35 replies to this topic

[EvilDragon]

slaanesh just released a new version of MAME4ALL for the Dingoo (running Dingux).



The changes are:

- Added A320 screen brightness option to frontend.
- Fixed bug with games containing multiple FM sound systems. Was allocating two identical FM tables and segmentation faulting when on exit (trying to free the same table of memory twice). This stops some games crashing on exit.
- More speed and smaller executable. Perhaps some of the larger games may run now?

See the included "whatsnew.txt" for complete details.

If you have any questions, please refer to the "readme.txt" and "faq.txt" first! 99% of questions can be answered in here if you look first. By all means, ask if you are unsure.

Download: MAME4ALL v1.2
Homepage: http://www.slaanesh.net/

[volanic]

Absolutely good news.I'm going to test it asap.

Edited by volanic, 02 December 2009 - 12:23 AM.

[volanic]

Can't get hook run.Out of memory.hook is only abt 3M in size....

[PolloLoco]

The games that run, definitely do run faster. Golden Axe was playable before, but now it's practically full speed.

Edit: By deleting the files in the "frontend" directory and "cfg" directories prior to updating to 1.2 - most compatibility is retained. The games that don't work (and used to in either 1.0 or 1.1) are now:

Total Carnage
Alien Storm
Altered Beast - loads, but no enemies can be destroyed, screen freezes - weird.

Edited by PolloLoco, 02 December 2009 - 12:01 PM.

[slaanesh]

I probably should have mentioned that you should delete your files in your "frontend" directory and "cfg" directory as the file format has change slightly. This may be causing some problems.

I can confirm that TMNT and Simpsons both work with v1.2 as I just played them.

Also Altered Beast's behaviour was the same in v1.1. I'll have a look and see what it's doing this and see if I can do a fix for v1.3.

Edited by slaanesh, 02 December 2009 - 05:44 AM.

[slaanesh]

Can't get hook run.Out of memory.hook is only abt 3M in size....

Was Hook working previously? I don't think it was.

Hook uncompressed is about 6.5MB. MAME then needs double this for graphics which is 13MB. That's a total of 19.5MB. The MAME executable is 9.5MB so that's about 28MB. There are other internal memory requirements too, like the emulated screen and sound. These are also dynamically allocated at run time. Probably another ~1MB for this.

As you can see it adds up quickly. And for what seems like a "small" compress ZIP file turns out to have rather large runtime requirements.

I do admit that the way MAME loads and has an uncompressed version of graphics RAM in memory isn't very good - but that's the most memory critical time as once the graphics are uncompressed they are disposed of and the RAM is freed up.

Basically it looks like Hook *almost* has a enough space. Its close, but not quite enough.

Edited by slaanesh, 02 December 2009 - 05:43 AM.

[volanic]

Can't get hook run.Out of memory.hook is only abt 3M in size....

Was Hook working previously? I don't think it was.

Hook uncompressed is about 6.5MB. MAME then needs double this for graphics which is 13MB. That's a total of 19.5MB. The MAME executable is 9.5MB so that's about 28MB. There are other internal memory requirements too, like the emulated screen and sound. These are also dynamically allocated at run time. Probably another ~1MB for this.

As you can see it adds up quickly. And for what seems like a "small" compress ZIP file turns out to have rather large runtime requirements.

I do admit that the way MAME loads and has an uncompressed version of graphics RAM in memory isn't very good - but that's the most memory critical time as once the graphics are uncompressed they are disposed of and the RAM is freed up.

Basically it looks like Hook *almost* has a enough space. Its close, but not quite enough.

Thx for your hard work,Slaneesh.Though a lot of people hope hook can run...I heard that Mame for PSP can run hook so I tested it and asked here.Really sorry abt that.But I appreciate your job all the same and all the time.
One question:
I wonder if there is a way to run bigger roms in Mame just like Fba does?We'll be very excited to see the hopes running so many favorate games if it does.Is it a big challenge to run cache in Mame?

Edited by volanic, 02 December 2009 - 07:31 AM.

[slaanesh]

Thx for your hard work,Slaneesh.Though a lot of people hope hook can run...I heard that Mame for PSP can run hook so I tested it and asked here.Really sorry abt that.But I appreciate your job all the same and all the time.
One question:
I wonder if there is a way to run bigger roms in Mame just like Fba does?We'll be very excited to see the hopes running so many favorate games if it does.Is it a big challenge to run cache in Mame?

MAME for PSP uses the previous version of MAME 0.34. The executables are quite a lot smaller - I think the PSP version has executables only 3MB or 4MB is size. This is probably enough RAM to make the difference.
I will try reducing the size of the executable further - but I think it's going to be at the cost of some games. The Mortal Kombat/Smash TV driver is very big - I'm tempted to get rid of it as it uses about 1MB and it doesn't really work very well on the A320 anyway (and I don't think ever will). I think it would be much better having more games that have a good chance of running at playable speeds at the expense of those that don't work. I may even get rid of CPS1/CPS2 as they are covered in FBA320 anyway - and run faster there anyway.

What does everyone think about that for v1.3?

