Older systems support & config

[David R Hilgendorf]

I notice your running on an 850MHZ. I have made efforts to support older systems, and would really to hear you feedback on how GameEx performs on your system.

Thanks,

Tom.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Tom, and GameEx userbase, here are some suggestions for running on "older" hardware. I am forced to use my P3 (see specs in my sig below) as I don't have any newer hardware available for the cab at present, but believe me I want to put a 3Ghz and at least 512MB ram in there asap.

1) I gave up on Win9x as soon as XP came out. I know it uses more resources, but it is WAY more stable and configurable. I personally still recommend a MINIMUM of a P3-500mhz and 256MB of RAM to run XP-pro, else stick to 9x. Oh and install XP CLEAN, preinstalls from hardware vendors are LOADED with system resource hogging junk.

2) Tweak your XP and turn off the crap you don't need for a dedicated game system (there is a lot of it). Here are a few good sites with excellent tips on maximizing performance in XP :

XP Performance Guide

XP Service Configs

TweakXP tips

Most of these suggestions are NOT for the computerphobe, but one easy thing you can do is go into System Properties | Advanced | Perfomance and select "Adjust for Best Performance" radio button. This is practically the FIRST thing I do on every XP box and is a HUGE boost on older spec systems. The second thing is to remove all apps that are in the Startup folder, and Run on startup in the registry. Don't forget to reboot

3) DON'T install apps like Office, Email, Photoshop, whatever on your Arcade cabinet. XP comes with notepad and IE, that's all you should need, if you download or install unscanned softare updates (emulators) regularly you need an AV software too. To avoid resource hogging AV software you can scan them for virii on your main PC before transferring them to your cab. That leaves ALL your hard drive space for EMULATORS, ROMS and your FRONTEND! You'll find you don't need that big a hard drive for your cabinet, 40-100GB should be plenty, and a 20GB might do fine if you don't have to have everything like me and especially if you run your CD games from disc instead of images (iso)

4) Run your frontend as Shell (google it) and you don't need the resource hog that is Windows Explorer at all... This is not a good recommendation for a computerphobe.

5) Don't expect miracles. I can run epsxe at full framerate, but I have to turn off a lot of the advanced features like smoothing and filtering. I can run Project64 at nearly full framerate, but at low res with virtually no features enabled. However almost every older system runs perfectly with no slowdown. I run into speed problems with newer MAME games, and Zinc is like molasses, but Daphne runs fine once you get past the huge hassle of configuring it.

Now to answer Tom's question; What problems do I have?:

I run Mame .92 currently, though I had all the same issues with .89 before.

1) GameEx runs well, however I have not tried using any video files which I suspect will slow it down greatly. I am interested in trying this soon though.

2) All the console emulators load up virtually instantly when a game is selected, but MAME take a LONG time, maybe 10-20 seconds to load Ms. Pac-Man which is a tiny ROM! I haven't spent any time troubleshooting this yet.

3) Exiting games takes quite a while to return to the frontend. I haven't timed it, but I would guess maybe 10 seconds. This does not seem emulator specific, and I think it's about the same amount of time GameEx takes to load on start which I am not sure it's supposed to do.

As a side note the sound in MAME is broken, though this has nothing to do with GameEx. It skips, loops and adds delay fairly regularly and I can't figure out why as I have a nice SB Live card in there. I have tried fiddling with a lot of recommended settings, but the only thing that accomplished was reducing static noises. Anyone have GOOD ideas how to fix this, I am all ears.

I will try to post an update with video performance, actual timing of above slowness, and results of any tweaks you all suggest. I might also post a screencap of my Task Manager if anyone is interested.

[Tom Speirs]

Now to answer Tom's question; What problems do I have?: 

I run Mame .92 currently, though I had all the same issues with .89 before.

1) GameEx runs well, however I have not tried using any video files which I suspect will slow it down greatly.  I am interested in trying this soon though.

2) All the console emulators load up virtually instantly when a game is selected, but MAME take a LONG time, maybe 10-20 seconds to load Ms. Pac-Man which is a tiny ROM!  I haven't spent any time troubleshooting this yet.

3) Exiting games takes quite a while to return to the frontend.  I haven't timed it, but I would guess maybe 10 seconds.  This does not seem emulator specific, and I think it's about the same amount of time GameEx takes to load on start which I am not sure it's supposed to do.

