Why Is Mame Emulation So Retarded?

[yourebuying]

Upon receiving my GP2X Wiz in the mail I was interested in seeing how well mame emulation worked on it.

... not terribly well as it turns out.

The gamelist that is supplied with the emulator is completely unhelpful.

It seems as if mame32 and the gp32x version seem to operate with rom sets that I've never even heard before.

I've only ever really gone to one website for mame roms and I've -never- had a single problem getting a rom to work with that emulator.

I've downloaded every version of a particular game on that website and not a single one works.

Can anyone explain to me why mame32 and mame for the gp32x are so different?

Is it not a port?

I would imagine issues regarding support of certain mame emulated games would solely be an issue of performance, or the lack thereof.

This is an absolute joke, I'm looking for rom sets that I've never even heard of before to run on an emulator that has a disappointingly inconsistent range of support.

 

[joyrider]

Maybe read some readme's ????

The roms used are not the latest sets !

 

[crow_riot]

google helps - just search for "wiz mame romset" ...

 

[trooper]

Welcome to the community yourebuying, Nice first post too. :rolleyes:

Trooper

 

[MatthewQA]

Indeed, welcome.

This is an absolute joke, I'm looking for rom sets that I've never even heard of before to run on an emulator that has a disappointingly inconsistent range of support.

No, it's really not. The MAME version was chosen for the fact that this version does not use floating point numbers, since the GP2x Wiz does not have a APU/ALU, floating point would seriously degrade on performance.

Your best bet would be to try and find a full ROM set download, and then just pick the games you should have, that's what I did and it works splendidly.

Another option is to give Final Burn Alpha, or a more specified emulator a shot. For example, Metal Slug games do not work in MAME4All for the simple reason they require too much RAM to emulate, but GnGeo will run them fine. Poke around a bit, I'm sure you'll be able to find the compatibility you're looking for.

Matt

 

[senquack]

Remember, it's always better to say less rather than more or you sometimes end up looking like a twat.

 

[DaveC]

Can anyone explain to me why mame32 and mame for the gp32x are so different?

Is it not a port?

I would imagine issues regarding support of certain mame emulated games would solely be an issue of performance, or the lack thereof.

This is an absolute joke, I'm looking for rom sets that I've never even heard of before to run on an emulator that has a disappointingly inconsistent range of support.

The Wiz is a handheld that runs on a small battery not a PC or laptop that gets 2 hours per charge. The result is the CPU can't be a 3 GHz pentium.

So as a result this MAME is based on an older build that has speed in mind and needs an older ROMset. Them there is the breaks bud. If you want something to run the latest and greatest MAME you will need to wait a few years for a more powerful system.

 

[Gruntfuggly]

Ask for you money back from the MAME team...

 

[ledow]

Basically MAME is an emulator that focuses PURELY on accuracy. They have stripped out most of the things like pre-recorded sounds in favour of emulating a precise sound chip in C. They state that they DO NOT CARE about speed at all - accuracy always wins. They even removed some of the early chip-based logic games because it's impossible to emulate them accurately enough even with some of the best analog electronics simulations available - they have been playable in the past but they removed just because they couldn't ever be made perfectly accurate.

And, let's be honest, how many arcade PCB's do you own to legally play? MAME is designed to archive and provide an accurate record of arcade games that are no longer working or available, not so you can play games on a desktop.

This is why you have to use old ports and old romsets - they often update the romsets to include things that were always present in the original games and insert code that enhances the accuracy but take 10x more time in order to simulate properly (and thus even simple games can tax a modern processor). It used to be that games used all shortcuts available, that they used pre-recorded sound and guessed colours, and didn't emulate quite a lot of the intermediate electronics that were unnecessary. More modern MAME versions don't use hardly any shortcuts, emulate the sound chips directly, use the original colour PROMs direct from the chip and emulate thousands of things that don't actually affect gameplay at all.

 

[yourebuying]

google helps - just search for "wiz mame romset" ...

I really didn't want to have to download the whole thing... but yeah I did.

Kind of annoying though.

 

[yourebuying]

Welcome to the community yourebuying, Nice first post too. :rolleyes:

Trooper

I know this wasn't the greatest introduction to the forums, but I cannot lie. I was fairly motivated to try things out the day I got the wiz and I had no idea what I was in for.


Getting this thing to do what you want feels a lot like pulling teeth...

 

[yourebuying]

The Wiz is a handheld that runs on a small battery not a PC or laptop that gets 2 hours per charge. The result is the CPU can't be a 3 GHz pentium.

So as a result this MAME is based on an older build that has speed in mind and needs an older ROMset. Them there is the breaks bud. If you want something to run the latest and greatest MAME you will need to wait a few years for a more powerful system.

Now this I was not aware of.

To be quite honest back in the day, when I had a pentium 450 running mame32 I had positively no problem running basic mame roms.

I had no idea that romsets of those old games had such a remarkable impact on performance with each newer version.

It's not as if I was looking to run something fairly sophisticated, I just wanted to play shinobi for god's sake.

I figured that of all roms would be pretty safe, but I tried not one but three rom sites and not a single one was supported by the emulator.

I still think it's bloody ridiculous, but that's just me.

 

[yourebuying]

Basically MAME is an emulator that focuses PURELY on accuracy. They have stripped out most of the things like pre-recorded sounds in favour of emulating a precise sound chip in C. They state that they DO NOT CARE about speed at all - accuracy always wins. They even removed some of the early chip-based logic games because it's impossible to emulate them accurately enough even with some of the best analog electronics simulations available - they have been playable in the past but they removed just because they couldn't ever be made perfectly accurate.

And, let's be honest, how many arcade PCB's do you own to legally play? MAME is designed to archive and provide an accurate record of arcade games that are no longer working or available, not so you can play games on a desktop.

This is why you have to use old ports and old romsets - they often update the romsets to include things that were always present in the original games and insert code that enhances the accuracy but take 10x more time in order to simulate properly (and thus even simple games can tax a modern processor). It used to be that games used all shortcuts available, that they used pre-recorded sound and guessed colours, and didn't emulate quite a lot of the intermediate electronics that were unnecessary. More modern MAME versions don't use hardly any shortcuts, emulate the sound chips directly, use the original colour PROMs direct from the chip and emulate thousands of things that don't actually affect gameplay at all.

Again, this is quite insightful.

Why they'd do this is beyond me.

I think there's something inherently wrong with that kind of reasoning. It just seems wrong to emphasize emulation accuracy to the point where it requires modern hardware just to run it.

I'm starting to understand their operative mindset behind using older romsets, I just wish I had been warned about it instead of being all:

"I got my Wiz today in the mail, AWESOME!"

"I'm going to install mame and play some classic games!"

"Oh great... none of the roms I downloaded seem to work, what the hell!?"