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

[arcadez2003]

A few bits n bobs............

Added the missing inputs for button 3 for Bonanza Bros

Fixed the music and sfx cutting out level 2 onwards in Super Spacefortress Macross II.

Attempted to get Scramble Spirits to work, please test it " using the latest rom from MAME" and lemmie know either way if it's playable now.

[Riverstorm]

@arcadez2003 - Thanks for the updates! I tested Scramble Spirits (sspirits.zip) from MAME 0.215. It starts to load fine and you see:

Sega
System-24
Now Loading...

after that it goes black though I can pull up the TAB menu, dip switch settings and exit the game, etc.

[arcadez2003]

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

@arcadez2003 - Thanks for the updates! I tested Scramble Spirits (sspirits.zip) from MAME 0.215. It starts to load fine and you see:

Sega
System-24
Now Loading...

after that it goes black though I can pull up the TAB menu, dip switch settings and exit the game, etc.

Thanks for trying it out i was hoping all it needed was the correct inputs and a better dump of the disc image, however it's likely gonna be
the big changes to the memory map handling in the system24 driver circa MAME79 which got the game working, too much graft
required to backport those changes to this core so Scramble Spirits will have to remain on the non working list.

Ya win some lose some :)

[BadFurDay]

@arcadez2003 said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

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

@arcadez2003 - Thanks for the updates! I tested Scramble Spirits (sspirits.zip) from MAME 0.215. It starts to load fine and you see:

Sega
System-24
Now Loading...

after that it goes black though I can pull up the TAB menu, dip switch settings and exit the game, etc.

Thanks for trying it out i was hoping all it needed was the correct inputs and a better dump of the disc image, however it's likely gonna be
the big changes to the memory map handling in the system24 driver circa MAME79 which got the game working, too much graft
required to backport those changes to this core so Scramble Spirits will have to remain on the non working list.

Ya win some lose some :)

The exact same happens with Gain Ground, another Sega System 24 game. Is it the exact same issue?

[arcadez2003]

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

@arcadez2003 said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

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

@arcadez2003 - Thanks for the updates! I tested Scramble Spirits (sspirits.zip) from MAME 0.215. It starts to load fine and you see:

Sega
System-24
Now Loading...

after that it goes black though I can pull up the TAB menu, dip switch settings and exit the game, etc.

Thanks for trying it out i was hoping all it needed was the correct inputs and a better dump of the disc image, however it's likely gonna be
the big changes to the memory map handling in the system24 driver circa MAME79 which got the game working, too much graft
required to backport those changes to this core so Scramble Spirits will have to remain on the non working list.

Ya win some lose some :)

The exact same happens with Gain Ground, another Sega System 24 game. Is it the exact same issue?

Nope different problem as Crackdown, Gain Ground and a few other Sega System 24 games are protected via the Sega FD encryption that's why they dont boot,
this core would need an updated MAME90 version of the M68k cpu which supports decryption routines for these games so they would work.

Alternatively i've seen websites that boast of decrypting the Sega System 24 games so they run on a standard M68k rather than Sega's FD M68k variant
from what i can tell these are kits to use for arcade machine collectors and dont seem to be available as romsets for use in MAME like you get with the
Sega 16 / 18 games, this is a pity as our M68k CPU would have been fine for running a System24 game which has had the protection ripped out
it would have been interesting to see if they would have worked with our ole MAME2003+ System 24 driver.

[arcadez2003]

A wee while back a super rare game on alotta MAME veterans wish list after a few false dawns was finally secured and dumped, however it was a conversion kit on Pacman
hardware rather than the proper dedicated Epos version, this created a problem for me as to get it up and running they had to rework more or less all the pacman
machine emulation code.

Sifting through 1000's of lines of code changes looking to pin down the parts required to get the game up and running in this core wasn't something i was gonna
ever do but as luck would have it another version of this game turned up on the proper hardware and well it dropped into our ancient Epos driver with no trouble
whatsoever.

Being a spooky haunted house deal i wanted to drop this on Halloween but the colour prom needed a redump and then i was busy with other stuff, so better late than never
here's a new game ya's can play or not :)

Eeekk!

You can check my original commit for something that might interest ya's ;)

[GreenHawk84]

@Darksavior has Ninja Baseball Bat Man improved at all? I find it pretty terrible on FBA using the latest version of Retropie.