Thanks for that.

1. Let me know what you find. If all goes well responsiness and overall speed will stay the same with avi, and mpegs whether used as logos, backgrounds or MAME videos, although possibly get a drop in framerate. MNG's will slow everything down. So I would only recommend MAME MNG videos on a fast PC. Some of the MNG's such as 720 dont even play full speed on a 2.4GHZ

2. I think that is something I can work on, and improve. Are you using MAME32 or MAME? MAME will probably be better. Let me know.

3. It's reinitialising DirectX, Thats why its the same as startup speed. I have a few caching ideas though. Would you be willing and able to test them for me. It's even a little slow on a 2.4GHZ sometimes, although harder for me to get a benchmark, because of windows built in caching.

[David R Hilgendorf]

2. I think that is something I can work on, and improve. Are you using MAME32 or MAME? MAME will probably be better. Let me know.

3. It's reinitialising DirectX, Thats why its the same as startup speed. I have a few caching ideas though. Would you be willing and able to test them for me. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

2. Mame i686-enhanced command line version in my Cab. I only use Mame32 on my main PC (2.4Ghz) because it is a very nice frontend when I'm not in cabinet mode It seems that only mame loads slowly via GameEX, and I'm not exactly sure why. I thought it might be the disabling of the two OK screens which I have never used before I got GameEx, but I haven't tried those commands direct from command line yet, or attempted to disable them in GameEx to verify. It sounds like that is not the problem though.

3. I am willing to be your guinea pig... er QA tester... let me know when you have a beta ready...

[Tom Speirs]

2. Mame i686-enhanced command line version in my Cab.  I only use Mame32 on my main PC (2.4Ghz) because it is a very nice frontend when I'm not in cabinet mode   It seems that only mame loads slowly via GameEX, and I'm not exactly sure why.  I thought it might be the disabling of the two OK screens which I have never used before I got GameEx, but I haven't tried those commands direct from command line yet, or attempted to disable them in GameEx to verify.  It sounds like that is not the problem though.

3. I am willing to be your guinea pig... er QA tester... let me know when you have a beta ready...

2. Just to let you know, I took a look, and can't see anywhere that I can improve the loading speed for MAME. What is weird, is Zinc uses the same section of code, and launches straight away. It has to be something to do with MAME, I mean it is a pretty big app these days.

MAME32 may already be doing some of the initialisation when loading the GUI, I don't know. The real way to test would be to use the 'Run Last Game' Shortcut in the programs group. You need to compare this time loading, from when GameEx goes to a black screen.

3. We will do this then.

[Tom Speirs]

2. Just to let you know, I took a look, and can't see anywhere that I can improve the loading speed for MAME. What is weird, is Zinc uses the same section of code, and launches straight away. It has to be something to do with MAME, I mean it is a pretty big app these days.

MAME32 may already be doing some of the initialisation when loading the GUI, I don't know. The real way to test would be to use the 'Run Last Game' Shortcut in the programs group. You need to compare this time loading, from when GameEx goes to a black screen.

3. We will do this then.

In regard to tweaking your system and removing all the crap at startup.

I can highly recommend startup control panel.

I've been using it for a couple years. The first thing I do with a new install is the same as Dave, and turn off all the animations etc.

Then I install Startup Control Panel.

It's also the first thing I do when someone asks me to take a look at there PC because its slow etc.

http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

StartupCPL.zip

[Toonces]

2. Just to let you know, I took a look, and can't see anywhere that I can improve the loading speed for MAME. What is weird, is Zinc uses the same section of code, and launches straight away. It has to be something to do with MAME, I mean it is a pretty big app these days.

MAME32 may already be doing some of the initialisation when loading the GUI, I don't know. The real way to test would be to use the 'Run Last Game' Shortcut in the programs group. You need to compare this time loading, from when GameEx goes to a black screen.

3. We will do this then.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

add this parameter to your MAME Launch parameters: -skip_validitychecks

I think you will be quite pleased. Apparently MAME checks all of the drivers before loading a ROM to ensure that there are no mismatched DLLs. See http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showt...o=&fpart=1&vc=1

for more info. I did this on my cab today and it goes right into the games now.

Toonces

[David R Hilgendorf]

1) I have not tried using any video files which I suspect will slow it down greatly. 

