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

[Riverstorm]

@WeirdH - Yeah it would have to be one of the programmers like @arcadez2003 @grant2258 @barbudreadmon to fix it as they are the true "Githubians of Libretronan" or "Libretronians of Githubio" "The Wizards of Retroly Street" ... :)

MAME 0.214 does still flag Storm Blade (SSV.cpp) with graphical issues on launch. Also ArcadeItalia lists cocktail issues. Still some good games in their though like Dyna Gear, Drift Out '94, Eagle Shot, Twin Eagle II, Vasara, Storm Blade, etc.

@barbudreadmon - That's great, thanks for the headsup! I'll be loading it up later this afternoon for testing. My build is mainly a hybrid of m3plus and fbneo with a bit of advmame for a handful of vector games.

I don't know if this was the fix back in 2005 but it does relate to shadows.

15th May 2005: Luca Elia - I finally got around to implementing proper shadows in SSV driver, replacing the hack that was there instead. The difference is most noticeable in Storm Blade. The way shadows work is this: The frame buffer is filled with 16 bit pens, that are indexes into the palette (i.e. the actual rgb colors), from the previously drawn, "normal" tiles. When a "shadowing" tile is drawn, it does not overwrite the contents of the frame buffer, but instead replaces the top bits of the pens there with the low bits of its pens. This results in a shift of the affected pixels from one section to another of the game's palette. The game has to just divide the palette into increasingly dark chunks of the same base colors. Some games do highlights this way, while Storm Blade again exploits the mechanism to cross-fade between graphics, which now works.

[arcadez2003]

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

I don't know if this was the fix back in 2005 but it does relate to shadows.

15th May 2005: Luca Elia - I finally got around to implementing proper shadows in SSV driver, replacing the hack that was there instead. The difference is most noticeable in Storm Blade. The way shadows work is this: The frame buffer is filled with 16 bit pens, that are indexes into the palette (i.e. the actual rgb colors), from the previously drawn, "normal" tiles. When a "shadowing" tile is drawn, it does not overwrite the contents of the frame buffer, but instead replaces the top bits of the pens there with the low bits of its pens. This results in a shift of the affected pixels from one section to another of the game's palette. The game has to just divide the palette into increasingly dark chunks of the same base colors. Some games do highlights this way, while Storm Blade again exploits the mechanism to cross-fade between graphics, which now works.

I've already backported the following improvements........

0.141u1: Improvements to the SSV sprite position and flipscreen support [Robert Zandona].

0.139u3: SSV update [Robert Zandona]: Implemented visible area registers in the SSV driver (now the resolution for all the games is the max visible area, the values of the registers after the boot process). Implemented y tilemap offset register. Implemented x and y visible area register. Disabled tilemap draw when mode=0. Removed kludge for sprite x offset and implemented 1 bit of 7a-7b register. Implemented y sprite inversion CRT register. Added a kludge for Dyna Gear. Used CRT registers to get the sprite x offset. Removed offset values from the init; the offset now are handled by the CRT registers. Fixed bit #a of 7a-7b CRT register. Fixed background disable condition. Corrado Tomaselli confirmed visible area register with a Twin Eagle II PCB.

0.139u3: Roberto Zandona fixed graphical corruption on left side of screen beginining stage 3 in Storm Blade.

0.96u3: Luca Elia added shadow effects to the SSV driver. Changed palettesize to 32768.

However from checking the commits i've spotted a small fix for the shadows which never got a mention in the MAME WIP, i've added it to my test build
and it seems to sort the problems although my eyesight ain't what it was, i'll add in these changes to this core update to latest build then
try Storm Blade once again and lemmie know how it pans out.

https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-plus-libretro/commit/ed9a8684e987e39e1981a1ec0a9412663f3f47ff

[arcadez2003]

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

@arcadez2003 @Riverstorm @WeirdH FBNeo also got some issues with some SSV games on arm/aarch64 (still trying to figure out the issue), but FWIW this one seems fine.

I hadn't played Storm Blade for quite some time but i do remember now sometimes on shooting down certain planes or finishing off certain bosses
you would as part of the explosions get a yellow or blue flash which i always thought didn't look quite right,

But i was never 100% on this until the recent posts with the pics and reviewing the gameplay on YT, certainly that commit i just pushed to the git seems
to sort it as the flashes before the explosions or afterwards are all white now which looks correct i think, of course maybe on arm/aarch64
hardware the graphical problems are worse and show up more.??

[Riverstorm]

@arcadez2003 - Thanks a bunch for the fix. It's looking darn right proper here unless my old peepers deceive me! :)

I mainly use the Pi 3 which I think is a quad core Cortex-A53 (ARMv8). Screenshot below running commit ed9a868. Shadow/shockwave overlap looks good.

[WeirdH]

@arcadez2003 Appears to be fixed on my 3B+ as well, awesome work!

[arcadez2003]

Well it was Luca Elia who fixed this issue, i just backported the code into this core, kinda like copying the guy next to ya at school :) but still it's another happy ending at least.

