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MAME for video game consoles
#321361 - 02/03/14 02:34 PM
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Does anybody have any experience in running a MAME version on a video game console? If yes, does it work well or are there problems?
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| Naoki |
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Reged: 11/10/09
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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: DaRayu]
#321362 - 02/03/14 02:36 PM
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> Does anybody have any experience in running a MAME version on a video game console?
> If yes, does it work well or are there problems?
I used to try it on my soft modded Wii but it was slow, couldn't load many games, based on an old version of mame. Gauntlet for example was a bit sluggish to play
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On a quest for Digital 573 and Dancing Stage EuroMix 2
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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: DaRayu]
#321366 - 02/03/14 03:16 PM
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> Does anybody have any experience in running a MAME version on a video game console?
> If yes, does it work well or are there problems?
Can you be more specific? "A video game console" is pretty broad and encompasses a whole lot of different hardware platforms with radically different capabilities.
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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: MooglyGuy]
#321367 - 02/03/14 03:41 PM
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> Can you be more specific? "A video game console" is pretty broad and encompasses a
> whole lot of different hardware platforms with radically different capabilities.
Right. That's why I'm asking: Who has played MAME on any video game console and what was the result? Was it slow like in Naoki's case or are there consoles that can run MAME decently?
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| R. Belmont |
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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: Naoki]
#321371 - 02/03/14 04:43 PM
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> I used to try it on my soft modded Wii but it was slow, couldn't load many games,
> based on an old version of mame. Gauntlet for example was a bit sluggish to play
There was an SDLMAME port available that ran up to date ROMs (it was based on at-the-time perfectly up to date MAME) and did pretty well for up to low-end 16-bit games in my testing.
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| Naoki |
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Reged: 11/10/09
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Posts: 1998
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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: R. Belmont]
#321373 - 02/03/14 05:04 PM
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> > I used to try it on my soft modded Wii but it was slow, couldn't load many games,
> > based on an old version of mame. Gauntlet for example was a bit sluggish to play
>
> There was an SDLMAME port available that ran up to date ROMs (it was based on
> at-the-time perfectly up to date MAME) and did pretty well for up to low-end 16-bit
> games in my testing.
This was in 2009-2010 when I messed with such it's probably better now
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On a quest for Digital 573 and Dancing Stage EuroMix 2
By gods I've found it!
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| R. Belmont |
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Cuckoo for IGAvania
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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: DaRayu]
#321374 - 02/03/14 05:21 PM
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> Does anybody have any experience in running a MAME version on a video game console?
> If yes, does it work well or are there problems?
I believe your actual question is "which console should I buy to play MAME on?". That answer is generally "don't, get a Gigabyte BRIX or Intel NUC or something" (both of those are tiny quiet PCs with real Haswell CPU power and HDMI output jacks). That said, if you're sticking with the golden oldies, the Wii version would probably work for you. I wouldn't buy a system specifically for that though.
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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: R. Belmont]
#321377 - 02/03/14 05:40 PM
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> I believe your actual question is "which console should I buy to play MAME on?". That
> answer is generally "don't, get a Gigabyte BRIX or Intel NUC or something" (both of
> those are tiny quiet PCs with real Haswell CPU power and HDMI output jacks). That
> said, if you're sticking with the golden oldies, the Wii version would probably work
> for you. I wouldn't buy a system specifically for that though.
Yeah, buying a PC for it is probably the most straightforward answer. I wouldn't even have to buy one since my current PC is perfectly capable of playing all of the games that I like.
But do you remember the lenghty discussion about vsync and input lag when using Direct3D? I was hoping that a console version doesn't require stuff like vsync to display a clean picture because it natively synchronizes with the screen (after all, actual console games never have tearing). Of course, I might be wrong, but that was my original thought.
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| R. Belmont |
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Cuckoo for IGAvania
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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: DaRayu]
#321378 - 02/03/14 05:46 PM
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> But do you remember the lenghty discussion about vsync and input lag when using
> Direct3D? I was hoping that a console version doesn't require stuff like vsync to
> display a clean picture because it natively synchronizes with the screen (after all,
> actual console games never have tearing). Of course, I might be wrong, but that was
> my original thought.
Nope. Consoles have used a PC-like video pipeline (double-buffers+vsync) since the PS1 generation, and that includes the same caveats for input lag.
It's funny you say console games don't have tearing; it was a hallmark of the X360 and PS3 that games often went without vsync and had very objectionable tearing because consumers demanded prettier graphics than the hardware could reasonably deliver. Google "Xbox 360 tearing" and see over 9,000 results, for instance.
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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: R. Belmont]
#321393 - 02/04/14 12:12 AM
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O.k., I must admit that I don't know very much about consoles that came after the Super Nintendo. I just noticed that these old consoles (NES, Super Nintendo) never have tearing and the output is "hardwired" to the TV refresh rate without the programmer having to do anything. Scrolling on the NES just works. You simply move the x coordinate every frame and that's it. And I was hoping that modern consoles do the same.
