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[ressurectionx]

QUOTE(G19 @ Jan 21 2008, 10:37 PM)

The one problem I have had with people making sets (including myself) is how they define 'Working'. Even in 'Arcades', games are included which patently do NOT run 100%. I mostly play shooters (shmups) like DoDonPachi, R-Type etc and I especially notice those types of games which do not run as they should. eg Dragon Blaze. Also games were included with no sound eg. Batsugun, V-Five etc. I know this is a compromise some people are willing to make to play certain games eg. MK3, but for me it is a bridge too far.

Yes.... this is a problem that I've been considering as well.  Any games which have lagging problems or no sound/ messed up sound I have made notes of.  I think unless I REALLY enjoyed playing it as a kid I will be removing these from the list as well.  Any one that I would like to keep I will see if there is a way somebody can write some code to get it to work on MAMEdox Arcades.  I know it can be done (probably not all the time), because there were about 15 to 20 or so roms that I'd already tested on MAMEox128 Plus that I had marked as not working from anything to controller issues, sound issues or even OUT OF MEMORY errors that are included in the list on MAMEdox Arcades.  And from reading BritneysPAIRS posts, I believe that he wouldn't put any roms on his emulator that didn't play perfectly.   I can't confirm this myself at this point because I haven't personally tested his emulator at all as I don't have it yet.  (No Mortal Kombat games on the list of working MAMEdox Arcades though, for example)

A real big thing for me would be to make the US roms the main roms in here, like I said above.  Between that issue, some Japanese roms being used over US roms, some 2 player roms being used over 3 or 4 player roms and some other similar issues, there are actually 128 different roms that I would use in my ideal romset that are different than the ones that BritneysPAIRS used.

I'm pretty excited about this now and I believe that I can put together a good list of games which should be added to or changed for MAMEdox Arcades, if BritneysPAIRS would be gracious enough to take a look at it.

Keeping my fingers crossed.....

QUOTE(competes2win @ Jan 21 2008, 10:15 PM)

haha you're crazy man going through all this... but keep up the good work.

Yeah, I know man.  I don't know why I do it, but once I start something like this I gotta see it through.  Back to the PSX compatability list when I'm done with this too.   Thanks for the good word.

[hargle]

http://xbox.nugnugnug.com/index.php?name=UpDownload&req=getit&lid=288

that's a link to the dat file I just created off my set o' trimmed up and merged roms.  Hopefully I've created the .dat file properly for people to use-I haven't done this type of stuff before.

sorry that I disappeared from this project for a bit, and hope this might help cut out some of the drivel.

[RMM]

I might be mistaken but I believe Britney Pairs is hacking many of the ROMS to try and get speed increases or to help those ROMS play better in some way.  If thats the case then most of these ROMS  would not work in Mameox128 so it would serve no purpose to try and use a ROM list from Mame Arcades because they wouldnt be compatible with Mameox128.  Its almost like the old NEORage situation where you had to use specially hacked ROMS to work with that specific emulator while most of the standard MAME ROMS wouldnt work.

[ressurectionx]

QUOTE(RMM @ Jan 22 2008, 08:37 AM)

I might be mistaken but I believe Britney Pairs is hacking many of the ROMS to try and get speed increases or to help those ROMS play better in some way.  If thats the case then most of these ROMS  would not work in Mameox128 so it would serve no purpose to try and use a ROM list from Mame Arcades because they wouldnt be compatible with Mameox128.  Its almost like the old NEORage situation where you had to use specially hacked ROMS to work with that specific emulator while most of the standard MAME ROMS wouldnt work.

Yes RMM.  This is true.  I know from experience now that there are at least 20 or 30 roms that I had listed as unworking in MAMEdox128 that BritneysPAIRS got working for MAMEdox Arcades, And I had only tested about 1,700 games myself, if you include all of the clones for the games I tested.  These include bad controller configurations, blank screen on load, crashes xbox on load and MEMORY ALLOCATION errors, among other problems that he fixed.  Pretty cool that he got extra games to work if you ask me.  I believe I read somewhere that he said that he's done somewhere around 300 fixes so far.  

I think it's a pretty safe bet though that if the game does work without any problems in MAMEox128 Plus that it should work in MAMEdox Arcades with little to no tinkering though.  That's the list I'm making now.  I have already noticed roms that work in MAMEox128 that I do like that haven't been added to MAMEdox Arcades.  I have all of BritneysPAIRS roms and every clone for them separated from the rest of the roms on the full list and I will test the rest in MAMEox128 Plus to see which ones will work before I suggest a list of enjoyable working games to BritneysPAIRS for his next update.  