2) MAME takes a LONG time, maybe 10-20 seconds to load tiny ROMS! 

3) Exiting games takes maybe 10 seconds to return frontend. 

4) Sound in MAME skips, loops and delays regularly.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Updates on above:

1) This is SUCH a cool feature, since these video files are low-res and small they run pretty well even on my crap hardware. Now I need to get my hands on more of these.

2) This is fixed by Toonces suggestion, awesome!

3) This is actually about 5 seconds, not as bad as I thought, but room to improve.

4) I thought it might be my SB-Live, so I replaced it with a crap ESS card and it did the same thing. Then I downgraded to mame .69 and it still did the same, so I started tweaking with the sound options in mame.ini. It is better now, but I have delay set to 2 so there is some audio delay and I dropped sampling to 11025 so the sound isn't as rich. Finally I downloaded fastmame .94 because it sounded faster and is the latest MAME core So far I am happier than before with the sound. I know the ultimate solution is to upgrade my CPU, so I can't complain too much. I was hoping for a miracle.

I am also still fiddling with fonts and large vs small option. I prefer small, but haven't found a font that I like yet so I am running a Playstation font in large size for now, but my main menu has to scroll cause I have to many emus.

I also want to do something with Catver, there are WAY to many categories, and I want to reduce the clutter some. Anyone know if this has already been done, or if it's even doable? i.e. I want to have ALL puzzle games in 1 puzzle cat.

tspeirs, can you specify exactly what "arcade mode" does in GameEx? I have it enabled, but I haven't figured out what some of your features are, or how best to implement them.

Also is there a way to kill that home button in the upper right without disabling the home page all together (back can still return)? I got rid of the eXit icon and I like the interface better without accidentally being able to select those, which I do all the time because mamewah used left and right as Alpha-Up/Down (similar to pageup). In GameEx I have to hold button 3 and press up/down on the stick for page up/down, but there is no alpha-up/down. HINT, HINT: alpha is 26 stops vs over 100 for paging, maybe you could add this feature, or make it a toggle option of which method is prefered by the user.

[Tom Speirs]

Updates on above:

1) This is SUCH a cool feature, since these video files are low-res and small they run pretty well even on my crap hardware.  Now I need to get my hands on more of these.

2) This is fixed by Toonces suggestion, awesome!

3) This is actually about 5 seconds, not as bad as I thought, but room to improve.

4) I thought it might be my SB-Live, so I replaced it with a crap ESS card and it did the same thing. Then I downgraded to mame .69 and it still did the same, so I started tweaking with the sound options in mame.ini. It is better now, but I have delay set to 2 so there is some audio delay and I dropped sampling to 11025 so the sound isn't as rich.  Finally I downloaded fastmame .94 because it sounded faster and is the latest MAME core   So far I am happier than before with the sound. I know the ultimate solution is to upgrade my CPU, so I can't complain too much.  I was hoping for a miracle.

I am also still fiddling with fonts and large vs small option. I prefer small, but haven't found a font that I like yet so I am running a Playstation font in large size for now, but my main menu has to scroll cause I have to many emus.

I also want to do something with Catver, there are WAY to many categories, and I want to reduce the clutter some.  Anyone know if this has already been done, or if it's even doable?  i.e. I want to have ALL puzzle games in 1 puzzle cat.

tspeirs, can you specify exactly what "arcade mode" does in GameEx?  I have it enabled, but I haven't figured out what some of your features are, or how best to implement them.

Also is there a way to kill that home button in the upper right without disabling the home page all together (back can still return)?  I got rid of the eXit icon and I like the interface better without accidentally being able to select those, which I do all the time because mamewah used left and right as Alpha-Up/Down (similar to pageup).  In GameEx I have to hold button 3 and press up/down on the stick for page up/down, but there is no alpha-up/down. HINT, HINT: alpha is 26 stops vs over 100 for paging, maybe you could add this feature, or make it a toggle option of which method is prefered by the user.

Arcade Mode:

The purpose/goal of Arcade Mode, was to support lower resolution for ArcadeVGA specifcially 640 X 288. It does not display the toolbar, makes fonts smaller, and diables the mouse. It sort of like a LO-FI version. As I said it's really designed for ArcadeVGA cards. I use it on my cabinet, with Snaps as backgrounds, at 640 X 288.

People have since used ArcadeMode at higher resolutions, something I never expected .

