Author Topic: Am I going nuts? Has Galaga always been not silky smooth? (Read 4984 times)

blkdog7 · « **on:** March 16, 2009, 08:09:52 pm »

running MAME 0.29, MALA, J-Pac, Soft15k, all connected to a WG D7700 monitor in a Ms. Pac cab. Intel Celeron 2.4, 512MB RAM.

It seems to me that Galaga is not running as smooth as I remember it. It looks like the animations are skipping a few frames. Kind of hard to explain. I could be imagining it. If you think of it like this... Your ship is going from point x to y. It's 3 pixels from point x to y. It looks like it is skipping the second pixel. I can see the stutter. Is it just me? Are my eyes hyper sensitive. Every other game seems to be running just fine. I only really notice it on GALAGA. Has Galaga always been like this since day one? I just don't recall it like this on my 60 in 1.

Any optimization settings I should try? I tried triple buffer and then it screwed up my audio. It seemed smoother but the game was running slower. Should I get new ROM? Is ADVANCE MAME a better way to go?

northerngames · « **Reply #1 on:** March 16, 2009, 11:28:27 pm »

check the original video res specs of the game and then check to see if your running a native/same res when the game is going

blkdog7 · « **Reply #2 on:** March 17, 2009, 10:07:58 am »

Quote from: northerngames on March 16, 2009, 11:28:27 pm

check the original video res specs of the game and then check to see if your running a native/same res when the game is going

I have MAME set to change the resolution of the games and I also ran the VGAres tool. Sailor mentioned that Galaga had a rewrite in the most recent versions of MAME. I am wondering if I should go back to an older version of MAME.

DolansCadillac · « **Reply #3 on:** March 17, 2009, 03:17:43 pm »

I had a similar issue with Galaga (and any other older Namco or Nintendo games), where the display would consistently stutter. What I ended up doing to fix it was manually specifying the refresh rate in the .ini file after the resolution parameter (so that it read like 1280x1024x60), which fixed it completely. Mind you I'm using an LCD so I don't know if it's related to your problem, but might be worth a shot if you haven't tried it already.

geocab · « **Reply #4 on:** March 17, 2009, 06:16:31 pm »

Galaga is running completely smooth for me. I'm using MAMEUI .129u3 right now and haven't touched any settings for video that aren't default. My screen is an LCD.

Just wanted you to know that, yes, you are nuts!

BobA · « **Reply #5 on:** March 17, 2009, 06:44:26 pm »

Quote from: blkdog7 on March 17, 2009, 10:07:58 am

Quote from: northerngames on March 16, 2009, 11:28:27 pm
check the original video res specs of the game and then check to see if your running a native/same res when the game is going

I have MAME set to change the resolution of the games and I also ran the VGAres tool. Sailor mentioned that Galaga had a rewrite in the most recent versions of MAME. I am wondering if I should go back to an older version of MAME.

How much older can you go then Mame 0.29?

BobA · « **Reply #6 on:** March 17, 2009, 06:50:03 pm »

Plays fine in my 122 and 107 and an earlier 56

blkdog7 · « **Reply #7 on:** March 17, 2009, 08:13:18 pm »

Meant to say 129, not 29. LOL.

blkdog7 · « **Reply #8 on:** March 17, 2009, 08:27:57 pm »

I just tried 122, 128, etc. I am gonna give up and just live with it I guess. Really sucks because these are the games that are most important to me.

I am a bit saddened by this. It's just not 1000000% smooth and I totally notice it. The game plays FINE. But I can see the choppy animation. It's very slight and the average person wouldn't pick it up. But it is there.

SirPeale · « **Reply #9 on:** March 17, 2009, 09:13:33 pm »

Hit F11 to bring up the frame rate. What's it say?

If it's stuttering a bit, it's probably a config issue of some kind.

geocab · « **Reply #10 on:** March 17, 2009, 10:11:33 pm »

Quote from: blkdog7 on March 17, 2009, 08:27:57 pm

I just tried 122, 128, etc. I am gonna give up and just live with it I guess. Really sucks because these are the games that are most important to me.

I am a bit saddened by this. It's just not 1000000% smooth and I totally notice it. The game plays FINE. But I can see the choppy animation. It's very slight and the average person wouldn't pick it up. But it is there.

