Page 2 of 3

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 2:27 am
by tar
Rick , I did not intend to speak for everyone . Sorry for being unkind .
It is just frustraiting to see a good score posted that is unviewable .
I posted a topic called phantomas when you got 54,000 .
I was sort of mad because I have 21,000 .
I deleted it after an hour , the post that is .
1,200 dollars for rent !
Here in appalachia , it is 1/3 as much for a place .
I am not really pedjudiced but , isn't washington D.C. 70% african american ?
Has the White house been attacked lately ?
It will be another soggy spring here / global warming / floods . High winds all day yesterday & almost 70 degrees farenheit , dropping down with rain.
ok
I request these LN2
300,000 millpac
1,500,000 arcade classics prototype super centipede
I would also like to see Tac-Scan by Teign
skito wrote:BTW, one vote for Gaz being a converter, i think you need two to be one.
I vote for gaz

I was thinking that maybe the macintosh mame could work on windows :idea:

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 2:32 am
by LN2
I think odds are that exact same addition would work for the other pacman clones at least.

This is a bit of a pain cuz the inp format has changed versus MAME version....so there is no standard I can apply to all of the inps as it's dependent on version used.

There also is a chance(not sure yet until I do at least 4-5 different games) that even the frame size is different. I hope not as that could only be resolved with a program to go through the inp and convert it.

I am hoping most are just adding bytes to the beginning which I can do manually.

Gaz, so header and 2 frames for the pacman one ehh?

I looked at the inp some and quickly saw it appears there are 40 bytes per frame...and the converted inp you made has 112 bytes more. So the header(at least for version 0.60) is 32 bytes?

Is the header for modern versions still only 32 bytes or has that changed also? Looking at a 0.77u2 macmame inp each frame seems to be 60 bytes now, not 40.

Is nothing in the header except for the game rom set name? That appears to be the case for the few I have looked at. If so, why 32 bytes to represent a rom set name that can't go beyond 8 letters? The header could only be 8 bytes long. Was 32 used for possible future expansion or perhaps at some point allowing up to 32 character rom set names?

I could likely get that from the code, but know some of you guys likely already know the answer. That can save me some time.

I won't have much time to test this with many games in the near future. I will try with at least a few though.

Are there any specific requests of ones people would really like to see? If so, I can check those out first.

I figure one of the first ones will be my Tapper run....also perhaps my punchout inp but punchout is as finicky as any game out there. requires exact same audio setting and watched with speed throttle on for it to stay in sync....what a pain. :P

One I looked at a bit ago was mschamp-ce. I need to launch VPC to make a sample pc-mame inp from version 0.77u2 though.

Launching VPC to test a lot of this stuff is the biggest pain cuz it's slow.

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 2:38 am
by Chad
modern versions header size is still 32 bytes game name is first 9 should be good enough, 40 and 60 are previous and current header sizes, but you should insert the SAME 40/60 bytes that start (1rst frame) the mac file (or maybe the copy 2nd frame and insert copies after 1rst frame if the 1rst and 2nd differ).

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 3:15 am
by mahlemiut
Analogue inputs are handled seperately in MAME from digital inputs. What makes it worse is that they are read from/written to the INP as the game requests them. Most games do not read all analogue inputs every frame.

It should also be noted that the info screens seem to count has frames, but for the most part this seems to have no effect on most games.

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 11:54 am
by LN2
tar wrote:It is just frustraiting to see a good score posted that is unviewable .
I understand. This is exactly what frustrates most of the macmame community about MARP. They can't just conveniently watch most of the replays on their macs using macmame. It makes the site unattractive to them.

I think the fact pc-ers can't view many of my replay files is frustrating to them also which perhaps is what makes them angry at me where they call me a cheater etc. It seems these are always from very arrogant gamers who think no one can beat their scores...so anyone that does must be cheating. A few here have accused me of cheating, not just Hisa.