[barbudreadmon]

@GreenHawk84 said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

I find it pretty terrible on FBA using the latest version of Retropie.

Do you mean FBNeo ? I don't think there should be speed issues with irem m92 on a rpi3b+, but if there are you can try setting frameskip to 1 and/or underclocking the cpu in core options (no restart required, you can tinker with settings until you find it playable).

[sirhenrythe5th]

just for interest: Ninja Baseball Bat Man runs great using AdvanceMame.

Because of that i cannot talk about the performance of this game with FBNeo.
I use this Emulator for other games that run much better on FBNeo, i.e. "DoDonPachi II: Beestorm" ;)

[arcadez2003]

Some of the Irem M92 M107 games Ninja Baseball Batman being one use nifty graphical effects which fire on a raster irq line, it's these effects which can cause the games to
have performance issues on some of the lesser spec platforms like the Rpi, you can however disable said raster effects in the driver code and it'll speed the games up no end
but with the downside that some of em will have graphical niggles as a result, from memory im sure the shmupmame builds have done this.

Maybe that's why the games perform better in advancemame builds on the Rpi due the dev's turning off the raster update on the graphics.?? i'd need to check the
source code or see a short vid of someone playing Ninja Baseball Batman "the intro map before the first level starts" to know for sure.

BTW quite a few of the Irem games have speedhacks in the older MAME cores hence why some people might favor using em over FBN, Unfortunately Ninja Baseball Batman
is one the games they did not add a speedup for, which is a real pity as it so obviously could have done with a little kick in that dept.

[arcadez2003]

On the subject of performance i plain forgot there is a version of Metal Slug 2 which has improvements in that dept more info here.............

http://blog.system11.org/?p=1442

So we now support Metal Slug 2 - Turbo in this core try it vs the original version and im sure you'll agree it plays a fair bit better.

[barbudreadmon]

@arcadez2003 do you mean https://github.com/finalburnneo/FBNeo/blob/54dba32527c8addf346aacfdd276fc224ea191da/src/burn/drv/irem/d_m92.cpp#L2082-L2094 ? I could add some fake dipswitch to toggle that code.

[Darksavior]

@GreenHawk84 The last time I tried it, it wasn't full speed on fb-neo. Use Mame2003plus. I've moved on to a pi4 and it runs full speed with neo.

From what I remember on my pi3b+, in neo the intro to stage was full speed but then the rest of the game was slow. On plus, it was the opposite. Intro slow, rest full speed.

[GreenHawk84]

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

@GreenHawk84 The last time I tried it, it wasn't full speed on fb-neo. Use Mame2003plus. I've moved on to a pi4 and it runs full speed with neo.

From what I remember on my pi3b+, in neo the intro to stage was full speed but then the rest of the game was slow. On plus, it was the opposite. Intro slow, rest full speed.

What about sound quality?

[grant2258]

The sound bug was fixed was teh decryption tables that needed updated. The only slowdow I got on the pi3b+ is the cut scenes bit all the game play is spot on.

[arcadez2003]

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

@arcadez2003 do you mean https://github.com/finalburnneo/FBNeo/blob/54dba32527c8addf346aacfdd276fc224ea191da/src/burn/drv/irem/d_m92.cpp#L2082-L2094 ? I could add some fake dipswitch to toggle that code.

If you wanted to try it change these lines, https://github.com/finalburnneo/FBNeo/pull/182/commits/efc0797f9f54b9deeeb86d0dc7b25db75706b0de

[Lyle_JP]

This post is deleted!

[WeirdH]

@arcadez2003 said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

So we now support Metal Slug 2 - Turbo in this core try it vs the original version and im sure you'll agree it plays a fair bit better.

This is very cool. Is it enough to rename the turbo version's '941-p1.p1' to '241-p1.bin' and put it inside the mslug2.zip for m2003+?

[barbudreadmon]

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

This is very cool.

That's why i'm always saying that people shouldn't discard clones, in fbalpha/fbneo mslug2t has been supported for a long time, however people prefer not looking at clones and overclocking the emulated cpu to get rid of slowdowns (causing issues with other games when doing it globally).

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

Is it enough to rename the turbo version's '941-p1.p1' to '241-p1.bin' and put it inside the mslug2.zip for m2003+

Messing manually with the content of a romset is never a good idea, i recommend using the mslug2t romset properly instead.

[Clyde]

Hi @barbudreadmon, do you know any good resources about preferable clones? Thanks.