4-player games crashing?

[seaner]

Another problem that has cropped up more than once when playing the simpsons or gauntlet is that when 4 people are playing, the emulator occasionally exits.
Has anyone seen similar behaviour?  I suspect either there is a s/w problem that is having problems keeping up with my input rates (4 players at a time mashing buttons, etc.), or that I have a problem with my firmware in that perhaps the ESC key is being sensed due to excessive loading on my bus lines (not too difficult to verify).
Cheers,
Sean

[BobA]

What type of interface are you using?  What CPU, how much memory and what operating system? Might  help to understand what your setup is before commenting.

BobA

[Smack]

Did you disable the alt-ctrl-delete windows shortcut?

Just a thought.

Word.

[jerryjanis]

When I built my first 2-player control panel, and used it in combination with the HotRod for 4 player gauntlet, I ran into some weird problem with Mame...  It's been a while, so I don't remember exactly what happened or what version of Mame I was using...  Mame would exit, and when I looked at the  information in the DOS window, I think it told me something that I thought meant 'program exited: escape code entered' or something loosely along those lines...  What caused it was some weird combination of keys - ctrl + 'c' or ctrl + 'end' or something, but I totally forget what it was.  I'd say that you're gonna have to find out what key combo causes Mame to exit and either not use that combo, or make Mame not exit when you press it.

[slug54]

If your using an I-pac with the default shift settings,
Player1 start + Player2 start = Escape
I found that one out the hard way.

If this is the case just re-program your I-pac to a different combo. I have a dedicated escape button so I just dis-abled it.

                        Slug54

[seaner]

What type of interface are you using?  What CPU, how much memory and what operating system? Might  help to understand what your setup is before commenting.
BobA

Sorry.. Athlon XP 1800+ running DOS advmame.
I'm using my own custom board for the interface (so I am kinda suspecting this may be where the problem is manifesting).
It's an 8x8 matrix switch with diode isolation for all of the inputs.. it's possible I am having what I could only describe as ghosting problems with higher loads at 3.3v (ie. more inputs closed could cause a false reading at another point on the same input busline).
I was just hoping to narrow down the possiblilities before developing some firmware to test this theory.... ie. people have seen this sort of thing before.

Cheers,
Sean

[seaner]

When I built my first 2-player control panel, and used it in combination with the HotRod for 4 player gauntlet, I ran into some weird problem with Mame...  It's been a while, so I don't remember exactly what happened or what version of Mame I was using...  Mame would exit, and when I looked at the  information in the DOS window, I think it told me something that I thought meant 'program exited: escape code entered' or something loosely along those lines...  What caused it was some weird combination of keys - ctrl + 'c' or ctrl + 'end' or something, but I totally forget what it was.  I'd say that you're gonna have to find out what key combo causes Mame to exit and either not use that combo, or make Mame not exit when you press it.

You describe what I am starting to suspect
I have player 4 down, left mapped to l-ctrl, l-alt in firmware.
It's possible mame is listening to some code other than just ESC (which I have mapped seperately to a dedicated switch).  Come to think of it, C is mapped to player 3's button 3.  I can easily generate some testcode to inject all possible keycodes into the game and see what happens. (although at 40 player-inputs, 2^40 may take some time to execute
Thanks for the pointer.

Cheers,
Sean

[cdbrown]

I have another wierd one
Pressing and holding player 1 buttons 1 and 2 and then pressing player 2 buttons 1 and 2 makes the screen go black, let it go the screen comes back?  Haven't really looked into it but I suspect it may be a shortcut combination for powerstrip or something like that.

*shrug* (c) Rampy 2003

Cheers
-cdbrown

[seaner]

FYI, the problem is solved.
CTRL-ALT-END was exiting the emulator (is this documented?)

so P4-down + P4-left + P2 down  was killing me

[Chris]

CTRL-ALT-END is the exit code for Allegro, and MAME is built using Allegro.

--Chris

[seaner]

wow.. odd that that wasn't disabled at a higher layer.
Thanks for the info!

[u_rebelscum]

CTRL-ALT-END is the exit code for Allegro, and MAME is built using Allegro.

--Chris

You're confusing me: "Dos MAME", ie "dmame", is built using Allegro.  "MAME" now means "windows (commandline) MAME", so "MAME is built on win32 & dx5" and not Allegro.

I know this is thread is mostly about dos and dos advancedMame, but someone else jumping in might not see that.  Sorry about the nitpicking; I must be tired.

[Chris]

CTRL-ALT-END is the exit code for Allegro, and MAME is built using Allegro.

--Chris

You're confusing me: "Dos MAME", ie "dmame", is built using Allegro.  "MAME" now means "windows (commandline) MAME", so "MAME is built on win32 & dx5" and not Allegro.

I know this is thread is mostly about dos and dos advancedMame, but someone else jumping in might not see that.  Sorry about the nitpicking; I must be tired.

Thre is still some Allegro code even in the Windows version, I believe (timers and keyboard handling, if I remember right), but I'll have to check the source to be sure.  Allegro supports DOS, Windows, Linux, BeOS, QNX and the Mac (Mac support is still beta, though).

If Allegro is linked in at all, MAME will die from CTRL-ALT-END.  I believe, however, that this can be disabled by setting three_finger_flag to FALSE somewhere in MAME's initialization.

--Chris

[u_rebelscum]

Thre is still some Allegro code even in the Windows version, I believe (timers and keyboard handling, if I remember right), but I'll have to check the source to be sure.  Allegro supports DOS, Windows, Linux, BeOS, QNX and the Mac (Mac support is still beta, though).

If Allegro is linked in at all, MAME will die from CTRL-ALT-END.  I believe, however, that this can be disabled by setting three_finger_flag to FALSE somewhere in MAME's initialization.

--Chris

I know keyboard in win mame is 100% vanilla directX 5.0 directInput; not sure about timers, but:

MinGW 2.0 doesn't come with allegro libs/headers, and the mingw-over.zip for mame doesn't contain allegro either.  AFAIK, allegro needs directX 7.0 to compile, and win mame uses the older dx5.  Without the allegro headers & libs to compile with, I don't think win mame can include allegro code and still compile.

Not that I have anything against allegro, it's great that it is cross platform unlike directX.  But I think mameDev went 100% directX when windows became the official platform.  (Might have been different before that.)

[Chris]

You're right... I just tested Windows MAME against DOS MAME using Pac-Man, and WinMAME doesn't respond to CTRL-ALT-END.

I also noticed that DOS MAME starts faster and runs smoother on my system than Windows MAME...

--Chris