Killer Instinct! Quality?

[said7]

I fired up the old cab and was rocking some KI.

And i noticed that this game doesnt look as sharp and as "3d" as it used to. Is it just the fact that my eyes are spoiled with todays modern graphics. Or was the game actually downsamled to make it run in mame?

To me it ressembles the snes version more than the arcade one. Anyone agree?

Still love the game though.

[hyiu]

I have an AMD 1.1GHz cpu.... its lagging... pretty badly...

not really playable....  

[said7]

Its playable on my CPU 2.4 P4, actually runs pretty good.

What im really talking about is the graphics quality.

[Homebrew]

I kinda felt the same way when i started playing KI.  I think i just remember it being better than it actually was.  The reason i think this is because i also remember the later MK's looking better as well.  I'm also playing it on a tv rather than an Arcade Monitor, so that may have something to do with it, maybe not.  Oddly, though not playable for me, i though KI2 looked about right, though i only fired it up once for a few seconds.

-Kevin

[Cisco Kid]

I have the PCB version w/HD ... and the MAME version is lacking in the graphics department (especially on Orchids stage ... it really sucks the big one) ... but thats just my personal opinion.  KI1 isn't to bad.

as for the MK series graphics ... hmmm ... they look about the same ... but the gameplay isn't even close.  Take MK2 Challenger ... you can easily defeat Kintaro by jump kicking him to death .... flawless victory everytime .... I have the PCB version and he's one tough mofo ... and that pattern doesn't even work ... and he'll stomp your --I'm attempting to get by the auto-censor and should be beaten after I re-read the rules-- into the ground in 10 seconds if you try that.

thats what gets me about MAME ... there suppose to be the actual ROMs being used ... so why would there be a difference in gameplay??? (thats always puzzled me)

[CitznFish]

I have the PCB version w/HD ... and the MAME version is lacking in the graphics department (especially on Orchids stage ... it really sucks the big one) ... but thats just my personal opinion.  KI1 isn't to bad.

as for the MK series graphics ... hmmm ... they look about the same ... but the gameplay isn't even close.  Take MK2 Challenger ... you can easily defeat Kintaro by jump kicking him to death .... flawless victory everytime .... I have the PCB version and he's one tough mofo ... and that pattern doesn't even work ... and he'll stomp your --I'm attempting to get by the auto-censor and should be beaten after I re-read the rules-- into the ground in 10 seconds if you try that.

thats what gets me about MAME ... there suppose to be the actual ROMs being used ... so why would there be a difference in gameplay??? (thats always puzzled me)

different revisions of ROM's being dumped?

I know Joust has 3 differnt revisions in MAME...

[Tailgunner]

I have the PCB version w/HD ... and the MAME version is lacking in the graphics department (especially on Orchids stage ... it really sucks the big one) ... but thats just my personal opinion.  KI1 isn't to bad.

as for the MK series graphics ... hmmm ... they look about the same ... but the gameplay isn't even close.  Take MK2 Challenger ... you can easily defeat Kintaro by jump kicking him to death .... flawless victory everytime .... I have the PCB version and he's one tough mofo ... and that pattern doesn't even work ... and he'll stomp your --I'm attempting to get by the auto-censor and should be beaten after I re-read the rules-- into the ground in 10 seconds if you try that.

thats what gets me about MAME ... there suppose to be the actual ROMs being used ... so why would there be a difference in gameplay??? (thats always puzzled me)

You might try messing with the game's dip switch settings to adjust the difficulty upwards.

[Lilwolf]

Also, imperfect timing can make for some great/bad AI.

Ultra64 has that problem.  He gives (but doesn't know how) to much cpu time to figuring out the computer AI and they play better.  More time to react?  More time to think?  

Who knows, but imperfect processor emulation is doing it.

[Cisco Kid]

Also, imperfect timing can make for some great/bad AI.

Ultra64 has that problem.  He gives (but doesn't know how) to much cpu time to figuring out the computer AI and they play better.  More time to react?  More time to think?  

Who knows, but imperfect processor emulation is doing it.

I think you hit the nail on the head there ... I notice there is a slightly delay in Kintaro's reaction (AI) which allows me to land that jump kick ... where as the PCB seems to react a tad quicker allowing him to uppercut me into the next century ... that makes sense to me ... thanks for cluing me in Lilwolf ... learning something new all the time about MAME  

[said7]

MAybe its for the better. MK AI has always been pretty tough  

[hooded_paladin]

maybe KI has some sort of function that reduces graphics complexity to keep the framerate up when it drops.  Since we all get low framerate anyway, it's at the minimum detail level.  Maybe?

