Mame Running On Pandora. Video(s) Inside.

[Joshwaan2k]

.53 looks like a good version to use

If you are using 0.53, you may as well use 0.62... newer and very similar performance...


No worries mate sounds good. Hopfully it's that version or later that gives me MK2 and NBA Jam fullspeed with sound on the panda .

 

[x68000]

Is it possible to take some drivers from a more recent version of mame and incorporate them into an older version such as 0.62?

Would be nice if we could play some stuff such as salamander 2, gradius 4 and mars matrix on the Pandora.

 

[geise69]

Is it possible to take some drivers from a more recent version of mame and incorporate them into an older version such as 0.62?

Would be nice if we could play some stuff such as salamander 2, gradius 4 and mars matrix on the Pandora.

Hmmm...I wonder how well the Konami GX driver would run? Metamorphic Force would rock on the Pandora as well, but that might be a mystwarr.c driver game.

 

[silver]

slaanesh was talking sense earlier on while referring to the Aaron Giles pacman performance test.

Mame does not steadily drop in performance with each version - it's actually has long periods of stable performance with major drops at certain versions.

So what we are really looking for is a 'sweet-spot' in terms of performance vs features/supported games for the Pandora. I'd suggest that the aim should be to use the newest version that runs most games well on the standard pandora cpu clock. Then older versions can be used for a particular games which it struggles with (and a frontend could make this choice seamlessly).

A brief summary of Aarons blog:

10% drop with 0.53 (dropped support for 8-bit palette modes)

6% drop with 0.61 (removed dirty bitmap support)

8% drop with 0.63 (newer GCC compiler?)

30% drop with 0.107 (Windows code now always chooses 32-bit video mode)

15% increase in 0.110 (not sure why)

However, it's worth pointing out a few things:

1) The above is solely based on pacman. Aaron points out that a 32-bit colour game like Rastan (pacman is 8-bit colour) would NOT have dropped performance in 0.53, 0.61 or 0.106.

2) The results are for the windows binary using directdraw. Not sure what the current quick and dirty port of mame is using, or if similar performances hits for 32-bit modes exist in SDLMame.

3) Seeing as it appears it's not a 'huge' job porting mame (& and mixing in ASM cpu cores) the only way to really test this is on a pandora, when all the software rotation etc..etc.. is removed. Then we can test current mame vs 106 vs 63 etc...

 

[chaos engineer]

Powerdrift, please!

 

[john4p]

So the performance drops don't seem that severe. I hope at least 0.119 gets ported - so we can try SF3...

 

[naples39]

So the performance drops don't seem that severe. I hope at least 0.119 gets ported - so we can try SF3...

I think there's a good chance we'll see a dedicated CPS3 emulator, so I wouldn't slow down 2000 other games to get SF3 on MAME.

 

[john4p]

True. And through MAME it would probably be too slow on Pandora anyway.

 

[fusion_power]

.53 looks like a good version to use

If you are using 0.53, you may as well use 0.62... newer and very similar performance...

Yes, I'm also for a "0.60's" MAME Version, I've started with MAME in this number-region. I think it's a good compromise between Performance and Number of emulated Games.

Hopfully it's that version or later that gives me MK2 and NBA Jam fullspeed with sound on the panda .

I recommend "NBA MAXIMUM HANGTIME" (updated version of NBA HANGTIME) I'ts stressing even my (old) AthlonXP 1700+ but maybe the Devs can optimize the Pandora-MAME good enough to play this game. Would be more than great!

 

[Vince2501]

Hey, is it possible to get CPS 3 emulation going?

 

[cools]

QUOTE
Spitting the output into an 1:1 resolution without processing it in any way massively improves performance.

I think Pandora could display a resolution of for example 320x240 pixels directly send to the screen in fullscreen mode, but the aspect ratio would be messed up. Like this is the case when you output a 4:3 resolution on a 16:10 screen. Is there a way to output it without scaling and give the right aspectratio, so the screen would ignore the rest of it?


Not on an LCD. Something is going to have to stretch the output, whether it's the Pandora hardware or MAME.

 

[geise69]

Final Burn Alpha emulates CPS3. The GP2X version doesn't but the PC version does, as well as the recent PSP port of FBA. There's even a demo version for the FAT psp. It runs slow, but it runs. So I'm more than sure that it could CPS3 could be quite playable on the Pandora. Just have to wait and see.

 

[telegramguy]

Zottd,

How come you're only showing the screen in your videos? Can we see the Pandora board you're using?

 

[DaveC]

QUOTE
Spitting the output into an 1:1 resolution without processing it in any way massively improves performance.

I think Pandora could display a resolution of for example 320x240 pixels directly send to the screen in fullscreen mode, but the aspect ratio would be messed up. Like this is the case when you output a 4:3 resolution on a 16:10 screen. Is there a way to output it without scaling and give the right aspectratio, so the screen would ignore the rest of it?


Not on an LCD. Something is going to have to stretch the output, whether it's the Pandora hardware or MAME.

I think what he means is can you display 1:1 without distorting the image by stretching aspect ratios.

You can but in this case a "1:1" mode should really be a simple pixel doubling so that 320 x 240 would become 640x480. It could also be called "integer scaling" so that you don't get that potentially ugly fractional scaling. This would give 1:1, 2:1, 3:1 etc.

 

[telegramguy]

Zottd,

How come you're only showing the screen in your videos? Can we see the Pandora board you're using?

was that actually a pandora "dev kit" like what squidge has?

 

[Qwertyuiop]

I asked zodttd about showing the actual board, and he said something along the lines of "sorry, I'm not allowed to show it right now =/".

 

[dinglebery]

well that actualy makes sence. if theres a few versions of the boards, and dev kits running around you dont realy want to post pics of the NONRealease stuff this close to launch. with as rabid as this community is lately and the chance for misrepresentation so high that could be a mess :> not to mention we dont know what other buisness arangements are going on with the dev team they may have other obligations or concerns we have no need to know about.


ps are Weeeeee theeere yet? bounce bounce bounce andora1: :lol:

 

[telegramguy]

I asked zodttd about showing the actual board, and he said something along the lines of "sorry, I'm not allowed to show it right now =/".

The reason I'm puzzled is that I don't think Zodttd has one of the Pandora dev kits. That's why I was surprised that he was able to make the cool videos he made.

If anything, pre-orders are already a done deal for a while and the number of Pandora dev kits hasn't changed... why not post some pics of what he used to make those videos?

 

[Adventus]

QUOTE

The reason I'm puzzled is that I don't think Zodttd has one of the Pandora dev kits. That's why I was surprised that he was able to make the cool videos he made.

If anything, pre-orders are already a done deal for a while and the number of Pandora dev kits hasn't changed... why not post some pics of what he used to make those videos?
I'm pretty sure he has a TI OMAP devkit. Its probably out of the Pandora Teams hands.

 

[craigix]

What Zod has is under NDA.

It's nothing shocking or unexpected though, more that it works and he is happy to use it , we are sending him one of the new final Pandora boards this week.