Circa '93-'99 3D Games on MAME?

[Vulgar Soul]

I know this is probably a dumb question, but I'm really curious about this.

So MAME can run thousands of 2d games up until the mid 2000's very well, but what are the chances of 3D games - mostly classic pre-2000 ones - being eventually emulated successfully on MAME anytime soon?

I was running a great Model 2 emulator that's mostly accurate and it got me wondering.

What exactly is stopping the progress? And for that matter, is it even possible or practical, or should we forget about this?

I see a few 3D games can boot up, but are very laggy, glitchy, and unplayable. At least it gives me some hope they'll be around soon.

Please let me point out that I'm not concerned about anything recent or profitable from the past 10 years or something - half of which were gimmicky DELUXE cabinets that used hardware difficult to build and emulate at home anyway. But I would kill to see all of the essential mid-90s, 32-bit era titles from companies like Sega, Namco, and Midway, running on MAME.

Virtua Fighter I-III, Last Bronx, Daytona USA, Manx TT, Fighting Vipers, Virtual ON, Virtua Cop, House of the Dead, Tekken I-III, Ridge Racer, Cruis'n series, NFL Blitz, and maybe even NAOMI titles.

I didn't grow up in the 80s and I consider these games to be especially nostalgic. I also consider it to be the last essential wave of arcade games before Fun World here in the Bronx closed down, regular joystick and pushbutton style cabinets went out, and multiplex theaters miles away loaded with super deluxe cabinets and redemption machines took over.

Just a shame these aren't yet emulated on MAME yet. So just wondering, what are the hopes of these coming around any time soon? Cus once we can get games like Virtua Fighter booted up in MAME, I'll never leave the house lol.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

The problem with the state of their emulation comes down to the mantra of mame: accuracy over playability. The various DSP and 3D chips in these games need to be emulated floating point perfect in order to work in mame. So what, right? That's what mame does with dozens of other processors for all the other games, right? Not exactly.

When you get into special purpose chips like the things that calculate 3d vectors and surfacing and what not, you start breaking into a class of processor that does parallel execution; that is, they do one or more operations simultaneously on large sets of data. Regular proccessors like your CPU don't work this way. Yes there are a few exceptions where they can do this on a smaller scale, but by and large modern CPUs like you have in your computer work via serial execution, they do one thing at a time. Sure you can help some with multiple cores and hyperthreading and what not, but it's still not massively parallel like a dedicated 3d chip will be.

So think of it like this: lets say the original 3d chip in Random Game 3: Fight for Health ran at 400Mhz and could churn away on 30 chunks of data at a time to crank out it's stunning 320x240 3d graphics. Lets say that your modern Core 2 Duo can emulate those instructions exactly, but can only do 2 of them at a time. That means that you need 15x more cycles to get the same amount of work done. Suddenly that 'slow' 400Mhz process needs 6Ghz to come up with the same numbers. And that's not counting whatever CPU it had on board, and the sound chips, etc etc. Now this is a gross simplification, but it illustrates the point.

Other emulators that sacrifice accuracy for playability will just take that 3d data and dump it into a modern GPU that has 320 stream processors or whatever terminology the manufacture uses and crank through it in an eighth of the time of the original chip, but if you looked at the actual numbers they aren't 1:1 what'd you see in the original because the GPU has it's own little tricks to speed up any given random operation to get it "Good Enough". the Mame team doesn't want "Good Enough" they want it historically accurate.

[Vulgar Soul]

The problem with the state of their emulation comes down to the mantra of mame: accuracy over playability. The various DSP and 3D chips in these games need to be emulated floating point perfect in order to work in mame. So what, right? That's what mame does with dozens of other processors for all the other games, right? Not exactly.

When you get into special purpose chips like the things that calculate 3d vectors and surfacing and what not, you start breaking into a class of processor that does parallel execution; that is, they do one or more operations simultaneously on large sets of data. Regular proccessors like your CPU don't work this way. Yes there are a few exceptions where they can do this on a smaller scale, but by and large modern CPUs like you have in your computer work via serial execution, they do one thing at a time. Sure you can help some with multiple cores and hyperthreading and what not, but it's still not massively parallel like a dedicated 3d chip will be.

