lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport

Riverstorm

@maxbeanz said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

@riverstorm The older Gorf samples are OK apart from the 'emperor' sample. It's 1kb and doesn't play anything. Not sure if it's supposed to be like that ?

There's only two choices either the newer 0 byte or the older 188 byte sample. If you have another sample we can drop that one in place?

markwkidd

@mediamogul these folks are trying to get some Gorf samples sorted out. Do you know anything about this emperor sample?

Riverstorm

@dankcushions said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

i rechecked and i have the same 8 files at 0 bytes.

Hey Dank, a double recheck, it's actually 11 just to verify we are looking at the same sample! ;)

markwkidd

Gorf samples update -- the ancient .sam MAME sample pack from Twisty's does contain a non-0 emperor audio clip: http://samples.mameworld.info/sam.htm

TL/DR: You can download emperor.wav here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l4uk3s6d454ksrq/emperor.WAV?dl=0

I don't plan to host that wav forever in Dropbox but it can hang out there for a while until someone comes up with a more permanent location.

If SAM format samples comes up again
There is a Windows utility to convert between SAM and .WAV: http://samples.mameworld.info/Utilities.htm

When I run the executable in Win7x64 it complains that I must use 32-bit Windows

I can successfully compile the included source via MSYS2 in Win7x64 but samtowav crashes with a segmentation fault unless you specify the name of the input file on the commandline when you execute -- in this case it was samtowav EMPEROR.SAM

That did the trick, as far as I know.

mediamogul

@markwkidd said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

I don't plan to host that wav forever in Dropbox but it can hang out there for a while until someone comes up with a more permanent location.

Sorry to come in so late. Trying to whip my yard into shape. The 'emperor' sample can also be found here as well. It's impossible to know the longevity of sampleswap.org and no one should have to host the file forever on their own cloud storage. Ideally, the file could be included with it's brethren in a more appropriate location before it's lost.

Riverstorm

Thanks guys are they the same sample? Sampleswap wants you to create an account to download so I just grabbed the one Mark posted. Is this the sample you were thinking @maxbeanz is correct?

Riverstorm

Media when you're done I could use a good raking over this way too but it might be a few more weeks as we are getting 3 to 5 in snow today...in April...sheesh...the Canadians need to take that stuff back north for spring already! ;)

mediamogul

@riverstorm said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

we are getting 3 to 5 in snow today...in April

Wow, that's wild. I live in South Carolina and we haven't even had that much in the winter since 1986. It's really sad to see the kids try to make a snowman out of the amount we get at any one time. When they're done, they've rolled the yard clean and the body is still mostly mud and gravel.

UDb23

@mediamogul Crazy! And it's not only USA...here in Italy it's still way colder than usually in this season. Not been this way since many years; yesterday it was even snowing on the Alps.

maxbeanz

It seems the 'emperor' sample may not even be needed. There is a readme inside the gorf zip that speaks about it !

Erased emperor.wav but kept it in the set for audit purposes.
After many tests I strongly believe that this sound is NOT USED during gameplay in the real machine
but may actually be "error", a sound played when a fault is detected in the speech system.
This would be the case since the original attack.wav had errors, and emperor never played for me on the real machine.
Unable to safely recreate on a real machine and documentation has not yet been found to verify if emperor is error.
The Gorf driver was written in MAME when half the samples were still missing.
With all samples now aquired, the driver still only plays certain sounds, some incorrectly/inaccurately.
Example:
In MAME you will hear "your cannot escape the gorphian robot emperor"
while the real machine plays it as "you cannot escape the gorphian robots".
And in MAME you hear, "My gorphian robot emperor are unbeatable"
while the real machine plays it as "My gorphian robots are unbeatable".
Hopefully the driver will be redone someday to correct and allow the other samples to be played like
"I have a gorphian empire". :)

mediamogul

@maxbeanz

Very interesting.

Riverstorm

@mediamogul said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

When they're done, they've rolled the yard clean and the body is still mostly mud and gravel.

That made my day. I remember doing that very thing some years. The closet recognizable city would be Minneapolis/St. Paul where they had the super bowl this year whatever we get Northern Minnesota is even worse. More cold, snow & wind.

Our average highest snowfall month is actually March but everyone is done with winter. We have another storm coming the first part of next week. There's some front that usually recedes back north but this year it's lingering further south. The issue with it is this very same "lingering front" happened 5 years ago in 2013 and we got freezing rain which was a tree killing, power downing, skating rink party.

