Resurrecting AdvanceMAME - what would it take?

[Ummon]

How easy would it be to update AdvanceMAME to the current rendering system and rom support, etc?

[bent98]

I for one and am sure many would love to see that fine project started up again.

[Howard_Casto]

I am by no means an expert on the inner workings of mame, but I think the whole point of the new rendering system was so that builds like advancemame would no longer be needed.  You now have the ability to tweak and adjust the screen to your hearts content from within mame. Couple that with the fact that dos is dead (deal with it) and with tools like powerstrip you can hack in custom resolutions into windows, which mame can use and there isn't a whole lot of use for the features that advancemame offers anymore.

So the short answer to your question is some real interest/motivation from someone willing and able to do the programming is what would be required and I'm not sure you are going to find that. 

[bent98]

I am by no means an expert on the inner workings of mame, but I think the whole point of the new rendering system was so that builds like advancemame would no longer be needed.  You now have the ability to tweak and adjust the screen to your hearts content from within mame. Couple that with the fact that dos is dead (deal with it) and with tools like powerstrip you can hack in custom resolutions into windows, which mame can use and there isn't a whole lot of use for the features that advancemame offers anymore.

So the short answer to your question is some real interest/motivation from someone willing and able to do the programming is what would be required and I'm not sure you are going to find that. 

I disagree. There were changes in mame with respect to D3d, but to properly display games in their native resolution is still best to use Direct draw. Plus while soft 15khz and powerstrip provide ability to tweak custom resolutions, advmame mame took the monitors specs in to account and calculated those for each rom on the fly. Game appear brighter and also run smoother. Certain cards like nvidia are limited to the number of modelines you can add but with advmame there are non. Also you can run advmame in windows, not just dos or linux.

[Ummon]

Thanks, Howard_Casto. The reason I'm asking is, at least with multi-syncs, the displayed result with AdvanceMAME is unlike any other set-up. That's what I thought with regard to the rendering system, but thought I'd ask. Really, my interest is in rom currency. What would that take?

[Anubis_au]

If someone could make advmenu / advmame work with the LEDWiz / make only the correct buttons highlight, then I'd go back to advmenu...

(sigh) I miss advmenu

[headkaze]

If someone could make advmenu / advmame work with the LEDWiz / make only the correct buttons highlight, then I'd go back to advmenu...

(sigh) I miss advmenu

FE's like Mala and GameEx (AtomicFE?) do that now anyway. The whole point of PowerMame was for things like that now most FE's have plugins to do it now anyway.

Also things like Command.Dat are supported in Johnny5 and CPWizard.

Then you have programs like the Mame Resolution Tool or AvRes that can configure each game to display correctly.

[Howard_Casto]

What he said... I couldn't remember the names so I didn't mention them specifically. 

If you take powerstrip and the mame res tool and avres and put them all together essentially what you get are all the features advmame had in terms of resolution tweaking.  Imho mame res tool is a lot easier to understand than advancemame as well. 

Just for the record, yeah you can run advancemame on windows, but then you aren't taking advantage of the windows optimizaitons that the windows version of mame uses.. also getting advmame to run properly... say from xp... can get quite hairy.

[arzoo]

If someone could make advmenu / advmame work with the LEDWiz / make only the correct buttons highlight, then I'd go back to advmenu...

(sigh) I miss advmenu

I don't know anything about AdvanceMAME, but if it can launch an external app and pass the ROM name when the game starts, then LEDBlinky can light the correct buttons.

[youki]

Are talking about DOS or Windows?

AdvMenu i think is only DOS?.  (it is what i use...)

I think AdvMame exists also under window , but i don't know if you can tweak resolution as you can under dos.

I don't think It is possible to run a windows application like LedBlink from a pure DOS application (at least Easily but nothing is really impossible with windows)

[Pac-Fan]

From what I've read  the key to AdvanceMame was that it was meant to output at 1:1 pixels at the exact Resolution, Refresh and all other settings required to exactly match the output of the original PCB.  Regular Mame on any flavor, even with add on toolbars, registry hacks, etc.. cannot reach the same level of control.

The changes to the core Mame drawing system after ~.109 were to make output on a regular high-resolution, high or fixed 60hz refresh rate PC monitor *look* closer to the original monitor, but didn't address the core support required for output to a real CGA monitor.  If you are sending to a 1920x1080 monitor, mame can play with the pixels and stretch that 320x240 image to fit that screen and simultate (not emulate) the original look as close as it can with current hardware.  This requires a ton of CPU and even more video card muscle.

