mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support

Riverstorm

Thanks @markwkidd & @grant2258. Analog working is a huge wow factor! Looking forward to testing it. Mark if your fingers aren't tiny little nubs on fire they have to be smoking. I've seen so many updates from you today I lost count around noon! :)

Clyde

@Riverstorm said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

Thanks @markwkidd & @grant2258.

I second that wholeheartedly. 👍

robertvb83

What does this mean?
A) Can i use a physical analogue joystick / steering wheel / gas pedal for respective games now?
Or does this mean
B) that those games where the original cabinet was equipped with gas pedal / steering wheel can now be controlled via digital joystick and buttons?

Riverstorm

@robertvb83 - Definitely option B and hopefully option A if you have a driver for whatever OS you're using, it sure seems like it should work.

A Former User

Anyone tried a spinner as a wheel, in Mame2003plus ?
This would work well with arcade games that had endless spinning wheels like the Pole Position games, and Super Sprint games...etc..

markwkidd

@robertvb83 -- as @Riverstorm says -- both "A" and "B".

Pending finalization like adding triggers and bugfixes from testers, etc.

Clyde

@John_RM_70 said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

Anyone tried a spinner as a wheel, in Mame2003plus ?

Not yet, but I have two SpinTrak spinners lying around since December which I plan to build into my upright cabinet in January or February.

Your question comes slightly too late, as I tested one of the spinners in the place of one of the buttons (same hole size) just two weeks ago. I only tested breakout games then, because they're the main reason I bought the spinners. 😌 They worked fine after some tweaking of the analog values in MAME's tab menu.

A Former User

Clyde, I mentioned the spinner-as-a-wheel because you can actually get a wheel to fit the same spinner you have, so I'm looking at getting both.
Also, can the Pi see a PS/2 Trackball with a USB adapter ? These are much cheaper than the USB Trackballs, and I like the smaller size. I'm worried the Pi would see it as a simple USB "Device", rather than a trackball. Still, they're cheap enough to try out, so I might order one and post my findings here.

Clyde

@John_RM_70 I also plan to give the SpinTrak steering wheel a try, but only after I have installed the spinners in the first place. But I already have measured the necessary distance to the sticks and buttons so that the wheel wouldn't touch them. :)

I can't say anything about PS/2 trackballs, alas.

A Former User

@Clyde Look forward to hearing how you get on. Does the spintrack fit a standard arcade button hole ? If it does, I might get one, a steering wheel to fit, and sacrifice a player2 button.

Clyde

@John_RM_70 Yes, they fit a standard 28mm hole. See https://www.ultimarc.com/SpinTrak.html (end of the page, "Dimensions")

janderclander14

Regarding spinners (through mouse input), does mame2003-plus has the option to configure their sensitivity? I found it in the lr-mame2003 within the TAB in-game menu under the analog control options, but I didn't see this menu in mame2003-plus.

grant2258

yes it does enable legacy mapping

janderclander14

@grant2258

Thanks, it woks! However, is there any way to display the MAME menu via a controller button press? In lr-mame2003 the R2 button shows/hides the Mame menu but in mame2003-plus only the TAB key (which requires an external keyboard) or the "diplay menu" core option works.

grant2258

its mapped to L3 by default

Lyle_JP

Love mame2003-plus. It's my default arcade emulator nowadays. However, a (recent?) change has me perplexed. I have warnings and copyright messages turned off in the RetroArch settings, yet Mame2003-plus still gives me warnings about games where emulation is not 100%. It doesn't do it in a MAME box, but rather in the lower left-hand corner where RA tells you things like which controllers are detected and if a core file is being used.

Well, I don't need a warning every time I fire up Gaplus (or whatever) just because the starfield isn't perfect. Is there a way to TRULY suppress MAME warnings in this core?

caver01

Well, folks, I finally rebuilt the image on my 4-player roadcase cabinet (finally running Stretch, and latest RetroPie) and getting around to testing some of the advancements with 2003-plus. I am struggling with vector a bit. Running 1280x1024 on a 19"LCD. I use a core option mame2003-plus_vector_resolution_multiplier = "3" which does make the vector line resolution nice and tight, but I am getting the light jaggies I have seen in some of the screenshots that were being posted. I think the fix was to enable bilinear filtering? Is there a core option for that or a retroarch setting? I don't access the RA menu on my setup since I have hotkeys disabled--I prefer to manually config with the cfg files.

Anyway, I am excited to be back and testing some of the new stuff here. 4-way joystick logic? WHAT? I just about fell outta my chair when I saw that. I am also looking forward to switching a few games back to lr-mame from advmame like Tapper and Sarge, and hopefully a few of the Bally games that were broken in 2003.

Clyde

@caver01 Did you read the outsourced backdrops thread by any chance? We had a quite lengthy vector discussion over there.

markwkidd

@Lyle_JP said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

I have warnings and copyright messages turned off in the RetroArch settings, yet Mame2003-plus still gives me warnings about games where emulation is not 100%.

I must apologize that I didn't think to hook up the new "frontend" warning messages to the core option. I will do so as soon as I can.

Now that I've had more time to see how the frontend messages are working -- and I've seen how these messages may get some visual flair with the new RetroArch widget system -- I am going try to move all of the information from the "legacy/MAME" warnings to the new system.

If that seems to work well enough then the old warnings would go away. Anyway, I'll fix the core option as soon as I can.

markwkidd

First off @caver01 , welcome to Plus :) I'm not the most versed in the backdrop vector artwork project but that's been generating all kinds of activity and improvements, as well as discussion of the best core options for certain games, so I'll let those folks help you on that point.

@caver01 said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

Anyway, I am excited to be back and testing some of the new stuff here. 4-way joystick logic? WHAT?

I'll let you in on something that I don't think anyone other than grant, dankcushions, or twinaphex knows this, but Grant's 4-way code and a partial set of the other new core options from Plus are now in standard MAME 2003 as well as of a week or two ago. It has to be compiled from source of course.