Software Support > GroovyMAME
Games with ISSUES: report here!
schmerzkaufen:
--- Quote from: Recapnation on November 01, 2018, 06:13:10 am ---Seems they are taking rewards lately for "issues" submitted through Bounty Source:
https://www.bountysource.com/teams/mamedev
So if they need the motivation (and they obviously do -- the aforementioned Garou glitch, for instance, makes of MAME the only NG emulator which doesn't run this game properly after all these years), there's that now. Hopefully this gets at least as popular as Retro Arch's Patreon and we can see some progress on drivers which seem to be long forgotten because they're "good enough" (and the devs start getting some well-deserved money in return).
--- End quote ---
If money is what it takes to motivate them to work on games that actually matter to droves of players, instead of obscure whatever electronics most would only consider for the garbage dump, then I have no problem with that.
Off the top of my head, capcom and cave timings/waitstates, some much-needed improvements to the UI+options and related issues for useability, that sort of stuff.
edit: rewrite popular drivers to be line-accurate and therefore eligible for Calamity to implement frame_slice. :p
But I have to contribute to GM as a priority, after I'd done recovering from the end-o-year taxes that is.
Paradroid:
--- Quote from: schmerzkaufen on November 01, 2018, 06:51:02 am ---Off the top of my head, capcom and cave timings/waitstates, some much-needed improvements to the UI+options and related issues for useability, that sort of stuff.
--- End quote ---
Yes! Definitely! SF2 Hyper Fighting is such a classic but feels real wonky in MAME.
Do they need access to PCBs or just someone to implement what they already know? I have 5+ working SF2HF PCBs that came as part of a bulk PCB purchase.
Sorry, not up-to-speed on where it's all at...
schmerzkaufen:
Just guessing but I think it's more like they don't know how to do it, or don't have the right person with the know-how to simulate in-game timings accurately, and they'll serve the ususal narrative that as long as the dump and driver code are right their job is done, even if the game doesn't play rigth.
By ourselves we can somehow tweak the game's behaviour using cpu underclocking, blitter delay, and adjust the framerate (well with Groovy tthe latter is not our concern), but they've specifically made it so some of these tweaks don't save and are a pain to set again every time, the excuse being that it's hack~ish and not true emulation, plus hacks = bad bug reports.
Ultimately a build with modified drivers could make the tweaks default, but they'd have to be featured in a specific one the likes of ARCADE for instance. Such project would require the cooperation of a number of people who own the pcb's to help compare, or an already good amount of trustable documentation (including enough good quality gameplay videos) and of course some with the ability to mod MAME where it applies.
Then unless it follows official MAME's evolution for the concerned drivers, and re-adjust the values every time there's a change, that hacked build might remain a one-time only thing.
And still this would be only hacks, which means somehow, more or less close to the real thing but not exactly the same, not like completely R&Ding and rewriting the drivers adding the missing stuff. It's not completely worthless though, some games like a number of the later Cave ones are only playble this way.
I wasn't serious regarding the bounties, chances mamedevs would consider taking paid jobs like that are probably extremely low, for the PITA development reasons, but also because in the event that would actually happen, they'd expect way more money than we're ready to pay.
Some things will just never be, or like it's sometimes the case with MAME; maybe they will but many years or decades in the future.
Alternative scenario: people writing arcade emulators that go the extra mile beyond MAME and focus on achieving playability accuracy for a select number of the most popular systems. Welp.
Calamity:
--- Quote from: schmerzkaufen on November 01, 2018, 10:00:35 pm ---Just guessing but I think it's more like they don't know how to do it, or don't have the right person with the know-how to simulate in-game timings accurately, and they'll serve the ususal narrative that as long as the dump and driver code are right their job is done, even if the game doesn't play rigth.
--- End quote ---
I believe I read that implementing wait states involves a non-trivial overhaul of MAME's architecture. It's not a matter of improving a couple of drivers. Based on that I guess that fixing those games without hacks means emulating the hardware at a much lower level, which also translates into more cpu intensive emulation. We can bet it'll be done at some point.
schmerzkaufen:
--- Quote from: Calamity on November 02, 2018, 04:28:25 am ---I believe I read that implementing wait states involves a non-trivial overhaul of MAME's architecture. It's not a matter of improving a couple of drivers. Based on that I guess that fixing those games without hacks means emulating the hardware at a much lower level, which also translates into more cpu intensive emulation. We can bet it'll be done at some point.
--- End quote ---
I suspected it was something heavy in any case yeah. An important overhaul probably won't happen just for better timings emulation anyway.
Personally I'm ok with hacks as temporary imperfect solutions, because better that than no change for 10, 20 years and beyond, you know I'm not exaggerating the lenghts. MAME never take that as a vital factor but alternative builds and heretic frontends featuring hacks and mods exist because people's lives aren't stretchable so that they'll have this much patience.
Ok just pushing sliders and turning knobs doesn't work with every game that has timing issues, of course.
For those games that can use adjustments with benefits though, just reanabling settings that fell under the cheats category to save would do, in fact it would be better than editing the drivers since we could readjust the values manually when for instance a change in a driver version that impacts perfomance occurs.
I've seen that savestates can be a workaround but it's kind of messy (the state 'remembers' your cheats settings, but only after you go and tickle them by a value of 1 and back)
In any case as long as it's away from the official MAME, and people provide logs where the active cheats settings appear, there shouldn't be any problems with reporting in this thread (right? or...)
In fact I wonder why this hasn't been a thing in ARCADE ? something like that could then land in GM by haynor's vector.
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