Vaughan
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Posts posted by Vaughan
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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.
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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!
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35560458
The video game of Steven Spielberg's ET is considered to be one of the worst of all time and has even been blamed for triggering the collapse of Atari. Howard Scott Warshaw, the gifted programmer who made it, explains how it was rushed out in a matter of weeks - and how he feels about those events in California now.
Spielberg was unimpressed.
"Couldn't you do something more like Pac-Man?" he asked.
It was July 1982 and Atari, then one of the world's most successful tech companies, had just paid a reported $21m for the video game rights to Spielberg's new blockbuster, ET the Extra-Terrestrial.
Howard Scott Warshaw was the programmer tasked with designing the game.
"I was stunned," says Warshaw. "Here was Steven Spielberg, one of my idols, suggesting that I knock off the game! My impulse was to go, 'Well, gee, Steven, couldn't you make something more like The Day The Earth Stood Still?'"
Warshaw's stock was high at Atari. The 24-year-old had just finished the video game of Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark. Spielberg considered Warshaw a "certifiable genius" and 36 hours earlier Warshaw had been hand-picked for their next collaboration.
"It was a day that will live in infamy in my life forever," says Warshaw. "I was sitting in my office and I get a call from the Atari CEO. He said, 'Howard, we need the ET video game done. Can you do it?'
"And I said, 'Absolutely, yes I can!'"
Games for the Atari 2600 were distributed on cartridges that took weeks to manufacture. If ET was to be in the shops for Christmas, Warshaw had a tight deadline.
"The CEO goes, 'We need it for 1 September.' That left five weeks to do it! Normally it'd be six to eight months to do a game, not five weeks.
"Then he said, 'Design the game and on Thursday morning, be at the airport and there will be a Learjet waiting to take you to see Spielberg.'
"I'm not sure exactly what I was full of but whatever it was, I was overflowing with it."
Warshaw drew up his pitch to Spielberg, and travelled from the Atari headquarters in Sunnyvale, California to Los Angeles. His idea was an adventure game in which the player had to help ET phone home by collecting components to make an inter-planetary telephone. The player would have to dodge government agents and scientists in order to complete the mission.
"I got down to Spielberg and I laid out the whole design," he says. "I told him, 'I think it's really important that we do something innovative. ET is a breakthrough movie and I think we need a breakthrough game.'
"I talked him out of the idea of a Pac-Man knock-off. But the key was to design a game that I could deliver in five weeks."
Atari needed ET to be a hit. In 1982 sales had reached a peak of $2bn but the company was losing market share to home computers like the Commodore 64, which could do more than play games.
"It was the hardest I've ever worked on anything in my life," says Warshaw, who was the game's sole programmer. "I started working at the office but after a while I realised there was a problem; I still have to go home to sleep and eat occasionally.
"So we had another development system installed in my house so that I would never be more than two minutes away from working on the code except when I was driving.
"There was a manager who was assigned to make sure I was eating so that I'd be able to keep going.
"When it came to the end of the process, my reaction was, 'Wow, I did it!'"
Atari ordered an initial run of four million copies and budgeted a reported $5m on what would be, at the time, the biggest-ever advertising campaign for a video game.
"ET needs help from his human friend - and that's you!" read the magazine ad. Television commercials ran for weeks. Spielberg himself appeared in a promotional video, whilst Warshaw was flown to the London premiere of ET and given a seat in front of the Princess of Wales.
"The bosses believed that as long as we put anything out the door with ET's name on it would sell millions and millions," he says.
To begin with, the game was "right up there on the Billboard top sellers" but word began to spread that there were serious problems.
"It was a finished game but it certainly wasn't perfect," Warshaw says. "There were too many opportunities where you could suddenly wind up in an odd situation. That was too much for a lot of people and caused them to put the game down."
Players complained that the ET character would inexplicably fall into pits and get stuck. As one 10-year-old told The New York Times: "It wasn't fun."
Atari soon realised that ET was not going home. In early December 1982 it announced "disappointing" sales for the year and the value of its parent company Warner Communications plunged. The results triggered steep drops in the value of other video game makers.
"After the Christmas season it was starting to come back from retailers," says Warshaw. "It still sold nearly 1.5 million units, but when you needed to sell four million, that's not good enough."
By the second quarter of 1983, Atari's parent company announced losses of $310m.