I'll look at the remove of the home button if I ever get time, or more people ask for this.

Could you spend a bit more time explaining this alpha paging stuff, sorry might be being a bit dim but dont 'get it' at the moment.

Thanks for your support David.

Tom.

[jr9770]

Arcade Mode:

The purpose/goal of Arcade Mode, was to support lower resolution for ArcadeVGA specifcially 640 X 288. It does not display the toolbar, makes fonts smaller, and diables the mouse. It sort of like a LO-FI version. As I said it's really designed for ArcadeVGA cards. I use it on my cabinet, with Snaps as backgrounds, at 640 X 288.

People have since used ArcadeMode at higher resolutions, something I never expected .

I'll look at the remove of the home button if I ever get time, or more people ask for this.

Could you spend a bit more time explaining this alpha paging stuff, sorry might be being a bit dim but dont 'get it' at the moment.

Thanks for your support David.

Tom.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Speaking of your cabinet, when do we get to see it, Tom!

Jeff

[David R Hilgendorf]

Alpha paging means for every "page-down" given the list goes directly to the next Alpha Character. i.e you are on 005, you Alpha-Down, it goes to the first A, another Alpha-Down goes to the first B, etc. So theoritically there are 27 "stops" for paging one for each character of the alphabet and one for numeric. IN a list like MAME where you could have anywhere from 1500 to 5000 ROMS showing up it's way more efficient than paging 15-30 titles at a time when using a joystick.

I like having regular page-down, and I like how you implemented it by holding in one of the buttons, maybe you could use a different button to do Alpha paging.

Another feature I have seen in some of my Xbox emulators is that the longer you hold down the controller the faster it scrolls. i.e. the first page scrolls 1 title at a time, but picks up speed until by the third page holding down the joystick scrolls as fast as a page down would. Just some ideas on how to get through large lists of roms in a more efficient manner.

[Tom Speirs]

Speaking of your cabinet, when do we get to see it, Tom!

Jeff

OK, you win!

I'll upload some pics at the weekend. It's not as glamarous as some of your guys ones though. I just bought a second hand JAMMA cabinet, ripped out the guts and used a J-PAC. I am good at software but SUCK big time at DIY

[Tom Speirs]

Alpha paging means for every "page-down" given the list goes directly to the next Alpha Character.  i.e you are on 005, you Alpha-Down, it goes to the first A, another Alpha-Down goes to the first B, etc.  So theoritically there are 27 "stops" for paging one for each character of the alphabet and one for numeric.  IN a list like MAME where you could have anywhere from 1500 to 5000 ROMS showing up it's way more efficient than paging 15-30 titles at a time when using a joystick. 

I like having regular page-down, and I like how you implemented it by holding in one of the buttons, maybe you could use a different button to do Alpha paging.

Another feature I have seen in some of my Xbox emulators is that the longer you hold down the controller the faster it scrolls. i.e. the first page scrolls 1 title at a time, but picks up speed until by the third page holding down the joystick scrolls as fast as a page down would.  Just some ideas on how to get through large lists of roms in a more efficient manner.

OK, I got it. I've kind of run out of buttons to use, so it would have to be an either or feature.

In regard to the other feauture, I think the list already scrolls as fast as it can so probably not really suitable for GameEx. GameLauncher goes into Turbo mode when Paging which is a feautre I liked. Although again GameEx already scrolls pretty fast IMO.

[schmidde]

hi david,

i think i have the same problem with the sound!!

i´m running mame32 0.94 and gameex 3.44 on a XP1800/2700, so the cpu is fast enough.

when i´m running mame without gameex the sound is ok.

any ideas?

[David R Hilgendorf]

Very interesting, I never spent much time checking MAME from CMD vs within GameEx, but now that you mention it I do seem to recall that the sound problems were not as noticable, or possibly non-existent from CMD. I need to do some more tshooting on this to see if it really is GameEx that is introducing messed up sound in MAME.

In the interim you can try the suggestions I mentioned before of increasing the delay and reducing the sample rate (I know this is a workaround and not a solution).

Tom, can you see if there is something funny happening to sound from your end. Now we have 2 reports of similar problems. Just a note that I had messed up sound even in Ms Pacman which is my favorite "test" ROM because it's very popular, extremely small, requires low horespower and is Vertical. When it's doesn't work many other games won't either.

