Laserdisc game support in Mame

[bent98]

Every new mame update I see aaron is doing more and more work to support laser games in mame. I can't seem to find out what the ETA is on getting those games to run. Anyone read anything on an ETA when we might expect playable laser games support?

[Ginsu Victim]

Laser games? I'm not sure what you mean.

[nipsmg]

Laserdisc games.  Aaron Giles has a whole series of posts on Laserdisc game emulation, and how the current techniques are forcing the use of crazy calculations to figure out frame locations, when the data is actually embedded in the video stream itself, kind of an interesting read.

DL,Space Ace support is forthcoming, but he's not given an ETA AFAIK.

[Ginsu Victim]

Ah, "laserdisc" would've made total sense to me. I was like, "What the heck is a laser game?"

[Ummon]

Where are these comments of Aaron's. I didn't see it in the .126.3  The only stuff I've seen is on his blog, but this had been about video capturing and stuff with regard to laser discs.

[nipsmg]

Right.  Sorry, the posts weren't on laserdisc emulation, but they were about how laserdiscs operate, and how the way it's currently done isn't the most optimal..

This is the kind of stuff he posts when he's working on something.  Don't be suprised to see support in MAME soon.  Why else would he be looking at it this deeply?

[u_rebelscum]

There never is an ETA for anything in mame (unless it's the very next update).

"When it comes is when it comes."  MameDev and Blizzard follow this.

[M.Lanza]

Laser games? I'm not sure what you mean.

[Ginsu Victim]

Laser games? I'm not sure what you mean.

Yeah....I know.

[Jdurg]

Keep in mind that Space Ace, Dragon's Lair, DLII, and the other more widely known and popular laserdisc games will be the last ones added to MAME to prevent the greedy ROM Kiddies from basically taking down every webserver on the planet trying to download these 5GB files, in addition to annoying the living hell out of everyone on emulation boards related to MAME.   

[Ummon]

I think Aaron's just gotten really interested in LDs. Implementation will come when it happens to be ready to his satisfaction, I think.

Keep in mind that Space Ace, Dragon's Lair, DLII, and the other more widely known and popular laserdisc games will be the last ones added to MAME to prevent the greedy ROM Kiddies from basically taking down every webserver on the planet trying to download these 5GB files, in addition to annoying the living hell out of everyone on emulation boards related to MAME.  

I don't know about this, given he's not working from the original animation frames, as the HD version was from.

[Jdurg]

Yeah, but MAME is not going to support anything but original dumps from the arcade laserdiscs.  Those HD versions of the games are not going to be supported in any form in MAME, so for kiddies to play them they'll have to either use another emulator, or go and download the proper, supported dumps.

[Lilwolf]

It also sounds like you will need a decent computer to play them.  He was saying a dual core is a good thing so you can split the video portion to the second processor.

He is emulating the reading of the reading, not just playing a video file and controling the player... but the controls and the video conversions / codex type code.  Should be amazing when its done....

and yes, DL DL2 SA will be some of the last ones ripped. 

[Jdurg]

It's not really going to be too CPU intensive, but it WILL be HDD intensive.  You'll need a pretty fast HDD to feed the data to the CPU fast enough to play well.

[DJ Infinity]

Keep in mind that Space Ace, Dragon's Lair, DLII, and the other more widely known and popular laserdisc games will be the last ones added to MAME to prevent the greedy ROM Kiddies from basically taking down every webserver on the planet trying to download these 5GB files, in addition to annoying the living hell out of everyone on emulation boards related to MAME.   

Ummm it ain't that deep   does the word Daphne ring a bell? Daphne is a great way to go for Dragon's Lair, Space Ace etc especially if you bought a Digital Leisure set like I did  

[Jdurg]

Keep in mind that Space Ace, Dragon's Lair, DLII, and the other more widely known and popular laserdisc games will be the last ones added to MAME to prevent the greedy ROM Kiddies from basically taking down every webserver on the planet trying to download these 5GB files, in addition to annoying the living hell out of everyone on emulation boards related to MAME.   

Ummm it ain't that deep   does the word Daphne ring a bell? Daphne is a great way to go for Dragon's Lair, Space Ace etc especially if you bought a Digital Leisure set like I did  

The files for the laserdisc images in MAME are at least 5 GB per game.  They use a different format than Daphne.  Plus, the majority of the "kiddies" out there only know about MAME and don't even know other emulators exist.  Besides, if they tried to go to the Daphne forums for help they'd be reamed out beyond belief.

Daphne is the better option, and probably will always be, but ROM Kiddies could give a crap and will still want to play it in MAME.   

[TheShanMan]

Daphne is the better option, and probably will always be, but ROM Kiddies could give a crap and will still want to play it in MAME.   

That could be true, but I'll wait until they are out and stabilized before I pass judgment like that. Besides, what's the big deal if some people would prefer to play it in MAME? All things being equal I would prefer to drop Daphne and use MAME. Why are you worried about bigger downloads?

[Jdurg]

I'm just worried about the massive file downloading starting to garner some bad attention.  That, and the way it will flood many message boards and make finding actual, real discussions so much harder to find.  Not every forum is as well moderated as this one.

[TheShanMan]

While it will be a milestone for MAME, I just don't see it as THAT big of a deal.

[Circo]

I'm just worried about the massive file downloading starting to garner some bad attention.  That, and the way it will flood many message boards and make finding actual, real discussions so much harder to find.  Not every forum is as well moderated as this one.

The current chd set for mame is like 86GB, torrents or newsgroups are probably the best way to get that stuff, and 100GB more to the TB's of files already running through these systems daily is not going to make a bit of difference.