GroovyMAME/UME for dummies

[cRacKh0rN]

Im not actually using frame delay on my fast Win 7 box, I'm using directdraw.

On the XP one I'm using d3d and frame delay 1. If it was a quicker processor I'd need to up the frame delay.

It's all a bit compare/contrast. Using direct3d frame delay MUST be enabled or you get lots of lag. Setting it higher than 1 gives diminishing returns, but for some games if they're able to be emulated too quickly just a delay of 1 actually breaks them and they run too fast.

Ahh. I followed your XP guidelines and used d3d and frame delay 1.
So is direct draw preferable?

[cools]

Try running Magic Sword, if it runs too fast either up frame_delay until it doesn't, or switch to directdraw. At least - that was the game I was having trouble with. If you don't have any issue just leave stuff alone.

[cRacKh0rN]

Try running Magic Sword, if it runs too fast either up frame_delay until it doesn't, or switch to directdraw. At least - that was the game I was having trouble with. If you don't have any issue just leave stuff alone.

Just played around with frame_delay and upped it to 4. In Espgaluda 2, sound gets choppy and the action is noticeably jerky. Definitely best on 1 for this game.
I have added a few ini files for Ibara /bl that sets frame_delay to 2 which seems to be a good place for it. Most seem fine on 1 but I will try magic sword and see how that fairs.
Going to see how directdraw compares on them but overall, things are working pretty good.

I upped the mame priority to 1. Not made any difference really.
sleep 0 is another setting in that link you posted. Again, no difference I can see.

[cools]

Priority and sleep shouldn't make any difference except in extreme edge cases where Windows is set up wonky.

[joeblade]

I did promise to report back about the Win7 / Groovy setup:

All the Cave titles run almost perfectly including Ibara.

Really? Have you tried Ibara Kuro or Muchi Muchi Pork...I can tell you that even on an i7 they don't run anywhere near close to full speed when the levels get busy, not sure if that's the blitter delay kicking in but it feels like my rig struggles a bit!!

Yeah sound gets choppy quick on cave cv1000 titles the higher your frame delay is set, if your running d3d its definitely worth changing frame delay to 2 as 1 gives many speed issues to earlier titles.

When GM 0.155 eventually gets officially released im gonna go through my setups one by one and recheck everything again and see if there are any performance gains to be had with the settings. I doubt it though..

Thanks for updates.

[cRacKh0rN]

Really? Have you tried Ibara Kuro or Muchi Muchi Pork...I can tell you that even on an i7 they don't run anywhere near close to full speed when the levels get busy, not sure if that's the blitter delay kicking in but it feels like my rig struggles a bit!!

Yeah sound gets choppy quick on cave cv1000 titles the higher your frame delay is set, if your running d3d its definitely worth changing frame delay to 2 as 1 gives many speed issues to earlier titles.

When GM 0.155 eventually gets officially released im gonna go through my setups one by one and recheck everything again and see if there are any performance gains to be had with the settings. I doubt it though..

Thanks for updates.

Hey Joe.

Regarding Kuro, I have to be honest and say I have never played the PCB so it is hard to judge, but I have the PCB's of most of the other Cave titles including Pork, Ibara, Espgaluda I and II, Esp Ra De and DoDonpachi and they seem pretty good. I guess I should play them all side by side to make a proper judgement as it has been a while since I have played any of the PCBs . I had a good go on Ibara w/Groovy yesterday which is the game I am most familiar with and it feels pretty tight with a frame_delay of 2. When I cranked the frame_delay up to 4 Kuro appeared to run pretty slowly and the sound was all over the place. You could well be right. My machine has been in hori for months and Pork has not really had much play since I got it Strangely, Guwange seems to have loads more slow down than I recall, but again, it has been ages since I played it.

Not sure if components help but I did buy some really fast ram and have it cranked up a bit. Other than that, it is a stock i5k with a PCIe Ati 4350.
When I get a chance, I will try and record some gameplay comparisons on Pork and Ibara. It's a bit difficult at the mo as my monitor is tated upside down to play some old PCB's.

[joeblade]

Not sure if components help but I did buy some really fast ram and have it cranked up a bit. Other than that, it is a stock i5k with a PCIe Ati 4350.
When I get a chance, I will try and record some gameplay comparisons on Pork and Ibara. It's a bit difficult at the mo as my monitor is tated upside down to play some old PCB's.

Yeah I'd like to tweak my hardware a bit but as mines in a sff case im not gonna push it past stock for the mo.

A couple of gameplay comparisons would be awesome matey but no rush, what with the new audio possibilities that cools was mentioning we'll still all be tweaking our setups for at least a few more years to come!!

[cRacKh0rN]

So I've been playing with using ddraw instead of d3d for Groovy.
Not sure if any other settings should be used in conjunction with ddraw but by selecting this mode, the games I have tried often have choppy sound and the odd graphical hiccup. They also appear to be more laggy with input.

Are their games you have found to work better on ddraw? Post them here if you have so I can do an A/B.
Also, what games give you issues with frame_delay 1?