So think of it like this: lets say the original 3d chip in Random Game 3: Fight for Health ran at 400Mhz and could churn away on 30 chunks of data at a time to crank out it's stunning 320x240 3d graphics. Lets say that your modern Core 2 Duo can emulate those instructions exactly, but can only do 2 of them at a time. That means that you need 15x more cycles to get the same amount of work done. Suddenly that 'slow' 400Mhz process needs 6Ghz to come up with the same numbers. And that's not counting whatever CPU it had on board, and the sound chips, etc etc. Now this is a gross simplification, but it illustrates the point.

Other emulators that sacrifice accuracy for playability will just take that 3d data and dump it into a modern GPU that has 320 stream processors or whatever terminology the manufacture uses and crank through it in an eighth of the time of the original chip, but if you looked at the actual numbers they aren't 1:1 what'd you see in the original because the GPU has it's own little tricks to speed up any given random operation to get it "Good Enough". the Mame team doesn't want "Good Enough" they want it historically accurate.

So I guess the short answer is that because of the processing methods of these old 3D arcade boards, NO computer at the moment is powerful enough to accurately emulate it yet?

[nitz]

Virtua Fighter I-III, Last Bronx, Daytona USA, Manx TT, Fighting Vipers, Virtual ON, Virtua Cop, House of the Dead, Tekken I-III, Ridge Racer, Cruis'n series, NFL Blitz, and maybe even NAOMI titles.

I think most of those games are playable on other emulators or as near perfect ports on console emulators. That's the way to play these for now. I'll bet darn near every pre-2000 arcade game that you'd wanna play is playable on a modern PC if you can live with them being console ports or having less accurate emulation to make them run faster.

[Vulgar Soul]

Virtua Fighter I-III, Last Bronx, Daytona USA, Manx TT, Fighting Vipers, Virtual ON, Virtua Cop, House of the Dead, Tekken I-III, Ridge Racer, Cruis'n series, NFL Blitz, and maybe even NAOMI titles.

I think most of those games are playable on other emulators or as near perfect ports on console emulators. That's the way to play these for now. I'll bet darn near every pre-2000 arcade game that you'd wanna play is playable on a modern PC if you can live with them being console ports or having less accurate emulation to make them run faster.

True, true. Actually, I was one of those poor saps who stuck by his Sega Saturn back in 95-97 which is why I loved these games the most. The Saturn didn't have the big library and support the Playstation had, but damn it had the nicest collection of Sega Model 2 ports. Almost worth it for that alone. I had a lot of those games I listed and than some. Fighters Megamix (not in Arcades) was my favorite.

I know playing these on consoles emulators is an option, but eh, it just doesn't seem right putting console games (even arcade ports) on a cabinet personally. I'd love to see them in their pure Arcade form on MAME. That would be great. Besides, there's practically no Saturn emulator out there either, though there is a great Model 2 emulator that's "close enough" as Cotmm said.

Just wondering how far off we really are from at least seeing those pre-2000 3D games running.

Like I said, I consider the mid-90s 3D titles (especially the Sega Model 2) to be the last wave of true arcade gaming before the industry declined. Those are the only things missing from MAME as far as I'm concerned.

[nitz]

I know playing these on consoles emulators is an option, but eh, it just doesn't seem right putting console games (even arcade ports) on a cabinet personally.

Yeah, that's kinda how I feel too, but I'm willing to make the trade off. If it's a good console port vs. shelling out big bucks for the best PC you can get (or in some cases, it's vs. not being able to play them at all), I'll take the console port for now. But then again, I'm mostly a classics player and only play these games occasionally, so the trade off is easier for me than for a die hard fan of these games.

Just wondering how far off we really are from at least seeing those pre-2000 3D games running.

I'm no expert on computers or emulation, but I'm confident that the mame team will get all of these emulated well sooner or later - some of them already are or close to it. It's just a matter of processor speeds catching up. I would guess that in another 5 years or less, most if not all pre-2000 stuff will be playable. Post 2000 games may be a different story, but frankly I couldn't care less - the vast majority of games in the last decade have been turkeys IMO.

