lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport

arcadez2003

Ok i had to revert the Sega Core Update as it broke all the System 16 / 18 games i've fixed them now, a real pity as it was a fair bit of work and those
MAME improvements would have been a real boon in the end i think some of the memory map handling was just not compatable with the
MAME78 source.

But hey it's not all bad news as there are two new playable games.............

Sonic Boom

ALTTEXT

Runs like a dog on lesser hardware when using FBA but plays a treat in ole MAME, mind and grab the decrypted Roms
and drop em in sonicbom.zip for this to work as we're bypassing the FD1809 encryption.

FixEight (Bootleg)

ALTTEXT

The original version of Fixeight is not playble in MAME78 but the bootleg plays quite nicely after i added it

Darksavior

@gamez-fan No worries. You tried. One of these days I will have to test out speeds to see which emulator is the best for system16. I might have to go with mame2010. FBA is too slow, even after they fixed their audio problems.

Do you look at fba too? If so, a small request, on why the konami (tmnt1,2,sunsetriders,mysticwarriors, simpsons,etc) and banpresto games (sailor moon really;P) games are faster on fba2012 than standard fba? Missing optimizations? Just more accurate emulation?

arcadez2003

Just a heads up with regards to the sound being better in MAME-2003 the Shinobi Bootleg is the version to play.

darknior

@gamez-fan said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

Just a heads up with regards to the sound being better in MAME-2003 the Shinobi Bootleg is the version to play.

Thanks a lot :)

No hope to improve Shinobi, E-swat sound problem ?
And fix Altered Beast ? because this one is not playable :(

arcadez2003

@darknior said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

@gamez-fan said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

Just a heads up with regards to the sound being better in MAME-2003 the Shinobi Bootleg is the version to play.

Thanks a lot :)

No hope to improve Shinobi, E-swat sound problem ?
And fix Altered Beast ? because this one is not playable :(

I just tried to do that and it ended it failure :( i cant be assed working on it again!! with regards to Altered Beast i just played the first two levels and didn't run into
any Gfx issues i used this version GAME( 1988, altbeast, 0, altbeast, altbeast, altbeast, ROT0, "Sega", "Altered Beast (Version 1)" )

darknior

@gamez-fan said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

GAME( 1988, altbeast, 0, altbeast, altbeast, altbeast, ROT0, "Sega", "Altered Beast (Version 1)" )

Ok thank i will try it.

https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/pull/212

@gamez-fan This will fix the sound and the sub CPU reset line getting lost in transet slowing the game down to a crawl

darknior

https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/pull/216

@gamez-fan Two new Joystick versions of Cabal which have an extra button for rolling, the bootleg has this setup also but the official versions are 100% soundwise.
The version i remember from the Arcades back in the day it's not the same without the roll button.
Anyway this change is from MAME120 the joystick version becomes the parent and the US set's 1 and 2 are now the trackball versions with just a slight Rom name change the bootleg stays the same.

maxbeanz

@gamez-fan said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

with regards to Altered Beast i just played the first two levels and didn't run into
any Gfx issues i used this version GAME( 1988, altbeast, 0, altbeast, altbeast, altbeast, ROT0, "Sega", "Altered Beast (Version 1)" )

Did you test this on Retropie/Retroarch ? I have the same issue, when you hit the enemies they freeze and you can walk through them. I think the game works fine on all systems except the Retroarch version. A lot of games in lr-mame2003 don't work properly whereas the original MAME 2003 versions work fine. Probably something wrong with the Libretro code.

arcadez2003

@maxbeanz said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

Did you test this on Retropie/Retroarch ?

No a MAME72 build on the Xbox, i just wanted to make sure folks weren't using the non working version 2 Romset.

@maxbeanz said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

I have the same issue, when you hit the enemies they freeze and you can walk through them. I think the game works fine on all systems except the Retroarch version. A lot of games in lr-mame2003 don't work properly whereas the original MAME 2003 versions work fine. Probably something wrong with the Libretro code.

