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

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.

barbudreadmon

@Clyde i've seen a few ressources trying to do this over the years, but only partial lists. Try googling "worthy mame clones".

arcadez2003

@WeirdH 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:

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+?

Technically no you cannot as mslug2 expects 241-p1.bin which has different CRC and SHA values, you could however make mslug2t a parent rom
to avoid duplication in your romlist if that's the issue.

arcadez2003

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

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

Depends on what your criteria is i suppose, personally i like my games to be in English and to be uncensored so the roms i keep will reflect that.

BTW this site contains alotta good info............

http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/

Search for a game you like either by name or romname and check out the history section for example lets look at Night Slashers

http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/dettaglio_mame.php?game_name=nslasher&arcade_only=0&autosearch=1

In the Japanese version:

The gore is uncensored (red blood instead of green).
At the end of a melee attack, Christopher holds out a cross instead of a crystal ball.
The Go arrow flips over to read 'To Hell!' in blood.
Extra pictures and dialogs in the cut-scenes.

Sometimes though they dont have all the info to hand for example seeing as i prefer my games in English i checked the overseas and usa versions of this game
and unlike the Korean version via the service mode you can turn the gore on manually and then you have the best of both words all the violence in a language
you can understand :)

WeirdH

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

Technically no you cannot as mslug2 expects 241-p1.bin which has different CRC and SHA values, you could however make mslug2t a parent rom
to avoid duplication in your romlist if that's the issue.

Well, there's my clrmamepro illiteracy again... I use non-merged roms, but I can't seem to get a turbo mslug2 when using my m3+ dat-file to rebuild. No doubt I'm barking up the wrong tree again.

But just to see what would happen, I did rename the file and copied it into the zip. The game does run and even mentions Metal Slug Turbo in the service menu. (I can't comment on better performance however, as I've only played Metal Slug X before.) Does this mean it actually worked? Please forgive my ignorance.

arcadez2003

@WeirdH 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:

Technically no you cannot as mslug2 expects 241-p1.bin which has different CRC and SHA values, you could however make mslug2t a parent rom
to avoid duplication in your romlist if that's the issue.

Well, there's my clrmamepro illiteracy again... I use non-merged roms, but I can't seem to get a turbo mslug2 when using my m3+ dat-file to rebuild. No doubt I'm barking up the wrong tree again.

But just to see what would happen, I did rename the file and copied it into the zip. The game does run and even mentions Metal Slug Turbo in the service menu. (I can't comment on better performance however, as I've only played Metal Slug X before.) Does this mean it actually worked? Please forgive my ignorance.

The simple and easiest way to have done it is to take your mslug2 rename it to mslug2t and drop in the 941-p1.p1 rom thats what i did :)

Anyway since it says turbo in the service mode we can assume it worked, although since you likely have the warnings switched off in the core you would
have missed the error message on boot which would have informed you that since the rom you renamed was incorrect for mslug2 the game might not function correctly.

So just because it seems to be correct doesn't mean it is, if i was you i do what i did above to be on the safe side ;)