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Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
#287666 - 05/24/12 02:20 PM
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Just wondering if from a Mame Dev's perspective has one manufacturer always posed the most problems when emulating the hardware..
If i had to make a guess, given the number of CPU's present,even on early hardware, I'd say NAMCO must be near the top of the list, or has some obscure hardware i've probably never even noticed been a bigger headache?.
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Ziggy100]
#287672 - 05/24/12 03:09 PM
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I guess discrete hardware are the worst nightmare to 'simulate', as they like to call it. I just don't understand why they refer to a discrete logic board emulation as 'simulation'.
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Ziggy100]
#287674 - 05/24/12 03:17 PM
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> Just wondering if from a Mame Dev's perspective has one manufacturer always posed the
> most problems when emulating the hardware..
>
> If i had to make a guess, given the number of CPU's present,even on early hardware,
> I'd say NAMCO must be near the top of the list, or has some obscure hardware i've
> probably never even noticed been a bigger headache?.
Two words that have sent devs' heads into the sand for over nine years: Seibu Kaihatsu. Raiden II was first added to MAME 0.68 as a TESTDRIVER (May 15 2003).
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Tafoid |
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Ziggy100]
#287675 - 05/24/12 03:26 PM
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> Just wondering if from a Mame Dev's perspective has one manufacturer always posed the
> most problems when emulating the hardware..
>
> If i had to make a guess, given the number of CPU's present,even on early hardware,
> I'd say NAMCO must be near the top of the list, or has some obscure hardware i've
> probably never even noticed been a bigger headache?.
To answer your question, I'd say anything that has been in MAME for 8.. 10 years and no substantial progress qualifies as difficult. There are several games like that, some frequently requested (Raiden II) and some not so much, but still missed by some (Mazer Blazer, Great Guns).
One off topic question for you if I could.. based on your subject line - what software or browser forces a capitol letter for each word? I've seen it everywhere but no one seems to mention why they do it or how.
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| R. Belmont |
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Tafoid]
#287684 - 05/24/12 04:53 PM
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> One off topic question for you if I could.. based on your subject line - what
> software or browser forces a capitol letter for each word? I've seen it everywhere
> but no one seems to mention why they do it or how.
That's called "camel case", btw. Because the capital letters look sort of like humps 
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| R. Belmont |
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Cuckoo for IGAvania
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Ziggy100]
#287686 - 05/24/12 04:56 PM
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> I'd say NAMCO must be near the top of the list
Not true - Namco hardware has generally been pretty well worked out over the years except for the really recent stuff. The real stumpers are things like Raiden II and Mazer Blazer, as has been mentioned.
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Ziggy100]
#287688 - 05/24/12 05:02 PM
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> Just wondering if from a Mame Dev's perspective has one manufacturer always posed the
> most problems when emulating the hardware..
>
> If i had to make a guess, given the number of CPU's present,even on early hardware,
> I'd say NAMCO must be near the top of the list, or has some obscure hardware i've
> probably never even noticed been a bigger headache?.
Tazmi/Tatsumi hardware. Everything they've made is stupidly complex. At least they didn't produce many games.
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Ziggy100]
#287691 - 05/24/12 05:13 PM
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Raiden 2/DX takes the cake hands-down.
Outside that, I'd actually say "full" emulation of PlayChoice-10/MegaTech/MVS, simply because the MAME architecture wasn't really intended for multicart originally. The amount of reworking it's taken to get to that point is pretty amazing, really.
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---
Try checking the MAME manual at http://docs.mamedev.org
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| R. Belmont |
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Phil Bennett]
#287721 - 05/24/12 09:50 PM
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> Tazmi/Tatsumi hardware. Everything they've made is stupidly complex. At least they
> didn't produce many games.
More or less stupidly complex than the Microprose 3D system?
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Heihachi_73]
#287727 - 05/24/12 10:04 PM
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> Two words that have sent devs' heads into the sand for over nine years: Seibu
> Kaihatsu. Raiden II was first added to MAME 0.68 as a TESTDRIVER (May 15 2003).
I've seen a lot of mention of Raiden II in the whatsnew as of late.....whats going on with that?
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| CTOJAH |
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Ziggy100]
#287749 - 05/24/12 11:58 PM
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Some time ago it was nice break through in Hyper Neo Geo 64 emulation (don't know what happened meanwhile ?!)
I believe that hng64.c is a hard nut for developers.
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| R. Belmont |
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: CTOJAH]
#287818 - 05/25/12 04:46 PM
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> Some time ago it was nice break through in Hyper Neo Geo 64 emulation (don't know
> what happened meanwhile ?!)
