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Viva Nonno vs MAME: an analysis of Rave Racer Differences
#309341 - 05/25/13 07:34 AM
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Hey guys 
Well after playing one of my favorite arcade games, Rave Racer, in MAME for a long while and having sworn to never fire up Viva Nonno again, I actually fired up Viva Nonno for the first time in like a year 
The good news, is that thanks to UJR and vJoy, I actually got Viva to see all three of my driving instruments(wheel, pedals and shifter) as one controller and it works great! :applaud:
I posted this over at BYOAC forums but I may as well post it here....
Couple of questions and comments regarding Viva Nonno....
Can anyone tell me if Viva Nonno was coded in D3D or OpenGL? If D3D? Which version? I'm tried to get SweetFX working with it last night but no luck. But then....I did some googling and discovered a couple of websites mentioning how Viva Nonno is a "DirectX" based emulator. Then I discovered that it was released sometime in 2002. Putting 2 & 2 together, it appears that the emu is probably running on D3D7 or D3D8. D3D9 was released that same year so there is a chance it's running on that, but I doubt it since common sense would dictate he started working on the emu in 2001 where D3D8 was the defacto API. If someone who's knowledgeable about the emu could answer this I'd be grateful. If it's indeed running in D3D8, I'm wondering why ENB's D3D8>D3D9 converter isn't working and allowing SweetFX to show in Viva Nonno?
It's quite a shame Viva Nonno was discontinued. Don't get me wrong....MAME *IS* my go to emulator for running Rave Racer and Ridge Racer 2, and they run extremely well! However it behooves me to point out a couple small benefits I see in Viva Nonno over MAME after using it again last night:
1)The audio. It is much louder and sounds clearer. The car's engine noise is perfectly balanced unlike in MAME, where not only is the whole game's audio volume extremely low, but the car's engine has the lowest sound between all the other sounds in the game versus the announcers' voice and the music. This really is quite bothersome, because I like to hear the car's sound when driving, and in MAME I have to turn the volume in Windows all the way up and then higher on my Yamaha receiver just to hear a good volume of Rave Racer. I'm sincerely hoping Cab revisits the Namco System 22 driver and addresses this issue.
2)As a byproduct of running in MAME, I must say in all honesty the RR games simply don't look as good as in Viva Nonno. Not counting any application of filters like HLSL or SweetFX...I'm talking simply vanilla MAME vs Viva Nonno. Viva Nonno uses hardware accelerated graphics and as a result, the higher resolution textures and things like Mipmapping and Depth Bias make the game quite good looking and sharp. I swear I'll jump for joy once me or someone else figures out how to get SweetFX working in Viva Nonno! It would be awesome to apply Boulotaur's Arcade CRT effects to the Viva Nonno version of Rave Racer. I bet I could make it look bonkers! 
3)Something else I noticed about the two different emulators running Rave Racer...in Viva Nonno, the lighting is quite flat and somewhat drab looking. There doesn't seem to be any dynamic changes to way light casts over the environment. In MAME however, the lighting is different and you will notice how the screen will go from dark to bright particularly when entering and exiting tunnels or passing under bridges.
Maybe one of you can clear this up for me but did the original arcade game exhibit this behavior? Or is the original game's lighting suppose to be flat with a drabby look all throughout the stage? If the lighting is supposed to be dynamic and change from light to dark the way it's depicted in MAME, then MAME gets points for accuracy. However, if Viva Nonno represents the way the actual game is supposed to look in terms of lighting and colors, then I'm hoping Cab will look into this and see what he can do to make the RR games look more authentic.
Don't get it twisted though folks....I'm ***ETERNALLY*** grateful to Cab for what he's done with the Namco Sys22 driver, and I'll send my sister over to have his babies in a heartbeat to show my gratitude for giving us the ability to play these wonderful games in MAME. So please don't take it the wrong way Cab, you most certainly **ARE** the fucking man, and thanks again for your hard working on bringing this driver to MAME!!!!  
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Re: Viva Nonno vs MAME: an analysis of Rave Racer Differences
[Re: Outrun2006]
#309396 - 05/27/13 09:18 AM
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but the other day you said to me that i shouldn't bother with vivanono
can you confirm the speed gain bug in Rave Racer with a wheel?
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Re: Viva Nonno vs MAME: an analysis of Rave Racer Differences
[Re: Outrun2006]
#309397 - 05/27/13 10:30 AM
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Thanks for the praise bro
The MAME namcos22 driver is Phil Stroffolino's baby. Improvements over the years were done by RB, and more recently by me. In all, it's a team effort.
viva nonno uses Direct3D (7 or 8? I don't know)
1) Yes, sound emulation is not accurate yet. RB can probably give you more info on why this is.
