Games locking up?

[APFelon]

I know this is a little off-topic for this forum and that there are "better" places to post MAME questions, but I often find the responders to questions posted in said forums to be oftentimes rude and contentious. So here goes...

My son and I enjoy playing Rampage World Tour together, but the game eventually locks up after completing a map. The music continues to play, but all action is siezed. Has anyone else experienced this? I haven't seen it noted in any of the other MAME sites or bug reports...?

APf
 

[SirPeale]

Yeah, it happens to me too.  Don't know why.

[MameMaster!]

I haven't played it long enough to notice. Are you using Mame32?

...I find that the game Viewpoint resets after about 3 minutes of play.

Other than that I haven't had any problems with virtually any of the games.

Have you tried reloading the ROM?  

The MameMaster

[hyiu]

if I didn't remember wrong... someone posted a similar question....

they will turn on the machine and leave it running on the attraction screen... and after some undetermined time...
the machine will froze....

it turns out that its because the machine is kinda overheating....
(cos mame doesn't conserve CPU speed on default setting...)

what they tried next is to open the panel and point a fan blowing that machine... and leave it on... and that seems to solve the pblm....

donno if this is your case.... (or maybe that particular rom is bad.... who knows ??)....

Up to my very limited experience... if you're using AMD... you can try the FAN trick.... INTEL seems to be a little more heat tolerant....

good luck...

[AlanS17]

If you're using a newer version of MAME, try using an earlier version of MAME. Specifically, try using the first version of MAME that offered that game in it.

Conversely, if you've got an older version try upgrading. Different versions of MAME react differently to different ROM revisions. If a change is made to a particular game in MAME it may require a a newer version of the ROM to run properly, but the old one will still be running around. It would work on an older version of MAME, though.

Also, sometimes changing drivers for one game can screw up another game in the process. For instance, I think The Simpsons was broken in v.70 but worked beautifully in v.69 even though no changes were made the the drivers for that specific game. So either way, try a different version.

Of course, this may not be your problem. Does it lock up in other games?

[APFelon]

Well, the cab is on 24/7, so I know it isn't a heat issue, and the Rampage World Tour ONLY locks up when a screen is finished. I hoped upgrading from DMAME .70 to .71 would help, but nope, same problem.

Actually, since I suspect it is a software/emulator problem, I just wanted to confirm if it was indeed happening to anyone else out there, because after searching Google and the usual forums, I have found no mention of the game being broken, and all other Midway games work like buttah.

Oh, well... It's not like there isn't 3000+ other games my son and I could be playing until the issue is fixed/resolved/forgotten about. Haw.

APf
 

[u_rebelscum]

Known bug.  The bug is listed half way down http://mametesters.com/knownbugsg-o.html as "rmpgwt060gre" and "midwunit.c" as the file.  

You can check for known bugs at http://mametesters.com/, but it helps if you know the driver name so you know which page to look.  Type "mame gamename -listsourcefile" to find the name; for you in this instance "dmame rmpgwt -listsourcefile".  The search is pretty nice too.

[APFelon]

Bah, I swore it wasn't in the buglist when I looked. Ah, well... Thanks for the info!

[Bluntman]

I have also experienced problems with games (in general, not a specific game or two) locking up, this most often happened (almost without fail) if I left the attract mode running for more than ten minutes, and it would often lock up faster than that even... and some times games would freeze while in active play, and the audio would lock up and loop the last .5 second of noise over and over... most annoying when it happens half way thru level 6 of aliens v's pred... or TMNT... anyway, I couldn't figure it out it was a fresh install of 98, it did it from dos or windows, from within a FE or commandline.... untill it dawned on me.. I have 320Mb of mem in the computer running my cab (almost done, pics soon )  and either win98 was having issues with the large amount of mem (large for win 98 era) or I had a faulty stick... so I removed all three sticks (2x 128Mb, and one of 64Mb) and tried them one by one (actually I'm trying the second stick of 128 right now) I botted up with  the first stick of 128Mb, rean MK3, and sure enough it locked up after several minutes in attract mode... so on to the second stick... it's now been running MK3 in attract mode for more than 45 minutes, a record for me. looks like I've got a stick of 128Mb SDRam that's gone a bit dodgy on me. I'll pop the 64Mb stick back in with the known good 128Mb and see how that goes, but it looks like my problems with hanging are over.  

just thought I'd share my expeirience for anyone having similar probs.