what has mame come to?

[MiKman]

I recently updated to the latest version .124a and it appears my machine is no longer up to the task of playing donky kong lol  the sound skips (like it's working too hard to play the game).  Golden Tee's can no longer play with the sound at full speed.  What do we need to play these nowadays?  I have a P4 2.4Ghz with 512 megs Ram, PCI sound card, Geforce 6200 128meg video in my cabinet. Think more memory fix the problem?

crazy how much horsepower this thing is beginning to take... might have to downgrade back to when golden tee's were added, but I dread the thought of trying get everythign back to that version... yikes!

[Minwah]

Could be a config issue, I would think your PC should run Donkey Kong ok.  Not sure exactly what it was but I had a similar problem with .123, IIRC it may have been the resolution, and also try using ddraw instead of d3d. Have a play around with some other settings too if that doesn't help.

[Red]

Could be a config issue, I would think your PC should run Donkey Kong ok.  Not sure exactly what it was but I had a similar problem with .123, IIRC it may have been the resolution, and also try using ddraw instead of d3d. Have a play around with some other settings too if that doesn't help.

How do you enter the config menu?  Thanks.

[loadman]

edit mame.ini

[Popcorrin]

Donkey Kong actually takes a little horsepower to run now.  Ever since they quit using samples for the sounds.

[Ginsu Victim]

Yeah, it's crazy, but DK takes a beast now, thanks to the sound changes.

[Jdurg]

Yeah, it's crazy, but DK takes a beast now, thanks to the sound changes.

Not really.  More often than not, the problems people have is because their monitor isn't able to run at a high enough refresh rate so the emulation skips and stutters due to that.  I have a desktop running a P4 at 2.8 GHz and get insanely high frame rates if I unthrottle it.

[Ginsu Victim]

Using the term BEAST was an exaggeration on my part, but it takes more than what some people use in their cabs (like my 733 mhz in my cab vs my dual core 2 ghz)

[u_rebelscum]

...  More often than not, the problems people have is because their monitor isn't able to run at a high enough refresh rate so the emulation skips and stutters due to that.

Yup, games like donkey kong have a faster refresh rate than most LCD monitors (dkong has 60.606061Hz vs LCD standard 60 Hz), so there is a sound sync problem with the newish mame enforcing a tighter video/sound syncing.  The -refreshspeed option is supposed to help here, but it's been broken for a few versions.  I hear it's supposed to be fixed in 0.124u2, but ...

[MiKman]

Well thanks for the tips guys, I messed aroudn with a few of the settings, I turned off sync to monitor refresh (although my monitor runs at 100Hz)  and it seems to have made a some of a difference.

Turning off throttle was not a good idea, some games run rediculously fast and not at normal speed.

I'll mess some more with the config and see what I can come up with...

[Jdurg]

I'm not sure what it is, but a lot of LCD screens don't seem to actually run at the refresh rate they say they are.  It's odd.  It's almost as though they use some other type of video update method that doesn't sit right with MAME.

[Ummon]

Well thanks for the tips guys, I messed aroudn with a few of the settings, I turned off sync to monitor refresh (although my monitor runs at 100Hz)  and it seems to have made a some of a difference.

Turning off throttle was not a good idea, some games run rediculously fast and not at normal speed.

I'll mess some more with the config and see what I can come up with...

I've seen people talk about unthrottling, but I've had the same experience. Maybe there's a ratio feature that isn't commonly known? DK sound emulation has gotten better this latest release - clearer and lighter load - but it still takes a high-end P4 to run it decently. It takes a high-end P4 to run any games after '81 since the re-write. I think at least DK will get even better, though.

[TheShanMan]

...  More often than not, the problems people have is because their monitor isn't able to run at a high enough refresh rate so the emulation skips and stutters due to that.

Yup, games like donkey kong have a faster refresh rate than most LCD monitors (dkong has 60.606061Hz vs LCD standard 60 Hz), so there is a sound sync problem with the newish mame enforcing a tighter video/sound syncing.  The -refreshspeed option is supposed to help here, but it's been broken for a few versions.  I hear it's supposed to be fixed in 0.124u2, but ...

Is that why I can't run any game on my desktop without extremely annoying sound? Video looks fine but sound is awful. That would explain it! Thanks for the info. I'll have to try that option in 0.125 when it comes out then.

[havic626]

odd that i read a lot of people of having problems with mame recently.  i havnt had a problem for a really long time.  i think the last problems i had was that my roms were incorrect.  Im running a 2800xp, 1gig ram, 5600fx.  my pc has many years i know, but the only games i have problems with is nfl blitz and gaunlet legends.