3) Those lighting effects you mention are done by fading the whole polygon layer. It is accurate in MAME AFAIK.
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Re: Viva Nonno vs MAME: an analysis of Rave Racer Differences
[Re: hap]
#309399 - 05/27/13 11:37 AM
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> Thanks for the praise bro
> The MAME namcos22 driver is Phil Stroffolino's baby. Improvements over the years were
> done by RB, and more recently by me. In all, it's a team effort.
>
> viva nonno uses Direct3D (7 or 8? I don't know)
> 1) Yes, sound emulation is not accurate yet. RB can probably give you more info on
> why this is.
> 3) Those lighting effects you mention are done by fading the whole polygon layer. It
> is accurate in MAME AFAIK.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Wow much appreciate the reply bro! First of all, my bad for calling you "cab" instead of "hap". I for some reason got the two names confused :P
Anyway that is very VERY useful and interesting information. I was unaware the driver was initially created by a guy named Phil Stroffolino. Hey Phil if you're reading this, my gratitude is endless my friend! Secondly I didn't know that RB lent a helping hand as well...good lookin' out my man! My appreciated
Well hopefully one of ya'll will get around to the sound issue one of these days but don't worry it's not a big deal. I'm just glad I can enjoy the game how it is and play it at 60fps with absolutely beautiful analog controls and response inputs. Rave Racer, as well as the other two arcade games, are driving games that you can tell were designed with steering wheels in mind. The steering feels so smooth and natural, unlike when playing Ridge Racers 2 PSP in the PPSSPP emulator with your steering wheel, where it is only emulating the portable's analog knob. The steering with the wheel in the coinup is one of the main reasons I keep coming back to them in MAME. The fact that I am now using a Windows utility called UJR to further enhance the analog steering by allowing me to adjust the sensitivity in my 900 degree wheel with incredible detail, is even more of an incentive to play! Of course my ultimate dream is FFB support for this game, but I realize it's not something that'll happen any time in the distant future so it's all good.
Anyway Viva Nonno has it strengths and weakness.
***************************************
asasega wrote
> but the other day you said to me that i shouldn't bother with vivanono
> can you confirm the speed gain bug in Rave Racer with a wheel?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Hmmmm, did I really say this? Well I probably did, and if so meant it at the time. However now that I've had the chance to use it, I can say it's a very good alternative *IF* you cannot achieve full speed in MAME. For the longest time I hated Viva Nonno, and didn't touch it for years, simply because I couldn't for the life of me get it to work well with my USB driving hardware. It wouldn't allow me to use my wheel because stupid ass Windows used to place my TH8RS stick shifter as the first device in it's controller list, and no matter how many times I'd uninstall/re-install all my USB devices in the order I want, winblows always arranges them in a specific order....Shifter>Wheel>Pedals. Hence the reason why Viva Nonno used to see the shifter as the X axis device and render the game useless. Now however, things have changed and thanks to the community, I am now using a very beneficial virtual joystick program called vJoy, which makes the virtual joystick it creates to ALWAYS be controller ID#1 and the first one in the list! Coupled with UJR, I can now map any of my three devices to the one virtual joystick and now Viva Nonno sees it and works beautifully! I even have my shifter working as a psuedo-H pattern shifter even though the RR games are sequential *only*, in this emulator.
So yeah I may have told you to stay away from Viva in the past, but I'm not beefing with it anymore now that I can play it with all my driving instruments properly
As for the speed gain, yes INDEED, this is something I noticed almost immediately. The car does seem to go slightly faster than it does in MAME. Not sure why this is but oh well, I'm complaining I'm still gonna use MAME as my default emu for all the RR coin-ups. The benefits simply outweigh the drawbacks IMHO. Once we eventually get ffb and louder sound I will cum. Twice.
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Re: Viva Nonno vs MAME: an analysis of Rave Racer Differences
[Re: Outrun2006]
#309402 - 05/27/13 04:52 PM
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If the low volume audio really bothers you that much, just change it in the source, its a quick edit, I changed the volume of the cps2 driver cause it was annoying me. Also the tmnt driver sound effects was killing my ear so I lowered the value of one of the speakers.
You can customize the volume levels of all the audio cpus in the source too, that way you can fine tune the car engine sound to the level you are happy to.
Specifically look for this part and change the values accordingly:
/* sound hardware */
MCFG_SPEAKER_STANDARD_STEREO("lspeaker", "rspeaker")
MCFG_C352_ADD("c352", SS22_MASTER_CLOCK/2)
MCFG_SOUND_ROUTE(0, "rspeaker", 1.00)
MCFG_SOUND_ROUTE(1, "lspeaker", 1.00)
MCFG_SOUND_ROUTE(2, "rspeaker", 1.00)
MCFG_SOUND_ROUTE(3, "lspeaker", 1.00)
MACHINE_CONFIG_END
As for the FFB, yeah, It will be a long wait...