> I believe that hng64.c is a hard nut for developers.
Not hard, just the work/reward ratio is pretty whacked given what games are on the thing. And they aren't even so bad it's good. (Atari Jaguar and 3D0 are in the same neighborhood on that scale).
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| CTOJAH |
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: R. Belmont]
#287862 - 05/25/12 10:40 PM
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You are right about hng64, but on Jaguar at least we have this :
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Tafoid]
#287888 - 05/26/12 03:44 AM
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Quote:
One off topic question for you if I could.. based on your subject line - what software or browser forces a capitol letter for each word? I've seen it everywhere but no one seems to mention why they do it or how.
I'm guessing the reason why some people capitalize each word in the subject line is because they think of it as a title. That doesn't bother me when people do that. What does bother me is when people capitalize each word in a post/message. I also don't like when people don't use punctuation, such as periods. And their whole post/message is just one run-on sentence with no separation. I find it kind of disrespectful alil bit to the reader because it makes it alot more difficult for the reader to read and understand what the poster is trying to communicate.
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: R.Coltrane]
#287899 - 05/26/12 09:17 AM
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> I guess discrete hardware are the worst nightmare to 'simulate', as they like to call
> it. I just don't understand why they refer to a discrete logic board emulation as
> 'simulation'.
We don't use net lists of the discrete components. The circuit is broken down into functional parts that specific code is written to simulate.
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Ziggy100]
#287900 - 05/26/12 09:20 AM
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> Just wondering if from a Mame Dev's perspective has one manufacturer always posed the
> most problems when emulating the hardware..
I would vote Konami. They are brilliant at making modular hardware, so each game on a "system" might actually run on different hardware. They are also very good at obsfucating their code, so you can't tell what it is they are trying to do.
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Ziggy100]
#288077 - 05/28/12 02:34 PM
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I seem to recall Sega Model 2 was in this category though I forget why right now.
Saying that, since Elsemi's emulator I'd image a lot of it is documented now?
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| Naoki |
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: RetroRepair]
#288081 - 05/28/12 04:06 PM
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I thought it was because there was little to no documents for the GPUs/CPUs
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Naoki]
#288187 - 05/29/12 05:00 PM
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> I thought it was because there was little to no documents for the GPUs/CPUs
ElSemi and Olivier Galibert figured it out pretty well. It's just that ElSemi's code is heavily tied to x86 32-bit (you'll notice there isn't a 64-bit version of his emulator, and forget about an ARM port) and thus it doesn't really drop into MAME in any meaningful way. Also, the fact that his emulator exists makes it less interesting to get it right in MAME.
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: R. Belmont]
#288190 - 05/29/12 05:38 PM
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> > I thought it was because there was little to no documents for the GPUs/CPUs
>
> ElSemi and Olivier Galibert figured it out pretty well. It's just that ElSemi's code
> is heavily tied to x86 32-bit (you'll notice there isn't a 64-bit version of his
> emulator, and forget about an ARM port) and thus it doesn't really drop into MAME in
> any meaningful way. Also, the fact that his emulator exists makes it less interesting
> to get it right in MAME.
At least until x86/Win32 code becomes largely obsolete... Once mainstream operating systems make the move to 64-bit only with no 32-bit variants, this will be the main turning point and there will be no choice but to convert everything or cease production (in a companies' point of view).
In reality, the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit is just the Win3.x to Win95 movement all over again - 16-bit programs ceased to exist whilst companies released later program versions as 32-bit only (complete with the Designed for Windows 95 logo on the packaging), making their software no longer compatible with Windows 3.x and forcing users to either upgrade their systems or be stuck with obsolete technology.
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: R. Belmont]
#288191 - 05/29/12 05:49 PM
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Quote:
the fact that his emulator exists makes it less interesting to get it right in MAME.
I can understand that, though MAME is a much nicer environment to use and the last release with a bunch of nice new features such as lua scripting is mono only as he forgot to enable it again after messing with something.
It's also pretty much done for now he works for Sega.
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Heihachi_73]
#288193 - 05/29/12 06:01 PM
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Yes, the part where MAME is way more portable is pretty much *the* interesting part of doing it.
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Ziggy100]
#288207 - 05/29/12 08:20 PM
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Wasn't Pong once on the list? By the way are there still TTL simulation devs on projects like Tank and DeathRace?
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He wakes up everyday in the same clothes, runs around in sewers, and collects coins for a living.
