So How Is Mame Compatibility?


cihx

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May 17, 2006
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i spent the afternoon at work fiddling with a zodiac 2 messing with the emus and stuff for that. after about 3 hours of fiddling, reading searching i get it to work. then i remeber about the gp2x and wonder why i wasted all that time. haha. i probably will be ordering mine in about a month or so.

so how well is mame running? i am assuming cps2 games don't work yet. all i care about are neo geo,cps1 and cave shooters and i will be happy.

and what version of mame is this runnign off of. 35? and when will they be able to get to the higher versions? zodiac2 mame was at .36 that quite a while ago. sorry if these are n00b questions it's been a few years since i followed the emulation scene.

thanks for the help in advance.
 
cihx posted on May 17 2006 at 03:43 AM said:
i spent the afternoon at work fiddling with a zodiac 2 messing with the emus and stuff for that. after about 3 hours of fiddling, reading searching i get it to work. then i remeber about the gp2x and wonder why i wasted all that time. haha. i probably will be ordering mine in about a month or so.

so how well is mame running? i am assuming cps2 games don't work yet. all i care about are neo geo,cps1 and cave shooters and i will be happy.

and what version of mame is this runnign off of. 35? and when will they be able to get to the higher versions? zodiac2 mame was at .36 that quite a while ago. sorry if these are n00b questions it's been a few years since i followed the emulation scene.

thanks for the help in advance.


I wouldn't use MAME for NeoGeo. Use GNGeo it is much smoother. It can run most NEoGeo MVS games at full speed with sound set to 11025 at the default 200 MHz with FS 1. It even runs the large ROMs.

MAME is great for the classics at full speed and runs stuff like Robotron, Rygar and Gauntlet etc real well too. Newer drivers may be added but it is at .34 now. This makes many games run full speed with sound. The screen res matches the games very well so you don't need to scale up causing blurriness.
 
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cihx posted on May 17 2006 at 01:43 PM said:
i spent the afternoon at work fiddling with a zodiac 2 messing with the emus and stuff for that. after about 3 hours of fiddling, reading searching i get it to work. then i remeber about the gp2x and wonder why i wasted all that time. haha. i probably will be ordering mine in about a month or so.
You may want to recheck MAME running on your Zodiac especially if you were using an old version. Vilmos (author of PalmMAME) has been busily enhancing it to make use of Zodiac hardware and getting the latest Cyclone core working.
What this means is that it runs 68K games really quite well. Compared to the Gp32/Gp2x version it also has the advantage of being based on 0.36 rather than 0.34/0.35. This means more games work. Seems like there were some key releases in 0.36.
Mind you the Gp2x version still is faster (and therefore smoother) especially with sound thanks to the high degree of optimization by Franxis (and later Chui).
 
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slaanesh posted on May 20 2006 at 11:36 PM said:
Mind you the Gp2x version still is faster (and therefore smoother) especially with sound thanks to the high degree of optimization by Franxis (and later Chui).


Do you have a GP2X yet? You may want to play the NeoGeo emu on it and MAME for it too. It is quite nice with a digital stick and 1:1 graphics.

Have you made any more changes to the GP MAME? I know you were trying to get Millipede controls working and some games that used samples.
 
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I have been improving/optimizing the cpu cores among other things.

Also i have tried to solve the problem with Millipede, but without results.
Slaanesh, what did you do to solve the problem???
 
Franxis posted on May 22 2006 at 08:30 PM said:
I have been improving/optimizing the cpu cores among other things.

Also i have tried to solve the problem with Millipede, but without results.
Slaanesh, what did you do to solve the problem???
There was an error in the millipede driver.

Code:
PORT_ANALOGX ( 0xff, 0x00, IPT_DIAL, 1, 0, 0, 0, IP_KEY_NONE, IP_KEY_NONE, IP_KEY_NONE, IP_KEY_NONE, 1 )

changed to:

Code:
PORT_ANALOGX ( 0xff, 0x00, IPT_DIAL, 1, 0, 0, 0, IP_KEY_NONE, IP_KEY_NONE, IP_KEY_NONE, IP_KEY_NONE, 4 )

It was only reading a single bit whereas it should have been reading 4 bits.

Do you have a GP2X yet? You may want to play the NeoGeo emu on it and MAME for it too. It is quite nice with a digital stick and 1:1 graphics.

Have you made any more changes to the GP MAME? I know you were trying to get Millipede controls working and some games that used samples.
Yeah, I've had a GP2X for ages. I've played GNGEO on it - it's really very good! :)
I also play GP2X MAME - it handles sound so much better than the GP32 and all those lovely CPS-1 and Sega System-16 games are amongst my favourite arcade games ever... It's a pity the GP32 doesn't have a wee bit more RAM as it could have played these other wise.

Mind you I think they *could* do it with a bit of mega-space optimization - possibly play the smaller CPS1 games for instance. It just depends on how big and how many screen planes they have - at least two from what I can see. I haven't got code here at the moment so I can't check.

I'm going to have to get a MK2 GP2X - I'm not really fond of the joystick on the my current one. To me it's just doesn't feel right.

I've made some more changes to GP32 MAME - updated some core graphics handling functions (from the recent GP2x updates) and compiling with the new R18 Devkitpro. I've started playing around with samples too - but I've been a bit distracted with helping Vilmos test PalmMAME on the Zodiac. :D
I've also tried getting Pole Position to work - but it's a bit of a nightmare. It needs a new CPU (Z8002) and the drivers only started working on 0.36 - so converting backwards from there can be... tedious.
 