For me, joining and being part of MARP was never about watching lots of others replays. I think since I joined in July 2002, other than replays I have watched with the purpose of confirming the score, I likely have watched no more than 5-10 replay files. Most of those I watched cuz I suspected excessive leeching or a trick etc. based on the score.

I joined MARP to compete and try and get high scores.
I posted a topic called phantomas when you got 54,000 .
I was sort of mad because I have 21,000 .
k, I have noted phantomas.

After seeing talk about Spectar at the TG forums, then seeing your submitted score for a clone of it on the uploads page, I decided to try the game out. After about 30-45 minutes of play(never having played the game prior to this) I got that score in phantomas. It was a break-out game though cuz in playing other clones and the parent Spectar I have not been able to get that far on my first man.

I would need to watch it again myself but I think I completed the first 7 boards on my first man. :P
1,200 dollars for rent !
Here in appalachia , it is 1/3 as much for a place .
Yeah, in the Baltimore burbs I am looking in, it's about half.

That's almost hard to believe given it's only a 45 minute drive from me.
I am not really pedjudiced but , isn't washington D.C. 70% african american ?
Inside DC, yeah, 60-70% is about right. I live out in a suburb though, not in DC.

Actually in my area, the majority seem to be from Latin/Central America. There are quite a few Russians around here also.

It's a very diverse group of people that live in this area.
I am just a Anglo-Saxon caucasian. :P
Has the White house been attacked lately ?
I haven't seen anything in the news.
There was a "scare" at the Capitol building a week or so ago though where they evacuated the building for a few hours. I think it was from a letter with a threat and suspicious powdery substance in it. Analysis of the powder showed it was nothing harmful.
It will be another soggy spring here / global warming / floods . High winds all day yesterday & almost 70 degrees farenheit , dropping down with rain.
It's about the same here today. Last night's low was only around 70F even though our normal high is still only 52F.
I request these LN2
300,000 millpac
1,500,000 arcade classics prototype super centipede
I would also like to see Tac-Scan by Teign
millpac I can look into...as whatever works for that one would likely work for each of the centipede clones and millipede also...so I can kill many birds with 1 stone there.

arcade classics might be different though. You have Donald Hayes's replay file from that game which likely shows play no different from my own. The game is easy cuz the sidefeed really never gets out of control.

The game does get fairly tough around the 175-225k mark but then after that seems to almost get a little easier where the difficulty levels off. I think that might be more from where on the early rounds at only 175-225k you don't have the mushroom filler you do later on.

Tac-scan....at this point, I won't be attempted to convert inps from other gamers...especially for games where I haven't submitted a score.

If I get into the macwolfmame project this summer though, I'll have to address each game cpu/engine separately to see the resulting inp is identical to the PC one. That still won't help the older macmame replay files that are here though.

After doing many manually, if I see a clear pattern for conversion, then I could maybe write an application to do the conversions. However, I think it will vary enough plus the various versions of mame used will make it where I can't just make a quickie CLI application to do the conversions. Each would require manual viewing of inps from both and adding the header and a couple frames and in some cases like Marble Madness partial frame to make things time sync ok.

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 12:20 pm
by The TJT
Just a thought...Now that you'll save $600 a month, how about bying a new pc. Or used one, I quess you don't even have to buy a monitor(which are cheap nowadays). Or are you what they call a "mac believer"? :idea:

Would save time in the summer for not having to think about macwolfmame, and time is money...so you would save money buying a pc...simple, eh?

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 3:18 pm
by LN2
The TJT wrote:Just a thought...Now that you'll save $600 a month, how about bying a new pc.
it's not about saving an extra $600 per month. I have been increasing my debt continuing to live here the past year. I'll be taking what I'm "saving" to pay down my debts first.

if I had a use for a PC other than just mame, I would perhaps get one. I am still tempted to get an el-cheapo off of ebay that is perhaps even just 1 GHz instead of a new system just for MAME.

However, that isn't me. I wouldn't want the PC otherwise. It would just be taking up space.

I have an interest in developing/porting other things to MacOS X.

