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

Riverstorm

@Rion - Ok, the new updates are submitted. ;) My plan was to do your new catver.ini first but arcardez beat me to it so I did the DAT to test. Here's the PR:

https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-plus-libretro/pull/836

I know what you mean by tedious. I've been updating the resolution_db file for shaders. I think Udb posted one a while ago for fbeno .44 that I grabbed from that thread. It has 100's of missing resolutions for clones. I know it's out of date almost immediately but it's newer than the original one for fbalpha. Anyway it's a line by line update but like you I do a few minutes here and there which I don't mind.

TedMaul

@johnodon perfect - thank you!!

johnodon

outfxies was discussed earlier in this thread but just wondering if there is any update. Sound is still listed as preliminary...

<driver status="good" color="good" sound="preliminary" palettesize="8192"/>

Current MAME (not Libretro) plays without issue.

arcadez2003

MAME2003 would require two extra sound cores + a new M37710 CPU core to emulate the sound for Outfoxies and the rest of the Namco NB1 + NB2 games
the sound cores would not be too difficult however the CPU core is in no way compatible with our codebase, so it's a non starter otherwise i would have
hooked up the sound for these games already.

But of course nothing is impossible in this world, if someone with more talent than me were to come along and radically rework the M37710 so it would be
compatible with the MAME2003 codebase then you might one day have sound and music in Outfoxies, maybe a bounty might do the trick

These are the changes to the codebase which would be required........

0.100u1: R. Belmont fixed incorrect voices in the NB-1 games.
0.99u9: Added sndhrdw\namcoc7x.c/h. Major Namco sound improvements [R. Belmont]: Added emulated sound and music to all NB-1, NB-2 and System 11 games, using Prop Cycle's MCU BIOS (pr1data.8k) as a substitute until the original can be trojaned or otherwise obtained. Hooked it up for plain System 22 games as well, but they're not interested in passing down proper commands for some reason. Speed-cheated all instances of the M37710/C352 sound system so CPU requirements don't go up much. This also helped back off the requirements a hair for Prop Cycle and Time Crisis. C352 now sets output pitch correctly by input clock. Added M37710 (16128000 Hz) CPU2 and C352 (16128000 Hz) stereo sound.

bluestang

@barbudreadmon @arcadez2003 Can any of you explain how the sound driver works? ADSP2105?

A very weird development, but I was messing around with the aarch (64-bit RPiOS) version of RetroPie and accidentally disabled the sound for mame2003-plus. I loaded up Killer Instinct and it was getting up to 120 fps on what I presume are the "speed ups". This was also using the Vulkan driver.

So I'm wondering if the slowdowns are caused by the sound driver instead. Later versions of mame have better implementations of the ADSP21XX series...

REK607

Is Dungeon Magic working fine? I found my dungeonm.zip working slow with choppy sound and music.

Darksavior

@REK607 That's a taito f3 game. Your pi is too slow to run it. Get a pi4.

REK607

@Darksavior oh I see, that makes sense because I'm on a RPi 3B, thank you!

Darksavior

@REK607 I think it might work full speed in advmame but I don't use that emulator.

sirhenrythe5th

@Darksavior i am the one that uses AdvanceMame here, maybe the only one 😄

Yes, Taito F3 games run pretty well using AdvanceMame on a Pi3.
They became even better with the 3.x versions (AdvanceMame got optimizations within this update specially for the Raspberry Pi and the overall performance grew with those)

arcadez2003

@sirhenrythe5th said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

@Darksavior i am the one that uses AdvanceMame here, maybe the only one 😄

Yes, Taito F3 games run pretty well using AdvanceMame on a Pi3.
They became even better with the 3.x versions (AdvanceMame got optimizations within this update specially for the Raspberry Pi and the overall performance grew with those)

Talking of advanceMAME i've contributed a little to that project of late..............
https://github.com/amadvance/advancemame/pull/57/commits/c51dd344d5a9f27740c2ad6b40eef58567c36cf2

sirhenrythe5th

@arcadez2003 Wow, this is great! Thank you so much for taking care of this project! 👍

REK607

Hello again, as always, I'm bringin new question! :P Have you ever tried goldnaxj.zip? It doesn't work for me. I'm using goldnaxe.zip but the japanese version is just a bit more enjoyable. Any idea?

barbudreadmon

@REK607 It's flagged as not working in mame2003plus, see https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-plus-libretro/blob/6c821ada3292270fe33d483e3c58753e8be136e7/src/drivers/system16.c#L7190.

You'll need a more recent MAME or FBNeo to run this one (NB : the romset was renamed to goldnaxej in those, its content is probably different too).

arcadez2003

Yes most versions of Golden Axe are either protected by the FD1094 encryption on the main CPU or the sound via the I8051 MCU
i guess we're lucky that the parent romset has no protection hence why it'll work with full sound and music in this core, however
the japan version wont work due it being encrypted via the FD1094 which is a pity as it's uncencored vs the other versions.

On a seperate note work still plods along with regards to this core the changelog contains a breakdown of the recent fixes and
or improvements but just a quick headsup we now support a couple more games...........

F1 Super Lap (World)

As per a request i fixed up this game a while back but we only supported the japan version, at least now with the World release
the game instructions will be in English which is handy if you want to suss out how and when to use the turbo/overtake button.

Xmen (6, Player Version)

As per another request we fixed up the 6 Player version of this game so now you can round up 5 of your mates or random complete
strangers and fire into this game at the same time :)

barbudreadmon

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

As per another request we fixed up the 6 Player version of this game so now you round up 5 of your mates or random complete
strangers and fire into this game at the same time :)

That's neat, you backported the recent FBNeo fixes/improvements too ?

arcadez2003

@barbudreadmon 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:

As per another request we fixed up the 6 Player version of this game so now you round up 5 of your mates or random complete
strangers and fire into this game at the same time :)

That's neat, you backported the recent FBNeo fixes/improvements too ?

Well someone asked me to get the game playable that was my main focus firstly, however it does have a few graphical niggles here and there
nothing major from what i could tell, but yeah anything which will improve the game in that dept is always of interest i'll check the FBN git
later.

But as is always the case backporting code from the latest MAME or FBN cores to MAME2003 is not always straightforward ;)

barbudreadmon

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

however it does have a few graphical niggles here and there
nothing major from what i could tell

Most of the issues should be in later stages, dink also did a wonderful job at implementing the k054539 delay/echo sound effects

arcadez2003

deleted

arcadez2003

Ok i've backported the code to my MAME72 test core just trying it just now everything looks good so far all being well i'll port it
across to MAME2003+ sometime tonight.

@barbudreadmon thanks for the heads up around these improvements Cheers!!

Edit dinks fixes for the 6 player version of Xmen have now been added to this core.