Can I limit the frame rate of MAME emulation?

starfry

I have just set up RetroPie on a 1st gen Raspberry Pi Model B (256K).

Pi Model or other hardware: B 256K
Power Supply used: Amazon Fire plug 5v1.8A
RetroPie Version Used: 4.3
Built From: downloaded https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/releases/download/4.3/retropie-4.3-rpi1_zero.img.gz
USB Devices connected: belkin mini bluetooth 4.0 adapter
Controller used: PS3 Dualshock3 over Bluetooth
Emulator: mame4all

I have everything installed and working except that I suffer the issue that the few Mame games (around 10) I've tested run too fast. Much too fast, like showing 200-300% frame rate on the display for an expected 60fps.

I am using mame4all because it's suggested as the right one for use on the B1, and I have the appropriate 0.37b5 roms for that emulator version. I followed the guide at https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Arcade.

I have read about settings in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg which I have tried

video_threaded = "false"
fastforward_ratio = 5.0

but they didn't help. I thought they had, but soon realised they hadn't!

The other emulators I've tried - NES, Megadrive and VICE, all seem fine; it's only MAME that's causing me problems.

I expect I have missed something in the documentation despite spending a lot of time looking for a solution. Can anyone suggest a solution please?

dankcushions

@starfry which games? can you give an example?

starfry

here is a list of games that I've tried in MAME and found to play fast:

dkong.zip
galaga.zip
mrdo.zip
pacman.zip
invaders.zip
phoenix.zip
scramble.zip

jonnykesh

@starfry I'm going to assume you mean the standalone mame4all. This is not a RetroArch core, changing the RetroArch settings will have no effect on it. You could try lr-mame2000 which uses the same ROM set, that is a RetoArch core and if you get the same issues you could try enabling vsyncto limit the fps.

starfry

ah @jonnykesh, is it placement of the roms in mame-mame4all which makes it 'stand alone'?

I hadn't appreciated that difference. I moved the roms across to arcade and tried with mameforall (same refresh issue) and lr-mame2000which worked except the video aspect is incorrect but I expect that's just a setting I can tweak.

I'll look into it more tomorrow, thanks for the pointer.

dankcushions

@starfry said in Can I limit the frame rate of MAME emulation?:

here is a list of games that I've tried in MAME and found to play fast:

dkong.zip

galaga.zip

mrdo.zip

pacman.zip

invaders.zip

phoenix.zip

scramble.zip

we have a compatibility sheet which doesn't seem to detail any issues with these games: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SHspjyHavY9-PKbO2swDr52BS2Wl_mB_Vjx2Z1SXiD8/edit#gid=828747670

my only guess is that you have a keyboard or some other device that is pressing F10, which apparently toggles the throttle: see readme at https://github.com/RetroPie/mame4all-pi