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

[Riverstorm]

@arcadez2003 - Thanks for all the hard work you, @grant2258, @markwkidd and others put into this core. It's my main core for arcade gaming with some FBNeo and AdvMAME thrown into the mix also. Hopefully the Libretro folks will keep it running as the RA frontend advances.

You know the fun doesn't have to end. There's always "newer" cores more suited for grafting code, if I remember correctly, that would run excellent on these low powered devices! ;) Nah, so many games and so little time!

But you know whenever someone says they are done there's always one more game, on a lazy afternoon that looks easy enough to throw into the mix! :)

@REK607 - If it helps the current list of games that require samples for m3plus:

armora.zip
astrob.zip
astrof.zip
battles.zip
berzerk.zip
blockade.zip
boothill.zip
bosco.zip
buckrog.zip
carnival.zip
circus.zip
congo.zip
cosmica.zip
cosmicg.zip
depthch.zip
dkong.zip
dkongjr.zip
elim2.zip
fantasy.zip
frogs.zip
galaga.zip
ghox.zip
gorf.zip
gridlee.zip
invaders.zip
invinco.zip
main.txt
mario.zip
monsterb.zip
natodef.zip
panic.zip
polepos.zip
pulsar.zip
qbert.zip
rallyx.zip
reactor.zip
ripoff.zip
samples.txt
sasuke.zip
seawolf.zip
sharkatt.zip
solarq.zip
spacefb.zip
spaceod.zip
spacewar.zip
spacfury.zip
starcas.zip
starcrus.zip
startrek.zip
subroc3d.zip
sundance.zip
tacscan.zip
tankbatt.zip
targ.zip
tekipaki.zip
thehand.zip
thief.zip
turbo.zip
vanguard.zip
warrior.zip
wow.zip
xevious.zip
zaxxon.zip
zektor.zip

[REK607]

@arcadez2003 that would be great. I have been able to put the sound to work but not fully, it's exiting the game suddenly after a few minutes of playing it.

[Riverstorm]

@REK607 - I'm not sure what platform you running on but with RetroPie 4.5.1 on the Pi 3 Teki Paki runs well. I'm not very good at it but I had no crashes up to around level 20 or so. I played a few games. Any Tetris style game I was just never very good. =/

[theissdev]

@arcadez2003 Thanks for all your work. This is really an awesome 2003!

[arcadez2003]

@Asure i'd be interested to hear back from ya with regards to Sega System 18 and your plans around supporting more games by using the decrypted romsets.

[REK607]

@Riverstorm as I see it, my problem is the music is in a very high quality and it's closing the game after a few minutes. I can have sound effects but no music. I run RetroPie 4.5.1 on a Pi 3B. Tetris is a hard game indeed!

[Riverstorm]

@REK607 - Ah, ok I am using a 15MB sample pack. I do have the bigger one that is 199MB but I haven't tried it yet. That may be the cause as it sounds like you already suspect. The bigger sample pack is 16 bit with a sample rate of 44100 Hz, (only single channel) so the bitrate is much much higher. The 15MB sounds quite good though even though some clipping most likely occurs at a sample rate of 8000, 8 bit, single channel. The game does run smooth and sounds good on the Pi. Tetris will always be a classic staple game but I like this a bit better, it's a fun little game! :)

[REK607]

@Riverstorm @arcadez2003 it's been a great success to convert the samples and now the game is fully working at 8000 Hz (about 33 MB), will try 16000 Hz soon.

[janderclander14]

Do you know if it is possible to disable the 'auto-centering' in the X axis of racing games? I'm using a spinner (mouse) as racing wheel and, when turning right or left, the car automatically self-centers in 1 or 2 seconds. The only solution to maintain the direction is to keep rotating the spinner in the same direction. This obviously happens in games that use a 270 driving wheel (such as Outrun), but also in games that supposedly used a 360 driving wheel (that is, a spinner or rotary enconder), such as Pole Position. You can see the exact effect in this video (using Mame 2003):

What I would like is to make the spinner act like in this video (which also uses MAME, albeit a newer Windows version):

[arcadez2003]

Alright im not coming outta retirement just had some unfinished business namely some code sitting around which adds the proper M68705 MCU for both
Renegade and Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun, problem was i could not suss out a way to workaround some incompatible code which sends a signal between
the main CPU and the MCU so the games did not boot, so i drafted in dink of FBN dev fame since he wasn't too busy just now to take a look at the code
and he sorted it all out in under two mins.

So thanks to him you can now play both of these games in MAME2003+ safe in the knowledge they are no longer using buggy MCU simulation code
and as such they can now be considered 100% faithfully emulated.....

Funny enough although i dabble with this core i dont actually use it, but just incase someday i do decide to pick it up i added support for this wee game which i like,
and since like the above games we now have a proper M68705 MCU dump for it, it's finally 100% emulated so no better time to add support for this quirky little number
from the golden age of Taito....

