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#241
It's called SDLMAME and it's in one of the extras repositories.
 
Flandry's Avatar
Posts: 1,559 | Thanked: 1,786 times | Joined on Oct 2009 @ Boston
#242
GL ES support is not as easy as flipping a switch and it's not something i'm going to look into until it's clear it's the best way to get where i want MAME to be. There is no 3D rendering going on in MAME--it's all emulated--and from the few conversations on drawing performance i was privy to, the memory bandwidth of the device is often the limiting factor for graphics-intensive apps. I hope someone who knows the details better can pitch in with better knowledge, but my understanding is that without independent RAM of its own to use, bringing in the GPU for drawing can actually reduce performance because of extra transfers to/from RAM. Whether that's actually the case or not, the limitations of the N900 hardware compared to a PC are such that i'm not at all sure that GL ES is going to be worth the effort. I haven't done any detailed profiling yet since the update.

Regarding the question of how much the PR1.1 system updates influence SDLMAME performance, here's what i found (using just a single older ROM):

No hardware scaling: 34% -> 52%
YUV overlay: 86% -> 88%

Which is kinda what i expected as mentioned earlier.

One interesting thing is that the kernel is now more occupied during execution than the mame binary is, in either case. I'm not sure what that means, but it suggests that the actual emulation is still the minor part of the cycle usage.

Originally Posted by oldpmaguy View Post
Could someone point me to the download of this build of MAME everyone is discussing?

It's not some great secret, is it? Just a link will suffice, I'd appreciate it. I'd search for it but I don't even know the proper name by which these projects get referred to. A bloke's got to start learning someplace, you know?
It's not a great secret: i clearly mentioned it's in -devel, meaning Extras-devel. It's a place for stuff not considered ready for users.
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Unofficial PR1.3/Meego 1.1 FAQ

***
Classic example of arbitrary Nokia decision making. Couldn't just fallback to the no brainer of tagging with lat/lon if network isn't accessible, could you Nokia?
MAME: an arcade in your pocket
Accelemymote: make your accelerometer more joy-ful

Last edited by Flandry; 2010-01-15 at 17:11.
 

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#243
Anyone there??????????

just checking why this thread stopped at 5.05pm.............
 
Posts: 1,255 | Thanked: 393 times | Joined on Oct 2009 @ US
#244
Bottom of the 9th plays great on SDLMAME. WOW
 
Bazza's Avatar
Posts: 733 | Thanked: 249 times | Joined on Jan 2010 @ UK
#245
Track & field and Hyper sports work superb but the run like hell cheat isnt compatible with this version of mame.

Its hard to qualify from the 1st event even though i'm bashing the phone buttons like a man possessed.

It looks good on tv out tho.
 
Posts: 344 | Thanked: 73 times | Joined on Jan 2010
#246
Ok you guys, thanks for helping a noob out to finding his way to extras-devel! I'm brave/foolish enough to dive in (my love of retro gaming makes me so).

And the result is - I am thoroughly impressed with SDLMAME. And you guys are underrating it - I've been playing some higher-res games and getting good frametrates, smooth gameplay, and acceptable (if a little choppy) sound. I am in heaven, really, this is going to only get better. A ton of thanks to you, Flandry.

So a few requests/suggestions (should I put these in the devel section? I don't know how to do that).

1) I'd like the GUI to start out stretched to fullscreen. It's incredibly tiny at first - but after you open a game that has a stretched aspect ratio, then exit the game, the menu keeps that stretched screen size. Would it be possible to simply have the menu start out at a fullscreen/stretched aspect ratio? It would be welcome.

2) Searching for games is confusing/awkward. A full alphabetical meta-list would be better than the way the current "smart-search by letter" functions.

Actually, it's not too bad now, but for some reason the search gets truncated. It would be better to get all the games that start with the letter that gets entered, and only begin to limit the search as more letters are added into the string.

Is there some sort of limit on how many games can be displayed in the list at once? I don't understand why entering "a" only gives games "aa through ac", when I've got games with "ad through az" in their title as well. The "a" search string should show all games that begin with the letter "a", and should only limit the results as more letters are added to the string. You get the idea.

Other than that, I can't think of anything that is a problem - I've only played a couple of games so far.

I look forward to everyone's suggestions about the best games to play. I'll say right now that out of two 1996 shmups, "Air Attack" runs smoothly at 0/10 skip, while "Air Gallet" crawls, but it's like watching anime on your N900!

Ed. Also would like to add for wish list - 1) Favorites folder
2) Possibly screenshot integration into GUI?!?!

