MESS

[EssexMame]

i want to emulate the following systems (and more later)

Acorn Electron
Amstrad CPC 6128
ZX Spectrum
NES
SNES
Sega Master System
Sega Megadrive (Genesis)

These are all in MESS but it doesn't seem to be used much. It's accurate but slow is the gist. Does the speed cause problems even for these relatively basic systems? Or are there other reasons people generally choose different emulators for each? It seems to me setting up the same emualator in each case, with similar config to MAME would be beneficial.

[Haze]

i want to emulate the following systems (and more later)

Acorn Electron
Amstrad CPC 6128
ZX Spectrum
NES
SNES
Sega Master System
Sega Megadrive (Genesis)

These are all in MESS but it doesn't seem to be used much. It's accurate but slow is the gist. Does the speed cause problems even for these relatively basic systems? Or are there other reasons people generally choose different emulators for each? It seems to me setting up the same emualator in each case, with similar config to MAME would be beneficial.

It's not really more accurate, it's just based on the MAME code (it really is just MAME but with the computers / consoles drivers enabled instead of the arcade ones, you can even build it as part of MAME with the UME target and have everything unlocked)

The Master System support is pretty good, Genesis runs most games (including a lot of obscure pirate games the more popular emulators need patched roms for eg Beggar Prince)

CPC464 / 6128 runs plenty of games, NES runs the vast part of the library well, SNES is pretty good for the base emulation but struggles for performance on some of the games with special chips.. (so you're not going to want to run Starfox on it)

Spectrum runs a decent number of games although timing isn't accurate so any game depending heavily on that won't work properly.  (again plenty are just fine tho)

Acorn Electron I can't speak for, never used it, don't know much about it.

It's convenient if you're familiar with MAME, and if enough people invest time in it then it's only going to get better.  I still feel it should simply be a part of MAME tho because well.. it is MAME, and therefore shares all the same strengths and weaknesses of MAME, but gives you the ability to run some extra content.

If you're running a cab or something I can imagine it being quite handy, if you're already familiar with most of the standalone emulators for the systems it really isn't going to offer much new, and will probably just seem a bit clunky due to the MAME interface and because it doesn't have all the bells + whistles and system specific hacks etc. to make things more enjoyable to use.

Take it or leave it really, I tend to use it (in UME form) as a first option for things because it works very similar to MAME, I can have a nice MESS romset, and I know it's running MAME code, so if I see a bug in a MESS system using large amounts of shared code then I know there is a fair chance it could also be pointing at a bug in MAME.  If it fails on something because it isn't accurate / good enough then I dig out the standalones.  That might sound a bit backwards, but I like the convenience of only having to use one emulator with a common interface / config (the UME form of MAME which includes MESS) rather than trying to remember how individual emulators work each time I want to test something quickly.  Personally I consider it like a 'bonus' feature of MAME.. although really it's the lead project these days.

 

[EssexMame]

Wow, very comprehensive and answered all my thoughts and queries - thanks very much Haze! You've summarised the systems I will be using perfectly. The Electron is a Spectrum era computer popular(ish) in the UK but not as much as Spectrum/C64. I had it though and so my childhood games are mostly on that. It doesn't work in a cabinet/emulator sense perfectly - non-automatic tape loading and so on - and the emulator (Elkulator) I use has a full screen option in the menu, but no command-line option. Little annoyances like that in an otherwise superb emulator.

I agree MESS is a good starting point and I think I'll start there and switch to other emulators as needed. I've used others but wouldn't say I'm "familiar" with any yet and all being different with different keys/menus/options etc. takes a lot of time to get used to each. I felt MESS would help there esp. as I'm not (more) familiar with MAME.

[ark_ader]

I do miss my "lecky" and playing elite until the early hours in the morning and Killa Gorilla.  Twin Kingdom Valley is another gem.

Mess is very hard to get running.  I have nearly all the "software for MESS" and the roms but I still cannot get programs to work properly.

The C128 emulation is hopeful but still buggy.

Hopefully Haze will eventually resolve these file loading issues in his future builds.

