My favorite new MAME feature - Unthrottle!

[Lilwolf]

106u9

Added "fast forward" function (defaults to the INSERT key). While
holding this key down, the frameskip is temporarily maxed out and
throttling is turned off. This is useful for skipping over parts of
the emulation. [Aaron Giles]

[Howard_Casto]

I haven't gotten ahold of the 9 build yet, but it does sound interesting. 

[GregorDV]

I've oft thought it would be a great feature for the BYOAC crowd if there were a -fastCheck flag for MAME that would turn off throttling/max frameskip for N seconds of game time to make the self-check go speedier.  On many games it gets a bit tiresome to watch it check out the board RAM every single time.

It seems un-documenty and more I-just-wanna-play-y, so might not make the cut for main branch MAME, but would be a nice feature for one of the derivatives.

[nobbo]

the easiest solution for that would be to map it to one of your admin or start buttons, so you can simply hold the key down when needed. An automatic command would be very troublesome as one would have to set the number of seconds the function stayed on for each individual game, becuase of course every game is different

[Circo]

but if you set it for let's say 10 sec then you could just pound the button a few times and whammo! On with the games!

[SirPeale]

This feature would be nice - IF - you have a system fast enough to expoit it.

What I mean is this: say you're playing Mortal Kombat. (I know MK doesn't have a long boot sequence, just bear with me here) and you're playing on a 2GHz system.  That's plenty fast enough to run it full-frame, sure.  But unthrottling it only speeds it up  by a small fraction.  Say, 80/60 FPS.

Just given for example, not a specific.

Better example: Arkanoid, which has a ten second boot-up.  Annoying.  On the cab I have it on, there would be almost *no* advantage to unthrottling it.  I've tried it, and it runs at like 63/60.

Everyone's milage will vary.

[Howard_Casto]

And there is the key flaw to this new feature.  The game is still being emulated, so if your system can only spit it out as fast as it can handle the game without throttling and only rndering 1 frame out of 60. 

Beatmania comes to mind as a game that really needs this feature, so I tried it.  While no longer a 2 minute boot wait, I still had to wait 20-30 seconds and I had to hold down the key the whole time.  So it helps, but it isn't some magic fast-forward button like some of you seem to think it is. 

[Havok]

And there is the key flaw to this new feature.  The game is still being emulated, so if your system can only spit it out as fast as it can handle the game without throttling and only rndering 1 frame out of 60. 

Beatmania comes to mind as a game that really needs this feature, so I tried it.  While no longer a 2 minute boot wait, I still had to wait 20-30 seconds and I had to hold down the key the whole time.  So it helps, but it isn't some magic fast-forward button like some of you seem to think it is. 

What would be nice if it could be command-line driven, that you could specify X number of seconds to unthrottle, and include it in the launch command...

[Justin]

Do I see a SelfCheckDelay.ini in the making?   

[jammyjam]

Why not just make a save state with the game loaded up and ready to go. Then launch mame with -state ?

[Howard_Casto]

Because the save state system has been reworked and 90% of your games don't support save states anymore. 

[jelwell]

I've oft thought it would be a great feature for the BYOAC crowd if there were a -fastCheck flag for MAME that would turn off throttling/max frameskip for N seconds of game time to make the self-check go speedier.  On many games it gets a bit tiresome to watch it check out the board RAM every single time.

It seems un-documenty and more I-just-wanna-play-y, so might not make the cut for main branch MAME, but would be a nice feature for one of the derivatives.

-ssf "skip startup frames" it's been around for a while (no offense meant). It's one of Alan's tweaks. I startup mame with "-ssf 999" this gets me past most rom loading screens and lands me squarely in the demo attact mode (most of the time).

There's no downside, even if the game can't render faster while unthrottled it's not going to break anything. It will simply run - and continue to accept input during that period.

Alan's latest tweaks are located here. Note there is now a startup.ini file that can contain a time interval that will skip you past rom loading for many roms already. You can add your own:
http://home.earthlink.net/~alank2/mame/

I had suggested the feature to PowerMame however it's become clear that PowerMame is a LEDWiz project and not the "cabinet friendly" mame that it claimed to be.
Joseph Elwell.

[jelwell]

it's become clear that PowerMame is a LEDWiz project and not the "cabinet friendly" mame that it claimed to be.

I should clarify, it's not simply that they rejected a feature I suggested.
11 Features listed - 10 are for XWiz products. 8 are LEDWiz exclusive 1 is GPWiz and 1 is GPWiz & LEDWiz (but also includes a game pause message).

So basically a GroovyGameGear MAME with sound support.
Joseph Elwell.

[Howard_Casto]

Oh I agree with you, no need to clarify. 

I suggested hooking up the ledwiz to mame drivers that have outputs and was humored but nobody but me bothered to look into it.  This seems sad to me as it'd make powermame a legitimate build that actually does something useful.  You see all of the features that powermame does can be done externally, so there is no reason to even have the build. 

I mean literally, you can do keyboard led tracking externally,  you can load a different ledwiz for each game externally, you can set the gp49 mode externally ect.  And all of this can be done via a resident app that simply monitors the mame caption too so it doesn't aid in the ease of launch either as the appropriate stuff can be called automatically. 

I think the qbert knocker was hooked up, but that's about it. 

I don't have any ill will towards powermame, the guy who made it and the people that use it, I just share your frustration.

Especially considering immediately after the features were announced for the build I made a nice post that said something along the lines of "I don't mean to offend, but all of that stuff can be done without hacking the mame driver, and it's a bad idea to do things on a custom build if you don't have to because most custom builds are seldom updated or down right abandoned." 

Everyone promptly ignored me and a few months later pm is all but abandoned and guys like me are going to have to "save" the poor schmucks that bought ggg products by making proper, external apps that won't have to be constantly updated. 

Also I was assured that the ledwiz inclusion was added so that the product could interact with mame.  As I said, I think the qbert driver is hooked up... that's something. 

[elvis]

I've oft thought it would be a great feature for the BYOAC crowd if there were a -fastCheck flag for MAME that would turn off throttling/max frameskip for N seconds of game time to make the self-check go speedier.  On many games it gets a bit tiresome to watch it check out the board RAM every single time.

It seems un-documenty and more I-just-wanna-play-y, so might not make the cut for main branch MAME, but would be a nice feature for one of the derivatives.

This is already implemented in AdvanceMAME.

You can set the startup speed:
http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/doc-advmame.html#5.10

And the startup time:
http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/doc-advmame.html#8.12.4

AdvanceMAME also has an internal and ever-growing database of startup times.  With no extra configuration on my behalf, by cocktail cab running AdvanceMAME automatically fast-forwards through the majority of game startup screens.

Yet another reason why AdvanceMAME is grossly superior to any other build.