Mame4all 1.3


Franxis

MAME 4 ALL
Joined
Aug 22, 2004
Messages
788
Age
49
Location
Spain
Website
franxis.zxq.net
New version of the MAME port for the GP2X, with the following news:

Changes by Headoverheels:
- New Gaelco games added (MAME 0.37b7): Big Karnak (bigkarnk) and Biomechanical Toy (biomtoy).
- New SunA 8 bit games added (MAME 0.37b15): Hard Head (hardhead), Hard Head (Bootleg) (hardhedb) and Rough Ranger (rranger).
- Optimizations in Xain'd Sleena.
- Fixed the NEC cpu bug that caused slowdowns in Raiden (MAME 0.37b15).
- Fixed some bugs in the I86/NEC cpu emulation. This includes raster effects problems in Geostorm and the 99 credits bug in Lethal Thunder (MAME 0.66).

Changes by Franxis:
- Cheats support added.
- Auto-fire support. Thanks to the code by AGAWA Koji.
- Jackal has been corrected.

Changes by Slaanesh:
- Optimizations in Commando (now it uses tilemaps).

The download is here.
 
Excellent... nice to see some further improvements.

(I'm really getting overwhelmed by the amount of new stuff coming in. ^_^ )

Thanks to all of you. :D
 
Again a update, nice. :)
Haven't tested the new one, in the last release, I had a wrong aspect ratio in "TEMPEST" (vector game), scaling and aspect ratio correction seems to not work with Vector games, right? ^^"
 
fusion_power said:
Again a update, nice. :)
Haven't tested the new one, in the last release, I had a wrong aspect ratio in "TEMPEST" (vector game), scaling and aspect ratio correction seems to not work with Vector games, right? ^^"
You need to run Tempest rotated to get a closer aspect. You don't want to scale vectors, that would look hideous.
 
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Changes say a bug was fixed to address slowdown in Raiden, but for me Raiden is even slower than it was in 1.2. No loss though really, because it was never fast enough to be playable in 1.2 anyway.
 
naples39 said:
Changes say a bug was fixed to address slowdown in Raiden, but for me Raiden is even slower than it was in 1.2. No loss though really, because it was never fast enough to be playable in 1.2 anyway.
I'd have to agree. BUT... the Raiden driver is incorrect as it defines the V30 cpus to be running at 19Mhz - which is wrong. They actually should be 10Mhz. In effect they are being viciously overclocked. The solution is to set the Video CPU setting down to say 60%.
There is another gotcha. Whilst the fix corrects the V30 CPU, it also slows it done as the cycle times for most instructions were overstated in the previous core. The effect was that it was doing less work to emulate the required speed. Now it's doing more work for the same speed. I think the net effect is that the new V30 CPU core is more accurate though somewhat slower.
 
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Raiden in mame 0.37b5 was overclocked because of the incorrect cycle times and other bugs in the v30 core. Now it can be set to the correct speed. If you look at the m72 driver in this version of mame (0.37b5), the v30 is also overclocked because of the inaccurate v30 core.
 
Franxis thank you so much for another fine update! I have one question though. Were you ever able to fix MAME to use the upper memory? I remember you saying there was a bug with that, but it probably wasn't going to be easy to fix. I was just wondering. Thanks again for you ongoing work for MAME!
 
geise69 said:
Franxis thank you so much for another fine update! I have one question though. Were you ever able to fix MAME to use the upper memory? I remember you saying there was a bug with that, but it probably wasn't going to be easy to fix. I was just wondering. Thanks again for you ongoing work for MAME!
I was wrong, there isn't a bug. The upper memory is used correctly. There is enough memory to emulate the big neogeo games but the new neogeo driver allocates a memory chunks of about 32 mb (instead of 2 chunks of 16 mb). This is why they don't run in the new port. Play them with gngeo because i don't know if i will be able to fix it.
 
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Franxis said:
geise69 said:
Franxis thank you so much for another fine update! I have one question though. Were you ever able to fix MAME to use the upper memory? I remember you saying there was a bug with that, but it probably wasn't going to be easy to fix. I was just wondering. Thanks again for you ongoing work for MAME!
I was wrong, there isn't a bug. The upper memory is used correctly. There is enough memory to emulate the big neogeo games but the new neogeo driver allocates a memory chunks of about 32 mb (instead of 2 chunks of 16 mb). This is why they don't run in the new port. Play them with gngeo because i don't know if i will be able to fix it.


