Android MAME

[Ian J]

Has anyone tried this?


After seeing MAME running on the Pandora at Replay (silky smooth) I was tempted to to get an iControlPad to tide me over but after trying MAME4droid on my Samsung Galaxy S I wasn't so impressed.


The frame-rate fluctuated and the sound was choppy.


I've been using MAME since it could only run a handful of games so have quite a bit of experience tweaking the settings, but no matter what I do I cannot get MAME on my phone to run smoothly which is annoying given that the games I'm trying ran fine on my old P3 500 (the machine I had when 37b05 came out)


I understand that frames are dropped to keep the game in sync as the screen refresh rate may not match the display on the phone but I get the same on my PC and the sound / screen doesn't stutter.


I guess phones just aren't cut out for running emulators.


Just shows it's not all about having the horsepower to run an emulator.


Ian

 

[Prometheus]

Just shows it's not all about having the horsepower to run an emulator.

I just wanted to say how refreshing it is to see someone say this, instead of "Such-and-such-a-phone has more specs!".


Besides, if that's how the telephone did with what I assume to be a port of MAME4All, then I can't even imagine how it would fare with MAME 0.106, but the Pandora runs both beautifully!

 

[strifer116]

Actually you should do some more research.


Android has had a much more capable MAME emulator for a long time.


2 actually which are much better than mame4droid (disappointment really )


1. Tiger MAME . Tiger MAME can play more games than any other MAME emulator I have seen on Android (I have tested just about all of them). This was pulled from the market by Google but luckily you can still install it. For example. I can't find a single mame emulator for Android which can play all 6 metal Slugs (this one can). it can play most all Neo Geo games, CPS1, most CPS2(I recommend CPS2HD on the android market though) and some Konami and other random ones


http://apps.tigerpla...ease_3.0.0a.apk (most recent build)


You will need to use the neo geo bios (place in your folder with ROMs) and use roms from this source: [Removed] (best source for neo geo roms on this emulator)


Only thing is his save state feature is spotty


2. Jararcade: https://market.andro...mkuY3BzMmhkIl0. (his CPS2hd emulator is great)


This one also has better compatibility than MAME4droid though it's support for Neo Geo games lacks compared to Tiger MAME


I will be opening a website with a directory of all known android emulators and how to use them etc and where to get them in near future.


So the two above emulators work better than MAME4droid and do benefit from the added horsepower of Android (running an Epic touch 4G)

 

[Prometheus]

Hi and welcome, strifer116.


Please be aware that for reasons explained here, I've had to edit your post and remove the ROM-site link - they're not allowed here.

 

[strifer116]

Hi and welcome, strifer116.


Please be aware that for reasons explained here, I've had to edit your post and remove the ROM-site link - they're not allowed here.

Understood and sorry for the trouble,


I have always found it funny when it comes to arcade ROMs

 

[Seleuco]

Hi... I'm the mame4droid developer...


Actually, mame4droid is probably the fastest mame emulator available with the right hardware and the right options... You must play around with the settings, and you should enable the opengl video render mode.. Also ensure you have enabled CPU asm cores and do some tweak In settings...


If you don't like auto frame skip.. Disable it and select a fixed frame skip


Not all phones has a capable gpu (driver) to do bit blt anyway (maybe this is your problem)... But MaMe4droit let you use sw video render (default)... it is more compatible but slower. if you don't read the help or play with the options maybe you aren't getting the faster emulation possible... But as said before android has some buggy OpenGL drivers and put a huge overhead because dalvik java virtual machine and all background process... Try to run in your p3 500 a java program... Mame4droid is almost native code, but is using android Apis that are running inside virtual machine, like touch control system..


The rom compability is the same as jarcade... Since they are based in the same MaMe romset... But jarcade is violating MaMe license.... Please dont support thieves.


Tigerarcade is a good choice also..

 

[DaMummy]

...where did these mame devs come from all of a sudden? how about helping with some mame on pandora?

 

[strifer116]

...where did these mame devs come from all of a sudden? how about helping with some mame on pandora?

maybe cause Android has more potential than open Pandora.

 

[WizardStan]

To be fair, there is a lot of overlap between the two. Ari64's recompiler for the N64 was designed for the Pandora but was repurposed onto the Android version of the emulator. Similarly it was used in the PSX emulator for the Pandora which I think was then ported to Android as well. Some open communication on the MAME front could be mutually beneficial.

 

[milkshake]

maybe cause Android has more potential than open Pandora.

woah now hold your horses, thats fightin talk round here ;P

 

[Ian J]

Actually you should do some more research.


Android has had a much more capable MAME emulator for a long time.


2 actually which are much better than mame4droid (disappointment really )


1. Tiger MAME . Tiger MAME can play more games than any other MAME emulator I have seen on Android (I have tested just about all of them). This was pulled from the market by Google but luckily you can still install it. For example. I can't find a single mame emulator for Android which can play all 6 metal Slugs (this one can). it can play most all Neo Geo games, CPS1, most CPS2(I recommend CPS2HD on the android market though) and some Konami and other random ones


http://apps.tigerpla...ease_3.0.0a.apk (most recent build)


You will need to use the neo geo bios (place in your folder with ROMs) and use roms from this source: [Removed] (best source for neo geo roms on this emulator)


Only thing is his save state feature is spotty


2. Jararcade: https://market.andro...mkuY3BzMmhkIl0. (his CPS2hd emulator is great)


This one also has better compatibility than MAME4droid though it's support for Neo Geo games lacks compared to Tiger MAME


I will be opening a website with a directory of all known android emulators and how to use them etc and where to get them in near future.


