Time Crisis Slow

[gb_phil]

Hey All...back with another issue that's probably user error, haha.

I have a Hyperspin setup in a actual arcade cabinet that has no trouble running Time Crisis. However, the Hyperspin setup I have in my living room is running time crisis at about 1/4th speed. You can tell by the counter going ridiculously slow. I actually timed it and it took about 18 seconds for 5 seconds to go by in the game.

I took the ROM (don't see a CHD so guess one's not needed on this game?) from my actual arcade and dropped it onto the other setup to see if it was a bad file and no luck. Both machines are running the newest version of MAME. The arcade setup was purchased so I don't know if the MAME file was re-compiled with all those fixes out there or whatnot. I'm not sure if this is the way to do this but I decided to copy over the Mame.exe file from the arcade over to my other setup in case there were performance boosts added to the arcade version or not. I kept the original exe and marked it as mame_old in case I need to revert.

Anyways, I'm assuming it's a simple setting somewhere I'm missing or maybe I need to compile my own Mame with some sort of a speed hack. I just found out about the Mame compiling stuff so all that's very new to me.

My setup:
Actual arcade machine is running an i5 3470 processor with a Geforce GT 610 2gb graphics card.
HPTC set up in my living room is running an AMD A10 7850k with integrated graphics card.

I asked a buddy who works in IT and he said the integrated graphics card should be plenty to push Time Crisis if the Geforce 610 can. I'd love to get this game working though so hopefully someone has some thoughts.

[yotsuya]

Actually, I don't think Time Crisis has ever worked right. You might be seeing normal behavior.

[gb_phil]

At first I assumed it was normal behavior until I played it on my actual arcade machine. The video scenes are little jittery still but the actual game play was fine for the first level. Played at normal speed. My HPTC, on the other hand, has major video jitters and plays at fourth speed. I read elsewhere that others had this game working so I'm thinking i just missed something somewhere.

[yotsuya]

At first I assumed it was normal behavior until I played it on my actual arcade machine. The video scenes are little jittery still but the actual game play was fine for the first level. Played at normal speed. My HPTC, on the other hand, has major video jitters and plays at fourth speed. I read elsewhere that others had this game working so I'm thinking i just missed something somewhere.

Oh, last time I checked, it was stil unplayable. Good if they've got it working.

[gb_phil]

Yea...and I did some more searching and found someone suggesting to hit F9 during gameplay to mess with the frame rates. I had to set it to 10/10 but the game is playing great now! Every time I exit the game it resets though. Is there any way to force this particular game to F9 itself to 10/10 or something?

[gb_phil]

Found this thread: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=96343.0

They talk about setting up a game specific ini file with frame skip. I can't test right now but would I just simply create a timecris.ini file and put "frameskip 2," as the only thing in the ini? I'm not sure if they were just throwing around that command as an example. Seems like they might have been since the OP's last post was "Had to figure out exactly what had to be written in the individual .ini file, but sussed it thanks." Unfortunately he doesn't say what the exact command was though.

[Haze]

Time Crisis doesn't work properly, and never has, some enemies can't be killed.  (I know it's marked as working, but it probably shouldn't be, the hitbox on the helipcopter boss is 1 pixel big for example)

It's also one of the more demanding games, if it runs slow the machine isn't good enough.

[BadMouth]

Do you have HLSL enabled on the machine that has onboard video?
That would definitely kill the speed.

[gb_phil]

BadMouth: Not sure. How can I check to see?

[BadMouth]

BadMouth: Not sure. How can I check to see?

Look at mame.ini in the MAME folder.
If there is no mame.ini, you'll have to run the command line
mame.exe -cc
or
mame.exe -createconfig
to create one.
(I dunno if both still work on newer versions)

If you're not sure how to do that, google it.

If you're playing on an LCD screen and don't see any scanline effects that make it look like a CRT, then it is probably off.
Time Crisis is a very demanding game.  You might just not have enough power.

[gb_phil]

Thanks! Yea, it's marked as 0 so I assume that's off.

[BadMouth]

Thanks! Yea, it's marked as 0 so I assume that's off.

yup, so that's not it.

[dkersten]

Time Crisis doesn't work properly, and never has, some enemies can't be killed.  (I know it's marked as working, but it probably shouldn't be, the hitbox on the helipcopter boss is 1 pixel big for example)

I always wondered why I can't seem to hurt the helicopter, lol!  Takes up like 20 seconds and you can never finish that level without continuing.. Runs fine on my mame computer though (got a decent i7 cpu though)..

[dkersten]

Oh, and yes, you can create your own ini for each game.. keep in mind that even if you have an ini for a game already set up manually, changing slider settings (like for hlsl) in game don't actually save for that game.  You have to get the settings where you want, record them on paper, then enter those settings into the game's ini file.  You also don't need a complete ini for each game, just the settings you want changed.  This is VERY useful with HLSL settings, which don't transition well from lower native res games to higher native res games.  Just create your ini folder (if it isn't already there), create a text file and save it as the rom name with .ini as an extension, then paste in the section you want to change from the mame.ini file into that new file, and change any values you want changed, save it and you are good to go.

Another tip in this:  If you have a mame.ini in your root directory AND a mame.ini in the ini subfolder, mame will first read the mame.ini in the root folder, then read the mame.ini in the ini subfolder, then read the game.ini file in the ini subfolder.  Some FE's can edit the mame.ini file, but will edit the wrong one (or you will get duplicates).

Finally, the HLSL settings and video settings from .153 to .154 changed, and they are NOT cross compatible.  If you have an ini that was created with .154 (using mame64.exe -cc) and place a .153 exe in that folder, it will either not run at all, or will run SUPER slow. 

As for your original problem, I also found that .154 has a hard time with integrated video cards and d3d, and either won't run at all or will run very poorly.  You might try .153 or even go back to .149 to run on your HTPC, but be SURE to install it clean, and don't have any .ini files either in the root directory or in the ini subfolder that are from a newer version.  And as stated, integrated video cards tend to perform very poorly with HLSL enabled, so be sure it is turned off on your HTPC (a GeForce 610 should run HLSL effects pretty well, I have run them on the 720 which is not much different and it runs perfectly smooth).