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Re: Viva Nonno vs MAME: an analysis of Rave Racer Differences
[Re: Marcelo_20XX]
#309403 - 05/27/13 06:10 PM
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You can also change the volume levels by pressing tab and selecting slider controls.
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Re: Viva Nonno vs MAME: an analysis of Rave Racer Differences
[Re: ]
#309405 - 05/27/13 06:47 PM
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Yes, but in some rare cases, you want to change the value beyond the slider threshold (by default 2.0)
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Re: Viva Nonno vs MAME: an analysis of Rave Racer Differences
[Re: Marcelo_20XX]
#309422 - 05/28/13 03:15 AM
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> Yes, but in some rare cases, you want to change the value beyond the slider threshold
> (by default 2.0)
>>>
Exactly. I already maxed them out in the slider controls.
Arcelo_20XX, your post contains valuable information and it is much appreciated bro. I would love to increase these levels in the source but don't know how. Can you or anyone else please tell me the best/easiest way to go inside the source of the game make these volume adjustments? Thanks.
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Re: Viva Nonno vs MAME: an analysis of Rave Racer Differences
[Re: Outrun2006]
#309423 - 05/28/13 03:25 AM
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Assuming you know how to compile, do the following:
Open the file namcos22.c located in "yourpathtothesource\src\mame\drivers", then edit it with notepad or whatever text editor you feel comfortable with. Start searching with the key "raw_p", that would lead you to a few lines before the sound hardware initialization.
/* sound hardware */
MCFG_SPEAKER_STANDARD_STEREO("lspeaker", "rspeaker")
MCFG_C352_ADD("c352", SS22_MASTER_CLOCK/2)
MCFG_SOUND_ROUTE(0, "rspeaker", 1.00)
MCFG_SOUND_ROUTE(1, "lspeaker", 1.00)
MCFG_SOUND_ROUTE(2, "rspeaker", 1.00)
MCFG_SOUND_ROUTE(3, "lspeaker", 1.00)
Change the values as you like, close, save and compile
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Re: Viva Nonno vs MAME: an analysis of Rave Racer Differences
[Re: Outrun2006]
#309459 - 05/28/13 04:27 PM
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i'm not talking about the car being generally faster than in MAME
if you press left,left,left ...etc or right, right,right ...etc or left, right, left, right...etc
then you gain speed, above the normal limit, it's like you are drafting always(you know there is a drafting meter)
i'm curios if this is achievable with a steering wheel? hence the question it's a vivanono bug or not? or it's a side effect of playing with keyboard
the same "effect" it's not present in ridge racer 1 or 2 in vivanono
P.S. i hope you know that Ridge 1 is playable in vivanono despite the fact that he readme states otherwise, you just have to feed the correct roms to it
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| R. Belmont |
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Cuckoo for IGAvania
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Reged: 09/21/03
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Posts: 9716
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Re: Viva Nonno vs MAME: an analysis of Rave Racer Differences
[Re: Marcelo_20XX]
#309464 - 05/28/13 04:45 PM
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> Change the values as you like, close, save and compile
And then if I fix it properly and your speakers explode, it's your fault
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Re: Viva Nonno vs MAME: an analysis of Rave Racer Differences
[Re: R. Belmont]
#309468 - 05/28/13 05:51 PM
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It's only a temporary solution until there is a fix, but I will be more than happy if you fix it
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Re: Viva Nonno vs MAME: an analysis of Rave Racer Differences
[Re: R. Belmont]
#309502 - 05/29/13 05:14 AM
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> > Change the values as you like, close, save and compile
>
> And then if I fix it properly and your speakers explode, it's your fault
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Hah, yeah I think I'll wait on the fix from RB on this one, mayne. Dont get it twisted Marcelo, good lookin' on the suggestion, but I CBA on compiling mame just for this problem which all of a sudden becomes negligible once you start realizing how much of a PITA compiling mame is(not for you, but for me at least) 
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Re: Viva Nonno vs MAME: an analysis of Rave Racer Differences
[Re: Outrun2006]
#309514 - 05/29/13 09:26 AM
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Really? It's not THAT hard 99% of the time. The only trouble I've ever had was when the tools change and I haven't noticed.
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---
Try checking the MAME manual at http://docs.mamedev.org
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Re: Viva Nonno vs MAME: an analysis of Rave Racer Differences
[Re: Outrun2006]
#309518 - 05/29/13 03:04 PM
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http://www.headsoft.com.au/?category=mame&page=mc64
Normally I don't use this tool, because I want to compile the way the official exes are done, but this comes handy if we want only the job done. Really it cant be more easy, just give it a try, if you like MAME at some point you will want it to compile a custom exe.
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