[EssexMame]

Elite was my first all nighter too!! - I got to "Dangerous" and the save game corrupted. I started again and got to "Deadly" and never played onto Elite. Still on my bucket list to sort that - and hence why I'm here  I played and completed "Hampstead" - a text adventure - and played Monsters (like Space Panic) and Croaker (Frogger) a LOT as they were the first couple of games I had (along with Dodgems on the Introductory Cassette). Then there was Overdrive (you'd love this BadMouth!), Football Manager, and Crazee Rider (real race tracks with CORNERS -all that you took at 125 or 134 mph depending on how tight they were).

Mess seems to do it okay with the Spectrum, from .z80 snapshots, but from tape its not so good for a cabinet as it need the switch to Partial Keyboard (scrollock) and access to the menus for tape loading/pressing play. You can load the tape but I know of no command line/button for "Play" on the tape :-( I understand why this is done, but a key/command line option rather than menu access for play would be great. I've looked to see if it is present but not found anything.

Snapshot isn't an option for the Electron either. The tapes can load fast (holding Ins) but I think the latest ElectrEm is the better option here at present - I've got it working quite well and will use JoyToKey/AutoHotKey for what it doesn't do. Some games didn't auto load (as it does CHAIN"" and they need *RUN e.g. football manager) but a snapshot of the start of the game did the job here . This is perhaps the way to go but I LOVE the titles screen/hex number loading - I can always do that outside of a cabinet/auto setup I guess but I'd STILL miss the constant slight rewind/load you had to do on a real Electron!

I want to setup an old Electron (mine is dead though I still have it and the games) to remember how it looked/speed it played as I can't determine if Arcadians is slow in ElectrEm or my memory just remembers it faster. MESS at least shows the speed its running at (F11). The source is available for Electrem but I don't really know where to start, despite some programming knowledge (10 PRINT "HELLO" 20 GOTO 10 on the Electrons in Boots!!)

Haze, if you're out there, what is the status/priority of the electron in Mess? It was popular (in the UK) just behind the Spectrum/C64. Disk loading (adfs/dfs) and especially snapshot would be great :-) I'm really impressed with what it (and mame) does and what they can become though - it's simply awesome - ALL those machines in one place - even the concept is mind blowing.

[ark_ader]

The Electron was the first computer I used to learn Assembler, but with the BBC emulator BeebDroid I can play most of my favourite games.  I have the entire collection for both platforms and they run perfectly(ish).  Maybe if you have a android you can check it out.

[Haze]

The Electron emulation doesn't seem great

I tried 'hopper' from the software list and the timer seems to run far too fast, there's no Cassette softlist right now, so I don't have anything at hand to try there but I'd be surprised if it works.

It's a very old driver and hasn't really seen much attention at all in recent years to my knowledge (surprisingly for all their popularity none of the Acorn systems have, you would have thought there would be many experts on them given how widespread their machines were in schools here)

It's possible it worked better in the past, but MESS overall wasn't great in the past, far too reliant on hacks, and even more awkward than it is today ;-)  Ideally somebody who understands the platforms well would come along and improve the emulation, unlike arcade machines where you have one or two games to test you have hundreds, if not thousands of pieces of software you have to test / get working when you're dealing with computer / console drivers so it really needs people who understand the systems, and how to use them WELL (also helps avoid people trying to spend days fixing bugs that have come because the software they're trying to run requires a very specific model / configuration / loading command but they don't know the system well enough to know that!)

I believe you're right in saying there's no easy way to start / stop tapes right now, this is one of the things that has been discussed with the lua 'autoboot' scripting and also the web-interface (to allow a remote device eg. a phone to be used for such tasks) but so far there's not really been much movement in that direction.  For drivers that support Save States and don't require multi-load you can always use the save state feature of MAME / MESS and use '-state x' when loading MAME to auto-load a state; the ugly hacked UME 0.151 builds that somebody put out did that with the Playstation version of Raiden DX to boot it straight to the gameplay with vertical orientation..  Keep in mind that save states are quite sensitive because if drivers / cores change what needs to be saved / loaded often changes too.

Like I said before, it's a lot easier to understand how MESS came to be and why it seems a bit awkward if you consider it's roots are in MAME, seeing the two together also makes it clearer why MAME is evolving in some of the directions it is, with the overall goal of improving MESS / making things less awkward & more compatible there!  Improving MESS makes our emulation more accurate, and makes MAME able to handle obscure situations more easily too.

[ark_ader]

Well with your attentions to Mess, we know it is in good hands, and like you say: when a developer comes around with some experience with Acorn, they will take care of the driver. We just have to remain patient.