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Random Emulation Questions (Mostly MAME)
#375188 - 03/29/18 05:06 AM
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1.) Is there a systems criteria for No-Intro? I'm wondering why I see certain systems included and not others. No Neo-Geo AVS, no Dreamcast etc.
2.) Is there an up-to-date list of systems that MAME emulates exceptionally well? For example: I notice that MAME emulates some SNES games poorly, whereas other emulators have no problems with those same games. This isn't a ROM issue. The same SNES ROM that struggled to emulate correctly in MAME works flawlessly in other emulators. Also, if you don't have a G-Sync/FreeSync monitor you'll see tearing in a lot of SNES games emulated in MAME even if you have options like triple buffering enabled. You won't however see the screen tears in other emulators because from what I'm aware, they are capped at 60 Hz. SNES9x for example - I have yet to see screen tearing.
I'd prefer to use the best emulators currently available for each system. I'm willing to sacrifice some degree of authenticity for a smoother play experience.
Maybe I should use RetroArch for Arcade & Consoles since it can make better use of 60 Hz displays? Screen tearing kills it for me and from my experience, enabling anti-tearing options can create audio & input lag issues. Currently I'm saving up for a G-Sync monitor but I'm not quite there yet.
3.) Are all of the ROMs in MAME SWL verified good dumps or will there be the occasional game that is broken in both MAME and other emulators?
4.) What's the difference between TOSEC and SWL ROMs/SWL CHDs? There seems to be a lot of overlap. Yet both TOSEC and SWL stuff continues to exist so there must be some difference to keep these projects going?
Thanks
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Re: Random Emulation Questions (Mostly MAME)
[Re: FennecTheFox]
#375193 - 03/29/18 09:03 AM
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Hi,
1. I think No-Intro's focus is on Disk/Cartridge based systems only.
2. MAME supports some platforms better some not so good. This is fact since MAME started to exist. It depends if a developer is interested into a system/platform, when this happens MAME does a lot of progress on these systems usually.
And since MAME developed in the developers spare time it can take a while until progeress is done.
3. Who knows ? MAME just adds ROMS/Disks/Images from the various well known collections like No-Intro, TOSEC, Redump to it's software lists. AFAIK all the dumping groups replace known broken images with coreect ones once they appear.
TOSEC is a bit special as the aim of the project is to catalog as many media for all systems as possible. So TOSEC is more of a library then a gamers choice collection.
This is why TOSEC have so many alternate and broken disks listed.
4. MAME uses it's own format to store disk based images (cd/dvd/hdd) in a standard container .chd.
TOSEC just catalog images of various types aswell as No-Intro, Redump and other teams do.
So MAME does not care about dumping teams and dumping teams dont care with MAME as they have different goals.
So in short, all the collections will exist in the future aswell as MAME softlist will exist.
And for Retro Arch, it should be the very last of choice imho. All they do is to add emulators code to their cores
and hack them together all over the place.
And i believe not just a few emulator developers aint to happy with that.
hope this helps at least a bit 
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Re: Random Emulation Questions (Mostly MAME)
[Re: minireaper]
#375194 - 03/29/18 09:06 AM
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With only 4 posts in 7 years, it seems like you're going for quality over quantity - your response is 100% correct and very well-written! 
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Re: Random Emulation Questions (Mostly MAME)
[Re: minireaper]
#375203 - 03/29/18 08:40 PM
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1.) Neo-Geo AES (Accidentally typed AVS in my OP)
Is a console cartridge system though.
2.) Ok, so no up-to-date list anywhere? Just gotta experiment and try out different games to see if they emulate well or not? If that's the case, based on my experience with SNES games emulated in MAME I think I'll just use dedicated system-specific emulators that work without issue absent screen tear even if that means they're hacked to run at 60 Hz.
3.) Ok, sounds like I should avoid TOSEC then as I'm looking for stuff that just works. Which is kinda why No-Intro/FB Alpha have caught my attention lately.
Yeah, I was wondering about RetroArch and I figured they were doing something like that (taking code from others), although I never actually looked into it. That is terrible.
Edited by FennecTheFox (03/29/18 09:09 PM)
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Re: Random Emulation Questions (Mostly MAME)
[Re: FennecTheFox]
#375206 - 03/29/18 10:01 PM
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AES is technically a home console using arcade cartridges, which MAME already covers. Also unlike many other cartridge formats (.nes, .sfc, .bin, etc.) AES cartridges are collections of ROM dumps not enclosed into single files. No-intro seems to focus on single file cartridge formats, some weird optical media like UMD ISOs and single downloadable package contents (e-Shop, PSN, etc.). AES dumps aren't any of them.
No-intro indeed classifies some ISOs like PSP UMDs as mentioned earlier, however that fits more redump.org's goal.
