New Mame Emulators/ Compatibility Lists

[herbfargus]

For those of you that are interested there are 3 new arcade emulators: lr-mame2003, lr-mame2010, and lr-fba-next.

The new emulators can be installed from the experimental menu after you’ve updated the setup script: see these pages:

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/FinalBurn-Alpha
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/MAME

I’ve created new compatibility lists for all three:

lr-mame2003

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LP1MELCvcxu7TfiowF_0ZuvRVEMqlfQyTVetnOJvuJc/edit?usp=sharing

lr-mame2010

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IRSmFrSDvIc6gAw0gn12TcQ3HDOwmrETTor8wvvb7VI/edit?usp=sharing

lr-fba-next

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GaqIIoiWbzKHwZ52S2xCSDQXILo81Ls1mHK6czKGAtM/edit?usp=sharing

Like the others they are open for anyone to edit if you feel so inclined.

I also updated the clrmamepro page with an easy to read chart of the new .dat files and simplified the instructions a bit:

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs

They are mainly for use on the rpi2. Fair warning they take quite a while to compile on the rpi2 (like 30 min to an hour, maybe more) you can try if you have a rpi1 but I doubt it will work very well but feel free to try it and let us know if you are able to get it to work.

[darksavior]

Tried them all. 2010 seems unusable for the ~10 games I tried. Too slow. These are games that are also too slow/aren’t in FBA.
2003 gave me better results with those same games. Most we’re fully playable. I’ll have to get compatible romsets for those that didn’t load. Some needed to be dropped to 640×480 for speed. Overall not bad. It’ll replace advmame for me. I do wish Ninja Warriors was playable at 1080P :(
On a Pi2.

Some of the games I tried:
1080P: Some with minor slowdowns here and there.
Battletoads
Cadash
Captain America and the Avengers
GIjoe
Robocop
Mystic Warriors

480p: Some with minor slowdowns here and there.
Bucky O Hare
SmashTV
Ninja Warriors (not stretched)

[dankcushions]

any more general impressions of these?

FBA-next – any good? the previous lr-FBA was pretty good, in my experience. all neogeo games were 100%, and the rest of the romset was handled mostly with ease. anything notable in the (slightly) later romset of FBA-next? any games handled better?

lr-imame4all was the best of the stock mame emulators, for me. street fighter 3 at full speed! it did have a few weaknesses, though: any scaling sega games (after burner, space harrier, etc), and the midway big-sprite games (MK series after 1, openice, etc), all performed with noticeable sound and lag issues. any improvements here?

i don’t expect anything outside of the old mame romsets having a hope of running on the pi 2, but any surprises? :)

[darksavior]

FBA-next supports more roms from a newer mame romset. So I suppose that’s better. I haven’t tried the new roms it supports.SF3 still has scratchy audio here and there. No change.
Mk1 runs better on Mame4all but Mk2 had less scratchy audio on 2003.
Oh, and Mame4all does not support SF3…

[dankcushions]

whoops, yeah, SF3 I have running on lr-FBA, not lr-imame4all :)

[Anonymous]

Finally got Mame 2003 up and going, roms so far work great! much better than AdvMame and Mame4all.

[jenksie]

Has anyone had any luck with the 2010 version. Just wondering before I go to the effort of getting a Romset and compiling.

[dankcushions]

so i’ve been messing around with lr-mame2003 – pretty good! however i’ve noticed that the 0.78 romset has a sizeable chunk of games that won’t work at all, to the extent where the nag message on load tells you it won’t work (usually because of copy-protection). i’d like to build a 0.78 datfile that ignores all these roms, as there’s no point having stuff clogging up your storage/emulationstation when it won’t boot.

so, if you look at the source code you can see how those messages are generated – it seems that the files in src/drivers contain all the warnings, so a search for GAME_NOT_WORKING across the entire code base will find all these games. eg:

mame2003-libretro/src/drivers/zn.c

GAMEX( 1995, ts2,      cpzn1,    znqsound, zn, zn,   ROT0, "Capcom/Takara", "Battle Arena Toshinden 2 (USA 951124)", GAME_UNEMULATED_PROTECTION | GAME_NOT_WORKING )
GAMEX( 1995, ts2j,     ts2,      znqsound, zn, zn,   ROT0, "Capcom/Takara", "Battle Arena Toshinden 2 (JAPAN 951124)", GAME_UNEMULATED_PROTECTION | GAME_NOT_WORKING )
GAMEX( 1996, starglad, cpzn1,    znqsound, zn, zn,   ROT0, "Capcom/", "Star Gladiator (USA 960627)", GAME_UNEMULATED_PROTECTION | GAME_NOT_WORKING )
GAMEX( 1996, sfex,     cpzn1,    znqsound, zn, zn,   ROT0, "Capcom/Arika", "Street Fighter EX (ASIA 961219)", GAME_UNEMULATED_PROTECTION | GAME_NOT_WORKING )
GAMEX( 1996, sfexj,    sfex,     znqsound, zn, zn,   ROT0, "Capcom/Arika", "Street Fighter EX (JAPAN 961130)", GAME_UNEMULATED_PROTECTION | GAME_NOT_WORKING )
GAMEX( 1996, glpracr,  cpzn1,    zn,       zn, zn,   ROT0, "Tecmo", "Gallop Racer (JAPAN Ver 9.01.12)", GAME_UNEMULATED_PROTECTION | GAME_NO_SOUND | GAME_NOT_WORKING )
GAMEX( 1997, sfexp,    cpzn1,    znqsound, zn, zn,   ROT0, "Capcom/Arika", "Street Fighter EX Plus (USA 970311)", GAME_UNEMULATED_PROTECTION | GAME_NOT_WORKING )
GAMEX( 1997, sfexpj,   sfexp,    znqsound, zn, zn,   ROT0, "Capcom/Arika", "Street Fighter EX Plus (JAPAN 970311)", GAME_UNEMULATED_PROTECTION | GAME_NOT_WORKING )
GAMEX( 1997, rvschool, cpzn1,    znqsound, zn, zn,   ROT0, "Capcom", "Rival Schools (ASIA 971117)", GAME_UNEMULATED_PROTECTION | GAME_NOT_WORKING )
GAMEX( 1997, jgakuen,  rvschool, znqsound, zn, zn,   ROT0, "Capcom", "Justice Gakuen (JAPAN 971117)", GAME_UNEMULATED_PROTECTION | GAME_NOT_WORKING )
GAMEX( 1998, tgmj,     cpzn1,    znqsound, zn, zn,   ROT0, "Capcom/Akira", "Tetris The Grand Master (JAPAN 980710)", GAME_UNEMULATED_PROTECTION | GAME_NOT_WORKING )