[massive88]

odd that i read a lot of people of having problems with mame recently.  i havnt had a problem for a really long time.  i think the last problems i had was that my roms were incorrect.  Im running a 2800xp, 1gig ram, 5600fx.  my pc has many years i know, but the only games i have problems with is nfl blitz and gaunlet legends.

Killer instinct 2 runs ok on that?  Thats not much better specs than my machine, and KI2 is craptastic.

[FrizzleFried]

I only have .121 on my  vertical cab,  which is a measly little XP1800+,  but it runs DK perfectly fine.

[danny_galaga]

surprising how many people regularly update mame. i guess they tend to be the younger crowd, hanging out for later games to be emulated. being an old timer (relatively speaking) im happy enough with .78, only that it doesnt have raiden 2 on it...

[TelcoLou]

I'll only update when (if) they get Radiant Silvergun running full speed 

[Paul Olson]

As one of the old guys, I updated to .120 for the improvements in the DK driver. That was way more important to me than new games added.

[Ginsu Victim]

Yeah, the improved DK sound is a definite plus.

[danny_galaga]

ahh! i hadnt realised DK had any major revision. im not a huge DK fan (although strangely i found myself playing it a lot more after seeing 'king of kong'  ). funny it took so long for such an old classic to be tidied up...

[FrizzleFried]

Same reason I upgraded my vertical cab.  Donkey Kong.  Unfortunately they went and jacked the colors of the girders...oh,  and don't try to argue with them...they seem to think PINK is SOMEHOW right...I've played enough Donkey Kong in my day to know they are full of ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.  I don't care what the "code" says,  PINK isn't the right color for the girders.

[danny_galaga]

thats an interesting point frizzle. what sort of monitor does your cab have? if its an arcade, i wonder if something is being lost 'in the translation'? the video card screwing something up whatever, not getting the RGB ratio right. not to say theres something wrong with the card, but that its done differently now to how it used to be?

then again, the in earlier version of mame, the girders arent pink...

[FrizzleFried]

There is a thread about it over at MAMEWORLD.  MAMEDev claims that the pink is the CORRECT color.  I claim they are smoking rock....

[Ginsu Victim]

They are pink.
Then again, I'm hittin' the pipe right now, so what do I know?

Honestly, though, no version of Donkey Kong I ever played was pink. Not even lightish red. It was RED.

[Jdurg]

Don't forget that the arcade cabinets had tinted glass put in front of the monitor.  This, without a doubt, altered the color that we saw. 

Last week I went to a pizza place during lunch and they had an old DK machine there.  I went and played it and noticed that something was "off".  What was "off" was that there was no glass covering the monitor screen.  What color were the girders?  The same color I see when I fire up MAME.  I just wish I had my cell-phone with me as I would have taken a picture.


I still believe that when people submit color "bugs" or "complaints" to MAME they should include a positive test that their monitor is working without any flaws and that they are viewing the image without any filtering taking place due to overlays, glass, etc.

[Paul Olson]

I just watched part of king of kong to check on the colors since I do not have a dedicated machine. I think the devs got it right. Steve Weibe's screen looks exactly like mine in MAME. The scores are red and the girders are definitely lighter. In the film, the DK machine at funspot has redder looking girders, but still lighter than the scores. I'm guessing that the difference is due to tinted glass on the original machine.

[Yarb]

Lol I thought you guys were smoking somthing, then I realized that my cab still has the smoked glass over the monitor so that is why it looks fine to me.

Yarb

[TOK]

I haven't found a compelling reason to upgrade past .99. It has the Golden Tee's in it, Robotron runs at the correct speed, and it still has hiscore.dat support.

I like DK, but the current colors and sound with samples are acceptable to me, even if they're not perfect.

[SGT]

For those having sound problems, it looks like the -refreshspeed has been fixed in .114u2 as urebelscum predicted.  Give it a spin and post your results.

[pmc]

surprising how many people regularly update mame. i guess they tend to be the younger crowd, hanging out for later games to be emulated. being an old timer (relatively speaking) im happy enough with .78, only that it doesnt have raiden 2 on it...

I'm on 0.94 because I've had no compelling reason to upgrade (or wasn't aware of a reason). I came from 0.75 where I was for a long while, and before that, 0.35.

I don't like to upgrade unless I have to because it seems that for every fix I get a new problem or I have to learn new stuff and reconfigure stuff. I don't really play games from after 1992 or so.

But, is there an established happy stable release that is recommended? I don't want to stay on 0.94 if there's a reason not to but I don't see the need to jump to the newest either. My cabinet runs a 2.2GHz Athlon class machine with 1/2 or 1 gig of RAM.