[slaanesh]

I've checked Altered Beast on the GP2X using the M68K compatible core - it does exactly the same thing as the A320 version! It must be a bug in the M68K core. It should be fixable for the next release.

[volanic]

[quote name='slaanesh' date='02 December 2009 - 08:00 AM' timestamp='1259740838' post='779501']
[quote name='volanic' date='02 December 2009 - 05:20 PM' timestamp='1259738435' post='779496']

MAME for PSP uses the previous version of MAME 0.34. The executables are quite a lot smaller - I think the PSP version has executables only 3MB or 4MB is size. This is probably enough RAM to make the difference.
I will try reducing the size of the executable further - but I think it's going to be at the cost of some games. The Mortal Kombat/Smash TV driver is very big - I'm tempted to get rid of it as it uses about 1MB and it doesn't really work very well on the A320 anyway (and I don't think ever will). I think it would be much better having more games that have a good chance of running at playable speeds at the expense of those that don't work. I may even get rid of CPS1/CPS2 as they are covered in FBA320 anyway - and run faster there anyway.

What does everyone think about that for v1.3?
[/quote]
I totally agree you remove cps1,cps2,neogeo and some other drivers which fba has included for the sake of reducing the size of Mame to run more games current version can't.Or split Mame into 2 different versions to support different rom sets.Don't get blocked by some certain games need large drivers.As is really practical.I think FBA and Mame are 2 differect emulators,at least for dingoo,running different game sets.All of us will keep both of them.I like the speed of FBA and the compatibility of Mame.But pls make "Hook" and "Shadow Force" run if possible.Thx.Slaneesh.Good luck.

Edited by volanic, 02 December 2009 - 08:55 AM.

[PolloLoco]

I've checked Altered Beast on the GP2X using the M68K compatible core - it does exactly the same thing as the A320 version! It must be a bug in the M68K core. It should be fixable for the next release.

OK - that may be the case, but with version 1.0 of your MAME4ALL - Altered Beast worked. I played it all the way through, but it was a little slow. I'm guessing you hadn't included M68K then?

Also - I've gone back and edited my original pot because by deleting my files in the "frontend" directory and "cfg" directories, allowed me to regain some compatibility. Now, the games that worked in 1.0 and don't work now are Alien Storm, Altered Beast, and Total Carnage. Though I'm going on hearsay with Total Carnage - others had said it worked, but I haven't tried it until now. I imagine both Alien Storm and Altered Beast could be attributed to M68K.

I don't know how I feel about losing the Smash TV drivers, since that was one game I was hoping to squeeze a little more speed out of. But you're the boss, if you feel it's best I'll defer. I personally wouldn't have a problem losing the CPS1 and CPS2 drivers that Finalburn already runs better.

Edited by PolloLoco, 02 December 2009 - 12:00 PM.

[PolloLoco]

F' it - I'm going to have to edit again. Double Dragon 3 now worked. I can't explain why. Also - Splatter House gave me a lack of memory error and on replaying it - it worked! Others should keep this in mind, maybe get out of MAME altogether and retry a game if it's reporting a lack of memory.

[slaanesh]

One other thing to note - I don't use a frontend launcher like Dmenu or even my own port of DinguXMB as I'm usually focused on playing one emulator at a time. So I have my "main" script always launching the emulator I'm currently playing. This could be making a difference to memory usage depending on how the frontend launcher starts up the new process.

[slaanesh]

OK - that may be the case, but with version 1.0 of your MAME4ALL - Altered Beast worked. I played it all the way through, but it was a little slow. I'm guessing you hadn't included M68K then?

This is really strange. I did nothing to the M68000 CPU core in v1.0 and v1.1.
There were some differences in the way that I compiled v1.2. I would have thought it would have broken in v1.2 rather than anywhere else.

My intention is to update the M68000 CPU core to the latest version as used in later versions of MAME - this should sort out other compatibility issues too.

I also still want to include C68K support as it's quite a bit faster than the M68K core.

[PolloLoco]

OK - that may be the case, but with version 1.0 of your MAME4ALL - Altered Beast worked. I played it all the way through, but it was a little slow. I'm guessing you hadn't included M68K then?

This is really strange. I did nothing to the M68000 CPU core in v1.0 and v1.1.
There were some differences in the way that I compiled v1.2. I would have thought it would have broken in v1.2 rather than anywhere else.

My intention is to update the M68000 CPU core to the latest version as used in later versions of MAME - this should sort out other compatibility issues too.

I also still want to include C68K support as it's quite a bit faster than the M68K core.

OK - that's really odd. Yeah - I was extremely psyched when I got altered beast to play with 1.00. I'd actually made a post on the old Dingoo forums asking if anyone had gotten it to work - and got info on the proper version, from others who had gotten it to work as well. I finally got to beat the arcade version on a handheld which made me quite happy - the finalburn version on the PSP was a little too slow for my tastes.

Regardless, the speed increases on all the games that work are really freaking impressive. It's turned a lot of games from playable to downright a joy to play. Thank you for all your hard work. I just gave you a small donation via paypal - hopefully others will do the same.