Mame2003 performance

crossmr

Pi zero W

I previously had madlittlepixels image installed on this from about 2.5 years ago. After some wifi issues I detailed in another thread, I'm on a stock 4.6 image with my own rom set that I'm putting on there.

I know on the old MLP image, I played through shadows over mystara on mame with a friend. There were no significant issues at all. Speed was fine, minor sound issues.

I just built Mame2003 from source as I read that it was "faster", but even mame 2003 built from source on the pi had it running this rom terribly. Very slow, sound was garbled.

I just downloaded FBA and the game works fine there. Speed is great, audio is wonderful, however, I'd like to fix my mame 2003 installation as I know this was working before. This is my first time looking up FBA, so I'm sure i wasnt' using this before.

It's built from source and I haven't changed anything, is there something specific I should be setting here to get the performance right?

Clyde

Hello and welcome to this forum.

You need the appropriate rom file for the exact version of the emulator you want to use. So, it just may be that your SoM rom file doesn't fit the current Mame2003 build.

See the Docs on Validating, Rebuilding, and Filtering Arcade ROMs for more information about the arcane art of romset (re)building.

Are you really using FBA, i.e. Final Burn Alpha? If so, you should consider trying its successor Final Burn Neo, because unlike the abandoned FBA, it is under constant development.

You could also try Mame2003-Plus, a fork of the original Mame2003 with many improvements and additions.

That said, both FB Neo and Mame2003-Plus need their own tailor-made romsets like mentioned above.

Which Pi are you using by the way? On my Pi 4 with RetroPie 4.6 and Mame2003-Plus, SoM runs smoothly with perfect sound.

IanDaemon

They're using a Pi Zero W. I have no experience with that hardware, but you're spot on with Romset versions... and my Pi 3B+ runs SoM fine. (I'm unsure of the emulator at the moment.) Maybe the ROM is almost compatible?

barbudreadmon

@crossmr SoM might be playable with FBNeo on pi0 if you enable cyclone (and maybe frameskip ?) in core options. I heard mame2003-plus also has cyclone but i don't know how you enable it.

crossmr

Hello all, yes I'm using Final Burn Neo. It was just referred to as Final Burn Alpha when I was googling so that was stuck in my head.

I'm using the SOM from the archive set for Mame 2003. So I believe that should be the right one for Mame 2003 on this.

The Rom does play fine in FBN. But, I know Mame 2003 was working on the Mad little pixel image that I had here before. I just don't want to mess with the system too much. I spent 8 hours getting the wifi to respond and it's working okay now. I think the mad little pixel image was for 4.2 maybe? It was the 32 gb version from arcade punks that i had used previously. It was actually working totally fine when I turned my pi back on, but my wifi refused to connect or work. So after trying everything I could find on google I ended up wiping the image and installing stock 4.6, and I've run the updater, so it should be the latest of everything on there.

As I mentioned at the top of my post, this is a Pi Zero W, and I know it can struggle with some roms and emulation, but I do know that this particular rom was working before under mame 2003.

I did grab both the US and the "parent" version of the rom, which seems to be the euro rom from the archive set and both of them run the same, significant slowdown and garbled sound.

mitu

@crossmr Please - no links to ROM sites.

crossmr

@mitu Sorry not intentional, was typing out the name and didn't realize it would turn it into a link.

crossmr

and in regards to mame 2003 plus that someone mentioned, I was just looking that up in the package manager, and I don't seem to see it here, just 2003 and 2010. is that something I have to figure out manually?

mitu

@crossmr mame2003-plus is in the experimental packages section.

crossmr

Thanks, I just found it.

Sadly that didn't fix the problem. Tried the 2003plus rom with this and still the same behaviour. Slow, and garbled sound.

Clyde

@crossmr Since it works fine on FB Neo (which is said to be more focused on speed and playablity than the more "archaeological" oriented MAME project), an easy solution would be to just use that emulator. If you put your roms in the arcade rom folder rather than mame-libretro and fba, you can choose the emulator more freely and use FB Neo only for SOM. This way, your MAME roms and your FB Neo rom(s) would appear together in the "Arcade" system of Emulation Station.

One possible future issue with this is FB Neo's constant development, which may require updated rom files for particular games to work in future FB Neo versions. But in my experience, that doesn't happen that often and/or can be fixed by getting updated roms from wherever you get your roms with only a few very rare or new rom dumps as exceptions.

edit: If you choose this path, although just copying/moving the contents of one rom folder to one another shouldn't be dangerous, be sure to make a backup of any data that's not easily recoverably before doing it!

crossmr

Of course that's how I'm playing it now. The issue for me was more about making sure my mame2003 installation was okay in case I need it for some other rom that perhaps I can't play in FBneo. Everyone keeps telling me in multiple places (discord and other places too) just to use FBneo, but I feel like that's missing the point. I'd like to make sure I'm getting the correct performance out of the installed emulators. I may buy another SD card and write that old MLP image to it and see if I can figure out what was going on on that image to get that performance.

barbudreadmon

@crossmr MAME2003 (and -plus) should be overall faster than FBNeo due to their emulation code being written for 17 years old computer, but FBNeo has some core options that can help with performance : on a pi0 that's probably used in a handheld (or are you one of those masochists that don't use pi3/pi4 to play on a TV ?), enabling frameskip is a no-brainer tbh since it'll be barely noticeable on the small screen.
And yeah, there are games that'll only be available on one or the other of those cores.

BuZz

@crossmr maybe it overclocks the RPI.

crossmr

@barbudreadmon They're definitely not faster. I'm even using the same rom on FBNeo that I'm using on the Mame 2003 and it runs perfectly on FBNeo compared to mame. I'm actually using the pi zero w on a TV. I bought this around 2.5-3 years ago and at the time it was the only pi I could get here in South Korea, and it was originally intended for older stuff. I may get a Pi4 sometime, but for the most part this does what I want. Is there a config or something I should copy/check to see if there is something wonky with the settings of this emulator?

crossmr

Additional information here: Something definitely not quite right with the mame2003 install. It's not saving any configuration. When I open the emulator, use select and the button to open the emulator menu to configure things like audio/video/etc, the "save changes on exit" never stays to on, everything just resets.

I just wanted to try manually editing the file with the settings from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/retroflag_gpi/comments/c1kusn/mame4all_core_fastest_mame_core_on_pi_zero_info/ and I couldn't find it anywhere. I went into the emulator told it to save, made a change and came back in and found the changes weren't saved. Any idea what's up there?

mitu

@crossmr Save your configurations it as a core override, not directly . There's a bug in RetroArch that doesn't allow saving when the conf file includes another.

crossmr

Sorry I'm not quite following you. is this something I have to do manually somewhere?

mitu

@crossmr Instead of using 'Save Configuration' in the RetroArch's menu (RGUI), use 'Overrides' (accessible once you open the RGUI Quick Menu) and choose 'Save Core Overrides'.

crossmr

I found it. Well, I changed a bunch of video settings and what not trying to make this better but nothing offers any improvement. I think at this point I need to get another SD card and write that MLP image to it and investigate to see what they had set up on there. See if they were really using mame 2003 or if they had something else going on.

thanks all for the help