Be aware also that MAME's principal purpose is to document the hardware as closer as possible. If you are looking for game enhancements and undocumented workaround hacks you are better off using single emulators for that purpose.
And about CHD, you should be aware it's an internal format used by MAME so you can use media without decompressing it. It's an storage format like .ZIP and .RAR, not a dump standard. If you look at the XML hash files you will realize MAME softlists are redump.org, no-intro, TOSEC and even randomly unclassified collections from the internet stored as CHD1.
1 Though in my opinion the format would be widely more used if it could extract exactly the same files and checksums they're put into. If you already know how to interpret the different formats, it shouldn't be that big of a deal to find a way to revert them back, then keep the weird cue files and ignored data stored into the CHD for that purpose. Maybe in a new CHD revision.
Edited by BIOS-D (03/31/18 06:20 AM)
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| Dullaron |
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Re: Random Emulation Questions (Mostly MAME)
[Re: BIOS-D]
#375215 - 03/30/18 05:12 AM
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> AES is technically a home console using arcade cartridges, which MAME already covers.
> Also unlike many other cartridge formats (.nes, .sfc, .bin, etc.) AES cartridges are
> collections of ROM dumps not enclosed into single files. No-intro seems to focus on
> single file cartridge formats, some weird optical media like UMD ISOs and single
> downloadable package contents (e-Shop, PSN, etc.). AES dumps aren't any of them.
>
> No-intro indeed classifies some ISOs like PSP UMDs as mentioned earlier, however that
> fits more redump.org's goal.
There is another website. Renascene. They listed the PS One Classics, PSP, PSV and PS3 dump data base there. I use this website to check and see a dump that I found good or not. PSP and PS One Classics.
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Re: Random Emulation Questions (Mostly MAME)
[Re: Dullaron]
#375228 - 03/30/18 02:57 PM
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> There is another website. Renascene. They listed the PS One Classics, PSP, PSV and
> PS3 dump data base there. I use this website to check and see a dump that I found
> good or not. PSP and PS One Classics.
Since PS One Classics contain a number of non-genuine dumps that clearly look like pirate/hand-edited dumps, I don't think it can be a good target for any serious preservation project. Check their Mad Stalker - Full Metal Force image, for example.
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Re: Random Emulation Questions (Mostly MAME)
[Re: F1ReB4LL]
#375230 - 03/30/18 03:13 PM
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> > There is another website. Renascene. They listed the PS One Classics, PSP, PSV and
> > PS3 dump data base there. I use this website to check and see a dump that I found
> > good or not. PSP and PS One Classics.
>
> Since PS One Classics contain a number of non-genuine dumps that clearly look like
> pirate/hand-edited dumps, I don't think it can be a good target for any serious
> preservation project. Check their Mad Stalker - Full Metal Force image, for example.
Right, a lot of official collections just pulled roms from websites, often old collections too (probably because they ended up download some 'BEST 1000 ROMS1!!!11' pack or something, and just using what was in there when half the times those packs are put together by some random 12 year old kid with no knowledge of the field to get youtube clicks.
Beyond that sometimes the emulators aren't very good so they had to use old images with hacks that made things work in older, buggier emulators.
This is one reason I'll always tell people to use the latest MAME, not old versions of MAME. The excuse of 'my roms work with old versions' is a bad one, they don't work with newer ones, typically because they were wrong and have been replaced. Recommending people keep using old sets, and keep them looking current when they're not is just bad for preservation in general because people new coming to emulation, especially from commercial backgrounds etc. end up seeing the (stupid) raving 'THESE OLD VERSION ARE THE BEST!!!!' fanboys, without really understanding that it's a complete fallacy mostly propagated because people are too lazy to do want to do things properly, or don't want to invest in proper hardware.
The problem with console emulation is *far* worse however because most of the dedicated emulators have no way of rejecting known bad dumps so people blissfully keep using them and spreading them. This to some people makes the console emulators better, because they never need to update their ROMs, but in reality, it just keeps a long-term problem going and causes things like what you're observing here to happen.
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Re: Random Emulation Questions (Mostly MAME)
[Re: FennecTheFox]
#375237 - 03/30/18 09:24 PM
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> 2.) Ok, so no up-to-date list anywhere? Just gotta experiment and try out different
> games to see if they emulate well or not? If that's the case, based on my experience
> with SNES games emulated in MAME I think I'll just use dedicated system-specific
> emulators that work without issue absent screen tear even if that means they're
> hacked to run at 60 Hz.
You may be interested in the following:
1. http://nonmame.retrogames.com/ - Shoegazer - member here - opinion on what's great in MAME and great elsewhere. In many cases he prefers RetroArch, but you can certainly see what "core" RetroArch is using and track down that emulator independently.