And a couple of questions - 1) is there CHD support for SDLMAME at this point? Some CHD's are only about 100 MB, I would load them if the game was worth it. I don't know where to put the CHD file, though.
2) How to enter "random" for a random game? It says that in the default search string, but I don't know how to enact it.
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N900.... thick like computer

Last edited by oldpmaguy; 2010-01-20 at 16:52.
 
Posts: 1,255 | Thanked: 393 times | Joined on Oct 2009 @ US
#247
Originally Posted by oldpmaguy View Post
Ok you guys, thanks for helping a noob out to finding his way to extras-devel! I'm brave/foolish enough to dive in (my love of retro gaming makes me so).

And the result is - I am thoroughly impressed with SDLMAME. And you guys are underrating it - I've been playing some higher-res games and getting good frametrates, smooth gameplay, and acceptable (if a little choppy) sound. I am in heaven, really, this is going to only get better. A ton of thanks to you, Flandry.

So a few requests/suggestions (should I put these in the devel section? I don't know how to do that).

1) I'd like the GUI to start out stretched to fullscreen. It's incredibly tiny at first - but after you open a game that has a stretched aspect ratio, then exit the game, the menu keeps that stretched screen size. Would it be possible to simply have the menu start out at a fullscreen/stretched aspect ratio? It would be welcome.

2) Searching for games is confusing/awkward. A full alphabetical meta-list would be better than the way the current "smart-search by letter" functions.

Actually, it's not too bad now, but for some reason the search gets truncated. It would be better to get all the games that start with the letter that gets entered, and only begin to limit the search as more letters are added into the string.

Is there some sort of limit on how many games can be displayed in the list at once? I don't understand why entering "a" only gives games "aa through ac", when I've got games with "ad through az" in their title as well. The "a" search string should show all games that begin with the letter "a", and should only limit the results as more letters are added to the string. You get the idea.

Other than that, I can't think of anything that is a problem - I've only played a couple of games so far.

I look forward to everyone's suggestions about the best games to play. I'll say right now that out of two 1996 shmups, "Air Attack" runs smoothly at 0/10 skip, while "Air Gallet" crawls, but it's like watching anime on your N900!

Ed. Also would like to add for wish list - 1) Favorites folder
2) Possibly screenshot integration into GUI?!?!

And a couple of questions - 1) is there CHD support for SDLMAME at this point? Some CHD's are only about 100 MB, I would load them if the game was worth it. I don't know where to put the CHD file, though.
2) How to enter "random" for a random game? It says that in the default search string, but I don't know how to enact it.
How do you do the skip option? I see no menu option for this.

Fireshark, Tigerheli, DoDonPachi, DonPachi play much better than I expected.

Still, funny how I can not find the frame skip option.

BTW, Flandry has plans to improve the options and UI, so I am happy with the current progress and will wait for updates.

Thanks

Last edited by Rushmore; 2010-01-20 at 17:25.
 
Posts: 42 | Thanked: 61 times | Joined on Mar 2007
#248
Hello, Could you update the first post with the cps2emu port that I did?

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/cps2emu

About gngeo, i did a build with some n900 optimizations and is working ok. I will upload to garage when i have time..

Thx!

 

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Posts: 344 | Thanked: 73 times | Joined on Jan 2010
#249
Originally Posted by Rushmore View Post
How do you do the skip option? I see no menu option for this.
Volume Down is frameskip cycle-down.

Oddly, it seems that Volume Up is not frameskip cycle-up; rather it seems to be "load savestate". But I haven't figured out what "save state" is yet (but I am pleased at the possibility for savestates in MAME, esp on a portable unit!)
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N900.... thick like computer
 
Flandry's Avatar
Posts: 1,559 | Thanked: 1,786 times | Joined on Oct 2009 @ Boston
#250
Still not ready to take feature requests, but i have profiled the program again and the drawing and YUV translation functins are the holdups, so i am faced with coding optimized assembler routines or implementing GL ES to pursue any significant speedup. Before doing that i will probably do more thorough testing and tweak the keymaps and other control setups to see how the current codebase compares with my expectations. As has been noticed, much of the UI is still unaltered from upstream, which is intended for PCs wih full keyboards.

A summary of which controls are actually important and which keys should be mapped to what is still welcome as i mentioned a while ago. Time spent messing with keymaps could probably better be spent on development.
__________________

Unofficial PR1.3/Meego 1.1 FAQ

***
Classic example of arbitrary Nokia decision making. Couldn't just fallback to the no brainer of tagging with lat/lon if network isn't accessible, could you Nokia?
MAME: an arcade in your pocket
Accelemymote: make your accelerometer more joy-ful

Last edited by Flandry; 2010-01-20 at 18:47.
 

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