lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport

markwkidd

@grant2258 yes that would be a simpler way to move forward. SMH. I'll take that approach this evening when I get some more coding time.

Riverstorm

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

For mame2003-plus binaries built in the last week or two there are working core options for vector intensity, thickness, and flicker.

I rebuilt from source over the weekend. Are the option names and parameters documented anywhere? At defaults they are very thick and bulky.

It may be that if some have a default setting they don't show up.

Thanks, yeah, that's right I need the 'mega' retroarch.cfg to get the specific option name or write out a core override within RGUI. I was spinning on that one for a long time. Thanks.

I use a keyboard as I don't have a 4 player cab and 4 controllers is clumsy to test so I use the keyboard as the next best alternative for testing 4 player games with all players running in game.

I will try your suggestion. I am open to all options. Over the weekend I was testing and certain keys for certain players would do weird things until it dawned on me what was happening. I usually don't see those issues with 1 and 2 players or even with 4 controllers but 4 on a keyboard or an IPAC looks to be a challenge to map everything without overlap. I even had to cut players 3 and 4 short to only 4 buttons. We need a few extra alphabet letters. I think for mapping like GPIO or an IPAC to keyboard equivalent inputs you would need to use the keypad also. There's just not enough characters for 4 players.

A few years back I did a GPIO input setup that works good but would give some issues when you would use things like a semicolon, etc. basically certain characters didn't translate well to GPIO input with RetroPie.

I will open a ticket over at Github. I didn't even make it half way through my game list. I kept getting sidetracked playing...errr....testing games. I will add more as I work through what I have loaded in my list. Any other games you need tested just let me know.

markwkidd

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

I even had to cut players 3 and 4 short to only 4 buttons. We need a few extra alphabet letters. I think for mapping like GPIO or an IPAC to keyboard equivalent inputs you would need to use the keypad also. There's just not enough characters for 4 players.

I ran into this issue of limited keys while mapping Player 3 and Player 4 for mame2010. MAMEdev says that there are no three-player and four-player games with more than a certain number of buttons. I cannot say for sure but my recollection is that no arcade games with 3 or 4 players have more than three (3) buttons per player.

If that's true, it's no problem to have fewer buttons available for the third and fourth players.

markwkidd

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

I rebuilt from source over the weekend. Are the option names and parameters documented anywhere? At defaults they are very thick and bulky.

The new vector-related option names aren't documented anywhere that I know of yet but you can take a look at this few lines of code: https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-plus-libretro/blob/master/src/libretro/mame2003.c#L147-L152

APPNAME is a macro that becomes mame2003-plus, so the options have names like mame2003-plus-vector-translucency

Riverstorm

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

I cannot say for sure but my recollection is that no arcade games with 3 or 4 players have more than three (3) buttons per player.
If that's true, it's no problem to have fewer buttons available for the third and fourth players.

Ah, ok, that would free up 2 buttons then as I did 4 buttons for players 3 & 4 thinking like NeoGeo games but not sure. I shaved off 4 buttons from player 1 as I figured 6 is good enough.

I tried following IPAC inputs that are mainly the same as the 'MAME default' inputs except for player 4 which used the keypad back in the day. If I left it on the keypad that would free up plenty of characters as directional inputs use letters too. But my wireless keyboard has no dedicated keypad and shift characters tend to be a challenge for general input buttons.

Thanks for the vector settings I will test them out and see how they look. I think to compete will AdvMAME it will need all the options available. I am not sure if you ever looked at AdvMAME but I can post a pick of Tempest or something as following Cavers vector doc they look pretty incredible.

markwkidd

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

Thanks for the vector settings I will test them out and see how they look. I think to compete will AdvMAME it will need all the options available. I am not sure if you ever looked at AdvMAME but I can post a pick of Tempest or something as following Cavers vector doc they look pretty incredible.

I started to post a link to the RetroPie forums thread pertaining to the mame2003 vector rendering bounty, but I guess we don't have a thread for that in these forums. Maybe there should be.

There is a github issue for it: https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/issues/332

And there is currently an $80 bounty for solving the problem.

Your screenshots of AdvanceMAME would be welcome in that issue, especially if they can show tempest with a similar screen to the comparisons I've put up between MAME 0.78 and mame2003.

Riverstorm

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

I started to post a link to the RetroPie forums thread pertaining to the mame2003 vector rendering bounty, but I guess we don't have a thread for that in these forums. Maybe there should be.

I did add to the bounty last week. I think it would be great to see all games under one emulator. If you want to start a thread and add the bounty info that would be great that way you can always update the first post with relevant information. I will work on a screenshot to add.