[Clyde]

@arcadez2003 You made me remember this quote from http://blog.wolfire.com:

We have opensource facial hair: if one guy has a big beard we all copy his code and get our own beards.

[grant2258]

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

ng the guy next to ya at school :) but still it's another happy ending at least.

opensource is a great thing when its truly libre :) including copying beards lol

[darknior]

Thanks a lot all for your help last week :)
Now i have my full set MAME 2003 Plus <3
I began to try some games and your work is so fantastic :)

But i have one question for CHD games ...
Mine are CHD2 not v5, but i think it help because less compressed.
I try to use them on USB drive or directly on the MicroSD car.
I try Area51 and KI1 KI2 and all are slow, impossible to play them fine :(
On PI 3b+ ... is it normal ? Is there a trick to help ?
Because i remember on XBOX @arcadez2003 we can play KI1 and 2 without CHD and not with MAME, but at full speed on a low 700Mhz proc with 64Mo of RAM ... :(
Why not on PI who is a 4 core, 1400Mhz with 1Go of RAM !!?
Thanks

[arcadez2003]

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

Thanks a lot all for your help last week :)
Now i have my full set MAME 2003 Plus <3
I began to try some games and your work is so fantastic :)

But i have one question for CHD games ...
Mine are CHD2 not v5, but i think it help because less compressed.
I try to use them on USB drive or directly on the MicroSD car.
I try Area51 and KI1 KI2 and all are slow, impossible to play them fine :(
On PI 3b+ ... is it normal ? Is there a trick to help ?
Because i remember on XBOX @arcadez2003 we can play KI1 and 2 without CHD and not with MAME, but at full speed on a low 700Mhz proc with 64Mo of RAM ... :(
Why not on PI who is a 4 core, 1400Mhz with 1Go of RAM !!?
Thanks

Most of the CHD games tend to big chunky 3D games which the xbox and many platforms that use this core will always struggle with, not being a fan of 1 vs 1
fighters preferring the ole scrolling beat em ups, i never bothered with the Killer Instinct games so im not 100% on this but im sure the xbox has a special
standalone emulator port which is heavily optimized for low spec hardware hence you could play em on a stock xbox.

SPPV is the current custodian of that project, maybe if you ask him nicely he might look at porting it across to the RA platforms sometime.

[arcadez2003]

@grant2258 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:

ng the guy next to ya at school :) but still it's another happy ending at least.

opensource is a great thing when its truly libre :) including copying beards lol

Right here's the thing "watching what i say here as the subject matter is adult in nature", after reading a story about big hairy beardy men who all lived in a house
together as pups and they all had a master who wanted them to inject a certain part of their anatomy with a substance which made said part of their anatomy grow
to a huge size so they could rub their faces against them kinda makes me prefer my copying your schoolmate analogy instead :)

Post Script

One of the pups died after the injection hence it made the newspapers and me hearing about a whole world i never knew existed :)

[darknior]

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

i never bothered with the Killer Instinct games so im not 100% on this

Me too i prefer Street of Rages, and CPS games ;)
But it's a CULT GAME, important in the Video Game history and it's why i wish found a solution to play with it.

Like i write i also try AREA 51, a fantastic shooting game !!!
I love it, and it is really slow too :(
Don't you have try it too ?

but im sure the xbox has a special ...

I don't use it from many years :p
The pi is life for me now ;)

standalone emulator port which is heavily optimized for low spec hardware hence you could play em on a stock xbox.
SPPV is the current custodian of that project, maybe if you ask him nicely he might look at porting it across to the RA platforms sometime.

Maybe, i can try ... but xbox gamers are always on xbox lol
They really evolve from many years ...

[barbudreadmon]

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

Like i write i also try AREA 51, a fantastic shooting game !!!
I love it, and it is really slow too :(

3D arcade games are generally impossible to run at full speed on current SBCs without a dedicated emulator, their original cpu+gpu put too much stress on the SBC's cpu, generally you'll need a dynarec to lower cpu usage, a 3D renderer to offload video processing, or both.

I doubt you'll ever see a dedicated emulator for arcade games based on jaguar, and while it might be possible to add this support to virtualjaguar, i doubt you'll find any developper interested in this (not that it would run full speed on a rpi3 anyway).

[WeirdH]

@arcadez2003 Thanks Luca Elia, for letting arcadez copy your homework!

[arcadez2003]

I added support for Lethal Enforcers a while back however there was still a little bug with the background scrolling in the section with the cars on mission 1,
this also affected the highscore table minor stuff really but annoying none the less, anyway the fix to sort this was on the large side and touched a fair bit
of the code connected to all the 16 and 32bit Konami games.

But today while researching this issue i found a little hack by robiza which didn't make the MAME WIP, i guess it was done before he fixed things up proper like
this is good in the sense it was a simple addition to this core which saved me a ton of work and does not affect any of the other Konami games which means
i didn't have to test em all :)

The shops not scrolling correctly on mission 1 is now fixed, and for good measure i've went ahead and silenced some debug code which would throw out
an "unknown pri" popup message at various points in the game, so all in all a couple easy to add fixes make Lethal Enforcers look a lot sweeter in MAME2003+

[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.