Vaughan

Agree with MrMaddog. In fact, this is precisely what I have used for some time. I got so used to the trackball, I no longer use a mouse at all. Kensington have four trackballs on the market. As you might have guessed, they go from cheap(ish) to expensive. The two cheaper models: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kensington-Orbit-Mouse-Ergonomic-Compatible-Sapphire-Blue/dp/B002Q42S4E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542885362&sr=8-1&keywords=kensington+trackball https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kensington-Orbit-Mouse-Ergonomic-Compatible/dp/B000HEW0KW/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1542885362&sr=8-4&keywords=kensington+trackball) both work great. The downside for both the cheaper models is the ball size. They both use a small ball, which for computer use is fine, but for gaming - not so much. They also only have 2 buttons, against the four in the expensive models. There are two models that use a large ball: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kensington-Expert-Mouse-Ergonomic-Compatible/dp/B00009KH63/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1542885362&sr=8-2&keywords=kensington+trackball https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kensington-SlimBlade-Mouse-Ergonomic-Compatible/dp/B001MTE32Y/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1542885362&sr=8-6&keywords=kensington+trackball In truth, for gaming, either one does the job. I personally fell in love with the inevitably more expensive model, the Slimline. However I stress, if it's just for gaming, either will do the same job. Setup is practically non-existent. Add to Windows, it's all plug and play. In Mame it will see the Trackball as a mouse, so just configure the game to use a mouse and BOOM, it works. There really is no other way to play, say, Marble Madness. Even the likes of Tempest are much improved by using a trackball. If money is tight, get a cheaper model, if you can stretch to it, get the bigger-ball model. I also use the Trackball in Stella.

You know the worst thing about Mame developers? The Mame Developers. They are the rudest bunch of condescending a**holes I've ever had the misfortune to communicate with. God forbid you ever ask them abut playing a game, or make a suggestion. Goodness no - they'll blast you for not liking what you get. The built in UI is a disaster. It is so very clearly written by people who know noting about designing and testing UI's. It's absolutely horrid. I stopped grabbing new versions because I finally got a version that worked for what I wanted. I won't upgrade Mame again. For every fix they make to a game, something else breaks. And you know what - if you're just a user, they basically hate you anyway. There were some good Mame UI's for Windows, but even the developers of those were attacked by Mame guys.... It's a great project, but damn, they're miserable b*astards.

Hey all. Apologies for posting here and then linking elsewhere, but I wanted to see if anyone here had an opinion. I have a thread HERE at Mameworld. Essentially, Atari 2600 emulation under Mame allows the use of Bezels. So I'm trying to see if there is any interest in having Bezels created for 2600 titles, or if this is the worst idea ever. There is a ZIP file over at Mameworld containing a Mock Up for people to test - so if you want you can grab that. Thanks all! ps: Stella is still the best!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35560458

\\if you choose Joystick, as described earlier, can you configure it by altering the PART TYPE under the Joystick options?

I may well have not understood your question - do you mean "how do I get my joystick to work with games?" If so - it's simple. In the Launcher click on OPTIONS - INPUT. In the PC INPUT change DEVICE to JOYSTICK.

I've not idea why this thread has turned into a little flame war. We're damn lucky to have Mame at all. From what i understand, Mame exists as a preservation project, not as a gaming platform. As a byproduct of the preservation, the games are playable. So for example. There's a game called EXAMPLE. The arcade version had speech, but the current Mame version doesn't. In the next version of Mame, the devs are adding the speech - but it will kill the framerate. THE DEVS WILL ADD THE SPEECH. They're not concerned about whether it's playable (though obviously that's a great side-effect), they want to preserve the original. I thought this was all well understood, but maybe I'm wrong. Other people - not MAME Dev's - have come up with front ends. I've been using them for years, and guess what - I don't actually like ANY of them. However, I've learned my way about, and can get everything to work. I prefer to think the best front end hasn't been written yet. As an aside - I did have a chat in recent times with a Mame dev about some of my favorite games. I had written that I didn't really think I needed to keep up with Mame updates because the games I like all fall between 1975-1985ish. I'm not interested in newer games. The guy (forget the name) corrected me - a lot of work is still going into the drivers for those old games to add bits and pieces missing. Frame rates go down, but processing power goes up, and most of the time it's a wash (I play Mame on an i7). I think we should be grateful for what we've got, for me it's truly amazing. If and when you get a setup working as you want - leave it alone! If you must have a newer version, get it, and install it in a different folder - keep things seperate. That way you can fall back to the old version if needed. It's not rocket science. The frontends are tiny, after all. I did use CLRMAME once, I created a lot of problems for myself. User error, no doubt.