Rumba Lumber

[REK607]

Hello! I've been adding more and more sound/music to the games. Does Batsugun have full sound? I can only have it partially working, don't know why.

[barbudreadmon]

@REK607 iirc toaplan games got proper sound support only 2-3 years ago in MAME & FBNeo/FBAlpha, not sure @arcadez2003 backported this to mame2003+

[arcadez2003]

The MAME2003 cores do not support the V25 varient of the NEC CPU which would be required along with a massive update of the Toaplan2 driver
to have full sound and music for Batsugan, Dogyunn, FixEight, Knuckle Bash and V-Five, the workload and doubts around the compatibility of the code
should we have attempted to backport it are the reasons why it was never attempted.

As you noticed Batsugan and Knuckle Bash have some sound, this due to me adding support for simulated MSM6295 sound commands to the driver so at least you
get the Sfx in those games where as they were totally silent previously, so that and adding working bootlegs of FixEight and Knuckle Bash both of which have full sound and
music is at least making the best of a bad situation.

[REK607]

@arcadez2003 that's an excellent answer, now I understand. By the way, I'm really happy with the way all metal slugs are working on the emulator too, so pleased!

[arcadez2003]

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

@REK607 iirc toaplan games got proper sound support only 2-3 years ago in MAME & FBNeo/FBAlpha, not sure @arcadez2003 backported this to mame2003+

Your thinking of the recent HD647180 sound MCU dumps, we did backport the ones for Fire Shark and Vimana adding full sound and music for those games to this core
however we ran into some problems with Ghox and Teki Paki as they would not boot with the new MCU code, so we just ported across the ThunderMAME samples for
both of those ones, so at least they would have sound and music should users have the samples in their set.

Batsugun is a different matter entirely the sound was finally emulated in 2011 but we're missing the required CPU for this in the MAME2003 core..........

16th January 2011: David Haywood - Alex Jackson added support for the extended V25/V35 features to the NEC V20/V30 core in MAME. These features (timers, memory-mapped register banking, custom interrupt controller) are used by the sound programs of several Toaplan titles. He then hooked things up properly in the driver, giving full sound to Batsugun. Batsugun has unencrypted sound code, so was the easiest one to get running. V-Five / Grindstormer, Fix Eight, Knuckle Bash and Dogyuun will also benefit from this once their sound code has been fully decrypted. This is just a matter of time and a bit of effort in figuring out the programs. For the remaining Toaplan games (Teki Paki, Vimana, Fire Shark, Ghox, Whoopee JPN version) the sound MCUs need decapping, which will require funding / donations for this purpose.

[arcadez2003]

@REK607 said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

@arcadez2003 that's an excellent answer, now I understand. By the way, I'm really happy with the way all metal slugs are working on the emulator too, so pleased!

Aye i like to fully explain the reasons why something cant be done :)

Sound for all the Toaplan games was on the target list, we managed to do most of em unfortunately due to code limitations we were unable to do them all.
Metal Slug's 4 and 5 were on the target list as well luckily we were able to get both of those to work Metal Slug 5 put up quite a fight though :)

[arcadez2003]

The protection schemes Toaplan adopted for some of their system 1 and 2 games was pretty secure, a v25 encrypted CPU using opcodes to hide the sound commands
or a fully protected HD647180 which securely stored not only the sound tracks but also the sound commands certainly kept the bootleggers at bay, as a result they only
managed to crack FixEight and Knuckle Bash ripping out the protection and using a Z80 to drive the sound instead.

I did keep an eye on the toaplan2 driver in MAME as new games are dumped everyday, maybe a bootleg or an unprotected version which similar to the above games
doesn't use the V25 might turn up for one of the games that currently doesn't have full sound in this core Batsugun for example, if that was the case it would be worth adding it down the road.

[GDEHON]

Hello,
I hope to be in the good place to expose my problem ...
I am French and I use the google translator given my "school English"
I have a arcade cabinet with rotating joysticks:
https://www.retroblast.com/reviews/joysticks/happrotary.html
I can only configure them on the keyboard
It worked on an older Recalbox version with mame078 / mame2003.
Currently on Batocera 5.25, impossible under mame2003 + to configure the rotate, impossible in the mame menu via retroarch to use the keyboard to configure the rotate !?
I added the mame078 emulator and my backups work ...
Is there a solution

[barbudreadmon]

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

I hope to be in the good place to expose my problem ...
...
Currently on Batocera 5.25

No, obviously you aren't, ask support to the batocera guys.

[grant2258]

@GDEHON I dont know if the defaults for plus changed or are still the same from what im reading from your post your finding it imposible to map a key in the mame tab menu.

fist thing you need to do is make sure you enable mame tab menu
goto quick menu and select legacy mapping to on

next you need to accept input from the keyboard and joystick by default its joystick only
goto quick menu and set input interface to simultaneous (this selects keyboard and joystick)

please not mames default key set as z and x for rotary conflicts with retropad default mapping change it to something else in the tab menu and you should be good to go.