You may be a god of all things "sight" but even an average person like me can see that Galaga is SMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTH on my system. Something isn't right on your system right now.

blkdog7 · « **Reply #11 on:** March 18, 2009, 09:16:08 am »

I did the F11 thing and saw something like this:

"Skip 0/10 100%"

Do you think having the vids in MALA could be doing this? When MAME launches, is MALA still running in the background? And, are the videos too?

I just ordered some more RAM for the computer. I have 512MB. I'm gonna go to 1.5GB of RAM.

Anything else I should be looking at?

I made the following changes to my MAME.INI. The rest of the settings are mostly default:

#
# VIDEO OPTIONS
#
video ddraw
numscreens 1
window 0
maximize 1
keepaspect 1
prescale 1
effect none
pause_brightness 0.65
waitvsync 0
syncrefresh 0

#
# DIRECTDRAW-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
#
hwstretch 0

#
# FULL SCREEN OPTIONS
#
triplebuffer 0
switchres 1

2600 · « **Reply #12 on:** March 18, 2009, 09:24:05 am »

What resolution is the game running at?
A Celeron isn't an ideal CPU for MAME.

blkdog7 · « **Reply #13 on:** March 18, 2009, 01:43:18 pm »

I'd have to check the game resolution. How do I do that?

It's running at whatever ArcadeVGA told it to run. It looks totally arcade perfect. Nice and sharp. I would say it's running at the games native res.

I was afraid someone would say the Celeron could be the culprit. I hope RAM fixes this.

Loafmeister · « **Reply #14 on:** March 18, 2009, 02:51:16 pm »

Ok, let's be clear on this, your CPU is 2.4ghz, it's more than enough to emulate Galaga so don't worry about that. 512 mb of Ram is also ok, again we're talking about emulating a game that's so small that ram is almost insignificant.

Your problem is probably a video configuration issue. Here's what you can try to test this out.

- try MameUI (formerly Mame32). The reason is that the video option are a little easier to test. There's nothing it can do that the command prompt mame can/can't, they're both the same but one is easier to mess around with, thus my recommendation, especially if perhaps you're not fully familiar with Mame and emulation itself.

- Try the different rendering options. I can't remember which is which but selecting "Directdraw", "GDI" or Direct3D will get you various rendering option but also a different hit on the framerate depending on the game.

- When others have said "try and older version", try something like MameUI(32) pre version 0.100. I think some have said the fastest versions of mame is something like mame 0.68

- Ensure the configuration is set up to not skip any frames (I think it's called "draw every frame". I'm sorry if I can't be specific, I'm at work and can't check this out.

MameUI isn't better than command prompt mame, but it might make it easier to sort out the issue. Once you've found the culprit, THEN start messing around with the Mame.ini.

Hope this helps.

Loaf

blkdog7 · « **Reply #15 on:** March 18, 2009, 04:27:51 pm »

What do you guys think of CabMAME?

northerngames · « **Reply #16 on:** March 18, 2009, 04:44:03 pm »

check the original video res specs of the game and then check to see if your running a native/same res when the game is going.

start the game and press the tab key then go into the video display while the game is running and post what res it say's it is running at.

do it in mame only with no fronts ends of any kind.

if it works fine in mame only but acts up in a front end then it is the front end that is the problem.

This way you could tell what is doing what instead of running different things at once and having no clue what is going on with what.

blkdog7 · « **Reply #17 on:** March 18, 2009, 06:59:09 pm »

I tried GALAGA from the command line and with no front-end, same thing.

GALAGA is running at 288 x 224 (v)60hz

I tried CABMAME. The game ran SMOOTHER with Triplebuffer on. It ran great. HOWEVER, it only ran at 84%. The sound was all slow. Game was slow. SUCKED. This is driving me mad!

blkdog7 · « **Reply #18 on:** March 18, 2009, 07:24:36 pm »

Ok, I checked the galaga.ini file and it had a totally different resolution in it! It had like 352x224 or something like that. I changed it to 288x224 (on both lines) and it FIXED IT!!! It's perfect now!! WOOT!

SO, I guess VGAres doesn't do such a great job with my setup?? Do I need to change them all now??

FrizzleFried · « **Reply #19 on:** March 18, 2009, 07:40:11 pm »

http://mamewah.mameworld.info/downloads/mame_res_tool.zip

Minwah's MAME Resolution Tool is your friend...

blkdog7 · « **Reply #20 on:** March 18, 2009, 08:06:11 pm »

Ok, cool. I will try that. I used VGAres and it didn't do too good of a job. I removed all the ini files from my ini folder and overall everything seems better. Galaga is running silky smooth now.

blkdog7 · « **Reply #21 on:** March 18, 2009, 08:27:14 pm »

I ran that mame res tool and it created a crap ton of ini files that just say "resolution auto". Is that the best setting?

