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MESS parents/clones
#324010 - 04/01/14 02:56 PM
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What's the logic behind MESS parents/clones?
What is the determining factor for a particular release (i.e. region) of a game to be considered the parent?
Filtering out SNES clones in my frontend results in a list of ROMs from mixed regions (Jpn, USA, Euro, ...).
This is problematic for region-locked systems like the SNES, because most PAL games will refuse to run with the NTSC driver.
The issue is similar for the Genesis driver.
This means that I have to configure the driver to use (snes or snespal) on a per-ROM basis. (I use some automation based on the region tag from the ROM description).
Do you see a better solution for this?
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Re: MESS parents/clones
[Re: bubble_joe]
#324016 - 04/01/14 04:08 PM
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The logic is that the European version is the parent, as in MAME.
If not available, the US version is the parent.
what you experience is a problem related to the fact that lists are not split by region [*], and this is on purpose: as the lockout message explains the program is compatible with both regions and it checks not to be run in the wrong country.
you can use list of favorites to sort regions (e.g. filtering out games with USA/Jpn in the description for PAL systems and Euro games in NTSC systems), but hardware-wise there is no reason to split the software lists by region
[*] exceptions are made when the game data are not compatible across the regions, like for PC-Engine vs TurboGrafx (wrong region = black screen, because of different byte order in the chips inside the carts), or like for MegaCD vs SegaCD (wrong region = CD detected as audio CD)
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Re: MESS parents/clones
[Re: etabeta]
#324018 - 04/01/14 04:53 PM
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Thank you for that clarification :-)
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Re: MESS parents/clones
[Re: etabeta]
#324019 - 04/01/14 04:53 PM
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I think it's "Sega-CD" and "Turbo-CD" (maybe other systems too) in which when a CD for the wrong system is inserted, the system will tell you that it is for the other system and not compatible. Does MESS emulate this?
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Re: MESS parents/clones
[Re: Diet Go Go Fan]
#324025 - 04/01/14 06:05 PM
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> I think it's "Sega-CD" and "Turbo-CD" (maybe other systems too) in which when a CD
> for the wrong system is inserted, the system will tell you that it is for the other
> system and not compatible. Does MESS emulate this?
to my knowledge many PCE cds work regardless from the console region, and indeed they are in a common softlist
OTOH, if I try to load a segacd disc in the megacd, it boots into the CD player and thus they are in separate lists
but I'm not an expert of earlier CD systems (I quit playing on consoles between 1994 and 2003) and I go for the few disks I have here for testing: there might be some disk I never tried which behave differently.
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| AWJ |
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Reged: 03/08/05
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Posts: 936
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Loc: Ottawa, Ontario
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Re: MESS parents/clones
[Re: etabeta]
#324032 - 04/01/14 07:56 PM
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> The logic is that the European version is the parent, as in MAME.
> If not available, the US version is the parent.
>
> what you experience is a problem related to the fact that lists are not split by
> region , and this is on purpose: as the lockout message explains the program is
> compatible with both regions and it checks not to be run in the wrong country.
This policy seems absurd to me. Listing software as "compatible" as long as it displays an error screen when run on the wrong hardware and doesn't simply crash? How is that useful either as documentation or from the users' point of view?
In that case we should fold all the Game Boy Color games into the GB softlist, because they all have error screens that are shown if you insert the cartridge into an original GB.
I'm also not happy with preferring the PAL version of software as the parent on consoles (especially Nintendo), because the PAL versions were almost always halfassed ports that ran at the wrong speed and sometimes even had major graphic glitches on real hardware. But that's another issue...
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Re: MESS parents/clones
[Re: AWJ]
#324034 - 04/01/14 08:48 PM
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> > The logic is that the European version is the parent, as in MAME.
> > If not available, the US version is the parent.
> >
> > what you experience is a problem related to the fact that lists are not split by
> > region , and this is on purpose: as the lockout message explains the program is
> > compatible with both regions and it checks not to be run in the wrong country.
>
> This policy seems absurd to me. Listing software as "compatible" as long as it
> displays an error screen when run on the wrong hardware and doesn't simply crash?
it's not meant to be listed as compatible, it's meant to be possible to launch them for debugging usage (because they are bitwise compatible) and I personally plan to eventually emulate region-bypass devices which will make it important to have them in the same list
You might also want to notice that we have a "compatibility" flag in the xml which prevents launching sets of the incompatible regions from command line when you skip the -media switch, see e.g. 32x softlist. but I doubt any frontend make useful usage of that, which is a shame (it does not help the fact that I never had enough time yet to add it also in popular systems like megadrive and snes)
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Re: MESS parents/clones
[Re: etabeta]
#324101 - 04/04/14 12:05 AM
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> > > The logic is that the European version is the parent, as in MAME.
> > > If not available, the US version is the parent.
> > >
> > > what you experience is a problem related to the fact that lists are not split by
> > > region , and this is on purpose: as the lockout message explains the program is
> > > compatible with both regions and it checks not to be run in the wrong country.
> >
> > This policy seems absurd to me. Listing software as "compatible" as long as it
> > displays an error screen when run on the wrong hardware and doesn't simply crash?
>
> it's not meant to be listed as compatible, it's meant to be possible to launch them
> for debugging usage (because they are bitwise compatible) and I personally plan to
> eventually emulate region-bypass devices which will make it important to have them in
> the same list
>
> You might also want to notice that we have a "compatibility" flag in the xml which
> prevents launching sets of the incompatible regions from command line when you skip
> the -media switch, see e.g. 32x softlist. but I doubt any frontend make useful usage
> of that, which is a shame (it does not help the fact that I never had enough time yet
> to add it also in popular systems like megadrive and snes)
Technically, they are compatible in the MAME/MESS sense (documentation over playability). The console detects the region of the game (or the reverse may happen depending on the system; the game code may detect the region of the console), and produces an error message or even a blank screen if it isn't the intended machine, or in the case of the "toaster" NES, the console will just sit there flashing on and off if another region's game is inserted or if it can't read the region data (e.g. if an HES game is used without another game in the back of it, or a game/ZIF slot with dirty connectors, or a faulty CIC chip, which I am yet to come across).
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Re: MESS parents/clones
[Re: etabeta]
#324637 - 04/13/14 07:31 PM
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What's the reason behind considering the Euro version the parent? Is this arbitrary?
AWJ is right regarding halfassed PAL ports, most of them are unoptimized and inferior to their NTSC counterpart. They are slower and the aspect ratio is wrong.
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Re: MESS parents/clones
[Re: bubble_joe]
#324652 - 04/13/14 10:53 PM
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> What's the reason behind considering the Euro version the parent? Is this arbitrary?
>
> AWJ is right regarding halfassed PAL ports, most of them are unoptimized and inferior
> to their NTSC counterpart. They are slower and the aspect ratio is wrong.
it is inherited by MAME convention where PAL -> USA -> JPN is the general order among parents and clones...
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