Pandora's Emulators - What Will Work And What Won't

[Tinnus]

IJ: FOT, DOTT, MI, MI2 and S&M all run in ScummVM

 

[indrema]

It looks like Pandora will, potentially, run everything from VGA's heyday. I don't think anyone should expect more than that. I mean, do we really need a portable version of "Bad Day on the Midway" or the glut of FMV titles that were forced on PC gamers after VGA?

 

[Joshwaan2k]

Well..

I'm hoping that Pandora will be fast enough to emulate when it's clocked to 800 or 900MHZ the following.

MAME: Mortal Kombat 2 and NBA Jam full speed with sound. note: I think both these games needed a P3 900MHZ to run full speed. So it might be possible to run full speed with the Cortex CPU.
N64: Mario 64,Banjo & Kazooie at quite good speed with sound.
Sega 32X games full speed + sound, Notz your Megadrive emu is fully sick mate, keep up the good work .
Dosbox: Blackthorne,Duke 3D, Doom, Hexen,Wolf3d.

I'd die a happy man if this is possible, hell... I might buy 2 if so

 

[Patrick R Ludvigsen]

I, for one, am eagerly hoping that Microsoft Dangerous Creatures is playable. Failing that, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 2.0.

 

[PolloLoco]

I know no one's signed up for it yet, but what kind of MAME capabilities can we recently expect?

I have a PSP and have been very disappointed by the level of MAME games that are actually playable.

I didn't own a GP2X, but notice that people have been really happy with it's mame performance. What are some of the more powerful games it can play? How about the TMNT arcade game, The Simpsons, or even Sega's Altered Beast?

 

[Chip]

I know no one's signed up for it yet, but what kind of MAME capabilities can we recently expect?

Laurent has said that he would like to port SDLMAME with some help from Franxis, so that's something to look forward to. As for what level of compatibility it will have, that's not easy to guess. Arcade hardware can use any combination of dozens of different processors - each of which has different requirements. I suspect it will be a matter of compiling everything, testing stuff to see what works, and commenting out support for stuff that doesn't work.

MAME for GP2X had very good compatibility, and Pandora should be able to improve on that considerably. I think we'll all be very happy with the selection of playable games on MAMEdora.

EDIT: Added link.

 

[Joshwaan2k]

I know no one's signed up for it yet, but what kind of MAME capabilities can we recently expect?

Laurent has said that he would like to port SDLMAME with some help from Franxis, so that's something to look forward to. As for what level of compatibility it will have, that's not easy to guess. Arcade hardware can use any combination of dozens of different processors - each of which has different requirements. I suspect it will be a matter of compiling everything, testing stuff to see what works, and commenting out support for stuff that doesn't work.

MAME for GP2X had very good compatibility, and Pandora should be able to improve on that considerably. I think we'll all be very happy with the selection of playable games on MAMEdora.

EDIT: Added link.


Thanks for that Chip, I guess with Pandora the Mame version will be higher version due to extra CPU power and memory.

So with that list I guess you could say all roms will run pretty much full speed on Pandora.

 

[Prophet]

Laurent has said that he would like to port SDLMAME with some help from Franxis,

Where did he say this? I would love to yellow light MAME in the list.

 

[ldesnogu]

Laurent has said that he would like to port SDLMAME with some help from Franxis,

Where did he say this? I would love to yellow light MAME in the list.

If I say it here is that OK?

I don't know if you follow current MAME development, but the latest release contains an interface for runtime code generation (DRC). Currently only MIPS uses it and it targets only ia32 and x86_64. I asked Aaron if he would agree on extending the support to other cores and targets and he's OK with that. BTW I am a MAMEdev so it could help things... or not

 

[Prophet]

Laurent,

I used to follow MAME religiously. Not as much in the past year or so. In fact many years ago I modded the official MAME board when it was hosted at Retrogames. But yes, I LOVE MAME.

So let me understand you - are you saying that we will be able to simply change the make target and compile a Pandora build someday?

EDIT: I take it you're Laurent Desnogues, maintainer of XMAME? Good to have a MAMEdev around here!

 

[vampire8bit]

Laurent has said that he would like to port SDLMAME with some help from Franxis,

Where did he say this? I would love to yellow light MAME in the list.


Prophet, it's posts 25, 27 and 28 on this thread.

I hope that Franxis ports MAME after his excellent work on the GP2X and I'm sure help from other members like Laurent would be much appreciated. Slaanesh also helped a lot with GP2Xmame and it would be great to have him provide help and support.

Let's wait for Franxis to say something regarding porting MAME to Pandora.

 

[Prophet]

Crap, how did I miss that? Thanks.