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slaanesh posted on May 24 2006 at 01:41 AM said:
Yeah, I've had a GP2X for ages. I've played GNGEO on it - it's really very good! :)
I also play GP2X MAME - it handles sound so much better than the GP32 and all those lovely CPS-1 and Sega System-16 games are amongst my favourite arcade games ever... It's a pity the GP32 doesn't have a wee bit more RAM as it could have played these other wise.

I'm going to have to get a MK2 GP2X - I'm not really fond of the joystick on the my current one. To me it's just doesn't feel right.


Ok I am suprised it seems like you prefer the GP32 over the GP2X, I don't think you updated MAME for it, just the GP32. I found the GP2X screen to have much better contrast and color than the GP32, but I guess the stick is better on the GP32. Too bad they couldn't put the GP32 stick on the Gp2X.

Do you have a replacement cap or the original? If it is the original then I can understand, it sucks. Get one of the replacements from Craig, the caps DO make a big difference. It seems strange that the GP2X stick feels odd to you but the analog one on the Palm doesn't feel odd? When I had one of those I could not play anything digital very well on that analog, Ms-Pac-man was impossible for me and always ended up in a long string of expletives. You must have l337 skillz to do it :p
 
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DaveC posted on May 24 2006 at 01:08 PM said:
Ok I am suprised it seems like you prefer the GP32 over the GP2X, I don't think you updated MAME for it, just the GP32. I found the GP2X screen to have much better contrast and color than the GP32, but I guess the stick is better on the GP32. Too bad they couldn't put the GP32 stick on the Gp2X.

Do you have a replacement cap or the original? If it is the original then I can understand, it sucks. Get one of the replacements from Craig, the caps DO make a big difference. It seems strange that the GP2X stick feels odd to you but the analog one on the Palm doesn't feel odd? When I had one of those I could not play anything digital very well on that analog, Ms-Pac-man was impossible for me and always ended up in a long string of expletives. You must have l337 skillz to do it :p
Actually I'm not that fond of the controller either, but it is alright. It's just everything else about it that I love. Touch screen, heaps of buttons, comfortable to hold, small enough for my pocket, purty enough to pull out in public and does most things fairly well. With the updated BIOS for it (v1.1) the calibration of the stick is a lot better, so you can play pacman with it - but I know what you mean - the expletives are still there. PalmMAME with Zodiac acceleration is really quite good. Kudos to Vilmos. It's highly compatible and with a bit of pushing and showing he got Cyclone core working with it. 68K games really fly now. If he can get DrZ80 working with it - I'd say he'd have a really kick-ass handheld MAME. But it's still brilliant as is.

I've got a host of other handhelds and I've got MAME for all the machines that have it.
There's also ZodMAME which is really, really good for some games - plays them full speed with sound! All the vector based games are great! However, many games don't work or have messed up colors. Looking forward to v1.1 of this - Fangorn is going to add Cyclone to it.

The GP2X version of MAME is probably the fastest of the lot - with all the optimizations that Franxis (and later Chui) have made it pretty much flies - even with sound. It's really compatible and plays just about all 0.34/0.35 MAME games. But I don't need to tell you guys that... :) It's got loads of buttons, a decent screen but not the best stick. Pity. Why did they change it?
I'll have to look into getting a cap. Or like I said before, I might just get a MkII.

The GP32 version of MAME is the predecessor to the GP2X version - so of course it's also good. The GP32 has better controls and (until recently) booted orders of magnitude faster. Not many buttons, but it most cases it doesn't matter. Doesn't play as many of the games due to lack of RAM but it still does a good job.

The Nokia N-Gage port is pretty good considering the hardware specs. It runs a limited subset of lower-end games - but some suprisingly well. It's controller is also surprisingly good and solid and provides excellent and precise control with loads of buttons.

I think one of the most disappointing MAME ports has been for the PSP. The new MAME4ALL PSP port looks promising (after all, it's Franxis's and Chui's MAME!), but so far there's not been a lot of MAME love there. Other ports of been *amazingly* slow, though credit must be given as the ports are based on a lot more current versions of MAME. Perhaps the lack of acceleration is the problem?

I don't have a PowerPC handheld - so I can't comment on that one.

Any other handheld MAME ports?
 
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slaanesh posted on May 24 2006 at 12:15 PM said:
The GP2X version of MAME is probably the fastest of the lot - with all the optimizations that Franxis (and later Chui) have made it pretty much flies - even with sound. It's really compatible and plays just about all 0.34/0.35 MAME games. But I don't need to tell you guys that... :) It's got loads of buttons, a decent screen but not the best stick. Pity. Why did they change it?
I'll have to look into getting a cap. Or like I said before, I might just get a MkII.

Well that explains alot, get a replacement cap. It is a matter of just pulling off the old one and pressing on a new one. They are so cheap from Craig that cost should not be an issue.

Another thing nice about the Gp2X version is that the resolution matches pretty well, and it is easy to play vertical games by just rotating the unit and using the volume buttons for action. I have never been fond of that Palm zod stretching that makes a blurry mess out of things.

So I would suggest to try a new cap first, certainly much cheaper than buying a Gp2X M2.
 
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