AdvanceMAME dead forever?

[amadama]

Anyone know what happened to AdvanceMAME? There hasn't been an update in well over a year (.106 was latest I think). The website forums are pretty barren as well over there.
This was truly an awesome program (in combination with AdvanceMENU and AdvanceMESS as found on the AdvanceCD) and it's a shame it has been abandoned.
I encourage anyone who hasn't tried it out to go for it. You can set everything up as a bootable CD/USB key (a simple included batch script puts it all together for you) and away you go. It has also the great ability to send specific resolutions at 15kz/25khz so you can plug right into an arcade monitor.
Alex

[joebells]

I never used it or anything but I believe I saw a post on here were someone wanted to try and get together money to try and get the developer to work on it again. I believe I read in that same post the reason for the stop in work on it was a big change in the way mame handled some video stuff.

I might be confusing things though.

[Jack Burton]

Damn, I really love advancemame.  I can't stand playing games in anything except their native resolution.  Is there any other way to play games in their native res's?

[Ummon]

Damn, I really love advancemame.  I can't stand playing games in anything except their native resolution.  Is there any other way to play games in their native res's?

Of course. That's why there's Soft15khz (and, way back, ArcadeOS which seems to have done something similar, but is for dos emulators). But I prefer Advancemame for a few reasons.

[Jack Burton]

Soft15khz only gives you a resolution that is running at 15khz.  It will make it possibly to play games on your arcade cab, but the game still won't be running at its exact native resolution.

[ahofle]

What exactly do you mean by this?  You can provide your own modelines with Soft15khz (not that they are needed though).

[Jack Burton]

Really?

I have only seen the tool Quickres used in conjunction with Soft15khz. 

For example, one of my favorite game, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, runs in 336 x 240.  The closest resolution I saw that I could choose with quick res was 320 x 240.  So it would be off a little bit if I ran it at that resolution. 

But you say I can specify.  I will have to look into this much more closely.

[Ummon]

I think 336x240 is part of the regular list. I like Advancemame for more special reasons, though. I'm thinking (out of ---my bottom--- maybe) that since couriersud added to the command line the ability to set the specific timing data for each game, then (though it's possibly Mazzoleni may have messed with the actual game drivers to what he thought would equate to more accurate emulation) perhaps the auto and manual configuration algorithms perhaps could be skinned from Advancemame and not too difficultly added into regular Mame?

[ahofle]

I think 336x240 is part of the regular list.

Yep.  Here are the other resolutions that come 'stock'.

http://community.arcadeinfo.de/showthread.php?t=8170

You can also manually add other modelines that work with your video card/monitor.

[Ummon]

I think 336x240 is part of the regular list.

Yep.  Here are the other resolutions that come 'stock'.

http://community.arcadeinfo.de/showthread.php?t=8170

You can also manually add other modelines that work with your video card/monitor.

You can...but it's a blind kind of thing, unless you know a bit what you're doing. With advmame's advv, you can create and test right there modes. Further, you can even adjust them so that you don't have to adjust your monitor. And, of course, there's the auto feature that is pretty spiffy.

[Ummon]

Hey, amadama, I've asked around and the consensus (what little there was) seems to be to start from scratch. I'm thinking it would be best to pick the features in advancemame that are the most important - which I'm thinking are the modelines generation modes, or maybe just the generate_yclock and xclock - and then soliciting the Mame devs or asking them whether they'd include such a thing if someone submitted it and it passed their standards.

[amadama]

Ummon,
It would be great if the mame devs included many of the video signal generating feature of advancemame! I remember emailing Nicola eight or nine+ years ago asking about adding the screen rotate feature (to play vertical games natively). Lo and behold the next release of Mame had it! I don't know how the dev community is now but these guys used to be really responsive to feature requests.
Alex

[Ummon]

Hmh, now they don't do that sort of thing, in general. There isn't a place for it, and any such posted at MW get a lot of flak, from different directions, in response. (Besides, this kind of stuff is not as simple nor as common-sensical as orientation change. It's certainly not in vogue, given the current status of Mame.) I'm lightly pursuing a course that is curious and a little suggestive but not requesting. We'll see.

[amadama]

I guess the "good old days" are gone. I'm not complaining, I'm super happy MAME exists at all. I'm putting together a new PC for my Pac-man and am using AdvanceCD booting from a USB thumb drive. No hard drive at all. I tested it out and it boots really fast and the games load almost instantly.

[Ummon]

Hm. What with thumb drives so cheap lately, I might look into this.

[Haze]

Ummon,
It would be great if the mame devs included many of the video signal generating feature of advancemame! I remember emailing Nicola eight or nine+ years ago asking about adding the screen rotate feature (to play vertical games natively). Lo and behold the next release of Mame had it! I don't know how the dev community is now but these guys used to be really responsive to feature requests.
Alex

It's not a feature we can feasibly add, it's incompatible with the mainline build (Windows based) and somewhat incompatible with recent changes to MAME (final image composition)

It's not going to happen.