[joeblade]

mr do, pacman, galaga (bullet timings), thunder dragon (quite a few of the NMK titles actually) and many more games were giving me issues with frame delay 1, these will all need to be changed to 2 or higher if using d3d, at least that's the case on my setup.
From your post above sounds like using ddraw isn't really a viable option then..if ddraw is more demanding than d3d in GM then im sure more of the games will suffer at least on my little sff rig.

[joeblade]

Quick update....managed to get all my GM pc's up to the latest versions of the CRT Emudriver, VM Maker, GroovyMame155 (both 32 & 64bit versions) without any fuss last night and updated all the AttractMode's to 1.4!

All looking good and will have a look at the ddraw tonight to run some performance comparisons with d3d on the i7 sff.

Quick q, with the List filter Clone Of / Does not contain / . all of the residual clones are removed nicely but for some reason that also filter Raiden DX.

Is there anyway of adding back in that game to the list? was thinking of adding a favourite filter to vert? would that work?...I tried lots of variations last night but couldn't get it to work!

[cRacKh0rN]

Quick q, with the List filter Clone Of / Does not contain / . all of the residual clones are removed nicely but for some reason that also filter Raiden DX.
Is there anyway of adding back in that game to the list? was thinking of adding a favourite filter to vert? would that work?...I tried lots of variations last night but couldn't get it to work!

Hey Joe.

The reason will be it is probably not status good.
You need to add imperfect to your filter

Code: Select all

   filter               SHMUP
      rule                 CloneOf not_contains (.)
      rule                 Status equals good|imperfect
      rule                 Tags not_contains Unplayable/Bad/Hidden
      rule                 Category equals Shooter / Flying Vertical

[joeblade]

Quick q, with the List filter Clone Of / Does not contain / . all of the residual clones are removed nicely but for some reason that also filter Raiden DX.
Is there anyway of adding back in that game to the list? was thinking of adding a favourite filter to vert? would that work?...I tried lots of variations last night but couldn't get it to work!

Hey Joe.

The reason will be it is probably not status good.
You need to add imperfect to your filter

Code: Select all

   filter               SHMUP
      rule                 CloneOf not_contains (.)
      rule                 Status equals good|imperfect
      rule                 Tags not_contains Unplayable/Bad/Hidden
      rule                 Category equals Shooter / Flying Vertical

Thanks cRacKh0rN but im pretty sure iv'e got imperfect already added...i'll check again tonight..

Just noticed none of my cps3 games seem to be not working in this latest version....I must have done something stoopid, i'll check that too, otherwise all tickety boo!!

[joeblade]

So anyways my status was set to perfect|imperfect so it wasn't that.
For now I've just created a full unfiltered vertical and horizontal list so I can go to them for the various other versions.

Changed video to ddraw on the mame.ini file and set frame delay to 0. All looks good, no stutter and it feels very responsive on my little sff i7.

[cools]

You need to regenerate the ROM list in attract mode for Raiden DX to show up, it was previously status bad. Also update catver.

[joeblade]

You need to regenerate the ROM list in attract mode for Raiden DX to show up, it was previously status bad. Also update catver.

Thanks cools, Rom list was regenerated but I'm still waiting for the latest catver to add into it. It does show up but only when I remove the filter "clone of does not contain ."

[cools]

That filter should be:

(.)

[joeblade]

That filter should be:

(.)

Thanks mate, i'll try that tonight and see if it makes a difference.

[joeblade]

That filter should be:

(.)

Ok just to update, tried (.) and has exactly the same effect to list as just .

Raiden DX still doesn't show on the main list, my guess is it's probably the catver causing the issue. As soon as the updated catver is available i'll test and report back.

Thanks again cools.

[TechnoFreek]

Cools, any tips or advice on the following.

I am running hyperspin and groovymame on 31khz monitor.

i have the brightness and contrast set nicely through the pots for the front end and other 31k emulators.

However I find that a good few mame games load with the image quite dark. I presume this is just part of the emulation process, how the original pcb would be too. Some of the midway games like mortal kombat load particularly dark and I actually have an original mk3 board and the pots would always need a good tweak to get the image to lighten.

Anyway any advice on making the adjustments through mame.ini or specific game inis as I don't want to be adjusting the pots every time.

[cRacKh0rN]

Cools, any tips or advice on the following.

I am running hyperspin and groovymame on 31khz monitor.

i have the brightness and contrast set nicely through the pots for the front end and other 31k emulators.

However I find that a good few mame games load with the image quite dark. I presume this is just part of the emulation process, how the original pcb would be too. Some of the midway games like mortal kombat load particularly dark and I actually have an original mk3 board and the pots would always need a good tweak to get the image to lighten.

Anyway any advice on making the adjustments through mame.ini or specific game inis as I don't want to be adjusting the pots every time.

Make a new ini for each game in the mame/ini folder that has the same name as the rom.
i.e. for donkey kong (dkong.zip) it would be dkong.ini

Add

gamma 1.000000
brightness 1.000000

I would presume that 1.0 is the highest, but it won't hurt to try higher settings.

If this has no effect, edit you main mame.ini file, lower these settings and up the pots on your monitor.
Then add gamma 1.0 and brightness 1.0 to the dull games.