Alotta the input and graphical code has been changed, i suppose so that it's endian safe for multiple platforms, problem is it might be these changes
which will likely be the cause of the Bally Midway games refusing to coin or locking into service mode on boot or the graphical problems your getting
with Altered Beast or as you say lots of games just plain not working all of which you dont get when using the original MAME78 build.

It would require some dev's with a bit of free time on their hands and a fairly large team of testers to put this right.

markwkidd

@gamez-fan said

It would require some dev's with a bit of free time on their hands and a fairly large team of testers to put this right.

If you can help write a description of the work in the github issues, that would allow bounties to be raised for a bigger project.

darknior

https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/pull/218
https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/pull/219

@gamez-fan The games will sound way better now, but folks will need new samples which are quite
easy to obtain via Twistys site FBA for example uses the same ones.

0.86u3: Donkey Kong sample improvements [Peter Rittwage, Derrick Renaud]. Added samples (run01, run02, run03, jump and dkstomp.wav).
0.86u3: Peter Rittwage and Derrick Renaud replaced the old climb and walk sample with three different samples. Replaced climb- and walk.wav with climb0, climb1 and climb2.wav and walk0, walk1 and walk2.wav.

Code via BritneysPAIRS

@gamez-fan Breath a sigh of relief it's my final commit .

darknior

Speedup hack for Street Fighter : https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/pull/221

@gamez-fan Code is via iq_132 and gives a large speedup and reduction in the overall memory requirements
when loading the graphical Roms for Street Fighter, this works very nicely on the Xbox im sure it'll
be likewise for all the platforms that use this MAME core.

Ok this is defo my last commit!! i simply forgot about this code which im sure you'll
agree was worth porting across.

darknior

Big performance boost for Midway V-Unit : https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/pull/222

@gamez-fan 0.94u5: Aaron Giles turned off debugging code in the hotspots, giving a huge speed improvement to the V-unit games.
To play these games you need to map a button for "Enter" as this is used as you go through some setup configs on first boot after that these are saved for every time you start the games thereafter.

markwkidd

@darknior said in lr-mame2003 driver improvement and backport:

To play these games you need to map a button for "Enter" as this is used as you go through some setup configs on first boot after that these are saved for every time you start the games thereafter.

Would you be willing to log a github issue for this? It should be possible to set up a default key for Enter. I don't have time this month but I may be able to take care of that eventually.

darknior

Attempt to fix some reported performance drops : https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/pull/224

@gamez-fan Add in the V-blank changes which were coded at the same time as the video changes happened for the FixEight bootleg i assumed maybe wrongly they were not needed, with a bit of luck this will sort the performance hit in batrider which has been reported on the forums.

Also since i was at it i added support for Knuckle Bash 2 which is just a bootleg of Knuckle Bash but
unlike that game this one does have full sound.

BuZz

Please can you clarify what is going on with this core? It looks like a lot of untested changes are being submitted, and a lot of reverts for many of them. There are people reporting new issues with the core, and I am considering forking and rolling back this core due to this.

eg

https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/pull/204

Revert because it broke all the games ? Why was a change submitted in the first place that had so many problems ?

BuZz

also - https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/issues/227

darknior

If we can choose what MAME core we want to use in the ES-SETUP ... why not, it's a good idea.
But it is not important for the common users. Nobody is using MAME core from source, it take time to compile, users are using BINary version.
Only testers are trying the source version to try games and compatibility.
If you only make a build when all is done, like you do for ES, it will be enough.

BuZz

@darknior

In regards to retropie that is not true. Binaries are updated all the time and I cannot be expected to just know when things are "unstable" - master branch should not be used for experimental and untested changes imho. Also for many platforms retropie is source only. From X86 to ODroid c2/xu3/tinkerboard and RPI on ubuntu etc.

For EmulationStation we have a stable branch - which I specifically manage so that's not comparable.

I'm not going to have a conversation in two places with you so please just reply here.

darknior

@buzz Yes for sure, if you update BIN all the time it is a problem.
Adding a DEV branch like we have some on ES can help.
Maybe you can add the dev branch to RP-SETUP like you add the emulationstation-dev last month.