"Things just started to unravel," says Warshaw. "It's awesome to be credited with single-handedly bringing down a billion-dollar industry with eight kilobytes of code. But the truth is a little more complex."
Consumers were turning to the home computer and the market was saturated with video games. In a bid to avoid collapse, prices - and much of the workforce - were slashed. But it was futile and in July 1984 Warner offloaded Atari for $240m.
"I took some time off to recover from the whole experience," says Warshaw. "I went into real estate for a couple of years and hated it.
"Eventually I went back to technology, returning to video games as a manager and director, but it had lost the charm by then."
Creatively unfulfilled, Warshaw undertook projects in writing and TV production.
"I knew I was done with the industry but I couldn't envision an alternative. I became depressed."
Warshaw's solution was "to throw reason to the wind" and in 2008 he retrained as a psychotherapist.
"Maybe a part of me really wanted to compensate for all the trauma and depression I created with the ET game," he says. "But in reality it's something I always wanted to do."
Today Warshaw bills himself as The Silicon Valley Therapist, "fluent in both English and nerd". Does he use his own story of colossal failure with clients?
"Sometimes I do," he admits.
"But every therapist uses their own experience with their clients. To me it's a very natural thing. Programmers and therapists are all systems analysts. It's just that I've moved on to a much more sophisticated hardware."
In April 2014 Warshaw was given his own chance to obtain closure on the ET fiasco. A film company was making a documentary about a legend that had persisted for 30 years - that in 1983 Atari had buried truckloads of the unsold ET games in the New Mexico desert.
"I never believed it, I just thought it was absurd," says Warshaw.
The city of Alamogordo granted permission for a public excavation to take place. Warshaw was invited to attend.
"When we arrived, there was a long, long line of fans from all over the country who had travelled to see this," he says. "It was an odd thing to sit there and literally watch your past being dug up."
The excavation confirmed that Atari products were indeed buried at the dump and Warshaw was filmed at the moment a battered and crushed copy of ET was pulled from the ground.
"I became extremely emotional," he says. "This little game that I had written in five weeks more than 30 years ago was still generating excitement. I was full of gratitude.
"Is ET really the worst game of all time? Probably not. But the story of the fall of the video game industry needed a face and that was ET.
"I actually prefer it when people do identify it as the worst game of all time because I also did Yars Revenge and that's frequently identified as one of the best of all time. So between the two, I have the greatest range of any designer in history!"
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First off, thank you for the replies. I have an opti miniPAC 2 arcade cab setup with two player buttons, spinner and U-Trak. The controls are usually mapped with button presses that correspond with key strokes. I am not using 5200 controllers.
\\if you choose Joystick, as described earlier, can you configure it by altering the PART TYPE under the Joystick options?
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It's running and the vibrancy of color — it just looks BEAUTIFUL! It's been a long time, man... wow, that 5200 flashy stuff looks so good.
But I'll be damned if I can get the controls mapped. I am not green when it comes to this stuff, I have managed to get 10+ emulators up and running, but THIS - ! I have spent probably an hour just trying to figure out control mapping. I've seen some help online but it is not getting me anywhere.
Would anyone be willing to help me with dummy-proof, step-by-step direction for this? I would really and truly appreciate it. : )
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Curious, did you set the Autofire as low as it goes (1)? It defaults to 3..... or is it still too slow?
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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?
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I'd update your frontend - the option is usually easily selectable from the menus. Changing your GUI won't affect your ROMS.
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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....
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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.
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The sound driver supplied by my MOBO maker already has an EQ available for it, among other settings. I can see though where if you don't have that, it can be good to get something like you did.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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!!!
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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!"
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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
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Long time Stella user, long time emulation user as far as that goes. I emulated a Mac on an Atari ST before some of you were even born!! Anywho...... Problem with Stella. If set to OpenGL, The mouse is invisible in full screen mode. Can make selections, but have to have mouse in just the right spot. Works fine in software mode, but perfomance on games suffers. Frogger flickers like hell when he is on the same line as the female frog. WAY more so than usual. Also mouse is fine in windowed mode. Can switch from windowed during menu and full screen during game play, but eyes are getting bad in my old age. I need full screen.
I have insralled latest version in a new location to test it and same thing. Any ideas???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)?
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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?
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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.
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Trackball (and steering) for MAME?
in Emulation
Posted · Edited by 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.