MAME ROW #15

obsidianspider

Our friendly host @meleu is in an area with poor Internet access this week, so I'll be taking over MAME ROW duties temporarily.

This is the 15th MAME Random Of the Week

So the three random numbers for this week are: 660, 39, 2068

660
Game Name: Gridlee
Company: Videa
Year: 1983
ROM file name: gridlee.zip

39
Game Name: Aliens (World set 1)
Company: Konami
Year: 1990
ROM file name: aliens.zip

2068
Game Name: Vimana
Company: Toaplan
Year: 1991
ROM file name: vimana.zip

Please vote: http://www.strawpoll.me/12017624

We will check the most voted game on Wednesday. So we have Monday and Tuesday for experimentations.

WHAT IS THE MAME ROW?

MAME ROW stands for MAME Random Of the Week. We randomly select an arcade game from the 0.78 MAME ROMset to play on the week. The idea is to play games we've never played before, interact with other forum members, post hi-scores, share game strategies, fun facts, and (the most important) HAVE FUN!

There's no need to use RetroPie to join the MAME ROW! You can play it on any platform you want.

Every Monday we create a topic at the "General Discussion and Gaming" forum section with the 3 random games to be voted. And on Wednesday we check the results.

The current week's game thread is just where there are more people interacting/talking about the game(s). Feel free to post your hi-score (or any content about the game) anytime you want on the previous "rounds" topics (links below).

These "rules" are constantly being improved!

EXPLAINING THE RANDOMNESS OF THE PROCESS

I took the 0.78 compatibility list and applied the following filters (in this order):

Parent: (empty)
Rpi 3 Status: (empty), OK, Untested
Rpi 2 Status: OK, Untested
Rpi 1 Status: Untested
Manufacturer: clear the "bootleg" checkbox
Saved a new spreadsheet with only the results of those filters here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13Q7QEqV5lUo662nvAC3zS_AvQvsjspEcGHVhaHcyzbI/edit?usp=sharing

And then went to www.random.org and generated a random number between 2 and 2185 (ignoring 1 because of the column headers).

LINKS TO THE PREVIOUS "ROUNDS"

Phoenix (not randomly chosen)
New Rally-X (not randomly chosen)

mediamogul

@obsidianspider

Nice work! You even took the crust off the bread and cut it into little triangles, just like @meleu makes it.

obsidianspider

@mediamogul I realized after I volunteered that you can't copy the formatting when you copy/paste a post, so I had to go back in and add that. I also thought that the videos helped. :)

mediamogul

@obsidianspider said in MAME ROW #15:

I also thought that the videos helped.

Always a welcome addition.

dankcushions

vimana is absolutely great! but no sound in mame2003. it has sound in lr-fbalpha if you update from source and have the samples in the right place (see wiki). a full fba 0.2.97.39 set should have samples included.

you also have to have a sensible memory split. the default (256mb) is fine but many people raise it, snatching useful system memory to be used for useless VRAM...

obsidianspider

@dankcushions Thanks for the tip on lr-fblpha supporting the samples, but yikes! 258.6MB for that sample zip!

dankcushions

@obsidianspider said in MAME ROW #15:

@dankcushions Thanks for the tip on lr-fblpha supporting the samples, but yikes! 258.6MB for that sample zip!

yep! hence the need for a decent amount of usable ram :)

UDb23

Aliens looks funny! Gets my vote.

Sorry for off topic, but as you're the experts here, am I the only one having this issue with vector games in advmame ?

meleu

I'm back! Home sweet home. :-)

Let's start our 2017 gaming killing some aliens!

GtBFilms

@dankcushions Thanks for the tips for getting sound working properly on Vimana using the lr-fbalpha emulator - I updated lr-fbalpha from source as instructed, and placed the sample zip file (vimana.zip) in /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/fba/samples and it worked fine!

For anyone who stumbles on this thread in the future:

Enter Retropie Setup from Retropie menu:

..then select
P Manage Packages:

...then
main Manage main packages:

...then
216 lr-fbalpha:

... then
S Update from source

Wait about 30 minutes (on an rpi3) while lots of text scrolls up the screen. Then exit back to Retropie menu.

Use WinSCP to copy samples zip file to the correct location:

Selected vimana from the arcade menu, pressing a key to access the emulator selection menu. Set the emulator for this specific rom to lr-fbalpha:

Select the game, and enjoy with sound and music.

It took slightly longer to start up than it did before (about 30 seconds) but the sound and music all worked.

Right, now I'm off to kill some aliens!

GtBFilms

Okay, looks like the Flamethrower is definitely my favourite weapon!

My best effort so far, 54200.

dankcushions

@GtBFilms thanks for that great little guide! it's quite a cool game isn't it? i'd never heard of it before. but yeah, aliens looks like fun also - i can never work out if you're supposed to be ripley or hicks. the sprite is a bit ambiguous!

GtBFilms

@dankcushions I wasn't too sure about Aliens to begin with, but I'm getting in to it now. I like the way they flip the viewpoint like in Contra to vary the gameplay. It's missing some way of replenishing health though, and I've never been very keen on the mechanic of having to time when you pick up a powerup to determine what it is.

As for Vimana, I'd never heard of it before, but now I have it's staying on my cab, it's pretty impressive looking and runs at a good speed, I'm certainly glad that the MAME ROW has brought it to my attention, even if it didn't get selected!

obsidianspider

Aliens is proving quite challenging! Even though I know the pattern of the first boss I still manage to get hit, and that stupid tunnel before you get to the second stage always makes me lose a life. Top score for me so far is 34,200. I am also really enjoying Vimana. It's a shame the samples pack is so huge, but it's better than having no sound at all!

obsidianspider

60,600 so far

GtBFilms

@obsidianspider Ah, so there ARE health pickups! I spot a large ham!

I'll give it another go tonight!

obsidianspider

@GtBFilms There are also two very close to each other halfway through the second side-scrolling stage, but you have to choose whether to go up or down so I don't think you can get both.

backstander

@obsidianspider
I wonder if someone could re-encode those audio files in a slightly less quality to make them smaller and work better on the RPi hardware. Like if they're stereo, maybe make them mono and if they're 48000hz , maybe make them 44100hz. I think most of the samples are just uncompressed WAV files. I wonder if mp3/ogg files would work.

obsidianspider

@backstander I have to think that the emulator is looking for specific files, so maybe resampling, but I'm not sure a different file type would work.

UDb23

Hi Guys,
surprise coming... guess what
;-)