BattleZone slowness?!

[Justin]

Kinda off topic, I know, but is everyone else getting REAL slow fps with BattleZone vector game?

My AMD Athlon XP 1800+ yields only about 40% speed at 1024x768x16

Other vecotr games seem pretty slow too, but at least they do hit the 100% mark.   Most any other game I run yields 150%-400%

[SirPoonga]

Might try using the nosleep or force something like 800x600 on those games.

[Minwah]

Using the new artwork system can slow things down considerably.  I can play BattleZone at full speed with no artwork, but with the artwork overlay I get a pretty poor framerate.  This problem occurs (for me) in a lot of games that use artwork.

[Justin]

Minwah:

I do not have any artwork in place.  (I knew about artwork slowdowns).

What processor do you have, and at what resolution are you running BattleZone?   I only get full speed if I go 640x480.

[Justin]

Update:

Even my a.s.s-slow Mac  (350 Mhz G3) runs Battlezone at 177% speed, 1280x960  (!!!)   What's going on here?  

I do notice the PC version seems to put colored vectors (green) while Mac uses white...

[SirPoonga]

a 350 g3 isn;t that slow

Did you try the no sleep option?

[Justin]

Should -nosleep be set to 0 or 1?  

Also, how does the new -high_priority work?  Isn't this similar to -nosleep?   Sorry, the documentation is very vague in this area...

[cdbrown]

In mame.ini sleep should be set to 0 and you can make high priorty 1.  Making it high priority can improve things but not guaranteed.  It just means mame will have more resources allocated to it and other background applications are less likely to take those resources.  Some people have said it makes no difference.

[SirPoonga]

actually, try sleep at 1.  Sleep cycles is something windows does.  It may improve performance.


high priority is differnt, and a new option.  If mame is the only thing running then highpriority won't do anything.

[Justin]

Another weirdness:  

Launch SuperBreakout, and 'insert a coin'.  Start 1 player game, and don't hit any other button.  Look at your framerates.

In my case, frame rates jump wildly from 30 to 400  (or something like that).  Just two values, up and down... game reacts accordingly.
As soon as I hit the button to launch the ball, all returns to normal.

I get this same behaviour off a lot of games.  (?!)  

Ideas?  You guys getting the same?  Looks like a MAME bug to me.  
sleep and cycles did not help

[Minwah]

If you are seeing colours (other than white) in battlezone then you are using artwork.  Turn off overlays in mame.ini or artwork altogether.

Sorry, I'm not sure what res my BattleZone runs at (I have res set to auto) and I am using an ArcadeVGA which picks odd resolutions when plugged into a PC monitor (and also cripples framerates).

But yes, I have seen odd framerate drops in *some* games.  I can't remember any in particular (maybe 1 or 2 neogeo/cps2 games?).  It sits at perfect 60fps and then for no apparent reason will flick to say 55 for a split second.  Even on un-extreme parts like title screen...who knows why!?  (I tried Super Breakout & it was perfect, but on a 2.26GHz P4 [not mine] ).

[SirPoonga]

If you are seeing colours (other than white) in battlezone then you are using artwork.  Turn off overlays in mame.ini or artwork altogether.

No, it doesn't mean he is using artwork:)

[ErikRuud]

Justin,

You may also want to try using an older version (.37) of mame for the vector games.  Many of them run slower in the later versions of mame.

Another option would be to get Retrocade and use their versions of the vector games. Retrocade is not supported anymore and it apparently won't run on my laptop, but it runs very well on my 233Mhz pc at home.

[Minwah]

If you are seeing colours (other than white) in battlezone then you are using artwork.  Turn off overlays in mame.ini or artwork altogether.

No, it doesn't mean he is using artwork:)

Sorry, artwork or a MAME version previous to the new artwork system is being used.

Is that right?

[ErikRuud]

I just put mame .66 and battle zone on my Win2k laptop.  No artwork at all.  The game graphics are green and the radar display is red.

[Justin]

So Erik, what speed do you get at 1024x768x16?

[Justin]

Guys, I just figured it out... Indeed, MAME was using OVERLAYS.    I set overlay parameter to '0' (off) and BattleZone now runs at well over 250% speed.  Of course all vectors are now white.

(All this time, I thought overlays required special artwork in the 'artwork' folder.. not so, mine is empty)

[Justin]

Another weirdness:  

Launch SuperBreakout, and 'insert a coin'.  Start 1 player game, and don't hit any other button.  Look at your framerates.

In my case, frame rates jump wildly from 30 to 400  (or something like that).  Just two values, up and down... game reacts accordingly.
As soon as I hit the button to launch the ball, all returns to normal.

I get this same behaviour off a lot of games.  (?!)  

Ideas?  You guys getting the same?  Looks like a MAME bug to me.  
sleep and cycles did not help

OK, another mistery solved:  As it turns out, the FPS jerkiness was being caused by the Keyboard LEDs lighting up.  This, as you know, happens only in certain games.  I turned the LED feature off in the mame.ini, and now no jerkiness whatsoever is present in these games when inserting coins.

Does everyone see this?!  Try Marble Madness  (insert coin only)

[Minwah]

Interesting, I just tried Marble Madness and yes, I get exactly the same.  I turned off keyboard LED's and it *almost* fixed it completely.  But I still see an occasional drop in frames for no apparent reason.

I don't have any lighted buttons so I think I'll leave keyboard LED's off for good now...