Anyone else have sound skipping, delays, and noise in MAME?

[Tom Speirs]

Very interesting, I never spent much time checking MAME from CMD vs within GameEx, but now that you mention it I do seem to recall that the sound problems were not as noticable, or possibly non-existent from CMD.  I need to do some more tshooting on this to see if it really is GameEx that is introducing messed up  sound in MAME. 

In the interim you can try the suggestions I mentioned before of increasing the delay and reducing the sample rate (I know this is a workaround and not a solution).

Tom, can you see if there is something funny happening to sound from your end.  Now we have 2 reports of similar problems.  Just a note that I had messed up sound even in Ms Pacman which is my favorite "test" ROM because it's very popular, extremely small, requires low horespower and is Vertical.  When it's doesn't work many other games won't either.

Anyone else have sound skipping, delays, and noise in MAME?

I don't think there is anything going on. I think it is because MAME32 uses its own settings for launching games, and these carnt carried over when launching mame32 as a command. I am 90% sure this is a mame issue.

As I've said before the way to test it would be to use the Run Last Game Shortcut in the GameEx Program group on the Windows start Menu. If this does something different then its probably a gameex issue, if not mame config issue

[David R Hilgendorf]

I don't use mame32. In fact the sound problem occured in MAME .69, .80, .89, .92, and .94. I have used the regular command line version, the i686 enhanced version, and curently the fastmame version all with similar results. I think I may have had problems with Mamewah in the sound arena too, but I never thought to compare it to command line only.

SOOO I will at some point check and see if the problem exists in commandline AND from GameEx, or just from GameEx. If the latter then I think it's safe to say the Frontend is doing something funny, maybe resource usage related. I am not convinced that this is a GameEx problem yet however.

[pavlov70]

I don't use mame32.  In fact the sound problem occured in MAME .69, .80, .89, .92, and .94.  I have used the regular command line version, the i686 enhanced version, and curently the fastmame version all with similar results.  I think I may have had problems with Mamewah in the sound arena too, but I never thought to compare it to command line only.

SOOO I will at some point check and see if the problem exists in commandline AND from GameEx, or just from GameEx.  If the latter then I think it's safe to say the Frontend is doing something funny, maybe resource usage related.  I am not convinced that this is a GameEx problem yet however.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hey David,

Does the sound crackle and occasionally skip only in a few older games besides Ms. Pacman? So far I have it happen in the Pacman and Galaxian/Galaga games. I try them from the command line and they sound fine.

[David R Hilgendorf]

The crackling only seems to happen in older games, the latency happens in newer stuff. Like sfa3 I will throw a fireball and the ha-do-ken will come later, or I get kicked and the impact sound is delayed.

I notice the Ms Pacman problem right in the intro music, it stutters. Donkey Kong also has issues. I haven't been able to run galaga since I went to .94 maybe they changed the roms?

I still need to test this at command line with and without the delay settings in the mame.ini

[Tom Speirs]

The crackling only seems to happen in older games, the latency happens in newer stuff.  Like sfa3 I will throw a fireball and the ha-do-ken will come later, or I get kicked and the impact sound is delayed. 

I notice the Ms Pacman problem right in the intro music, it stutters.  Donkey Kong also has issues.  I haven't been able to run galaga since I went to .94 maybe they changed the roms?

I still need to test this at command line with and without the delay settings in the mame.ini

http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?showtopic=136&hl=

[David R Hilgendorf]

Guys, I did some tshooting on this FROM CMD prompt myself the other day and here are my results.

Audio problems in older games like mspacman, digdug, dkong, galaga seemed to be caused by having wait for Vsync enabled. Once I disabled it I had NO more sound stutter at ANY audio setting from 11025 up to 44100 or with delay of 1 or 2.

However this caused almost all sidescrolling games to "tear" or flicker as one other user wrote in TOPIC.

When I enabled wait for Vsync I had to lower my audio to 11025 with a delay of 3 which prevented sound stutters, BUT caused the audio to be unsycronized. i.e. throw a fireball, wait 1 second then hear Ha-do-ken audio.

So At this point I merely disabled wait for vsync and suffer through the tearing that is involved. Looks like I really need a faster CPU, this does not appear to be an audio problem at all.

As a side note triple buffering and other settings did not seem to impact the framerate or the audio in any notciable way on my config.

-Dave