[Haze]

I wouldn't pin your hopes on great strides anytime soon with these.

As I've said elsewhere, there are essentially no developers left working on actual emulation in MAME.  Just Aaron refactoring things over and over, a few making 'simple' additions (games on existing drivers), and a couple of others making changes you don't even need to be a programmer to make (renaming roms and such when proper board labels are found, filling in missing dipswitches)

There are technical challenges involved, as pointed out, but when you don't really even had a dev team anymore that's pretty much irrelevant.

It's been over a month since u1 was put out, and while there have been a lot of changes in that time I wouldn't say any of them were of any actual real benefit to the emulation of anything.

Improving the emulation of the 3d games is a giant learning curve for anybody new to the project as well, which again makes improvements anytime soon rather unlikely.

[Vulgar Soul]

Post 2000 games may be a different story, but frankly I couldn't care less - the vast majority of games in the last decade have been turkeys IMO.

Same here. I can live without The Fast and The Furious, Deal or No Deal, Guitar Hero, DDR - Super Duper Extreme Ultra Hyper Up Your Butt 2, And a bunch of other games that are damn near impossible hardware-wise to emulate accurately anyway (motion control games in particular). Man those mid-90s 3D Sega, Namco, Midway, Konami, Taito boards would be great though. I do hope we see it come together in the next few years.

I wouldn't pin your hopes on great strides anytime soon with these.

As I've said elsewhere, there are essentially no developers left working on actual emulation in MAME.  Just Aaron refactoring things over and over, a few making 'simple' additions (games on existing drivers), and a couple of others making changes you don't even need to be a programmer to make (renaming roms and such when proper board labels are found, filling in missing dipswitches)

There are technical challenges involved, as pointed out, but when you don't really even had a dev team anymore that's pretty much irrelevant.

It's been over a month since u1 was put out, and while there have been a lot of changes in that time I wouldn't say any of them were of any actual real benefit to the emulation of anything.

Improving the emulation of the 3d games is a giant learning curve for anybody new to the project as well, which again makes improvements anytime soon rather unlikely.

This is a shame, I have noticed this though. Truthfully, I haven't even bothered updating MAME or my rom sets for awhile because the updates are so minimal. I knew Nicola isn't very involved anymore, but I can't believe the MAME project is dieing.

If I wasn't so broke at the moment, I'd donate. There's still a lot of enthusiasm for MAME and I hope things move forward soon, maybe they just need more funding. Just that last wave of true arcade titles and I'd consider MAME to be complete from there. I'm still gonna keep the faith for now.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Its still worth your time to look into other emulators for the various particular games you're interested in.
You will probably not be disappointed in the playability. Dreamcast/Naomi emulation is approaching perfect.

[nitz]

And the Sony Playstation hardware based games like Tekken I-III run well on Zinc, and the model 2 games run well on that model 2 emulator (name of it escapes me ATM) as you mentioned.

I don't think model 3 emulation is happening anywhere right now, but I've heard it's being worked on...

I wouldn't pin your hopes on great strides anytime soon with these.

As I've said elsewhere, there are essentially no developers left working on actual emulation in MAME.  Just Aaron refactoring things over and over, a few making 'simple' additions (games on existing drivers), and a couple of others making changes you don't even need to be a programmer to make (renaming roms and such when proper board labels are found, filling in missing dipswitches)

There are technical challenges involved, as pointed out, but when you don't really even had a dev team anymore that's pretty much irrelevant.

It's been over a month since u1 was put out, and while there have been a lot of changes in that time I wouldn't say any of them were of any actual real benefit to the emulation of anything.

Improving the emulation of the 3d games is a giant learning curve for anybody new to the project as well, which again makes improvements anytime soon rather unlikely.

My "5 year" comment was misinformed. I had it in my head that most of these games were in the "imperfect" stage, and it would just be a matter of time for them to be worked on some more and CPU speeds to catch up. A quick look at MAWS however, and I see that a lot of these are in the preliminary stage. And I had read that thread where Haze mentioned that the mame team isn't up to much these days but had forgotten about it.

But again, we do have the model 2 emu, Zinc, and Dreamcast/Naomi emus. If a model 3 emu happens, I would think that most of those 3d games from the 90's that people want to play would be covered.