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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: DaRayu]
#321395 - 02/04/14 01:11 AM
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> O.k., I must admit that I don't know very much about consoles that came after the
> Super Nintendo. I just noticed that these old consoles (NES, Super Nintendo) never
> have tearing and the output is "hardwired" to the TV refresh rate without the
> programmer having to do anything. Scrolling on the NES just works. You simply move
> the x coordinate every frame and that's it. And I was hoping that modern consoles do
> the same.
Even then you had to be careful - if you updated sprites/tiles while the display was updating instead of waiting for VBL (and you didn't have double-buffered sprite RAM) you'd get tearing. Updating mid-scan is the basis of raster effects, e.g. the "heat wave" effect on the airport scene in one of the KoF games is exploiting the same phenomenon as tearing when horizontally scrolling (updating X coordinate while the screen is updating to offset some lines of sprite from others).
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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: DaRayu]
#321396 - 02/04/14 01:15 AM
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> Scrolling on the NES just works. You simply move
> the x coordinate every frame and that's it.
You could create software on the NES that tears if you wanted. Back in the 80's a game with tearing wouldn't be tolerated though.
> And I was hoping that modern consoles do the same.
The last console with anything like that type of hardware was a Saturn. Even if modern consoles had scrollable playfields then a MAME port wouldn't use them because it renders everything in software and just outputs each frame individually.
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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: ]
#321400 - 02/04/14 01:43 AM
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> You could create software on the NES that tears if you wanted. Back in the 80's a
> game with tearing wouldn't be tolerated though.
Yes, you could probably do something like that with hardware tricks if you wanted. But what I wanted to say: You don't have to do anything to prevent it. You have an interrupt for screen refreshing and that's where everything is done (game logic, gamepad input, graphics output). And that's it.
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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: DaRayu]
#321405 - 02/04/14 02:45 AM
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> > You could create software on the NES that tears if you wanted. Back in the 80's a
> > game with tearing wouldn't be tolerated though.
>
> Yes, you could probably do something like that with hardware tricks if you wanted.
> But what I wanted to say: You don't have to do anything to prevent it. You have an
> interrupt for screen refreshing and that's where everything is done (game logic,
> gamepad input, graphics output). And that's it.
And you're wrong. If you weren't careful, you could easily end up with undesirable graphical artefacts.
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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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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: DaRayu]
#321434 - 02/04/14 07:03 PM
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> Yes, you could probably do something like that with hardware tricks if you wanted.
> But what I wanted to say: You don't have to do anything to prevent it. You have an
> interrupt for screen refreshing and that's where everything is done (game logic,
> gamepad input, graphics output). And that's it.
Even that wasn't true for long. Tricks like parallax scrolling and smooth sky gradient backgrounds involved reprogramming the graphics chip per-scanline, somewhat like the Atari 2600 (MAMEdev tends to call this "raster effects"). The water effect in the original Genesis Sonic games was just changing the palette quickly when the screen got to whereever the water started, for instance.
This was so common that the SNES included dedicated hardware that you could program to screw with the video chip on arbitrary scanlines without CPU intervention (called "HDMA").
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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: DaRayu]
#321470 - 02/05/14 02:46 PM
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> Was it slow like in Naoki's case or are there consoles that can run
> MAME decently?
It depends on what games you want to run. There are no consoles that can run MAME better than a top of the range PC.
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Re: MAME for video game consoles
[Re: DaRayu]
#321674 - 02/08/14 07:37 PM
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It all depends if you want to display the games on a real CRT in the original video modes. If no, don't bother since LCDs are rubbish themselves so no need to go any furher than PC, Windows and MAME.
Using MAME on a real 15 kHz CRT is a totally different story and the only correct approach. Now there is a problem with consoles: there is currently no console that would run most 80s games and provide authentic video modes. There are at least 2 serious candidates: the original Xbox and Wii. The problem with Xbox is pretty straightforward: emulators do not output anything else than 60 Hz 480i or 50 Hz 576i. This is because the Microsoft SDK does not support anything else. To be able to output authentic video modes, someone needs to investigate how to enable custom video modes on the TV encoders inside Xbox meaning new SDK, probably new video BIOS etc. So far, noone with the knowledge has cared, and because it has been a lot of years since 2001, it is very unlikely that someone ever will.
Wii can provide better video modes but still not fully custom and the emulators are mostly outputting interlaced modes anyway. But Wii is probably a better choice than Xbox for at least some emulators but definitely not MAME because it does not support those authentic video modes.
I would say the only option is a PC with approprite VGA card and OS that provides "ring 0" environment to give you perfect VSYNC (definitely not Windows and Direct X). Currently I think it is GroovyMAME and AdvanceMAME (perhaps better but without important updates since 2006).
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