Therefore to take advantage of all these new features you need a beefy CPU and relatively new video card and a very high res screen. In the end you are left with an image that looks better than Mame pre 109, but doesn't help connecting to a real monitor and is still not the same.

With Advance Mame, since it is only processing the original pixel size (i.e. 320x240) and pushing it out 1:1 to the video card, you do not need super fast CPUs, you don't need windows, you don't need 1 GB memory 1Ghz cpu video cards.  You can do it on a 300 mhz Pentium class CPU with a 4 meg video card with a few Mhz video chip, and it looks just like the arcade as you remember it.  (This is why the pirate asian xx-in-1 boards use an old version of mame cross-compiled to their processor and can do it so cheaply, but clearly not optimized fully as one would with their own current version of AdvMame)

But of course AdvanceMame comes at a high cost. It takes forever to configure everything to be 'arcade accurate', you need to have somehardware and 16 bit operating system knowledge, and you deal with long load times since nothing is being addressed for performance that a 32 bit O/S gives you.  But those are the tradeoffs.

[Ummon]

I'm only talking about using the Windows version of AdvanceMAME (and Menu). And it's only difficult because the documentation is not written for someone who isn't familiar with coding (or even simple command-line protocol) and display technology. It's really a simple process getting it running. Configuring it is only slightly more involved depending on circumstance. It's a balance between game resolution and monitor type. I think the people who have tended to program might be due to a lack of understanding how the generate function works.

For anything other than a computer monitor or LCD, it's superior. (For those two there's not much difference to be had so it doesn't matter.) It supports true 16 bit color. Even more, it supports 8-bit. The difference is this: instead of images drawn on the screen, you have very thin-depth 2D objects. A game has it's own physical reality. And you're viewing it through the glass. This is what I remember games looking like when I was a kid.

Actually, I'm not unhappy with Adv .106. A couple of well-liked games' sound are screwed up in current MAME, and I hate the core sound in DK/DKjr. But there are games like PP/PPII that are better-playing. If the problems mentioned get fixed, I would be inclined to want to switch. But, now having been to El Dorado, not at the expense of visual quality.

[Silver]

From what I've read  the key to AdvanceMame was that it was meant to output at 1:1 pixels at the exact Resolution, Refresh and all other settings required to exactly match the output of the original PCB.  Regular Mame on any flavor, even with add on toolbars, registry hacks, etc.. cannot reach the same level of control.

It is my understanding - although I could well be wrong - that current versions of mame will create a 1:1 pixel output of the resolution+refresh if you make that resolution+refresh available to the OS (e.g. Windows)

I belive this is true in ddraw or d3d, (although I remember coming across a d3d "error" at some stage where you got 1 pixel of trash at a screen edge when joining 2 screens (e.g. arcade game had multiple horizontal monitors) which was due to how it handled textures, although that may now be fixed/not relevant).

I'm intrigued by comments on colour differences though. Does being in 8-bit vs 16-bit vs 32bit colour make games appear a different colour?

[vinniet]

I have been using AdvMenu and AdvMame for years.  I have been trying to find a frontend like AdvMenu and just can not find one.  AdvMenu is to tied to arcade controls.  I am playing with Mala and its ok but it does not have the flexibility.  For example I have custom scripts to bypass coin drop.  I have not seen any other front end have that.  Also its a plus with AdvCD where everything is customized running under Linux with all you have to do it run a script and drop it on a HD or burn to CD.

I might be wrong but any front end has to be controlled WITHOUT a mouse ever.  That I just have not seen yet with anything else.

[Ummon]

Silver, like I said, more than just color quality.

I have been using AdvMenu and AdvMame for years.  I have been trying to find a frontend like AdvMenu and just can not find one.  AdvMenu is to tied to arcade controls.  I am playing with Mala and its ok but it does not have the flexibility.  For example I have custom scripts to bypass coin drop.

I might be wrong but any front end has to be controlled WITHOUT a mouse ever.  That I just have not seen yet with anything else.

Not sure what you mean about the mouse part. As for coindrop, just set the game for free play in in-game tab menu. I think you can do this also in the mame.ini.  In any case, I'm interested in what monitor(s) you've been using, and would you post your rc files?