Emulation

gijoe77,

Thank you for the feedback!! It's definitely 0.94.

It _started_ as 0.78, and I had to patch it up incrementally so I could re-use the work I did on the OpenGL renderer in later versions. I couldn't locate any complete source archive for the versions I wanted to work with.

If something is reporting 0.78, then I missed something (probably minor) somewhere.

What specifically is reporting 0.78.x? Is this messing up your front-end?

no, the front end seems fine, it's reporting 0.78 when i do a "xmame -version", also on the splash screen when first starting a game along with the games specific info, and also the window titlebar when not running fullscreen.



Eitherway its not a big deal, I just wasn't sure how to confirm.

I did run into a problem with vector games and some 3d games like Street fighter EX (something to do about textures maybe), these might be frontend related, not sure - I'm still trying to play with it. But the fact these games can absolutely run full speed on fullscreen with sound on an IRIX box sure is an amazing thing!

Thanks !!!

What HW are you running on? Traditionally, the hangup on the *MAME stuff has been in the graphics renderer. The SDL and X targets are in the archive in order to provide comedic relief for the bored. We finally have an awesome OGL renderer, and now this project really shines on SGI.

I'll look into these games today. Try running without the front-end and see if anything changes.

BTW: Which vector games exhibit issues?

I have the version string fixed. When I do the tardist, it will report 0.94 across the board.

Just let me know what vector and 3D games aren't working right.

I'm at work now so I can't test anymore, but I tried a bunch of vector games, the ones I remember are star wars and tempest, the 3D game that gave me a possible texture error output was street fighter EX, another 3D game i tried but it didnt seem to work was virtua fighter kids

the hardware is a V12 Tezro quad 1ghz (yeah i know.. ^_^ )

Cool. I'm looking into this now.

I got to dig deeper into this finally - the 3D games based on the "zn" driver are the ones that are all giving me issues with the texture, but it looks like it is frontend related, I was able to get the game to "run" via command line:



but it seems the emulation doesn't work or so the splash screen says that. I tried a few other games under the zn driver, and they don't work either, so looks like its not working as intended. Seems the frontend can only go up to texture_size 1000!

Also I could of sworn the virtua fighter series games were working by this point in mame, but it looks like virtua fighter kids is also broken (as per the splash screen) and it looks like the regular virtua fighter games are not even supported on this version of mame!

so the 3d games I looked at seem to be all not working perfectly per design.

The vector games are having the same issue from both GUI/command line; the game starts up but no vector graphics are shown - I do hear sound so it seems to be a displaying issue. I tried star wars, star trek, tempest.

zn won't work, as the driver (as it stands) can't emulate the protected BIOS of the HW.

That and the Virtua Fighter stuff aren't really IRIX porting issues - they're unfinished MAME drivers in the version we have. This is kind of the nature of MAME.

If you know what MAME version these systems began working, that would be very helpful.

gijoe77 wrote: so the 3d games I looked at seem to be all not working perfectly per design.

.

For many 3D games, even a modern PC will struggle to run them smoothly. Like California Speed for instance. Lacking the 3DFX graphics hardware/emulation it had as an arcade, the load is put on the CPU and it's just too much.

I'm curious to see how well the games like Donkey Kong, Rampage, Pacman and all those will work.

Axatax_ wrote: zn won't work, as the driver (as it stands) can't emulate the protected BIOS of the HW.

That and the Virtua Fighter stuff aren't really IRIX porting issues - they're unfinished MAME drivers in the version we have. This is kind of the nature of MAME.

If you know what MAME version these systems began working, that would be very helpful.

I looked around, seems it might have been added later than I was thinking - I used to play it on Saturn long long ago so I think I'm getting confused about ever playing it in Mame. Is it possible/trivial to add support for a particular driver from a later mame version? I sort of tried my hand with that with my .106 build, but I was having a really hard time trying to just do a targeted build (i.e. only compile say cps1 driver to not waste time), that's sort of where I left off. Also they did a whole new video system or something starting with .107 so I really was in over my newb head anyway.

Krokodil wrote: I'm curious to see how well the games like Donkey Kong, Rampage, Pacman and all those will work.

They all run full speed with sound. All raster games I tried so far run full speed with sound. I wanted to really push it and see how the 3d stuff was running and that's where I ran into the non-working driver issues (zn, stv, model 1, model 2, etc).

The OpenGL renderer is a heavily modified back-port from a pretty recent version of MAME.

If you can identify which MAME versions the various broken games started to work, I can look at this.

This is really a complex issue, and why we don't have an "awesome" version of MAME (although I think this one is the best, but I'm biased )

As was observed, my 0.149 port was really not too hot on compatibility. The problems were really issues with upstream MAME.

---

When you look at the development time line of MAME, you can sometimes have years of garbage (ie. the NES emulation in MESS was broken for *ten years* from late 2003 until somewhere around 2013 -- yes, NES emulation).

Certain versions are considered "islands of stability".

Don't get hung up on the latest and greatest. This project (MESS/MAME) is really a developer's playground. Once in awhile, a really good version, all around, comes out of this project, and that's where we should focus our efforts on in terms of a polished Neko release.

I'm cool with trying to back-port certain important drivers to the version we have working here.

Just understand, there's a reason this software has version numbers which have never exceeded 0 (zero). As a packager, you have to put a stick in the ground at some point, and focus on your platform, rather than the existential project in question.

any chance of trying to stick the cps3 driver in here? i think a working cps3 driver was added in .116u2

I gave it a shot on my r5k o2, and it seg faulted on cps1 and cps2 games (I didn't try any others), seems the o2 has openGL 1.1? did I miss some update? I always thought o2's and other modern sgi's supported openGL 1.2?

I gave it a shot on my r5k o2, and it seg faulted on cps1 and cps2 games

The binary is compiled for IP27/R12K.

gijoe77,

Can you try this -- specifically, if there is improvement WRT to the non-working systems... This is based on a *much* newer MAME.

OK, so I can't attach, probably due to the file size -- Will send to /incomming.

Thank you for helping out with this!! -- Just one thing, when you mention systems (ie. cps*), please state which game failed.

OK,

ftp://ftp.nekochan.net/incoming/xmame-0.106.tar.bz2