BuddaMAME v0.107 WIP

[Buddabing]

Hello,

I thought I would post some news for the two or three of you who use my derivitive build BuddaMAME.

As most of you know, the MAME developers made a lot of changes to version v0.107 which completely broke BuddaMAME and all its associated applications. The two biggest changes affecting BuddaMAME are the complete rewrite of the command line options parsing system and the complete rewrite of the video rendering system. BuddaMAME hooks into both of these to add options, create movie screen shots, and display images while pause is pressed.

I have successfully hacked the new video system to display an image when pause is pressed. However, the controls image is always displayed at coordinates (0,0) to (1,1) which will be wrong in most cases. What needs to happen is that my code should read the bounds of whatever screen elements are out there and adjust its own coordinates accordingly. This is what previous versions of BuddaMAME did.

The internal artwork generator is currently disabled. There are a large number of options which need to all be edited.

Movies appear to be generating. I had to use -movieaudio 0 when testing, but I think that is due to my computer, not due to the VirtualDub script. I've changed the movie creation batch file slightly.

I will probably not be adding -skip_warnings, -skip_disclaimer, or any other skip_foo option to future BuddaMAME versions. I added the options to keep BuddaMAME from stopping at the OK prompt when generating movies in batch mode. Since the -ftr parameter suppresses the warnings, skipping them is not necessary.

I have posted an alpha executable here.

I do not have an ETA when BuddaMAME v0.107 will be done. It may not be done until v0.108 is out.

Regards,
Buddabing

[2600]

I assume BuddaMAME is getting a nice speed up due to the new video system and how it treats Artwork?

[Buddabing]

I am hoping so, but it's too early to tell.

[AaronGiles]

I have successfully hacked the new video system to display an image when pause is pressed. However, the controls image is always displayed at coordinates (0,0) to (1,1) which will be wrong in most cases.

Since you probably hacked into the UI system, you might want to move your work to 0.107u1 or later as I significantly cleaned up the UI code. It should actually make your life easier, especially if you add your own menus and whatnot.

What needs to happen is that my code should read the bounds of whatever screen elements are out there and adjust its own coordinates accordingly. This is what previous versions of BuddaMAME did.

Email me if you have questions about how to do this.

I will probably not be adding -skip_warnings, -skip_disclaimer, or any other skip_foo option to future BuddaMAME versions.

Thank you, I have been meaning to email you asking to remove these for a while.

[Buddabing]

Since you probably hacked into the UI system, you might want to move your work to 0.107u1 or later as I significantly cleaned up the UI code. It should actually make your life easier, especially if you add your own menus and whatnot.

Yes, I did update to u1, after burning some time before u1 came out on trying to get the old renderer to work.

I never thought of hacking the UI system. That would have been a lot more elegant than what I actually did, which was to create bogus XML file entries which are added in at layout file parse time.

After looking at the UI code, I may change my approach and use a textured quad in the UI layer.

Also, I would like to keep the -skip_startup_frames options, which I think are a nice addition to have for games that don't yet have save state support.