While I was working through games this past weekend I was also updating my snaps to HD. The scraped snaps are fuzzy and blurry on a 4k TV and I figured eventually higher resolutions snaps will be preferred.

A few vector games don't snap well and I had to take multiple shots then use Photoshop to overlay sections that would flicker blank to make a complete snap. Basically like a box for example 2 sides would be present and two blank. I also had to strip off the shaders as they create a moire effect and don't look very good as snaps vs. real time playing. I basically use Photoshop to clean up snaps. Like adding color to Circus or Depthcharge for example that used some type of translucent cellophane over the screen or using selection masks for Golden Axe 2 that seems to flicker players 1 and 3 info in one frame and players 2 and 4 in the next frame.

markwkidd

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

I did add to the bounty last week. I think it would be great to see all games under one emulator. If you want to start a thread and add the bounty info that would be great that way you can always update the first post with relevant information. I will work on a screenshot to add.

Ah hah, can you believe that I didn't realize that you and Wilstrom are one person? Now everything makes sense! :) Thank you for contributing to the bounty!

Riverstorm

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

Ah hah, can you believe that I didn't realize that you and Wilstorm are one person?

Yeah, sorry, I never thought about it but that's true. Whatever pops to mind of a few login names gets used. I should change it to match if it's possible.

grant2258

@riverstorm the changes to the timing are in mame2003 are the issues with the games present in mame2003 and mame2003-plus or just one

markwkidd

The weekend's work on mame2003-plus just got merged into mame2003, so both are now needing an update in RetroPie-Setup. I submitted a new PR that takes care of both: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/pull/2370

Riverstorm

@grant2258 said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

@riverstorm the changes to the timing are in mame2003 are the issues with the games present in mame2003 and mame2003-plus or just one

Sorry you mean the games listed above are they having the same issues in both lr-mame2003 and mame2003_plus?

grant2258

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

@grant2258 said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

@riverstorm the changes to the timing are in mame2003 are the issues with the games present in mame2003 and mame2003-plus or just one

Sorry you mean the games listed above are they having the same issues in both lr-mame2003 and mame2003_plus?

sorry should have specified

Arkanoid (US) (arkanoiu) - Player 2 flipped upside down (vertically)
Dragon Spirit (dspirit) - Player 2 filled upside down (vertically)
Kick (kick) - Player 1 and 2 only flip horizontally (lays on left and right side)
D.D. Crew (ddcrew) - Crashes black screen
Pig Newton (pignewt) - Crashes black screen

Riverstorm

@grant2258 said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

sorry should have specified

You want me to test these in lr-mame2003 and see if they do the same in both emulators?

grant2258

just want to see if its somethign we broke am going to work in a few minutes. Ill look into them two games that arent working at all as well an see why there not loading

markwkidd

(mame2003-plus should start building again now once folks update RetroPie-Setup)

Riverstorm

@grant2258 said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

just want to see if its somethign we broke am going to work in a few minutes. Ill look into them two games that arent working at all as well an see why there not loading

Ok will test both emulators here in a bit and let you know.

grant2258

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

@grant2258 said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

just want to see if its somethign we broke am going to work in a few minutes. Ill look into them two games that arent working at all as well an see why there not loading

Ok will test both emulators here in a bit and let you know.

i went into service mode in dragon spirit an activated the flip it cocktail mode being active on that game might be the same for the rest but am leaving for work now. Its just doing a cocktail flip for p2

Riverstorm

@grant2258 said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

i went into service mode in dragon spirit an activated the flip it cocktail mode being active on that game might be the same for the rest but am leaving for work now. Its just doing a cocktail flip for p2

Shoot, ok I never tried service mode. Will check Dragon Spirit tonight.

Arkanoid (US) (arkanoiu) - Player 2 flipped upside down (vertically)

Dragon Spirit (dspirit) - Player 2 filled upside down (vertically)

Kick (kick) - Player 1 and 2 only flip horizontally (lays on left and right side)

D.D. Crew (ddcrew) - Crashes black screen

Pig Newton (pignewt) - Crashes black screen of them do the sa

All these games are the same in both emulators.

Arkanoid (World) (arkanoid) does work correctly with defaults for player 2. Arkanoid (US) (arkanoiu) does not work with defaults. Maybe a code paste or something simple.

Kick (Upright) (kick) seems like it expects the monitor to be rotated 90 degrees but also the writing is written backwards on screen.

D.D. Crew is a great 4 player fighter side scrolling game. There's not enough 3 and 4 player games.

Pig Newton is a cheesy little game but still kind of fun.

Riverstorm

@grant2258 - It might be irrelevant being a different emulator altogether but all these seem to work correctly in AdvMAME.