2. Some random wiki's opinion on what is good/bad in MAME: http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/MAME_compatibility_list
- Stiletto
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Re: Random Emulation Questions (Mostly MAME)
[Re: Haze]
#375244 - 03/31/18 12:27 AM
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> This is one reason I'll always tell people to use the latest MAME, not old versions
> of MAME. The excuse of 'my roms work with old versions' is a bad one, they don't work
> with newer ones, typically because they were wrong and have been replaced.
> Recommending people keep using old sets, and keep them looking current when they're
> not is just bad for preservation in general because people new coming to emulation,
> especially from commercial backgrounds etc. end up seeing the (stupid) raving 'THESE
> OLD VERSION ARE THE BEST!!!!' fanboys, without really understanding that it's a
> complete fallacy mostly propagated because people are too lazy to do want to do
> things properly, or don't want to invest in proper hardware.
>
> The problem with console emulation is *far* worse however because most of the
> dedicated emulators have no way of rejecting known bad dumps so people blissfully
> keep using them and spreading them. This to some people makes the console emulators
> better, because they never need to update their ROMs, but in reality, it just keeps a
> long-term problem going and causes things like what you're observing here to happen.
The only use case I have found for this sort of thing is something like replays with inp files. Other than that there is pretty much 0 reason to keep the older broken things. I recently cleaned out about 15 gig of MAME executables and source that for some reason I had accumulated.
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Re: Random Emulation Questions (Mostly MAME)
[Re: Stiletto]
#375245 - 03/31/18 01:07 AM
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> > 2.) Ok, so no up-to-date list anywhere? Just gotta experiment and try out different
> > games to see if they emulate well or not? If that's the case, based on my
> experience
> > with SNES games emulated in MAME I think I'll just use dedicated system-specific
> > emulators that work without issue absent screen tear even if that means they're
> > hacked to run at 60 Hz.
>
> You may be interested in the following:
> 1. http://nonmame.retrogames.com/ - Shoegazer - member here - opinion on what's great
> in MAME and great elsewhere. In many cases he prefers RetroArch, but you can
> certainly see what "core" RetroArch is using and track down that emulator
> independently.
>
> 2. Some random wiki's opinion on what is good/bad in MAME:
> http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/MAME_compatibility_list
>
> - Stiletto
#1) Someone else on mameworld shared this link with me before but I forgot to read it. Seems kinda biased? I'll check it out a bit later.
#2) I read this link before and I posted it here weeks ago. Someone else from mameworld said it's fairly accurate but not up-to-date.
Personally, when I try to play one of the most well known SNES games (Yoshi's Island) in MAME and It's broken, I tend to lose interest with MAME's console emulation capabilities.
Edited by FennecTheFox (03/31/18 01:07 AM)
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Re: Random Emulation Questions (Mostly MAME)
[Re: FennecTheFox]
#375247 - 03/31/18 01:39 AM
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> Personally, when I try to play one of the most well known SNES games (Yoshi's Island)
> in MAME and It's broken, I tend to lose interest with MAME's console emulation
> capabilities.
That happens quite often where a favorite game may not work for a specific machine. Just keep in mind that many hundreds of SNES games do work just fine with current MAME emulation. someday I'm sure MAME can improve to the level of the single purpose emulators, but for now if you want to use it you may have to put up with a machine that is flagged with graphics and sounds not being 100%.
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Re: Random Emulation Questions (Mostly MAME)
[Re: lharms]
#375253 - 03/31/18 04:14 AM
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> > This is one reason I'll always tell people to use the latest MAME, not old versions
> > of MAME. The excuse of 'my roms work with old versions' is a bad one, they don't
> work
> > with newer ones, typically because they were wrong and have been replaced.
> > Recommending people keep using old sets, and keep them looking current when they're
> > not is just bad for preservation in general because people new coming to emulation,
> > especially from commercial backgrounds etc. end up seeing the (stupid) raving
> 'THESE
> > OLD VERSION ARE THE BEST!!!!' fanboys, without really understanding that it's a
> > complete fallacy mostly propagated because people are too lazy to do want to do
> > things properly, or don't want to invest in proper hardware.
> >
> > The problem with console emulation is *far* worse however because most of the
> > dedicated emulators have no way of rejecting known bad dumps so people blissfully
> > keep using them and spreading them. This to some people makes the console emulators
> > better, because they never need to update their ROMs, but in reality, it just keeps
> a
> > long-term problem going and causes things like what you're observing here to
> happen.
>
> The only use case I have found for this sort of thing is something like replays with
> inp files. Other than that there is pretty much 0 reason to keep the older broken
> things. I recently cleaned out about 15 gig of MAME executables and source that for
> some reason I had accumulated.
and a lot of the time when inp files don't work anymore is because tiny improvements have been made in the emulation that means they no longer work.
See Donkey Kong.
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