TIA

-pmc

[lcddream]

well i tried 124u2, and while donkey kong seems too run better, there is still some audio skip/stutter issues and framerate issues intermittently.

my mame.ini:

Code: [Select]

#
# CORE PERFORMANCE OPTIONS
#
autoframeskip             1
frameskip                 0
seconds_to_run            0
throttle                  1
sleep                     1
speed                     1.0
refreshspeed              1

#
# CORE SOUND OPTIONS
#
sound                     1
samplerate                44100
samples                   1
volume                    0

#
# WINDOWS PERFORMANCE OPTIONS
#
priority                  0
multithreading            0

#
# WINDOWS VIDEO OPTIONS
#
video                     d3d
numscreens                1
window                    0
maximize                  1
keepaspect                1
prescale                  1
effect                    none
waitvsync                 0
syncrefresh               0

#
# DIRECTDRAW-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
#
hwstretch                 1

#
# DIRECT3D-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
#
d3dversion                9
filter                    1

#
# PER-WINDOW VIDEO OPTIONS
#
screen                    auto
aspect                    auto
resolution                640x480
view                      auto
screen0                   auto
aspect0                   auto
resolution0               auto
view0                     auto
screen1                   auto
aspect1                   auto
resolution1               auto
view1                     auto
screen2                   auto
aspect2                   auto
resolution2               auto
view2                     auto
screen3                   auto
aspect3                   auto
resolution3               auto
view3                     auto

#
# FULL SCREEN OPTIONS
#
triplebuffer              1
switchres                 0
full_screen_brightness    1.0
full_screen_contrast      1.0
full_screen_gamma         1.0

#
# WINDOWS SOUND OPTIONS
#
audio_latency             2

 as you can see I even tried to lower the audio samplerate to 44100.

my computer is a p4 2.0, geforce 6200 video card pretty sure I should be able to play this fine without too much tinkering.

any thoughts?

[Jdurg]

Try removing Triplebuffer from your DK game.  With it all being one screen, you shouldn't have to worry about tearing at all.  In addition, change "priority 0" to "priority 1".  What may be happening is that another process begins to run and momentarily takes away CPU cycles.  I always run MAME with priority set at 1 to ensure that it is "in charge".  Also, change "sleep" to 0.  For some reason, MAME might be thinking that it can take a rest when it shouldn't be.  Chances are that's not a problem, but why risk it?

[Minwah]

In addition to the above, set 'switchres 1' - maybe it is running at your desktop resolution rather than 640x480.

[Xiaou2]

 Colors are vastly different on a real arcade monitor  -vs-  a pc or lcd monitor..

 as the arcade monitors tend to blend and mix near colors.

 I think also, that the older arcade monitors may have used thicker shadowmasks,
thus making the differences greater.   Not sure.

[MiKman]

how much ram are you running in your cabinet?  I upped from 512 MB to 1GB and any sound stuttering issues virtually disappeared.. (similar system specs to yours P4 2.4, 6200 Geforce).

Edit:
Unfortunately Donkey Kong still isn't 100% even with the upgrade to 124u2...

[SavannahLion]

as the arcade monitors tend to blend and mix near colors.

That is true, but I don't think the color arrangement of the girders lends itself to significant bleeding. Not enough to make pinkish girders turn a deep shade of red.

[Haze]

 as you can see I even tried to lower the audio samplerate to 44100.

my computer is a p4 2.0, geforce 6200 video card pretty sure I should be able to play this fine without too much tinkering.

any thoughts?

I doubt anything you can change will make a difference.  With the new code Donkey Kong wouldn't run at full speed on my old Althon XP 2400+, and only just ran at full speed on this old 3000+.

The discrete sound stuff is complex and needs a lot of CPU time, and has a dramatic impact on framerate (frameskipping won't help as the audio has to be processed every frame regardless of frameskip)

Progress comes at a cost, and a plain old original P4 3.0ghz isn't going to be good enough.

 

[danny_galaga]

 as you can see I even tried to lower the audio samplerate to 44100.

my computer is a p4 2.0, geforce 6200 video card pretty sure I should be able to play this fine without too much tinkering.

any thoughts?

I doubt anything you can change will make a difference.  With the new code Donkey Kong wouldn't run at full speed on my old Althon XP 2400+, and only just ran at full speed on this old 3000+.

The discrete sound stuff is complex and needs a lot of CPU time, and has a dramatic impact on framerate (frameskipping won't help as the audio has to be processed every frame regardless of frameskip)

Progress comes at a cost, and a plain old original P4 3.0ghz isn't going to be good enough.

 

   i'll definitely live with it being not perfect...

[Paul Olson]

I'm running .120 on an athlon 1800+ and Donkey Kong runs perfect. Did it slow down more after .120?