26 replies to this topic

[HowardC]

Old thread I know, but I was about to start a similar one seeing as how the agemame/mame merge is now fully complete.

I've actually worked on inputs and outputs for several mame drivers and let me tell you as nicely as possible, vpinmame/pinmame is behind the times.

Here's a list of things vp would instantly gain by switching over to mame

1. Proper dual monitor support.... the newer versions of mame handle this much better.

2. Instant backglass support as well as placement managment. All the headaches of getting the backglass and dmd on the right monitor and in the right orientation is over. In newer versions of mame you can do this on the fly while playing.

3. Better performance. You guys have it backwards actually.... newer versions of mame keep getting faster... assuming you are upgrading your pc to keep up. If you have a 64 bit os and a dual or quad core mame gains a real performance boost, espeically when having to deal with quirky things like inter-program communication. I mean yeah, you can't run pacman on a 486 sx anymore, but you can't run vp tables on anything less than a dual core either.

4. No more DMD quirks...... The dmd would be handled via the artwork system in mame, no hardcoded simulator. Anything hooked up to the artwork system automatically gets hooked up to the output system. Via the output system you could send all those dmd dot values directly to the vp table, meaning the dmd is now in the table itself (optionally of course) this means no more annoyances like the dmd falling behind the screen, the added overhead of displaying two windows on top of each other, ect...

5. A more realistic DMD. Again, a dmd done in regular mame would be generated via the artwork system. That means you could use photos of real dmd segments to make the display.... making for a photo-realistic image. But mame's artwork system is flexible so just by changing the layout you could make it look like old-school pinmame or even raw pixels... whatever you want!

6. A larger developer staff. I'm guessing pinmame has a couple of guys actively coding at this point. Mame has dozens, sometimes hundreds.

7. Less wasted time on a custom build. This is also better to the user. They can just use mame for both pinmame and their arcade needs.

8. No more registry clutter. pinmame currently writes rom settings to the registry there are hundreds of pinmame roms... The windows registry is bloated enough without all that extra stuff in there to bog things down. Actually I never did understand why pinmame doesn't use ini files. Yes you need some registry files because vp doesn't know where pinmame is, but wouldn't it make more sense to just have a single pm entry with the paths in it and then read stuff out of the ini files?


Mame's output system is pretty quick and fairly robust. It should be able to handle all of the lights/whatevers on a table right now no problem. There wouldn't be a need to compile mame into a dll and create a com interface.... mame's message broadcasting would do just fine. The output system also lets you talk back to mame, but right now that is limited to asking for info. If Mame's output system was expanded a little to let you send input states to mame it would work as a substitute for pinmame without a hitch.

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with pinmame or that it doesn't do it's job or anything like that. What I am saying though is that if you ever want it to evolve to include better features, it might just be better to start porting those pinmame drivers into mame and work on the vanilla build instead. The few things that mame needs to replace pinmame need to be added anyway if mame ever has any hopes of getting the EM games working.


Btw... that isn't why mame changes rom names... they actually change them to make things easier to the user. The newest revision of a rom always has the same name, so if there are 4 revisions of outrun, running "outrun" will load revision 4, the version that 99% of the people out there would want to run. If a new revision of outrun is found, the current version gets renamed to outrunr4 and the newly found revison 5 gets renamed outrun. This way you are always playing the latest version of a game so long as you launch the parent rom.

Sometimes they DO go back in and just change a bunch of rom names, but it's for cleanup purposes. They might find the official name printed on the pcb, ect.... The roms are still the same though... that's what rom mangers are for... to automatically rename them for you.

[Joe]

Old thread I know, but I was about to start a similar one seeing as how the agemame/mame merge is now fully complete.

Btw... that isn't why mame changes rom names... they actually change them to make things easier to the user. The newest revision of a rom always has the same name, so if there are 4 revisions of outrun, running "outrun" will load revision 4, the version that 99% of the people out there would want to run. If a new revision of outrun is found, the current version gets renamed to outrunr4 and the newly found revison 5 gets renamed outrun. This way you are always playing the latest version of a game so long as you launch the parent rom.

and how does that work for all the pinball home roms, and the hacks of the free play only to coin play roms?

Pinball roms and the way the places that make them are handle differently then video game roms. For one thing the WMS rom updates where free and where on the there own web site but the video game rom where not.

[destruk]

In specific cases we do rename the roms before a release. ie when we renamed all those data east romsets to account for alternate revisions that were obtained. However, there were 4 or 5 months where users constantly asked why their old rom didn't work anymore and they had to run the alias batch file to rename them to valid/current names - and it's just as big a pain in the butt when MAME decides to rename their roms. And it's still possible someone out there will download a data east romset from ipdb or somewhere else on the internet and still even to this day ask why it doesn't match the required rom name in pinmame. In most cases lately we decide on the best name possible to fit into the existing naming scheme for the set in question. There are thousands of ways to name stuff - and this is best for our users to be consistent.

Your other points don't appear to be important until MAME can play with any kind of simulator for the ball or a 3-d pinball physics environment.

[destruk]

BTW - MAME will never ever allow EM games to work within it - as those are mechanical/physical/analog assemblies. MAMEDev has actually gone through and religiously removed any analog support or drivers in the past, as well as removing complete games on a whim.

