Mame mapping question

[zerox600]

I'm not necessarily new to gameex, this has been my project for the past 3 months and its nearing completion i don't have internet at my home right now because i lost my job, so i cant post any emulator configs or gameex configs for you guys to see at the moment, but i could post them tomorrow or the next day when im able to put them on my jump drive. anyways, enough rambling.

I'm curious about 2 things,

1) Is it worth even mapping roms to zinc and nebula, etc. or is mame decent enough now that it will run a majority of them(assuming the reason for emu mapping is to send them to a more compatible emulator)? (im still trying to figure out mame... i never got into it when i was younger, i always just did nes and snes emulation)

and if so, is there a list of stuff that "should" be mapped anywhere that i can look at?

2) i just switched to project tempest for my jaguar emulator (yay finally one that will play roms)

except.... when i use the PT loader, it tries to load some crazy name that isnt what i told it to load.

I.E. i tried to load Atari Karts (1995).jag and it comes up with something like C:/eMuLaTiOn/rOmS/aTaRi JaGuAr/AtArI_kArTs192387.jag cannot find file. (this isnt the exact thing it says, the letters ARE alternating lower case and caps like that though. and the path is right, just not the file name.)

my command line is

ProjectTempestLoader.exe [romfile]/[rompath]

the romfile/rompath part is the normal default setting for most emulators... sorry guys im trying to do this all from memory for you.

EDIT: ah, sorry, forgot about that.

Edited September 8, 2011 by zerox600
Post has been adjusted. Speaking of how roms are obtained are again forum rules.

[fRequEnCy]

I'm not necessarily new to gameex, this has been my project for the past 3 months and its nearing completion i don't have internet at my home right now because i lost my job, so i cant post any emulator configs or gameex configs for you guys to see at the moment, but i could post them tomorrow or the next day when im able to put them on my jump drive. anyways, enough rambling.

I'm curious about 2 things,

1) Is it worth even mapping roms to zinc and nebula, etc. or is mame decent enough now that it will run a majority of them(assuming the reason for emu mapping is to send them to a more compatible emulator)? (im still trying to figure out mame... i never got into it when i was younger, i always just did nes and snes emulation)

and if so, is there a list of stuff that "should" be mapped anywhere that i can look at?

2) i just switched to project tempest for my jaguar emulator (yay finally one that will play roms)

except.... when i use the PT loader, it tries to load some crazy name that isnt what i told it to load.

I.E. i tried to load Atari Karts (1995).jag and it comes up with something like C:/eMuLaTiOn/rOmS/aTaRi JaGuAr/AtArI_kArTs192387.jag cannot find file. (this isnt the exact thing it says, the letters ARE alternating lower case and caps like that though. and the path is right, just not the file name.)

my command line is

ProjectTempestLoader.exe [romfile]/[rompath]

the romfile/rompath part is the normal default setting for most emulators... sorry guys im trying to do this all from memory for you.

Please ready the Forum Guidelines and Rules. I adjusted your post.

MAME does a pretty good job at this point for most roms. A good source for the games that MAME doesn't support yet or don't support well can be found at NonMAME.

As far as the loader, I know there was an issue with one that released in the forums, if that's the one you're using? I know there was a release by another user but would have to search for that one. Also I would think the correct command-line would be as follows:

ProjectTempestLoader.exe "[ROMPATH]\[ROMFILE]"

You may have correct since you did say you're doing it from memory. Would have to see your config and also let us know the source of your loader so further testing can be done.

[zerox600]

MAME does a pretty good job at this point for most roms. A good source for the games that MAME doesn't support yet or don't support well can be found at NonMAME.

As far as the loader, I know there was an issue with one that released in the forums, if that's the one you're using? I know there was a release by another user but would have to search for that one. Also I would think the correct command-line would be as follows:

ProjectTempestLoader.exe "[ROMPATH]\[ROMFILE]"

You may have correct since you did say you're doing it from memory. Would have to see your config and also let us know the source of your loader so further testing can be done.

