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Contradiction in Mame?
#392197 - 10/18/21 06:33 PM
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Hi guys,
I hope you are all well. I am a new member and I would hope forward to learn from each one of you.
If the MAME Team are very faithful to the original system and embrace fidelity (not hacks), then why do the MAME programmers skip their own "impositions" when they want to. Why do they allow fast-forwarding with a button (they're already busting the "fidelity"), and yet they don't allow the emulator to do it automatically?
According to the MAME programmers it's OK for me to fast forward manually, but for the emulator to do it automatically only in the data loading areas is already wrong. I don't understand anything.
I would appreciate any clarification.
THANKS IN ADVANCE.
Edited by Peewee (10/18/21 06:34 PM)
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Re: Contradiction in Mame?
[Re: Peewee]
#392199 - 10/18/21 08:55 PM
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Your thought process is flawed.
The “Fast Forward” feature as implemented in MAME is not inaccurate emulation. All it does is cut out delays to keep emulated time in sync with the wall clock and skips uploading video output to your GPU. The full emulation is still running. It doesn’t overclock the emulated CPU(s), it’s not like a fast load hack that bypasses emulated disk accesses and copies data directly into RAM or anything like that. It just runs the full emulation as fast as it can.
If you want to automatically fast forward over slow loading processes using MAME’s implementation of the “Fast Forward” feature, you’d need a way of detecting a loading process and activating “Fast Forward” automatically. That’s not what MAME does – MAME tries to be agnostic about what the software is doing, and just emulate what the hardware would do.
However, you’re free to write a Lua plugin that detects loading processes and automatically unthrottles the emulation for software you like to run. We have a rich scripting interface that lets you implement all sorts of things on to of MAME, from sophisticated cheats, to input macros, to integration tests, to alternate user interfaces. We’re not going to do it for you though, as that’s not what we do – we just provide the tools.
If what you really want is a fast load hack that bypasses emulation of the loading processes and replaces them with high-level simulations, we’re not going to do that, although you might be able to achieve it with Lua scripting if you’re creative enough. Once again, it requires being aware of what the software is trying to do, but the triggered actions would be a lot more complex.
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Re: Contradiction in Mame?
[Re: Peewee]
#392202 - 10/18/21 09:50 PM
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> Hi guys,
>
> I hope you are all well. I am a new member and I would hope forward to learn from
> each one of you.
>
> If the MAME Team are very faithful to the original system and embrace fidelity (not
> hacks), then why do the MAME programmers skip their own "impositions" when they want
> to. Why do they allow fast-forwarding with a button (they're already busting the
> "fidelity"), and yet they don't allow the emulator to do it automatically?
> According to the MAME programmers it's OK for me to fast forward manually, but for
> the emulator to do it automatically only in the data loading areas is already wrong.
> I don't understand anything.
>
> I would appreciate any clarification.
>
> THANKS IN ADVANCE.
Automatic fast forward can be replicated with F10 (disable throttling) and F8 (max frame skip - F9 is the same as F8 but goes in the opposite direction), although it's slightly slower than the manual Insert key method because MAME removed the frameskip 11/12 options 15 or 20 years ago (oddly, the manual frameskip still skips 12 frames so it's faster).
Also, why it's in MAME is the same reason why fast forward (not to be confused with speed hacks or fast-load hacks, as per Vas Crabb's post) is in virtually every other emulator.
It's better than waiting forever to get to the part you need to be, and to skip annoyingly-long loading times (especially with tape-based games e.g. DECO Cassette, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum etc.), power-on self-tests (including RAM/ROM tests which Konami games are notorious for, or the tile cycling that Pac-Man era games tend to do), and/or unskippable cutscenes like countless PlayStation games do (also, "PlayStation" and "annoyingly-long loading times" are virtually synonymous), all of which are extremely useful to fast forward through when testing something that isn't possible to access in-game in the first few minutes of normal-speed gameplay.
Likewise with MAME implementing save states and cheats - these are just as valuable for MAME development/testing as they are for genuine cheaters and players who keep dying/losing over and over (either due to the game being a deliberately-unfair quarter muncher or just general suckiness of the player and/or the game engine). Not all games let you continue if you lose either, particularly with early 80s titles - game over is game over, enter your initials and back to the title screen for you.
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Re: Contradiction in Mame?
[Re: Heihachi_73]
#392203 - 10/18/21 09:59 PM
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> Also, why it's in MAME is the same reason why fast forward (not to be confused with
> speed hacks or fast-load hacks, as per Vas Crabb's post) is in virtually every other
> emulator.
>
> It's better than waiting forever to get to the part you need to be, and to skip
> annoyingly-long loading times (especially with tape-based games e.g. DECO Cassette,
> Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum etc.), power-on self-tests (including RAM/ROM tests which
> Konami games are notorious for, or the tile cycling that Pac-Man era games tend to
> do), and/or unskippable cutscenes like countless PlayStation games do (also,
> "PlayStation" and "annoyingly-long loading times" are virtually synonymous), all of
> which are extremely useful to fast forward through when testing something that isn't
> possible to access in-game in the first few minutes of normal-speed gameplay.
Also, for skipping over the stripping scenes in Mahjong Hyper Reaction so I can get back to playing mahjong.
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Re: Contradiction in Mame?
[Re: Vas Crabb]
#392206 - 10/19/21 04:46 AM
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I really appreciate your reply & clarification, @Heihachi_73, and @Vas Crabb.
Regards 
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