Hi Franxis ;) ... Why Empire City it is slow... I do not think it is a high resources game... :huh: ...and Drz80 don't work on it ... :(
 
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Franxis and the crew, many thanks for your ongoing work! loving the newest version!

this calls for a picture or two. This is where my copy of Mame4All resides:

IMG_5271_small.jpg


IMG_5261_small.jpg


Yes, it is powered by a GP2X, and yes those are real full-size arcade controls(!), and that is a tiny (5" or so, can't remember exactly) TV in TATE mode

Pictured running Pacman - my son loves it!
but 1943 (my fave, hence the banner and bezel), Space Invaders, Fast Freddie, Mr Do, and many others also get a regular run :)

You should see the inside of the cab - crammed with mini-pac board, break-out-board, cables everywhere, and the GP2X currently selotaped to the back of the cabinet ;)
 
Really cool thing. :) How are the Arcade Butons/Stick connected with the GP2X? Is there a simple 5-Minute-way for non-pro's like me? :D I always wanted to build a 1:1 MAME Arcade Cab. ^_^
 
fusion_power said:
Really cool thing. :) How are the Arcade Butons/Stick connected with the GP2X? Is there a simple 5-Minute-way for non-pro's like me? :D I always wanted to build a 1:1 MAME Arcade Cab. ^_^
hmm yeah, I thought it was gonna be easy, but ah... things are never as simple as they first look ;)

I originally was thinking of gutting my GP2X, making it a permanent internal fixture, so I opened it up and looked at soldering the arcade switches straight into the connectors on the board but OMG are they ridiculously small and fragile bits of circuit I'd have to solder to. waay beyond my capability.

then I thought of using an ultimarc mini-pac (wicked little device, check it on google). but actually I got it wrong above, I didn't use it. Can't remember why in the end, maybe it was software compatibility/configurability. yeah, I think it was a bit useless for navigating the front-end menus.

In the end I went for the this (deep breath...):

ingredients:
* a proper Sanwa clicky balltop arcade joystick, and a full set of clicky arcade buttons :)
* a cheapo USB game controller (like a nasty PC clone of a playstation gamepad)
* a GP2X breakout board (not the new cradle)
* a hundred bajillion bits of cable.

hardware:
1. gut the USB game controller, and just keep the innards - the PCB and USB connecting lead.
2. connect the arcade joystick and buttons to the solder-points on the gamepad PCB
3. connect the gamepad to the breakout-board USB connector

software:
1. front-end menu 'just works' because it thinks it's just a normal USB gamepad controller.
2. Mame *nearly* just works except that I had to configure the 'CREDIT' (select) and 'START' buttons. really great USB-controller support, thanks Franxis!

add several attempts to get the rotation correct (ie: the screen is vertical, but the joystick still needs to act how you would expect. damn the number of times I got left/right up/down transposed, or rotated the wrong way, by trial and error when I thought I had it perfect, lol.

the buttons just worked out neatly. There are two on the front (CREDIT and START), four on the top (the four main buttons), and then two shoulder buttons on the sides (pinball stylee), which you may just about be able to see in one of the pics. so you basically got all the buttons mapped except vol+/- and j-press.

I'm not saying it's totally elegant inside, but at least the thing works (at last. whew!)

the other thing was, I built the cab JUST big enough to put the GP2X inside, in position so it used the GP2X screen AS the screen (horizontal or vertical, rotatable). which seemed really cool. apart from two things: first, the screen was toooo small for the scale of the thing. plus the damn power cable sticking out the side just didn't fit whatever. So in the end I replaced it with a mini-tv, fed from the tv-out on the breakout box: appalling picture quality and I'm stuck with TATE mode, but bigger screen, who needs high-fidelity for space invaders, and its kinda more authentic arcade experience anyway, lol.

hmmm. I'm thinking maybe I should do a little photo-blog somewhere, showing the build process. I took stacks of pics while I was building it, so watch this space B)
 
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