so my plan is to go through all these (100+) driver files, and then manually locate and remove any GAME_NOT_WORKING from my 0.78 datfile, and the provide that to the community, so we can rebuild our romsets, unless anyone can think of anything quicker? it seems scriptable. i was hoping that there was a generic 0.78 working-only datfile, as the list would be the same across any mame emulator using this romset, but i couldn’t locate one :(

(i will also update the compatibility spreadsheets as i go – anything that is GAME_NOT_WORKING we can blindly mark as ‘doesn’t work’)

PS – i imagine this approach will also be relevant to the mame2010 and other mame emulators, if anyone wants a project :)

[dankcushions]

ok, i’ve done the above exercise (took ages!) and updated the mame2003 compatibility spreadsheet. anything i’ve marked as ‘not working’ should have the ‘game_not_working’ string in the comments. some notes on that:

– ‘game_not_working’ is a little vague. i did some spot-checks and some games would boot, but they would have had graphical/gameplay glitches to the point where they were unplayable. i think under our definitions, these games might be classed as ‘has issues’, but i feel ok about marking them as ‘not working’ given the severity of the issues.

– the spreadsheet has a few lines that need deleting that i noticed – they will have a blank in the game name, and garbage in the ‘bios’ column. i can’t delete them due to write-protection.

– there are a LOT of games that don’t work, and it’s most of the ‘new’ games, to extent where i’m not sure what mame2003 gives us over the previous mame4all romset. are there any significant games that work now, that didn’t before/weren’t included?

– i have generated a new dat file for the ‘working’ subset of these games. i’ll release it in the other thread once i’ve checked it works on my system.

[Floob]

@dankcushions – almost makes me wonder if 0.78 is correct for that version.

[herbfargus]

the source code readme specifies it as .78 https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro but they also have done some patches so I don’t know about total compatibility- mame has always been a mystery to me

I also removed the garbage rows.

[dankcushions]

0.78 is definitely the right version for the mame2003 emulator – i’m scraping information from the driver files themselves, calling out these specific games from the romset as not working.

my understanding is that mame development is always playing catch-up with the available rom dumps, so whilst the 2003 0.78 mame romset included a whole lot of stuff, not all of that had been emulated completely yet. i figure that it’s not a huge problem – helps us cut down our game libraries!

i’m going to upload my working dat file in the other thread and then do the same process with lr-imame4all. i hope to reach some sort of conclusion as to what is the best emulator, at the end!

[dankcushions]

sorry, minor issue with the FBA-Next spreadsheet herb – last few columns are frozen somehow, so you can’t see the notes column properly. cheers :)

[herbfargus]

Should be fixed now

[Anonymous]

Anyone know where .chd should go for lr-mame2003?

[windale]

So is there a datfile for MAME 2003 that has working Roms only ? Where do I find it ?

Also, after everyone contributed to the Compatibility Lists (mainly Mame 0.37), I think Herb said he was going to make a datfile for the working games only, was that ever made ?

[herbfargus]

I know @dankcushions said that he was working on parents only sets/ working sets, and I think he’s set up a few but I’m not sure how extensive they are, I’ve been pretty swamped with uni, so a lot of my mame testing has gone to the backburner.

see this post:

HOWTO: Use datfiles to eliminate clones, etc, from Mame/FBA/Neogeo

[herbfargus]

This Page has all the mame Dats thus far: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Managing-ROMs#lr-mame2003

It’s also linked to my github repo where I keep copies of all the dat files so far:

https://github.com/HerbFargus/retropie-dat

[windale]

Thanks Herbfargus for pointing me in the right direction and thanks Dankcushions for the Mame 2003 Lite datfile. It will do for now. It’s been a while since I used my Pi.

[dankcushions]

it looks like lr-fba-next has been updated to 0.2.97.37 – https://github.com/libretro/libretro-fba

not many games added, but it looks like some of the drivers have been updated so games that once didn’t work/worked badly may now be working! eg CPS3 games like jojos now work without all the bugs as before. a thread on this: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/issues/1080#issuecomment-154855836

[epe9686518]

Nice find! I have been quite impressed with lr-fba-next, it works great, plays games as good as pifba, and has more support and plays more games than that release, and of course you can use all of the retroarch filters and settings… Can anyone confirm that fba-next actually supports .chd files on pi? I haven’t been able to confirm this, nor if it does figure out how the chd files need to be configured to get them to work. From what I have seen thus far, it appears the PC version does support chd files, and it appears they need to be added to the rom .zip file but I cannot confirm any of this for the pi release…

[yfdtsrer]

I haven’t tried the new roms it supports.SF3 still has casesam.co.uk scratchy audio here and there.

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