My 2 cents. As others have said, it doesn't always pay to have the latest and greatest. If you have all the games you want, why change anything? Basically I have two complete sets of ROMS. A version for .149, and a version for .160. I have mulitple front ends installed, one for each set of ROMS. My folder structure goes like this: I have a folder called MAME. Under that I have three folders. MAME149, which contains a frontend for .149, MAME160 which has a frontend for .160, and MAME FOLDERS. MAME FOLDERS contains all the frontend folders that can be shared among different front ends - such as ARTWORK, BEZEL, HI, HLSL etc. Then I have a ROMS folder, which contains a 149 folder, and a 160 folder. When installing a new front end, I just point it to use the shared folders and it works. This has made it very easy to grab new things, and to do it without breaking what i had before. In truth I could delete all the 149 stuff, but I leave it there as a sort of backup. I even had all the CHD files once, but decided they weren't worth keeping. I got all the 160 roms from a torrent - 32 GB or so.

For Mame, I have HQ3 turned on for everything. I don't use any other filters. Bilinear just blurs things. I'm also not interested in simulating a CRT with the scanlines, and curvature and whatnot. I play on an LCD screen, and I like to have the best of best worlds. It's a funny thing about emulation. I think the work that goes into it is amazing stuff, from dedicated people. I enjoy that they can make it as close to the original as possible, it's very cool. But when it comes to PLAYING the games, I'm happy to compromise. I use HQ3 to even out the hagged edges (I play on a 52" TV, and they're very noticable.) I prefer an Xbox controller to the original controllers. I use autofire a lot. The games don't need to be look like the real thing to entertain - after all, it's the same game. If I was really dedicated to wanting it to be like it was back in the day, then I'd be driven to use the real hardware. I mean, I have a heavy sixer, and a bunch of carts. But playing 2600 games is done on Stella these days. Again, I appreciate all the hard work that goes into things, but a game is a game, and if I can make it look even better than back in the day, I usually do. ps: I consider myself knowledgable - but I was never able to get MESS working. Now that the MESS code is rolled into Mame, perhaps the standard Mame interfaces will make things easier. I liked the idea of MESS, but man what a nightmare. Strangely no-one else ever failed quite as completely as me.

I don't know why I didn't think to post about them in here before - but better late than never. Last night I came across some killer artwork from Atariboy, and it reminded me. Anyway, I have created some custom bezels for games that don't have them. You can find them here: http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=2&Number=342720&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1&new=1437888770

Curious, did you set the Autofire as low as it goes (1)? It defaults to 3..... or is it still too slow?

I stand to be corrected here - but I think you have to be a bit careful updating Mame. Early games worked great in earlier versions, but may have performance issues with later builds as things move on. I personally gave up keeping things up-to-date. If you're got performance problems then maybe try an earlier version of Mame?

I'd update your frontend - the option is usually easily selectable from the menus. Changing your GUI won't affect your ROMS.

I wouldn't play half the games I play for fun on Mame without Autofire - the days when I wanted to button mash are long gone. As far as I know Autofire is a function of the front end. I use IV/Play - and that have Autofire. Having said that, IV/Play has a horrid bug in its interface if you're using an Xbox controller, as I am. The selection screen goes mad at times. Since there's no setting to disable the joystick in the interface it's just something I have to live with. I like IV/Play because it also has the excellent "Image Enhancement" settings. If I could find an interface that had both Autofire and Image Enhancement I'd likely switch to it....