To just go and buy a cheap PC and just play mame there would essentially be saying screw the mac platform only because of replay file incompatiblity issues? cmon.

It might end up being that anyway...but I'm not going to go spend even $500 for a cheap PC only so others at MARP would be happy I would be using the same wolfmame they are.

The true solution is a true port of wolfmame to MacOS that has the replay files cross-platform compatible etc. It sucks the macmame dev didn't care about that as he developed and kept upgrading macmame over the years. If it was done from the start it wouldn't have taken much effort.

This in turn would make MARP attractive to mac gamers as they would then be able to view wolfmame inps from those playing on PCs.

Mac gamers could then also participate in the Decas and other competitive events.

Competing in those would actually be more of a motivation for me to spend $500 to get an ok PC versus doing it only so I would submit wolfmame replays to MARP like most others.

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 4:51 pm
by Chad
I think i and barry brought this up before, but i'll ask again. I don't see why you can't use the xmame build, i thought mac now has a bash window and Xlib compilabilty and thus you can probly complie xmame with hardware acceleration etc? if you can compile xmame i can help you make it into xwolfmac mame.

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 6:50 pm
by mahlemiut
I think he's said that it's too slow. OpenGL hardware accelerated rendering should be perfectly possible on a Mac though. Maybe upgrading from 400MHz would be a better idea though - that is quite sad, especially for MAME.

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 8:37 pm
by LN2
Chad wrote:I think i and barry brought this up before, but i'll ask again. I don't see why you can't use the xmame build, i thought mac now has a bash window and Xlib compilabilty and thus you can probly complie xmame with hardware acceleration etc?
Well, I have not read up on it recently. The last xmame report I heard ported to OS X ran slower on a 1.5 GHz G4 than macmame runs on my 450Mhz G3.

Apple abandoned x-windows for Jaguar (10.2) OS. It has a new x-windows with opengl acceleration with video cards the MacOS supports but that version requires Panther(OS 10.3.x) to run it. I would need to get a new mac to run 10.3.x.

That's just too plain slow from previous reports in x-windows for 10.2 or earlier. I can get those speeds in VirtualPC using pcmame.

The latest macmame build does have built-in opengl acceleration. For some games, especially neogeo games, it can make a difference of 200% in speed. I can run a neogeo game like Metal Gear(1 and 2) at 100% speed even at frameskip 0. I can't even quite get that at frameskip 6 using software rendering.

I just don't plain have the time right now to do something like xmame.
I have little to no experience with things like fink and libs I likely would need to install to get any x-windows thing running now.

I would much rather take that time when I have it toward making a real mac port of wolfmame versus a port that then runs in a port of xwindows.

Yes, my mac is slow. It's still generally fine for me for most users I have. it's even fine for most games I like to play. I am generally not into most of the 1990 games that generally require faster hardware.

Well, I have spent the past couple of hours experimenting with marble madness and getting frustrated.

I can make an inp in pc-mame...and convert it so it runs in macmame just fine(well, just testing with inp only clearing first maze...so still not sure time sync is 100%...but it does play...no service mode or reset crap. I am adding the 32 byte header and then 8 bytes at the point in the inp where the byte frame size appears to change from 40 bytes/frame to 48 bytes/frame.

...and do the reverse procedure to convert that particular inp back to pcmame format and it playsback fine also.

...but then I try same with an original macmame inp...doesn't work.
I then removed all the extra frames at the start until it seems the game starts where it appears to go into 48 bytes per frame instead of 40 bytes per frame it has in the beginning. When I did that with my macmame inp so the initial start of those 48 byte frames matches up, then it starts and DOES PLAY the first maze back properly in PC-mame.

However, at start of 2nd maze it's apparent the time sync is off. I need to add some frames.

...so I'm now trying to figure out at what increments I can add frames back before the game starts so it does playback versus going into service mode. I tried adding just 1 frame and it resulted in the playback going into service mode.

It's very odd.

It seems games like centipede and millipede might be very similar.