At the end of the day, he uses the coins to buy mushrooms
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Heihachi_73]
#288265 - 05/30/12 10:27 AM
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> In reality, the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit is just the Win3.x to Win95 movement
> all over again - 16-bit programs ceased to exist whilst companies released later
> program versions as 32-bit only (complete with the Designed for Windows 95 logo on
> the packaging), making their software no longer compatible with Windows 3.x and
> forcing users to either upgrade their systems or be stuck with obsolete technology.
The first 64 bit version of windows came out 7 years ago, anyone still running 32bit has been stuck with obsolete technology for a long time.
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: ]
#288302 - 05/30/12 09:45 PM
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Yes and no. While x64 has existed as long as you say, 'proper' Windows support didn't start to appear until maybe a year into the Vista cycle. Driver support on XP x64 never materialized and the early Vista drivers were extremely problematic.
So I'd say that "usable" Win x64 is probably about four to five years old.
I do agree that pretty much everyone should be migrating up to x64 by now, though.
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Try checking the MAME manual at http://docs.mamedev.org
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Firehawke]
#288314 - 05/30/12 10:58 PM
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> Yes and no. While x64 has existed as long as you say, 'proper' Windows support didn't
> start to appear until maybe a year into the Vista cycle. Driver support on XP x64
> never materialized and the early Vista drivers were extremely problematic.
>
> So I'd say that "usable" Win x64 is probably about four to five years old.
>
> I do agree that pretty much everyone should be migrating up to x64 by now, though.
It sort of reminds me of the old Windows 3.1 vs. NT 3.x debate (Win32s could probably go here as well) where 32-bit hadn't quite caught on - once Windows 10 or whatever is released with only a 64-bit version in mind, everyone will have no choice but to migrate to x64 or be left in the dark ages. The sooner that program code is no longer compiled for x86/32-bit, thus cannot be run on "legacy" hardware, the better. Apple did this when they transitioned from 68K to PowerPC (also, programs designed for an '020 for example also couldn't run on a 'classic' 68000 Mac!), and later still with the Intel Macs.
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Heihachi_73]
#288315 - 05/30/12 11:04 PM
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I don't really agree. A lot of applications don't actually improve going up to 64-bit. There's also no real cost for running 32-bit apps on a 64-bit architecture. 32-bit should be supported under 64-bit OSes for the near future, up until about the point where API compatibility with those older apps fades out.
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Try checking the MAME manual at http://docs.mamedev.org
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Firehawke]
#288322 - 05/31/12 12:26 AM
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> I don't really agree. A lot of applications don't actually improve going up to
> 64-bit. There's also no real cost for running 32-bit apps on a 64-bit architecture.
> 32-bit should be supported under 64-bit OSes for the near future, up until about the
> point where API compatibility with those older apps fades out.
I agree that programs should be supported as long as CPUs have the compatibility for them (reflecting Win16 compatibility in Win9x and 32-bit NT OSes), but 32-bit operating systems themselves are well and truly at the end of their life cycle.
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: ]
#288358 - 05/31/12 02:04 PM
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Tell that to the OEMs shipping computers with a nice beefy 64-bit-capable CPUs but still shipping 32-bit versions of Windows 7 for some strange reason.
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| R. Belmont |
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Firehawke]
#288374 - 05/31/12 04:48 PM
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> I don't really agree. A lot of applications don't actually improve going up to
> 64-bit. There's also no real cost for running 32-bit apps on a 64-bit architecture.
> 32-bit should be supported under 64-bit OSes for the near future, up until about the
> point where API compatibility with those older apps fades out.
You actually are agreeing: the discussion is "people should use 64 bit OSes", not "people should stop using 32 bit apps". (Although in the case of MAME it's dumb to run a 32-bit version on a 64-bit OS).
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: R. Belmont]
#288376 - 05/31/12 05:07 PM
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> (Although in the case of MAME it's dumb to run a 32-bit version on a 64-bit OS).
Unless it's PPC/SPARC :P
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Ziggy100]
#288431 - 06/01/12 05:57 AM
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Re: Mame Devs..Who's Hardware Has Been The Most Consistantly 'Difficult' To Emulate?
[Re: Firehawke]
#288878 - 06/07/12 10:21 AM
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> Yes and no. While x64 has existed as long as you say, 'proper' Windows support didn't
> start to appear until maybe a year into the Vista cycle. Driver support on XP x64
> never materialized and the early Vista drivers were extremely problematic.
I guess your experience on vista x64 drivers depends on the hardware you used. At work we bought two identical dell laptops that came with 32bit vista installed. I reinstalled 64 bit and had less driver issues than the one running 32 bit. Mainly the network driver seemed to have massive problems under 32bit, because intel had been more obsessed with sorting out a 64 bit driver.
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