Latest MAME?


Blue Protoman

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How come the Pandora (and other open source consoles, too) is subject to an older, less compatible MAME? Is it because of system requirements? Do they really go up with each release? What is the reason the latest version has not been ported?
 
How come the Pandora (and other open source consoles, too) is subject to an older, less compatible MAME? Is it because of system requirements? Do they really go up with each release? What is the reason the latest version has not been ported?
These are the ones available on openhandheldsMy linkAre they out of date?Im sure more work will be done.setting up mame on my pandy is on my to do list actually
 
How come the Pandora (and other open source consoles, too) is subject to an older, less compatible MAME? Is it because of system requirements? Do they really go up with each release? What is the reason the latest version has not been ported?

As MAME gets more advanced, the system requirements go up - this is mostly because the MAME devs don't care about playability; they want the most accurate emulation possible.


This includes such things as removing sound samples in favour of emulating the sound instead (takes vastly more CPU time) and not simulating a 3D graphics processor with OpenGL, but rather emulating it in software. So yes, as each version comes round, the system requirements go further up. There are MAME ports that revert back to the more sane (read: playable) methods, however, but the MAME devs don't condone this.


Remember, MAME is not there for you to play the games - it's there to document the hardware. Why they can't do this with a few hundred text files is beyond me; emulation is probably the worst way to "document" a CPU.


D.
 
Do any of these "sane" ports have the source code available so they can be ported to the Pandora? I don't give a damn if the MAME devs condone it or not.
 
This has been discussed in the past with well documented details, but in essence ..


Each version of MAME (or any project) changes .. adding more stuff, or changing old stuff; the MAME code has been substantially changed over time as its a fairly old project. Originally when it suported only a dozen games, its requirements internally were very different than when it supports stuff like Street Fighter Alpha, so the code changes. Rather than have dozens and dozens of very different code paths for different architectures (an unmaintainable mess), they simplify; probably the right thing to do in a lot of ways, but it does 'write off' older machines. ie: At very specific versions, they did changes that hurt less beefier machines -- consider, they used to support 8bpp paletted modes, and 16bpp, and 24bpp, and so on; at some point it was just too much burden to carry all that around, so they simplified and dropped 8bpp palette modes IIRC. Likewise for other changes .. at one point they supported dirty buffers, and now not. Stuff like that .. at specific versions, from version 1.2.3 to 1.2.4 (made up), the speed woudl drop 15% just like that.


So Pandora can run _current MAME_ reasonably well (its out there), and also an older mame like MAME4ALL much much more efficiently -- but with a featureset more or less locked in history. You get your pick.


jeffphone
 
Can't we have both?
We do actually have both. There's currently two versions of MAME you can run on the Pandora: one is oldish and the other is newer, but I forget exactly which versions they are. The newer one has better compatibility but is slower; the older one is much faster but less compatible. That's the tradeoff as mentioned: increase compatibility, decrease speed; that is the philosophy of the MAME project, that 100% perfect emulation is far more preferable to playability. So we have the older one which is pretty good for most things, and if your cabinet plays under it you should use it. If it doesn't, try the newer one but don't expect it to be as fast as it would have been.
 
Hm. I guess I'll have to get both when I get my Pandora. But my other question still stands; why can't we get a port of one of these "sane" (as described) versions?
 
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