When it's so late in the season it creates freezing rain sometimes and that drops power lines and trees like nothing. We currently have flood warnings more for safety around flowing water then worry of flooding cities or townships.

I have some great pics. It's incredible to see ice so thick on the traffic signs, trees, poles, wire fences, bike tire spokes, everything you can imagine looks neat in crystal clear ice about 1/2 inch thick. You just here the trees cracking as they sway in the wind. It looks incredible but so terribly destructive.

I tried talking the wife into a house generator. I was all about poring a concrete pad along side the house (my brother does flat work_ and get it wired but she shot that down. I told her you'll say that until the next ice storm comes along! :)

For good measure add the corrected emperor.wav to the sample zip?

Nowun

As a new user who is still absolutely drooling over retropie I want to thank you for all of this hard work!

Riverstorm

@nowun said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

As a new user who is still absolutely drooling over retropie I want to thank you for all of this hard work!

If you're using mame2003-plus you need to direct that praise @markwkidd, @grant2258 & @arcadez who are doing 99% of the work. We are just testing and giving feedback! :)

Riverstorm

@maxbeanz - Here's a new DAT. I added the pre 0.125u2 Gorf set & corrected emperor.wav. I also verified the sets are current where applicable as some are from the older section on Twisty's. Lastly I updated the set to use the unofficial enhanced versions of the samples described below with a brief description. If you prefer the current set or older just let me know.

Arcade Accurate Unofficial Samples

Berzerk - enhanced version by Gyrovision, who states that it sounds more accurate in comparison to a real machine. Try it out!

Carnival - enhanced version by Gyrovision, who states, "Just a couple tweaks, upped the quality a little and gave the bear a new attitude. Grrr! :)"

Donkey Kong - lower pitch adjustment by Gyrovision.

Space Invaders - Gyrovision assembled this set by merging some edited Retrocade samples with the Mame ones, and the result is magnificant 8D. There is a significant quality increase that is very noticeable. I now use these instead.

Qbert - enhanced by Gyrovision.

Rallyx - enhanced by Gyrovision.

Star Castle - this was submitted by Gyrovision - he modified the pitch on the 'drone' sample and increased by 50% the volume on the 'star' sample within the set to make it sound much more accurate in relation to the real arcade machine - recommended.

Vanguard - enhanced by Gyrovision.

maxbeanz

@riverstorm I think this is a good set of samples and should be the default DAT for mame2003plus samples. One minor point, as stated in the readme, the 'emperor' sample in Gorf isn't even needed and people may struggle to find it anyway at a later date. Maybe just leave it as it is in the Twisty's archive ?

Riverstorm

@maxbeanz said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

One minor point, as stated in the readme, the 'emperor' sample in Gorf isn't even needed and people may struggle to find it anyway at a later date. Maybe just leave it as it is in the Twisty's archive ?

Yeah that makes sense then all the samples may be obtained from one location at Twisty's. Even the 188 byte samples has no audible audio when played back. I put corrected emperor.wav in a separate zip with a note so when I go back to it a few years later or whenever I'll have an idea what it is.

markwkidd

If there is going to be a 'null sample' in the DAT, I suggest it should be the 188 byte CRC. I'm making an educated guess that the 188 byte file is a valid WAV file (meaning it has a header) with no audio.

On the other hand a 0-byte file can't be a valid WAV file. Based on my reading while looking for emperor.wav, older versions of MAME might crash when trying to load a 0-byte WAV. In other words, if there is going to be a 'fake' WAV it seems best to make it a valid fake WAV. :)

Riverstorm

@markwkidd said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

In other words, if there is going to be a 'fake' WAV it seems best to make it a valid fake WAV. :)

Thanks Mark, that makes sense why I didn't hear anything with the 188 byte sample. That's the one we were going to use (the older 188 byte) samples from the 0.125u1 and older set. Current samples (0.125u2 and newer) are the ones using the zero-byte files.

maxbeanz

I read in the 'whatsnew.txt' on Github (2003plus) that 'Explosive Breaker' was added but I don't see it in the datfile. Are there more missing ? (I used the DAT posted on Github, does anyone detect this game with the manually generated DAT ?)

EDIT: Also, I just noticed this post . Apparently there are no unofficial roms used.