I will also let him know about the 4 or 5 duplicate roms that I found on his emulator and also suggest that he use other roms instead of the ones he is using in certain instances.  (I am aware that certain roms like the Street Fighter clones were intentionally left in because of the "Turbo" or whatnot, but there are around five roms that I see no reason that two versions were included.  I believe this to be due to the fact that they are named two completely different things and are so far apart on the list from each other that mistakes happen.  My spreadsheet, now that it is complete doesn't allow for that.  It's pretty cool when you look at it and I'm looking forward to sharing it with everyone when I'm done.)

[G19]

It would have been useful if BritneysPAIRS had given a list of the bugfixes or at least a list of the games which he fixed/optimized for your own comparison. Here is a response I got from him over at 1emu in relation to the bugfixes

QUOTE(BritneysPAIRS @ Jan 20 2008, 12:30 AM)

bug fixes are keymapping of alot of games you couldnt control (Ikari warriors you cant turn the gun) or / and was non standardised for xbox controller. Sound glitchs that worked with old dats so I mixed them to produce an older game that actually played faster or with sound as new rom wouldnt, only for top games like Sam showdown 5 special as it has sound error in mamedox.... clones working but orig game not so you needed both to get the clone to work and the orig one would hang, cheats locked up a few games using orig settiings. Sort methods by genre was about 1000 of them now there is about 8 or 9 cats the list actually goes on and on

[ressurectionx]

Thanks for that info G19.  

That's kinda what I figured.  He did say that he wouldn't put any games on that don't work and games like Ikari Warriors that I couldn't get to work right with MAMEox128 were included in the working list for MAMEdox Arcades.  I have also noticed some that I listed as not working because of no sound or slow play that he had working too, so this confirms my findings anyhow.  

At this point I'm just going to assume that any game he has working on his emu is 100% without any evidence otherwise.  I've never seen a single complaint myself about it.  So I will not be testing any more of them than I already have, since I assume once I finally get my hands on his emu that it will be my emu of choice over MAMEox128.  Looks like I have about a week until that thing finishes and I can FTP it.... sigh.  

I finally figured out my problem about getting the UI options to work on my MAMEox128.  Actually, I didn't figure out why, but I've deleted everything and FTP'd a new version over and it works fine.  So back to testing it is for me.  I've got a lot less to do now that I can eliminate the 800 or so roms already in Arcades and all of their clones.  I'll update everyone on my progress.

---------------

Oh... one more question.  I'm kinda dumb at the programming end of things.  He's not actually hacking the game roms themselves right?  Other than mixing the roms differently than MAME would have usually called for.  I assume any programming or altering has been done on the emulator end and that he's not actually physically changing any of the roms.  

This would be great to know, because if he feels it not worth his time to get the alternate roms for the 128 games that I would prefer an alternate romset for I may be able to do them myself without losing any of the work he did to get the roms working.  

For example, if he were to have used the (World) rom for Ikari Warriors or Guerilla War and I wanted to change it to the (US), this would be impossible for me to do if he changed the rom somehow to get the guys to fire right.  I'm hoping that whatever he did was on the emulation level and if I need to make these rom changes myself that it will simply be a matter of swapping the roms inside the zipfiles and everything will work automatically with his keymapping work intact.  (I know that he did use the (US) rom for both of those games actually, I was just using that as an example.)

I hope that question is clear to everyone.

[RMM]

Well he posts over here sometimes so maybe he can respond.  I dont know the answer but I thought he was  hacking/modifying both the roms and the emulator.  I was also thinking that since he was modifying the emulator that would cause many of the games that work on Mameox128 not to work on his modified emulator.  Like I said Im not exactly sure so take what I say with a grain of salt because I might be completely wrong.

[ressurectionx]

QUOTE(RMM @ Jan 22 2008, 11:13 PM)

Well he posts over here sometimes so maybe he can respond.  I dont know the answer but I thought he was  hacking/modifying both the roms and the emulator.  I was also thinking that since he was modifying the emulator that would cause many of the games that work on Mameox128 not to work on his modified emulator.  Like I said Im not exactly sure so take what I say with a grain of salt because I might be completely wrong.

Hey RMM,

I have seen some of his posts in here before, so I know that he must stop by every once in a while or when somebody here grabs his attention for a minute.  I will go to the other place and talk to him myself about all this when I'm done.  I don't want to go to him with a half an idea though.  It's amazing what you can do with the sort functions in MSO 2007 and I will be able to make small lists of the roms and their info and notes really easy with it when I'm done.  Any of my suggestions would be really mapped out and easy to follow.

I believe with the roms he was just moving the roms inside the zipfiles a different way than the .84 MAME datfile would have them set up.  That I can do.   If he's putting in any code or anything, I won't be able to do anything about that.  