[Vulgar Soul]

I actually never heard of Zinc. I gotta check that out! It seems to cover a lot of games from that era!

Maybe sometime in the near future I'll consider alternatves to MAME for these games. I just kinda appreciated the non-hassle of having all my arcade goodies under one great piece of software.

And the fact MAME development is really goin under is very disappointing to me. I hope things come around soon.

But on the other hand, really cool to know Dreamcast emulation has come so far. I haven't checked on that in a while

EDIT: nitz, if its no trouble, could you pass me that thread on the current status of MAME development? I'd like to read on this as well.

[BadMouth]

Almost all these games are supported by some emulator.
You just have to put in the work of doing the research and learning how to configure them.
I'm sure I have over a hundred hours in getting things working and integrating them into my front-end. 

Tekken I-III, Cruis'n series, NFL Blitz

These all work perfectly fine in mame, provided you have a fast enough processor.

Virtua Fighter I, Last Bronx, Daytona USA, Manx TT, Fighting Vipers, Virtual ON, Virtua Cop, House of the Dead

All these work near perfect on Nebulas Sega Model 2 Emulator

Ridge Racer

Vivanonno.  Ridge racer has a lot of glitches, but Ridge Racer 2 and Rave Racer work pretty good.

maybe even NAOMI titles.

Makaron or NullDC, I've had better luck with Makaron when it comes to the fighting games

Virtua Fighter III

To the best of my knowledge, that's the only one that isn't supported through emulation.
MAME .119 supports model 3 emulation without sound, but only Scud Racer & Daytona 2 worked.
The games haven't worked since version .120
There was also an M3 emulator called SuperModel, but it hasn't been worked on since 2006.
I have not tried either of these.
There is a post on the Demul board that the developers of that emulator are working on M3 emulation,
but it's just a comment by someone who claims that one of the WIP pics they saw somewhere else was an M3 game.
It would be awesome if true, but I'm doubtful.

[BadMouth]

A little more proof that someone is working on adding Model 3 to Demul!
http://www.speksnk.org/foro/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=72234
I'm excited at the prospect of all the great M3 games on my driving cab,
but just above the M3 section are the Hikaru roms  
That was the post M3, pre Naomi system that only a few games were made for.
Check out Planet Harriers on youtube (make sure to switch to high def)

[nitz]

EDIT: nitz, if its no trouble, could you pass me that thread on the current status of MAME development? I'd like to read on this as well.

Sure, no problem. Haze talks about it a bit in this thread: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=107242.0

The thread isn't primarily about that though and there is some major craziness to wade through

There might be other places where he talks about it as well, you can just click on his username and see all his posts...or if Haze is still following this thread, perhaps he can just jump in.

[Donkbaca]

Thanks for the great info BadMouth, I am a non-mame emulator noob, and there are so many out there, Final Burn Alpha, Zinc, Model 2, etc.  I wouldn't know where to begin!  I recently started playing around with a M2 emulator on my 3ghz p4, and man its sweet!  I am gonna mess with ZInc next.  THis information is so crucial for people putting together a cab that don't want to or can't shell out the cash for a screaming system, to know that you can run HOTD in an M2 emualtor is awesome, and that you can run the tekkens in zinc is fantastic.

[Hoopz]

The thread isn't primarily about that though and there is some major craziness to wade through

That's normal around here.   

Crazy are threads that don't degenerate into a bunch of 2 year olds arguing. 

[shateredsoul]

well like everyone has been saying, sega model 2 emulates most games pretty perfectly, makaron and demul are making huge advances for naomi and atomiswave ( just read that the makaron guy is making some progress in breaking the protection), zinc works great with most games.. but man is it difficult to set your controls for that emulator for some reason, and for current games you can find most taito type x games hacked and a lot of konami games.. there a pain to find.

For me, most zinc games works pretty well in mame. I used to run most of these in a pc with a 2.66 ghz i7 cpu with no issue. It might take some trouble to setup, but you might want to make one list for all your games but just use a different emulator to run the game. I know that hyperspin has a way to do this, and so does mala I think.