[amadama]

Hi Haze,
Thanks for the feedback. I take it you are on the Mame dev team? If so keep up the good work, we all appreciate it.
Alex

[Ummon]

It's not a feature we can feasibly add, it's incompatible with the mainline build (Windows based) and somewhat incompatible with recent changes to MAME (final image composition)

It's not going to happen.

arby mentioned it would be better to start from scratch. Maybe someone in the community is interested in writing some kind of thing that does the same as those in Advancemame?

[Haze]

It's not a feature we can feasibly add, it's incompatible with the mainline build (Windows based) and somewhat incompatible with recent changes to MAME (final image composition)

It's not going to happen.

arby mentioned it would be better to start from scratch. Maybe someone in the community is interested in writing some kind of thing that does the same as those in Advancemame?

you could start from scratch, but you'd probably find the same thing as advancemame found.  keeping up with the pace of the changes in MAME is nearly impossible when you're making such heavy modifications to the codebase.

also it seems a lot of AdvanceMame users didn't really use it to get a 'genuine' experience (running vertical games on horizontal monitors is NOT a genuine experience)  and as a result won't be happy whatever you do.  For example, due to changes in MAME such as those required to render the galaxian stars correctly it  requires 3x the horizontal resolution, and thus won't work if you try and display the game rotated to display on a horizontal screen as you end up with 3x the vertical resolution.  Without using the old galaxian driver (even more code to maintain if you start using old drivers) this isn't something that can really be worked around.

IOW, a new project would probably die as soon as it was created due to it being unmaintainable, and user pressure to do things that aren't really possible anymore, and the expectation it will perform well on low-spec hardware, which becomes less and less of a reality all the time.

[Ummon]

IOW, a new project would probably die as soon as it was created due to it being unmaintainable, and user pressure to do things that aren't really possible anymore, and the expectation it will perform well on low-spec hardware, which becomes less and less of a reality all the time.

Actually, I was looking at the starfield in Galaxian last night on Advancemame .104 and I could see the 1/3 pixels an all. (Perhaps he re-wrote the drivers long before ya all did?) As well, what I think you're missing is Advancemame automatically takes into account three things: resolution prescribed by the driver, device_video_format (or in lieu of that, device_video_clock) values, and hardware used (including orientation), and arrives at a proper mode. For example, it's quite easy to get 25khz games like SmashTV to run at 15khz and be playable. Same with vectors.

[lettuce]

I could see why trying to keep up-to-date with mame constantly would be unachievable, but what about if they just releases updates of advancemame every 3-4 months, and not with every release of the mame source code??

[Haze]

I could see why trying to keep up-to-date with mame constantly would be unachievable, but what about if they just releases updates of advancemame every 3-4 months, and not with every release of the mame source code??

because so much changes in 3-4 months you'd practically be starting from scratch every time...

[lettuce]

Ah ok. Would be nice to see a .125 version though, think the the latest version is .106 way back in 2006 isnt it?

[Ummon]

I have a feeling things are simpler than they seem. Mame already has some auto-select features for video modes. Introducing an algorithm that takes into account the video hardware used I wouldn't think'd be such an odd thing that would change from release to release. I think there's just a 'build' bias here, though this idea is open to correction by anyone who's seen and understands the Advancemame source code.

[amadama]

No clue on the video output code of advancemame. I'm going to try to play around with the SDL version of mame for Linux. Perhaps playing around with the framebuffer or svgalib drivers might get a similar effect. I saw there is a project called lincade out there but they appear to be using the advancemame executables as well.
I may also try to do a tiny WinXP install using BartPE to get a bootable USB version of WinXP. Maybe using Soft15Khz with this would be a very viable solution.
My goal here is to put everything on a USB thumb drive for quick boot and to have it output 15Khz to drive a regular CGA arcade monitor.
Anyone try something like this before?
Alex

[esaelectrionics]

Im very happy with advancemame 1.06,
it plays most games very well, its really
good if you have a cocktail cab and boths sets of controls
that can play either vert/horiz games in the correct way.

But i would love to get an updated version,
just one more!, it would be great!

[bloodyviking77]

I'm going to try to play around with the SDL version of mame for Linux.

As Haze noted above, mainline mame is becoming increasingly Windows-focused.

As I understand it, sdlmame is now the [about as official as you can get] linux/OSX port of choice for mame. From memory, R. Belmont (the maintainer of sdlmame) has  invited the addition of advmame-like video features by an (eager)other developer for a new project, but has said he won't be including those changes in sdlmame.

Sounds like a great project for you, amadama!

[Jdurg]

I'm going to try to play around with the SDL version of mame for Linux.

As Haze noted above, mainline mame is becoming increasingly Windows-focused.

As I understand it, sdlmame is now the [about as official as you can get] linux/OSX port of choice for mame. From memory, R. Belmont (the maintainer of sdlmame) has  invited the addition of advmame-like video features by an (eager)other developer for a new project, but has said he won't be including those changes in sdlmame.

Sounds like a great project for you, amadama!

Aaron just got done completely re-doing the DRC code for MAME which vastly changes how it compiles for different processors.  So MAME, while it may have become somewhat Windows Focused, just introduced this new DRC code which I believe allows for better compiling for specific types of processors.

[Ummon]

I don't recall knowing arby had opened an invitation for that. Hmmm. Well, all of us who like Advancemame will just keep plugging away with the 'promo-ing' and hopefully someone will step up and do something with it or like it.