Not easy for me. I use a PC, but it's not dedicated. To an extent all frontends are the same, so you're just down to cosmetic issues. However, there are two features I consider a just - an AUTOFIRE option (I'm too old for button mashing!) and Video FX, which smooth out graphics visually. I have tried MESS half a dozen times, and have yet to be able to get it to do anything. So - for me it's down to MAMEUI and IV/PLAY. MAMEUI doesn't have the video FX, but has autofire. IV/PLAY has both video FX and autofire - but the interface hates the XBox controller I use (random scrolling in the selection screen). I have appraised the games I play and it turns out I could be using MAME .95. But I really only play the early games.

The best OS to use is the one with the emulators you want on it first. Second to that is the OS you know best, since you may need to play with things later.

My soundcard has its own EQ, but it only works with digital out. My amp doesn't support digital in, so that option was out of the question. Obviously some apps have their own, for example VLC has one. What i really needed was an EQ for the entire system - that is every sound the system made (this is a Windows box). Turns out system-wide EQ is not an easy thing to find. You can find them to affect certain apps, but emulators weren't included. So i was glad to find this free one. It's tough to use without a GUI, but that's what PEACE does. It had a nice ON/OFF button, and works great. Just attempting to contribute. If I ever build a cabinet, this will be going in it.

Well, I don't post much because, frankly, because you guys all know a lot more than I do. My contributions are mostly saying "I like it" and such like, because you're always ten steps ahead. However, I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before - if it has, apologies. My problem, or rather issue, was that I felt the sounds in Mame, Stella and Altirra was a bit...... thin. I wanted low-end BOOMS. In other words, I wanted more bass. I tried to do this in Windows, and with the adjustments in my sound card, but it was impossible to do what I wanted. What I needed was a System Wide Equalizer, I could easily turn on and off when needed. That way, when gaming, I could set the levels to give me the BOOM. And so I found my solution. You need two bits of free software. You need Equalizer APO and PEACE. The former is the software that sets the sound, the latter is a user friendly GUI. Equalizer APO: http://sourceforge.net/projects/equalizerapo/ On the right of the page you'll find a link for PEACE. I've been using it for months now, and it's great. Since it's system wide it affects everything - VLC through Stella. Just a little tip incase anyone needs it.

I'm different from most here in that my purpose of having emulation is purely about access to some great games. What I mean is, I prefer to use a 360 Controller for all my Atari needs. I play on a LCD screen with no effects. On Mame I make use of Autofire (unless I participate on the High Score Comps on this site, of course). I want the games emulated properly, so they play the same, with the same level of difficulty etc. But for other things, such as how they look on the screen, and how I control them, I prefer settings and controllers that maximize the benefits of a modern age. I don't have a desire to use a CRT, for example, not when I'm already using a 52 inch LCD. More power to everyone doing things the way that brings them pleasure. For me, it's the games, not the hardware.

I have fond memories of Trojan - they had it in my local pub, we played the hell out of it. How about Space Invaders? I can't beat my high score of 3500!!!

Just in case someone finds this thread in the future........ No matter what I tried, although I could create the correct association in Windows, JAR files refused to start with double-clicking. I came across a utility via Google called "jarfix.exe". This purports to create the association for you. I tried it, and it did indeed fix my problem. A strange one this - I think I'll keep this utility to hand for the future!"

Hey Paulo! Thanks for the quick response. You nailed it. It seems that when I installed the latest version of Java, it broke the file association for JAR files. I'll have to mess with it now, because I thought I'd assigned it correctly a moment ago, but I still can't double click on it. When I right-click and choose OPEN WITH and choose Java Platform it does run. So I can get it to work now.... just need to mess with my Windows a bit.... Sorry to trouble you! By the way - the Java Version came back as 1.7.0_45-b18

  I don't know the answer - but I checked my setup, and I run in "Software" without performance issues. What's your OS and hardware (which video card do you have)?

Hey Peccin. I downloaded Version 4 last night (javatari40.jar) for use on my Windows 7 computer (64 bit). I found it doesn't work. I double-click on it, but nothing happens. I went to upgrade Java on the machine to the latest version, and I have the same result, double-click and nothing happens. Any ideas?

Don't feel bad - I have never been able to get MESS to work at all! I have MAME working great, along with Altirra, Stella, and JavAtari. But MESS.... I install it, and it just never allows me to add games. Madening... but at least I can game.