Do you guys change the resolution on every game when running an arcade monitor?

blkdog7 · « **Reply #22 on:** March 18, 2009, 08:29:36 pm »

How do I see what resolution MAME is outputting. If I hit "info" it just shows me what the game should be running at, right?

Minwah · « **Reply #23 on:** March 19, 2009, 06:12:44 am »

Quote from: blkdog7 on March 18, 2009, 07:24:36 pm

Ok, I checked the galaga.ini file and it had a totally different resolution in it! It had like 352x224 or something like that. I changed it to 288x224 (on both lines) and it FIXED IT!!! It's perfect now!! WOOT!

The game will not be running at 288x224 because as far as I know this mode isn't supported by the AVGA. I suspect what is happening is Mame is defaulting to 'resolution auto' since this mode is not found.

You were probably previously using 352x288, which is not a bad *resolution* for Galaga, but as the refresh rate (on AVGA) is 51Hz you will drop frames (ie jerky movement) as Galaga runs @ 60.606060Hz.

I am assuming you are using a horizontal monitor? There is no perfect mode for a 288 line vertical game on a horizontal monitor unfortunately $:-\$

Also worth noting is that since Mame became very accurate with it's screen refreshes, you will drop the odd frame when running Galaga even in a 60Hz mode (since 60 is less than 60.606060). 'refreshspeed' is supposed to 'fix' this but the last time I tried it, it didn't work properly

FWIW, I just use 640x480 -hwstretch for 288 line vertical games. Not perfect but I have to accept that given my monitor is the wrong way around!

blkdog7 · « **Reply #24 on:** March 19, 2009, 04:29:31 pm »

Quote from: Minwah on March 19, 2009, 06:12:44 am

Quote from: blkdog7 on March 18, 2009, 07:24:36 pm
Ok, I checked the galaga.ini file and it had a totally different resolution in it! It had like 352x224 or something like that. I changed it to 288x224 (on both lines) and it FIXED IT!!! It's perfect now!! WOOT!

The game will not be running at 288x224 because as far as I know this mode isn't supported by the AVGA. I suspect what is happening is Mame is defaulting to 'resolution auto' since this mode is not found.

You were probably previously using 352x288, which is not a bad *resolution* for Galaga, but as the refresh rate (on AVGA) is 51Hz you will drop frames (ie jerky movement) as Galaga runs @ 60.606060Hz.

I am assuming you are using a horizontal monitor? There is no perfect mode for a 288 line vertical game on a horizontal monitor unfortunately $:-\$

Also worth noting is that since Mame became very accurate with it's screen refreshes, you will drop the odd frame when running Galaga even in a 60Hz mode (since 60 is less than 60.606060). 'refreshspeed' is supposed to 'fix' this but the last time I tried it, it didn't work properly

FWIW, I just use 640x480 -hwstretch for 288 line vertical games. Not perfect but I have to accept that given my monitor is the wrong way around!

I have a vertical monitor. My MAME setup is in a Ms. Pac-Man cabinet with a WG D7700 monitor mounted vertically. I am not running an ARCADEVGA card. I am using Soft15k with a J-Pac.

I really just need the best solution to create the ini files specifically for my setup. If anyone can give me direction. I know there is a way to add resolutions to Soft15k. I just don't know which ones to add or how to add to it.

Minwah · « **Reply #25 on:** March 20, 2009, 07:59:51 am »

Quote from: blkdog7 on March 19, 2009, 04:29:31 pm

I have a vertical monitor. My MAME setup is in a Ms. Pac-Man cabinet with a WG D7700 monitor mounted vertically. I am not running an ARCADEVGA card. I am using Soft15k with a J-Pac.

OK sorry, it's just you said 'It's running at whatever ArcadeVGA told it to run' which lead me to think you had an AVGA...

Quote

I really just need the best solution to create the ini files specifically for my setup. If anyone can give me direction. I know there is a way to add resolutions to Soft15k. I just don't know which ones to add or how to add to it.

This is really a matter of opinion. There are several ini file creators, so you have to try them and choose which you prefer.

And as for adding resolutions, again it depends on which modes you really want to have - probably determined by which games you want to play.


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