of the games once you tone down some of the effects. And before Xiaou2 yells at me, I have an AD cocktail so I do know what a vector monitor is supposed to look like.  ;D
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: RobeeJ on August 22, 2012, 03:11:21 pm
Oh hai there! :)

I've been heavily working on my website recently, as a result of which I've been looking for 404s and noticed the link from this thread. I forgot to allow downloads from the files directory, so the diff would have resulted in a 404, it should work now.

Needless to say I haven't abandoned the idea of patching MAME, and in fact I actually begun looking into it again a few months ago.

I did a fair bit of googling for a HLSL shader that gives a nice glow effect, but none of the ones I found I can get to work. :/ And alas this isn't my area of coding expertise.

I'm also having a bit of a scaling issue, I think there is an element of MAME code I'm misunderstanding.

Anyway, don't expect miracles in short time periods, but likewise I haven't completely abandoned the idea of doing this with the newer MAMEs.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Nightbring3r on August 22, 2012, 11:49:40 pm
... I haven't completely abandoned the idea of doing this with the newer MAMEs.

Good to hear! This is definitely an area that mame is lacking and your patch is an impressive proof on concept. When I first came across your patch I had hoped one of the mamedevs would pick it up and run with it, but I guess that wasn't meant to be. Wish I could help, but all the graphics stuff is way out of my area of expertise.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: shrunkenmaster on January 15, 2013, 02:02:40 am
Looking at using AAE for my upcoming Battlezone scratch build. Couple of questions:

1) What PC specs/GFX card works well?
2) What resolution are you running?
3) Can you run Battlezone without the bezel overlay? If so, does it still show the radar, etc? I read somewhere that turning off the bezel also took out the radar, which would not be good for me.

Any help would be great.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: Gravitar on January 17, 2013, 12:09:17 am
Looking at using AAE for my upcoming Battlezone scratch build. Couple of questions:

1) What PC specs/GFX card works well?

Any modern PC and card work well. I have GeoForce 9800 GT and it runs flawlessly.

Quote
3) Can you run Battlezone without the bezel overlay? If so, does it still show the radar, etc? I read somewhere that turning off the bezel also took out the radar, which would not be good for me.

Yes and yes.

However, high score saving doesn't work in AAE BattleZone, for whatever reason. It works fine on most other games.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: shrunkenmaster on January 17, 2013, 01:56:05 am
Thanks Gravitar!
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: dmckean on April 11, 2015, 06:40:11 pm
Been away for a while, has the Vector HLSL in MAME caught up to/surpassed AAE? Is there any reason at all to still run it?
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: MikeNZ on April 12, 2015, 05:14:30 am
Been away for a while, has the Vector HLSL is MAME caught up to/surpassed AAE? Is there any reason at all to still run it?

Yes, and curious to also find out what other user's best HLSL settings are for the most realistic vector look?


Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: lamprey on April 13, 2015, 01:36:35 pm
They are talking about a graphics overhaul. I don't know what that means however, but something to keep an eye on.

But, Mame vs AAE depends on the game. HLSL, is great for most of the games and the artwork system works (if you want bezels and such). AAE is still king in my book when it comes to Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe. A little tweaking and it looks fantastic! Unfortunately, AAE artwork system is lacking. Also, if you are using a joystick control there are some compatibility issues. But, those can be overcome with joystick to key mapping.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: dmckean on April 15, 2015, 04:50:35 pm
They are talking about a graphics overhaul. I don't know what that means however, but something to keep an eye on.

But, Mame vs AAE depends on the game. HLSL, is great for most of the games and the artwork system works (if you want bezels and such). AAE is still king in my book when it comes to Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe. A little tweaking and it looks fantastic! Unfortunately, AAE artwork system is lacking. Also, if you are using a joystick control there are some compatibility issues. But, those can be overcome with joystick to key mapping.

The B&W vectors need their own overhaul. B&W CRT monitors were fundamentally different from color ones.
Title: Re: New VECTOR GAME Emulator (AAE)
Post by: alexportugal1212 on January 08, 2017, 09:47:26 pm
Please update this GREAT EMULATOR, fix all high scores to workd