Removed American Soccer, Space Walk, Salary Man Champ, Super World Stadium '99, Onna Sanrisou, Raccoon World, Hanajingi, Cross Bingo (Poker Carnival), Wolf Fang, Pro Soccer, Lady Master, Fantastic Journey, Final Lap 3, Touchmaster 2000 Plus, Kick Boy, Super Real Mahjong Part 5, Trivia (SMS), Almond Pinky, American Poker II, Rapid Fire, Da
REMOVED: Heavy Unit, Poizone, Jack Potten's Poker.
REMOVED Fire Trap (Japan), Alien Challenge, Lucky Girl (1991), Night Gal, Night Bunny, Royal Night, International Team Laser, Sexy Boom, Pachi Fever, F-15 Strike Eagle, Battle of the Solar System, Tank Battle (was listed under Super Tank Attack), Versus Net Soccer, Soccer Superstars, Shark Party, Victor 5, Victor 21, Top Shooter Mahjong Super Da Man Guan II, Skimaxx, Rushing Heroes, Run & Gun 2, Oh! Paipee, Tougenkyou, Shogun Warriors, B.Rap Boys, Sky Love, Panther, 39 in 1, Cliff Hanger, Cobra Command, Back Fire (Tecmo), Tokimeki Mahjong Paradise - Dear My Love, Tokimeki Mahjong Paradise - Doki Doki Hen, Laser Quiz, Laser Strixx 2, Laser Quiz 2, Magic Premium, Candy Puzzle, Harem Challenge, Steel Worker, Mirax, Super Crowns Golf, Bullet, Rumba Lumber, Denjin Makai, Balloon & Balloon, Dain San Wakusei.
REMOVED Sega Mega Play games, Status Blackjack, Tekken Tag Tournament, Hidden Catch 3, Mahjong Vegas, Knights of Valour Superheroes, Buggy Boy/Speed Buggy (cockpit), Squash (Itisa), Go 2000, Dakkochan House, Casino Five, Big Apple Games, Give us a Break, Ten Up, Cherry Master '91, Mahjong Tenkaigen, Noboranka (original), (Happy) Jackie, Tetris bootleg, Shooting Master, Aqua Jet.
REMOVED Mirage Youjuu Mahjongden, Grudge Match (Yankee), Double Dealer, Yumefuda, Good, Mahjong Daireikai, Otogizoushi Urashima Mahjong, Megatouch 5, Astropal, Pit Boss, TX-1, Chanbara, Super Football Champ, Magical Date, Fighters' Impact, Judge Dredd, Cube Quest, Da Ban Cheng, Kyuukyoku no Othello, Galactic Storm, Survival, Wonder League 96, Deroon DeroDero, Sigma Poker 2000, Touki Denshou Angel Eyes, Chase Bombers, World Rally, Pinbot PC-10, Snooker 10, Side By Side, Touchmaster 3000-7000, Filetto, Jackie Chan Kung Fu Master/Fists of Fire, Firefox, Super Free Kick, (4 nin-uchi Mahjong) Jantotsu, Sky Lancer, Mad Zoo, (New) Lucky 8 Lines, Turbo Sub, Soul Calibur, Megatouch 3, Space Battleship Gomorrah.
Removed "Poker? (IGS)"
REMOVED 1 on 1 Government
Removed Lock-On
Removed Gekisou, Super Bowl, Pit Boss II, Super Pit Boss, Pit Boss Megastar, Megatouch 6, Risky Challenge/Gussun Oyoyo, Tang Tang, Side By Side 2, Moon Base.
Removed Gappolin, Wild Arrow, Mahjong G-Taste, Match-It II, Street Fighter III, Jojo's Venture, Warzard, Change Lanes, DJ Boy, Taisen Hot Gimmick 4, Sliver, Cross Blades, Last Fighting, Super Eagle Shot, Super Real Mahjong P6, Joryuu Syougi Kyoushitsu, Hayaoshi Quiz Grand Champion Taikai, Hayaoshi Quiz Nettou Namahousou, Super Real Mahjong, Vs Janshi Brand New Stars, Mahjong Tian Jiang Shen Bing, Maze Invaders, Jumbo Ozaki Super Masters Golf, The Block Kuzushi, Mahjong Hot Gimmick Integral, Midway Road Runner, Mortal Kombat 4, Invasion, Buggy Boy/Speed Buggy upright, Task Force Harrier, Spectrum 2000, Big Fight, Ripper Ribbit, Chicken Farm, Crazzy Clownz, Space Fighter Mark II.

Aside from the request from Cave that I heard about, for them removing those games, what is the reason for removing so many others? Is it because they add the roms and find out later they aren't good reads, or is it more because adding roms is quick and painless, but working on them requires, well, work?

Edited by destruk, 25 February 2012 - 07:06 PM.

[destruk]

Last comment on the roms thing - you do know that pinmame does support 'merged sets' - so you could download something like RomManager or ClrMAMEPro and merge all your sets so you have a single romset for each game that will work. The only issue with doing that is whenever a new romset revision is added for that machine, if a table uses it, you'll need to download the romset revision and remerge it.
If we were to set up a merged roms section here, then you could download the merged rom - however, it would take up more bandwidth to redownload 30+mb for a game (or for newer games like WPT it'd be 853MB) to download instead of the size for just the code you need.

[blur]

merging pinmame in mame will not help for two monitors support

vpinmame already supports all monitors you have and you can move it from inside the game

vp is the problem - vp doesn't support multiple monitors and mame can't solve that


actually - when i think more about it - if vpinmame would just support different window for every score - you could use it as it is - without uvp - if only it would have 6 different windows - 4 for scores and 2 for ball and credit - you could just move them around and avoid using uvp

and if it would also support lights - in a way to you can move move lights around and define size for all of them - you could replace all of uvp functionality - but don't think this is gonna happen

Edited by blur, 25 February 2012 - 09:23 PM.

[Mitchell]

I don't merge my Rom's for a reason. What if there are two ROM's that have the same name but different sizes. You will screw the ROM's up this way. I always use split.