I tried mschamp also. I could get playback to work on the other platform but not get the time sync right where the monsters come out of the box in the same manner. The problem is is that I am assuming if the time sync is correct from the start then the monsters will come out of the box the same way...but that maybe isn't the entire story and perhaps the macmame build generates a different pseudo-random number for how the red and pink monsters come out initially versus in pcmame.

If the later, then an xmame build for x-windows through MacOS X likely wouldn't help here.

It would help if I had a basic guide for bytes sizes of frames without having to dive into the code to try and find it myself. I am just guessing what the sizes are from looking at the replay file.

Maybe I should stay away from analog games at first and just try with regular non-analog control games.

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 9:50 pm
by LN2
ok, I downloaded Ron's Marble madness inp played in mame60.

I have it close to playing correctly in macmame60. ..just slight time sync issue....found spot to add/remove frames so it still playsback but different sync.

it's after the credit is popped. Adding frames before the credit is popped does nothing but make it go into service mode instead....very odd.

I have been able to affect the outcome of the first maze by adding/removing frames...so it's just finding the right amount I hope.

However, I tried watching his replay in VPC in mame60 and it just goes into service mode. AHHH!

I have no idea why it is doing that for me. Can others play back his inp ok in mame60? Perhaps something in the ini is affecting my playback. His score is confirmed so someone has played it back successfully.

This is why this stuff gets frustrating cuz even testing things in VPC cuz emulation speed or cuz using win98 can affect the playback alone on the original pc inp.

Seeing what his ball does in that first maze can help me find the right time sync....cuz when I make an adjustment unless the ball goes wildly off the maze I really have little clue if in sync or not until the second maze. I have it where with 2 frames removed, it is "in sync" until near the end of the 2nd level where by 1 pixel he falls off the edge....which obviously doesn't happen on pc version.


Maybe I'll go ahead and try a couple non-analog games. They should be a lot easier. :P

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 10:53 pm
by LN2
ok, just tried phantoma(clone of spectar).

I was able to add/subtract 1 frame at a time, and test the playback each time. Each frame change did change the initial map design.

However, trying a range of adding 1-30 frames and subtracting 1-30 frames, none of those generated the same map as I had from a pc-mame replay.

So...more is at work here besides just the information in the inp file.

There likely are endian issues or seed reference issues with respect to pseudo-random number generation that might be part of these choices.

Anyway, I think I have used enough time attempting this. There still might be some games that have a simple solution like my pacman replay file did. I guess I likely can do similar conversions for all my other pacman clone inps at least.

[edit addition...]
Ok, using Lordgaz's tips for converting the pacman inp I have tried the same thing on a few of my pacman clone replays and it's working.

I'll convert all of those and post to a thread in the playbackability forum once they are online and ready for confirmation.

Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 2:22 am
by Chad
ron has two mame60 marble madness recordings, please be specific with a link when refering to recordings:

http://marp.retrogames.com/inp/8/0/f/rc ... mame60.zip

this one goes left then right and then makes a jump on the first ramp, playsback fine for me in windows XP. it probably would be better doing non analouge, but i'm imagining your problem is frameskiping, make sure it's fs0 analog games need it for playback. Seymore or a moderator: can you please Split these last three posts into a thread in Playbackability?

Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 2:28 am
by mahlemiut
I can run a neogeo game like Metal Gear(1 and 2) at 100% speed even at frameskip 0. I can't even quite get that at frameskip 6 using software rendering.
You mean Metal Slug, right?

There really shouldn't be much difference between software and hardware rendering, unless there's stretching involved. Software stretching is absurdly slow.

As a comparison, BBH got about a frameskip of 3-4 on most Neo Geo games on his P2-450, from memory. That's with sound enabled, of course.

Maybe a better X server might be an option. XFree86, maybe?

Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2004 12:25 pm
by MJS
LN2: Another option you have is to use AdvanceMAME. Among its great features it has Mac OS X support.

http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/doc-build.html

Give it a try!