I think you're right that many of the roms I'm testing that work on MAMEox128 Plus might not work in MAMEdox Arcades, unless he adds them.  What I believe is that in 99% of the cases, if it works flawlessly in MAMEox128, it will work flawlessly in MAMEdox Arcades if BritneysPairs chooses to add them.  Either way, I have a list of roms that work flawlessly in MAMEox128 Plus that are not included in MAMEdox Arcades.  

BritneysPairs is what I believe to be the superior emulator, and I haven't yet played it yet.  If it is everything I've heard it was, most importantly every game on it works flawlessly, then all of the layout and sort options makes his the superior emulator by far.  It's actually everything that I had originally intended when I took up this project, but better.

I was hoping that he would add a lot of the really oldschool classic games that I remember back in the early 80s and he could add a category specifically for them so old guys like me could play them, but they wouldn't be cluttering up the lists for everybody else that would never play them.  I don't think that would be very code intensive and most of those games are so small that you wouldn't even notice them in an update.  

That's just one of my suggestions.  I've come up with some ideas along the way and I'm taking notes as I go.  We'll see how everything works out when I get the list done.

[ressurectionx]

Hello again everyone,

I've started from the beginning again after merging both lists.  I wanted to be more clear in what the problems were if the game didn't work, or the type of game that it was if it did work so BritneysPAIRS might add the games.  It's pretty slow going, but this time around from the beginning, I have already figured out a lot of the bad roms out of the first 2000 or so roms and because of the roms that are already on MAMEdox Arcades, so it's much quicker than my first time around.  

My weekend is over, but it's been very productive as far as this list has been concerned.  MAMEdox Arcades working list knocked out nearly 2,200 roms total if you include all of the clones that do not have to be tested too.  I myself have now tested and catalogued all of the other games from A to Gemini Wing now.  That's 1470 out of 5162 roms down, plus all of the MAMEdox roms that have already been tested from Gemini Wing to Z, so I would guess about another 1,700 on top of that bringing us to a guesstimated total of around 3,150 roms being tested out of 5,162, or about 60%.   Once I get to the roms that I haven't tested at all before again, it will be a little slower, but now that the spreadsheet is done and all of this work has been put into it I don't imagine it will take very long.  It may be premature to say now with everything that could happen until then, but I believe I will be done with the testing by the end of February.

[VampX]

Awesome work man, its greatly appreciated!
no more "missing roms" even though i have the 0.84 romset.

I hope that when you post the new dat file you'll also post a little walkthru with pics and all,
i always get lost when using those romcenter or clrmamepro programs, there are just too many options.

[underworlderZer0]

Dude, you are awesome. Thank you for undertaking this huge project.

[ressurectionx]

Hey VampX.  Not a problem man.  This is taking a lot longer than I would have liked (the whole XBox thing for me), but I finally feel like I'm getting to that end of the tunnel.  Once I get this and the PSX compatibility project done, I don't have much left but to see if the Karaoke function in XBMC is any good and get a nice collection there too.  While most of my work on the other consoles I found later could have been done en masse instead of painstakingly done by hand, I'm just glad that is all over.  Most roms for the other systems work just fine and I have gotten rid of any that don't and named them the way that I want to see them.  Not much help I can give to somebody else in those regards though, short of giving them a download which is illegal here, and it's not something they couldn't find themselves online anyways.  

I hate to disappoint anybody, but I will not be doing a Commodore 64 compatibility list

The spreadsheets I'm making for PSX and MAME though have a ton of work put into them and I'm happy to share it with whoever wants it.  I might not be able to code anything or get these games running, but I like doing my part where I can.  Hopefully BritneysPAIRS considers my suggestions for adding games and using different romsets for some of the ones he's already done.  I don't have much faith in my abilitiy to see to it that that part of the project gets done if he declines.


Hey underworlderZer0.  You're welcome man.  

Keep you guys updated.

[ressurectionx]

Been working on this a bit here and there the last few days and I just got past 2,600 roms on the list.  Figured I'd let you know that it's about halfway done.

[xyteam]

are you leaving out all tha mahjong rubbish?

[ressurectionx]

LOL.... of course I am....  I can promise not one single Mahjong game will be on my list.  (Well, possibly ONE if there was ever one made in English that actually worked.)  

That sure helped me skip a big chunk of the letter 'M'.

Any game that I can tell by the name or the screenshot is Mahjong I automatically make it Orange in color on my list and put a '?' in the "Working" column.  Just like I do with the Play Choice 10 and other home console arcades and all of the "Cassette" roms.  

On a side note... have you tried MSO 2007 for Excel yet?  It's crazy all the things I can do now with the sorting.  I can't wait to get this done and put the different categories out on a thread.  It will probably take a few more weeks after I'm done testing before I can have good working datfiles though.

Oh... and I'm at about 3,200 games now.  Just finished the letter Q (Skipping the Quiz games too)