I am using tempest's loader from the link in your signature. and that is my command line, i forgot it needed quotes around it.

i will try and search for the other loader and see if i can find it.

also, thank you for the nonmame link. that is what i was looking for

Edit: I found the other loader you were talking about, Brian hoffman posted it i believe. I downloaded it and I will test it tonight. Also, for anyone else who might have the problem i am having i read on a post by tempest that if you open PT and load a rom and navigate to your directory where they are stored, it "should" work. might make sense if you change the command line to

ProjectTempestLoader.exe "[ROMFILE]"

i will let you know what i find out. Hopefully i can post the configs i am using when i do.

[bkenobi]

NonMAME only lists Cool Boarders under Zinc now. Does that mean that the main MAME code is sufficient to actually play the rest of these games reliably now? If so, can anyone comment on the brawn the system needs to have in order to fire up these games? I can play these pretty perfectly in Zinc, so switching over to MAME is fine as long as they don't require tons more power.

Also, I didn't realize there was a Model3 emulator available. Is that pretty playable? I suspect it's probably up there with PS2 and Wii emulation since they all used pretty high polygon count. On the other hand, Dreamcast emulation isn't that tough apparently...

[fRequEnCy]

NonMAME only lists Cool Boarders under Zinc now. Does that mean that the main MAME code is sufficient to actually play the rest of these games reliably now? If so, can anyone comment on the brawn the system needs to have in order to fire up these games? I can play these pretty perfectly in Zinc, so switching over to MAME is fine as long as they don't require tons more power.

Also, I didn't realize there was a Model3 emulator available. Is that pretty playable? I suspect it's probably up there with PS2 and Wii emulation since they all used pretty high polygon count. On the other hand, Dreamcast emulation isn't that tough apparently...

Recent changes to MAME was the reason they were removed from the list. So yes, they do play pretty good now. Well I don't know the specifics to specs required for those particular games. The specs are listed on NONMAME that are used for the list. I guess the best thing would be to test those games for yourself on your machine and then compare to other users to see what is required.

I have no comments on Model3 emulator quite yet as I haven't tried playing anything on it. Hopefully someone will chime in with experience on it. Sorry!

[bkenobi]

I guess the real question about the Zinc games is whether they incorporated the Zinc engine or if they improved the zn.c etc library right in MAME. If they incorporated what Zinc was already doing, then it should play approximately the same as it did in Zinc. If it's new code, then yeah, I'll have to test. I'll have to check out the whatsnew.txt to figure that out.

Anyone know what version these games became playable?

[Draco1962]

I guess the real question about the Zinc games is whether they incorporated the Zinc engine or if they improved the zn.c etc library right in MAME. If they incorporated what Zinc was already doing, then it should play approximately the same as it did in Zinc. If it's new code, then yeah, I'll have to test. I'll have to check out the whatsnew.txt to figure that out.

Anyone know what version these games became playable?

I am assuming you are attempting to triangulate an approximate date. Based upon Mesk's post in the Social Club, try searching for dev notes on or before July 25th. I hope this is of help!

[Adultery]

Just to chime in, I doubt they took notes from ZiNc, as the goal of mame is to reproduce games faithfully, whereas ZiNc used work arounds to achieve better speeds, which requires some fancy footwork to get it playable.

As we already know, mame devs don't like fancy footwork.

[Draco1962]

Besides that, if I am not mistaken, Zinc was developed from an older MAME build. It would not be impossible that some of the fancy footwork wasn't incorporated or at least they found a way on faster systems to make it more like the actual thing.

[bkenobi]

I was thinking about that after posting. Zinc uses some shortcuts to get the graphics all nice, smooth, and pretty. MAME is not going to do that since that's pseudo-emulation. So, unless they figured out some cool ways to make accurate emulation run faster, I'd probably need a faster machine than I've got running now. I'll check it out on my dual-core box to see if that can even push it!