AlphaMame Blocking Bonus

[diabolik]

The "tab" key, the "pause" key, "save states" and the other features are disabled in "all type of games" or only when recording a game (making an inp file)?

Only when recording. As piot already said TAB key is not disabled at all in current version.

[mahlemiut]

The "tab" key, the "pause" key, "save states" and the other features are disabled in "all type of games" or only when recording a game (making an inp file)?

Only when recording.

[Skyline]

Here's a relevant (I think..?) question regarding MAME vs. AlphaMAME...dunno if it's specific to my crappy machine but what the hell. Some games vary in speed depending on whether MAME or AlphaMAME is used, by ways of slowdown, framerates less than 40 fps, etc. In those instances where a game performs better on MAME than AlphaMAME, will this rule still be in effect for it?

[Chad]

yep alphamame has the potential to be a "little" slower than regular mame because it does everything mame does with a very brief compression routine called in addition. The speeds used (will be from when alphamame is used) are averaged through the recording so what ever speed alphamame records that is the speed we use. below 40fps for some frames is "ok" as long as it doesn't linger and averages out to 90% for regular submits and 95% for tournaments, just use autoframeskipping to keep the average up and provided it's not too skippy to play it should be fine.

in other words, if you can get 90% in regular mame and 85% in alphamame it won't be accepted, but i'm sure it won't be fun to play when it averages 90% so get a faster computer :) I really doubt there will be any game that gets 100% in regular mame and 89% in alphamame, so i don't think this is an issue. The % difference will proly be in the 1-5% slower range... but i haven't done any tests with slow computers.

[LN2]

just use autoframeskipping to keep the average up and provided it's not too skippy to play it should be fine.

Well, I wouldn't recommend using autoframeskip. If you are playing a game where the inp is picky on the frameskip used and you use autoframeskip it's likely no one else will be able to playback your inp. If you are playing a game where you know the playback is fine versus different frameskip rates then autoframeskipping is fine. You could make a test run inp and play it back at a couple different manually set frameskip values and if it plays back fine both ways using frameskip 4 and 8 for example, then it likely will playback fine using autoframeskip.

It would really suck if you had set a great score for a game using autoframeskip and no one else could play the inp back cuz of it.

Manually set a frameskip to get the speed you need instead.I'm not sure if same for PC mames vs macmame, but in macmame using autoframeskip seems to even hurt performance a little bit more cuz it's having to use that little code to check if the current frameskip is ok or to change it. When you use a fixed frameskip that check isn't done which helps the performance. It isn't a huge difference but enough to be noticeable in the framerates.

[mahlemiut]

There aren't all that many games that have problems with frameskip adjustments. Sega System 1 and all lightgun games are about all I think of at the moment (if anyone can think of any others, then let me know).

[Luja]

At last I installed alphamame32 too.

You can install various version (mame32, alphamame32, esmame32,...) withouth any relevant problems. Unchecking "enable version mistmatch" they will run fine.
The only problem is that as they use the same registry key, a change in the general option of one will affect the rest.

Installing mame32 and alphamamew runs fine withouth problems.

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Last questions:

* I see that alphamame has new features. For example the "speed is recorded" and can be seen in a playback with F11.
Is there any other important feature that is helpfull to confirm an inp?
The controls and dipswitchs that you see are the ones used by the recorder?
Alphamame can only replay "alphamame" inp? Of all alphamame versions?

Thx

[piot]

At last I installed alphamame32 too.
Alphamame can only replay "alphamame" inp? Of all alphamame versions?

I thing U means Alphamame can only replay "alphamame" inp? Of all mame versions?

Well alphamame cannot replay "regular" mame inp just its own (or previous alphamame release inps)

[mahlemiut]

AlphaMAME INPs should work across different AlphaMAME versions. at least for the recent ones anyway (0.63 and up at least). There will always some differences between drivers or other MAME components that may cause INPs to not playback on other versions. This is the same for both MAME and AlphaMAME.

Hopefully, I haven't confused you more.

[Barthax]

Two games that have trouble with frameskipping are Super Invader Attack (sia2650) and it's clone, The Invaders (tinv2650). These must be recorded and played at the same frameskip. If recorded at more than frameskip 0 then the game does not play properly anyway.

[Chad]

Is there any other important feature that is helpfull to confirm an inp?

Thx

One helpfull confirmer thing is: the confirmer doesn't need to watch the F11 screen to know that the recording is too slow, they can just look at the console screen after the game is playedback to see what the average recorded speed was. This does not work in the mame32 version when used in gui mode because there is no console to print stuff out to when running the gui.

[zlk]

Another thing that needs to be thought out is the fact that many games require calubration at the start of the game by the player. So "tab" is a must. Foodfight is an example of such a game. I am not sure if there is an easy solution to this problem.

[LN2]

zlk, nope...you don't need to enter the cfg for food fight.

It's been a while since I played it but either when you get the missing nvram error in food fight you hit the control key(or whatever your throw food buttons is...hehe) or you hit F2. I forget which but it's one of those 2 will get you past that and get the game running.

No need to go into cfg.

[Chad]

zlk, you can hit tab BEFORE you record and setup the cfg file then in regular play mode, and then use the cfg file that you setup before. This unfortunatly DOES NOT garuanted playback (because you are starting mame with a differnt state (cfg file) than someone playing it back but it should work with most if not all games. During recording it's a good idea to prevent tab from being used to keep the recording normalized. But, this isn't 100% necesary because if push comes to shove we can detect if cfg settings were altered in the inp file itself.

[zlk]

I will have to check BBH's inp. I know at the start he calibrates his joystick (few people have the weird joystick that Foodfight used so calibration is necessary for a decent score). I thought tab was necessary for this, but I may be mistaken.