I know a lot of PC games do this.

[AlanS17]

I have the PCB version w/HD ... and the MAME version is lacking in the graphics department (especially on Orchids stage ... it really sucks the big one) ... but thats just my personal opinion.  KI1 isn't to bad.

as for the MK series graphics ... hmmm ... they look about the same ... but the gameplay isn't even close.  Take MK2 Challenger ... you can easily defeat Kintaro by jump kicking him to death .... flawless victory everytime .... I have the PCB version and he's one tough mofo ... and that pattern doesn't even work ... and he'll stomp your --I'm attempting to get by the auto-censor and should be beaten after I re-read the rules-- into the ground in 10 seconds if you try that.

thats what gets me about MAME ... there suppose to be the actual ROMs being used ... so why would there be a difference in gameplay??? (thats always puzzled me)

That always worked for me in the arcade.

[AlanS17]

I haven't played KI in MAME yet so I can't speak for it, but in Emu64 it's fairly accurate. Granted, the emulator is fairly buggy, prone to sound problems, and may crash for no apparent reason. However, when it works it seems to work pretty well. I haven't noticed many problem in the graphics department. By the way, I also own the KI original boardset, so I can speak from experience.

[Aceldamor]

I've been having a hard time with the controlls for KI...What I mean by that is that the controlls don't seem as responsive as they do in the arcade. I can pull of combos from hell in the arcade, but I can't get those combos off in mame, my timing is good because I time the combos by hit, but for some reason I just can't get the mame version to get it going...I would assume it's the joysticks i'm using (Happ Comps), but It just seems really weird to me.

[Cisco Kid]

probably just a timing problem with the game ... maybe a frame rate issue causing gameplay issue ... I doubt its the joystick.

I know it takes a Pentium 4 2.8GHz or higher to run the game without dropping a single frame ... seems once you got enough cpu power backing the game it plays rather smooth ... and I can't really tell to much of a difference between it and the arcade version.

Anything less than the above ... it can become glitchy at times and cause you get killed or to miss landing that huge combo (like Orchids).

[Lilwolf]

As for the graphics dropping quality... probably not.

It's really hard to implement... and only really useful when you have more then one platform you are going to run it.  

Arcade and Console games don't... They always know exactly what speed they are running.  So it's only used when the number of objects change (like in MMORPGs where usually you have 5 people in an area... but there could be 50, or 500).  

But for a game with 2 guys... and a background.  They know their resources.

MUCH better chance is that mame doesn't emulate the lighting property.  Or some of the transparencies or the alpha channel isn't emulated.  IE they got it to playable... but didn't worry about fixing the rest... or didn't know the rest.

Emulation is a hard thing.  some of these processors can do thousands of commands... that the game never really uses.  So they might not emulate those.  

Another reason why console emulation can be a TON harder... You get a game running perfect in mame and your good to go... but on a console, you might find a ton of commands not used... until you try to run the next game.  

Also way they change the processor cores somewhat often.  Someone emulates a new game... The learn a little more of what the processor should be doing... Then they mess up any hacks others where relying on the incorrect cpu emulation/timing...

[Analog-X]

I can RUN KI on a AMD Athlon Barthon XP+ 1.8ghz overclocked to 2.2ghz + 512MB Dual DDR Synch. Ram + ATI Radeo 9700 PRO

Depending on Scene Complexity it runs between 50-60FPS.

Here are my thoughts in Point Form, please note that I am not complaining.  MAME is free and you get what you pay for the project itself is a monster and very enormous and its amazing that even exists with the man hours it takes to program such a beast and get it working.  So it is with some degree of understandibility that MAME is not perfect and it may never be.

- Someone mentioned Kille Instinct might change graphics quality due to slow processing mode.  IMHO since the game was designed to run in a dedicated Arcade Machine it wouldnt have the issue of processing speed as the hardware would have been optimized for the game and so therefore such a feature would not be needed.  I think this is primarily a MAME Problem.
 