So the two above emulators work better than MAME4droid and do benefit from the added horsepower of Android (running an Epic touch 4G)

I have TigerMame on my phone it runs very nicely but the last version I tried was aimed more at NeoGeo & Capcom CPS1 & CPS2 which are 90% beat em ups which are not my thing, I will certainly look at the latest version though.


Jararcade - Never heard of this so will take a look.

 

[Ian J]

Hi... I'm the mame4droid developer...


Actually, mame4droid is probably the fastest mame emulator available with the right hardware and the right options... You must play around with the settings, and you should enable the opengl video render mode.. Also ensure you have enabled CPU asm cores and do some tweak In settings...


If you don't like auto frame skip.. Disable it and select a fixed frame skip


Not all phones has a capable gpu (driver) to do bit blt anyway (maybe this is your problem)... But MaMe4droit let you use sw video render (default)... it is more compatible but slower. if you don't read the help or play with the options maybe you aren't getting the faster emulation possible... But as said before android has some buggy OpenGL drivers and put a huge overhead because dalvik java virtual machine and all background process... Try to run in your p3 500 a java program... Mame4droid is almost native code, but is using android Apis that are running inside virtual machine, like touch control system..


The rom compability is the same as jarcade... Since they are based in the same MaMe romset... But jarcade is violating MaMe license.... Please dont support thieves.


Tigerarcade is a good choice also..

Please don't insult me by saying I haven't read the help or played with the options, as I said in my original post I have been using MAME for over a decade. I use the DOS version via command line so I certainly know my way round the settings in a GUI based version.


The P3 500 has long since gone to the scrappers.


<sarcasm>Maybe it is my phone, when my upgrade is due I'll make sure I get a dual/quad core model with Tegra 3 so that I can play z80 based games smoothly. </sarcasm>


To be honest if it takes all that extra horse power to get an emulator running on my phone I'll stick with the Pandora for my emulation fix (when It arrives).


Maybe you should look at developing on the Pandora if it can run games smoothly at 600mhz the system must be more efficient than my Samsung Galaxy.


Many thanks for your reply though.


Ian

 

[Seleuco]

Sorry man,


But you don't understand me... I'm not a native English speaker... So excuse me poor English...


What I say you is simple... If you have a device with poor gl driver and I have to upload a texture per frame to the gpu, to do hw scaling and smoothing... You are fucked... All blitting and smoothing needs to be done in sw... If you add the android overhead you have poor performance... Normally gl drivers are not thinked to do bit blliting... You upload Meshes and some textures and you are finish... Emulator needs to upload a texture por frame... Some drivers only like power of 2 texture... Yo must deal with tricks like upload sub textures.... If the driver doesn't help you have poor performance... It is importan the gpu bandwidth also... Not the CPU MHz..


Also remember that DOS is not a multitasking system... That's mean all CPU horsepower is used in the program you are running... Also an arm device is a risc CPU targeted to eats little power... You can't do a simple mhz compare..


Anyway...you don't need really a high spec android to run mame4droid... I have some android devices where mame4droid runs pretty well... In fact, far better than pandora system and are more cheaper... You need the right hw, the right software and the right drivers... And the right tweaking...

 

[milkshake]

where mame4droid runs pretty well... In fact, far better than pandora system...

how do you know it runs better than the pandora version? do you have a pandora to compare it to?

 

[Ian J]

where mame4droid runs pretty well... In fact, far better than pandora system...

how do you know it runs better than the pandora version? do you have a pandora to compare it to?

+1


I have tried the Pandora and I've now tried it on my phone, the Pandora ran smoother.


Damn I've only been active on here for a few days and I'm already getting bolshy.

 

[Seleuco]

Not, but I have seen mame4all running on a pandora mate... (runs well of course) but Mame4droid running in a tegra2 400$ honeycomb device running at 1280 resolution with image filtering and CRT or scanline overlays is far better experience.. Also with 60 fps all time in mk1.. And with 10' screen inches... Not color... Pair it with a icp or an iCade and you have the best MaMe experience on an arm device...

 

[Prometheus]

^ Different market, I think. That's not very portable.

 

[Seleuco]

Buy then a samsung galaxy 2... My wife has one and runs mame4droid far better than any device I have seen... It is the best phone I have ever seen... Far better than my iPhone 4... Runs emulators like a champ... Buy an icp if you don't like touch control and you have a phone and the better portable emulation platform...


Also users have reported me that xperia play runs very well mame4droid... full speed using open gl video render mode...

 

[Prometheus]

I'm not interested in telephones, sorry.

 

[Seleuco]

Ok... I understand ... I really like pandora... And I think it is a different device than phones or tablets... And I think it is a good choice if you don't need phone or you like real homebrew stuff and not the marketplaces thinked to earn money... Also the pandora community it is a must...