I'll yellow light MAME. Obviously we're gonna have it on Pandora.

 

[ldesnogu]

So let me understand you - are you saying that we will be able to simply change the make target and compile a Pandora build someday?

Using SDLMAME, the answer is yes. SDLMAME already works on many platforms, MacOS X and PS3 for instance.
But what I have in mind is slightly more involved: generating ARM code dynamically, using the new infrastructure.

QUOTE
EDIT: I take it you're Laurent Desnogues, maintainer of XMAME? Good to have a MAMEdev around here!

Yes I am the happy maintainer of a dead project

I hope that Franxis ports MAME after his excellent work on the GP2X and I'm sure help from other members like Laurent would be much appreciated. Slaanesh also helped a lot with GP2Xmame and it would be great to have him provide help and support.

Let's wait for Franxis to say something regarding porting MAME to Pandora.

The fact is that neither Franxis or Slaanesh have said they would work on it

 

[Prophet]

I think MAME is kind of particular in that list. It belongs to several entries because it emulates a wide range of arcade HW.

Perhaps having a dedicated Arcade entry would be useful and then refine it into several generations of arcade HW.

Given I can put my hands on a dev unit, I will probably spend some time porting SDLMAME. Of course, I would work with Franxis to see if porting the changes he did to MAME .37 make SDLMAME usable

I apologize for missing this post earlier. That's great you would like to maybe work along with Franxis.

I like your point of making a seperate arcade section, but to keep things simple I generalized (greatly, I know!) by putting 80's arcades in 8bit and 90's arcades in 16bit etc. I may refine it a bit more though. Just not sure it's needed, since MAME is so HUGE.

 

[Esn]

I don't know very much about MAME... but is "S.T.U.N. Runner" a possibility?

I've been playing the wonderful (believe it or not!) Atari Lynx version over the past few days, and it leaves me wondering what the real deal is like.

By the way, does anyone have tuskenraider2k's contact info? It would be great news if he could port his Atari Lynx emulator to the Pandora.

 

[Prophet]

STUN Runner was great fun in the arcades - I used to play the sitdown cab. The Lynx version is extremely close, except for the graphic quality.

And yes, it's supported by MAME. Play it on your PC.

As for tuskenraider2k - it would be great for him to emerge onto the scene again.

 

[vampire8bit]

Prophet, another one for yellow, really looking forward to the PC Engine , my favourite system after C64 and MSX

and Exophase has indicated Temper will most probably be ported to the Pando.

Also gpSP.

 

[KRH]

Should GBA be highlighted in Green since Boycott Advance can run in a Java applet?

The website says that "Most games run at ~60 FPS on an AMD Athlon 750 Mhz"
So if we overclock to around 850MHz then it should probably run ok? :huh:

(In no way am I denouncing a Dedicated emu, which I know to be
far superior in both compatibility and Speed)

 

[fusion_power]

BTW I am a MAMEdev so it could help things... or not

Cool. I always wanted to ask someone from MAME, how fast this Emulator could be if the focus would be on Speed instead of 1:1 emulation. ^_^ Since I use MAME (PC), it always feelt, like there could be squeezed out much much more speed...theoretical, especially the poor 3D Performance felt like this.

So will a possible PANDORA-MAME also "only" goes the way of perfect 1:1 Emulation...or is it possible to use everything of the Pandora-Hardware that speeds up the Emulation, even if it's not longer an 1:1 emulation?

I'm asking becasue of Games like "Radiant Silvergun" etc. . I Doubt, we will ever see a useful SEGA SATURN Emulator so the only way to (MAYBE) play this game (and others) mobile is MAME for Pandora.

 

[Prophet]

Prophet, another one for yellow, really looking forward to the PC Engine , my favourite system after C64 and MSX

and Exophase has indicated Temper will most probably be ported to the Pando.

Also gpSP.



Yellowed! I LOVE Blazing Lazers and Bonk.

Does Temper support PCE CD-ROM? We really need that emulated on Pandora as well - lots of great games and it could run flawlessly on Pandora.

Should GBA be highlighted in Green since Boycott Advance can run in a Java applet?

The website says that "Most games run at ~60 FPS on an AMD Athlon 750 Mhz"
So if we overclock to around 850MHz then it should probably run ok? :huh:

(In no way am I denouncing a Dedicated emu, which I know to be
far superior in both compatibility and Speed)



Hmm, interesting.

But I'll leave it as is for now, since I'm really documenting Pandora-specific projects here. Plus Exophase will make fast work of gpSP for Pandora, and it will probably be beyond perfect and nobody will want to use anything else anyway.