- Timing issues are not isolated to the newer games that require more resources.  2 years ago while on my honymoon I got a chance to play the real arcade game of "Twin Cobra" so when I got back home the game was fresh in my mind and so I fired up MAME and started playing.  The pattern of the ships were identical to what I had played on the arcade which put a smile on my face and was impressed, however my smile went into confused, when I realised the Bonus Weapons were changing too rapidly compared to the arcade and would even dissapear from the screen much faster.  I thought about dip switch settings, so I tried all the dip switches in various settings and no luck.
 
- Roms although  dumped from original hardware, are running in software simulating those hardware as you can imagine any Processor is pretty complicated and to get a perfect simulation of a processor requires a lot of work.  I think that is why we see the constant updates on the mame.net/wip  Constant improvements.  Now in the above example one of those processor might not be 100% emulated causing the bonus items to be out of sync.  Those PCB's contain a lot of IC's processors for video/sound etc.. Imagine if more than 1 processor is faulty.  The game might work but you have these glitches here and there.
 
- According to official info from MAME.NET in the early stages of MAME roms were being dumped without the color rom.  Meaning they didnt dump the ROM that contained the color info.  So earlier games like SuperMappy had colors that were visualy matched to the original arcade by the mame team either by looking at pictures or the real arcade screen.  Now I dont know if since they have managed to go back and re-dump some of those games where the colors were guessed, but thats something thats bothered me about mame.
 
- Pac-Man......a couple of years ago I found the rec.games.arcade.video.collecting news group and found a lot of mame bashing etc... and did a lot of reading and understood why mame was being bashed from an Arcade Collectors point of view and they had some valid points.  The one that realy stuck out in my mind was a discussion on how mame was emulating Pac-Man.  The article is still there and you can read it here:

http://tinyurl.com/n0w6

There is a reply back to the post by Nicola Himself, pretty neat.

- MAME is not Perfect and still needs a lot of work to bring it near perfection.

[Lilwolf]

He has a lot or very valid points about mame.

mame likes to think of themselfs as a way to document the hardware... but there is a lot of code that is in there to make the game playable... at the expense of clean to understand code.

I would personally LOVE it to have two projects.  One to do nothing other then show how the hardware works... and how the software works with that hardware.  No software hacks.  Not considered complete until it has the same exact error when you are missing a rom...as if the rom was missing from the board.  Something that was also super easy to read and understand... Mind you not how to read and understand how to emulate a game... but something that you could see the arcitecture between whats happening... almost see the parallel between the emulation code and a picture of the board.  This wouldn't expect to run much.   Old games on very new hardware if that is what it took... but when it runs... it runs perfect...

Then I would a project for playablity... Why?  who wants to play a game at 5fps...  This should look at the code from the first project... understand whats going on... figure out how to get around everything... And zooom...

There is another pre project I think would be cool.  I would like to see a boardlevel emulator.  One that you emulate a chip and circuits.. and it does everything per clock cycle.  So you look at the board... put down all the chips on the board (and roms).  Then you would either graphically or however make all the connections.  Then it would figure out what everything is doing every clock cycle.  It would be VERY slow... but it could really help emulate complicated board sets... but this isnt' really the trouble with todays emulation... its usually they dont' know what the chip does... not how they relate to each other.

[Analog-X]

Well thats the thing I find with the Official Release of MAME, more and more Broken games are included in the official release that dont really work.
 
Current PC hardware should handle a KI or KI2 game emulation running at Full FPS.
 
Maybe they got pressure from public to have these games released as official.

[HeadRusch]

you know, it may very well be that the folks doing this have other things in their lives that actually mean more than fully emulating the dip-switch settings on a 4th revision bootleg PCB...

The MAME mission statement can be read "into" many different ways.

Frankly I dont care, cuz I enjoy playing the games...I enjoy playing reasonable FAXIMILIES of the games.....I'm much more into seeing an original Battlezone cab and playing on original controllers than I really care about wether or not Pac-Man's yellow is the correct shade or not...

[eRA186]

Well all you guys are lucky you can run KI.I downloaded the ROM and the CHD files and can't get it  to run.I'm not sure where i'm actually suppose to put the CHD files anyways.Any help is appreciated.

[SirPeale]

Well all you guys are lucky you can run KI.I downloaded the ROM and the CHD files and can't get it  to run.I'm not sure where i'm actually suppose to put the CHD files anyways.Any help is appreciated.

See here:

http://www.mame.net/mamefaq.html