Mame2003 game runs on 4.3 but not 4.7

[mahoneyt944]

@riverstorm I guess the easy answer is it's very complicated as you know. As much as I use, maintain, prefer 2003+ over vanilla I try to keep vanilla alive for the benefit of the community. Typically games are only fixed when they are isolated games that don't share anything with any other games. These game are usually dead to start with so it can't hurt to improve them. 2003+ gets the book thrown at it with updates while vanilla gets very little.... Maybe 1 or 2 out of everything 20 we fix in plus.

The additions were added to vanilla more out of necessity for bootstraps. That's not to say that vanilla can't live without them but I believe the user base whether they understand them or not wants these because they auto setup problematic games. Games that end up on the help page here.....
If the bootstraps differ between cores I won't be able to maintain them easily in vanilla so vanilla just won't get anymore.

It's easy enough for you and I to just say well use plus, but a lot of people have their entire system setup around vanilla so changing over means going through every rom again which doesn't sit well with everyone.

I guess it's a rock and a hard place situation with hammers falling from the sky. Lol 😂

[Riverstorm]

@mahoneyt944 - I do appreciate the explanation but I'm still not quite understanding. Why do you need to add a game to vanilla 2003? If a game didn't exist or didn't work previously in the vanilla set it shouldn't need a bootstrap??

Also I do flip back and forth between the two cores when running games and I haven't had any issues that were apparent. More to the point you don't have to be totally on one core or the other. That's the point of mame2003-plus. You can run multiple cores and choose which core runs which game. RP makes it a snap as I'm sure other frontends do too.

Roughly 4,721 games are identical and the rest are all the new additions and a good number of updated (changed) ROMs in Plus also. Now with the new additions it just not a static set anymore it's more of a moving target again. I like the idea of a static set. It makes the core a solid and dependable set to rely on.

Over time it will continue to grow until it's probably a substantial list of additions. From a HD space perspective it's quite small for a core too. My vote is to remove them and use mame2003-plus for the new games but I'll have to be ok with whatever you decide to add for new ROMs.

[mahoneyt944]

@riverstorm The bootstraps are made for 2003+ then the entire list is copied to vanilla. If a rom is named differently between cores the bootstrap will need altered to load correctly and to keep our naming convention Then every time after that when a new bootstrap is made you'll have to hand edit the list because the lists aren't the same. For example look at this diff when adding the nbajam bootstraps (bootstrap.c) there's about 5500 lines of binary. https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-plus-libretro/commit/9106f659f498fa5eb306588ad9c954caf562b31d#diff-052cf6ad0faeb2d4eeabe627d91cd472f7b934179a2d1ef02f1ddeb2da782624

Now let's say these are named differently between cores. Can you tell which lines are different between each bootstrap?

The main reason vanilla is kept static is so existing roms don't break. This avoids the "this rom use to work" issue. In these rare exceptions the games did not work anyhow, so no one's roms were working and became broken. These games were not being played or functional.

In my opinion, I value having the bootstrap feature with on going development over the these rare exceptions. The diff is just too large to micro manage the bootstraps....And again we're talking about.. was it 7 or so games out of over 4700.

I have no issue reverting these games. But then I'm not going to micro manage the bootstraps. Too much time involved. So this will revert a hand full of games to not working....

[Riverstorm]

@mahoneyt944 - OK, I’ll concede to your better judgment of all things code related behind the scenes! I was hoping for clarification and I appreciate you taking the time explaining everything. I know previously they were able to update hundreds of games with thousands of commits without changing the original set. It makes sense that you don’t have to track two sets of bootstraps as they are pretty handy.

As far as the fiasco when all these new games were being added to vanilla MAME everything was great and then the foundation started cracking and more and more issues were cropping up as time went on. It was a bummer and I just hope that doesn’t happen this time around with Introducing new ROMs into the set.

Anyway thanks a bunch for all the great changes you’ve been adding, it’s all about the games! :-)

[Riverstorm]

The other thing but I was thinking about is if it sets a precedence where others say you added a few games. I’m going to add a few games for convenience or set completion or hacks etc. if that makes sense. At the end of the day someone has to make the decision on which games to add or how many more for what reason.

[Riverstorm]

One time this guy wanted to add like 75 hacks for a game. I can’t remember the game but it’s in one of the closed requests on GitHub somewhere. To him it made perfect sense and he submitted the code changes and everything to do it but I think they ultimately declined it for what seemed like obvious reasons but you just never know I guess.

[dankcushions]

one important thing to remember is that mame2003 should never be modified to enable a game that was previously disabled, otherwise it breaks its own license: https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-plus-libretro/blob/master/LICENSE.md (VII).

but hey, on pi4 it looks like we should be able to run current MAME at good speeds, if we can just iron out the performance outside of X.

[mahoneyt944]

@dankcushions
"enabling games that are disabled"

Hmm that's interesting. Can't say I've ever seen that before. How do they define disabled exactly? To me a "disabled game" is a game that is purposely not allowed to run. Or a game that was causing harm so it was disabled? It's not very clear....

[dankcushions]

@mahoneyt944 if memory serves they used to (still?) disable the emulation of games released within a grace period of X years, so MAME wasn't emulating stuff that was currently available for purchase etc. at least, not until it was X years old. i guess back in 2003 that may potentially have covered some neogeo games, but i'm not sure.

(i may be thinking of FBA...)

i wouldn't have thought it covers games that were marked as non-working, and are now working due to fixes - doesn't seem to be in the spirit of the rule, but i'm not really sure.

[mahoneyt944]

@dankcushions yeah that theory makes sense. Good enough for me. Lol.