New Lightweight GLSL Shader around - some testing comparison

If you browse this blog, you'll see how important I deem shaders for MAME. Proper shader configuration was a bit of the start of this blog. So no wonder if I report about a promising new lightweight GLSL shader.

MAME-PSGS in action, good looking and performant

You find the new shader here: https://github.com/TheCodeTherapy/MAME-PSGS. According to the ReadMe, this shader is designed for rather low-key non-Windows devices running MAME. Clearly modern Macs run every BGFX MAME shader with ease, but let's see which performance gains a truly lightweight shader can achieve.

MAME on Apple M1 - as good as expected!

Update 6 February 2024: Breaking news - MAME 0.274 provides a brand new ARM64 dynarec. The wait is over, native Silicon Macs are capable of running all MAME games. Let's celebrate!

Update 6 January 2025: I need to mention my new blog post regarding running an Intel Build on Silicon/ARM Macs, as they can really complete a good emulation experience on this platform. Needless to tell that I am now on MacOS Sequoia without any hassle in MAME.

Update 3 December 2022: moving to Ventura was smoothless - see this short post.

Update 16 July 2022: I did some prelimimary MAME testing on a 14“ MacBookPro M1Pro (it’s not mine). While this is no in-depth review, there are some insights from a MAME gamer‘s perspective I would like to share with you.

• SUPERB The Liquid Retina XDR-display with 3024x1964 is a real highlight. Above all the ProMotion refresh rate of 120 Hz provides you with butter-smooth scrolling out of the box. Just activate waitvsync on top, and you get perfect scrolling. But don’t use nothrottle as your games would run double speed.
• GOOD: This laptop produces surprisingly good sound quality. Retrogames sound very nice!
• GOOD: It did not produce any heat during my testing, and no fan noise. Always such a good thing compared to most Windows and MacIntel laptops.
• BAD: In some games, e.g. 1942, the display notch is quite a nuisance (see photo below). But it’s not terribly bad, if it makes you crazy, use a bezel and shrink your screen, or just turn to window mode.
• SURPRISE: Initial benchmarks (as I used to do them) provide for worse results than on my Mac mini M1, even on the same external display. The M1 Pro should provide better results, so something is wrong. In practice, this is totally irrelevant, as the games run just nicely so far.

Conclusion: Of course this machine is too much for Retrogaming, but if you happen to own such machine, it provides an impeccable MAME gaming experience, with this display being the highlight. Would I need a Mac laptop, I would always opt for a ProMotion display.

In many games, you will have to adjust the screen below the Display Notch.

Original post: I finally decided to move to a Mac mini M1 - and MAME just shines on it. No war stories here, but just the benchmarks!

R0ni compiles M1 MAME, so get it here: https://sdlmame.lngn.net/ or on Github: https://github.com/mac-a-r0ni/mame 

This table shows you a performance comparison between:

- Mac mini M1 (native)

- Mac mini M1 (Rosetta2): no real need for this, but just to demonstrate Rosetta2 performance 

- Mac mini Intel (latest version)

- iMac (late 2013): best results under Mojave (Catalina became slower, and no Big Sur here)

./mame -video bgfx -str 60 -noafs -bgfx_screen_chains crt-geom -bgfx_backend opengl -noreadconfig -nosleep -nothrottle -lowlatency

FINALLY: perfect scrolling in MacMAME by configuration!

👾👾👾👾👾👾 Time to celebrate. After so many attempts, I finally stumbled across the perfect configuration for flawless scrolling in MacMAME. 👾👾👾👾👾👾

Update 16 July 2022: It seems to me that with displays higher than 60 Hz, the nothrottle option would not work, as it results in speeds far above 100%. At least that was the result of my testing with a MacBook Pro M1. With such monitors, you would not need this hack anyway as waitvsync alone already provides for perfect results.

Showcase Moon Patrol - watch on your system how it scrolls sideways 

Until now, the usage of waitvsync, which is rather important for avoiding bleeding, caused stuttering in MacOS. As the MAME documentation explains:

On macOS, -waitvsync does not block; instead the most recent completely drawn frame will be displayed at vblank. This means that if an emulated system has a higher framerate than your host display, emulated frames will be dropped periodically resulting in motion judder.

That's why waitvsync is disabled by default. Now, very surprisingly, nothrottle combined with waitvsync comes to the rescue! With this MacMAME emulation is close to perfect for me! No 144 Hz monitor or Adaptive Sync required.

MAME and RetroArch in macOS 12.1 Monterey

Just a fast post on Monterey: Both MAME and RetroArch/FinalBurn Neo work flawlessly, both on Intel and Silicon machines available for me.

After the read of Ars Technica's review of macOS Monterey and the release of version 12.1, I found it safe enough to to the upgrade. 

January 2016 - September 2021: 100.000 Views - Thank You

Without realizing it, this September saw my blog passing the 100.000 views mark. Even in rather silent times, this documentation seems to help Mac users.

Thank you for your interest, this is my contribution to MAME. Please let me repeat that this blog will always remain strictly non-commercial.

Cheers.

Final Burn Neo 1.0.0.2 is the better MAME on Macs

Fast update 29 August 2021: After quick tests of MAME 0.235 and FBNeo 1.0.0.3/RetroArch Metal 1.9.8, the situation is still the same. Important note, however: After updating FBNeo (as well as any other Core), restart your Mac! Weirdly any updated Core crashes RetroArch immediately, while after a restart, everything works fine.

These are quite heretic news: On my Macs (both M1 and Intel), many arcade classics play better on the brand new combo Final Burn Neo 1.0.0.2/RetroArch Metal 1.9.2 than current MAME. If you are curious and ready to dive into RetroArch, this is definitely worth a try.

Moon Patrol (FBNeo with crt-guest-dr-venom2 shader)

I tested the newest incarnations of Final Burn Neo (via RetroArch frontend) and MAME official on my Macs, and to my surprise, Final Burn Neo currently has a clear edge over MAME in some classic arcade games. If you want to do your own testing, I recommend that you try out these three games, where results are quite obvious:

MAME Arcade Bezel Update!

Just to let you know that my Github repository containing realistic bezel artwork for MAME is significantly updated. No need to repeat the ReadMe file in Github, just move there:

https://github.com/estefan3112/MAME-Realistic-Bezel-Artwork/blob/master/README.md

Shinobi contains all updates, including the Screen Mask (very much smoothing the screen borders) and
adding a dedicated Screen Bezel (thereby adding a lot of depth to the bezel).

I was looking for a long time for a screen bezel for Oddyssey2/Videopac - so many thanks to SuSGoART for that one (I found it in the libretro forum, conversion to MAME layout format by myself).

While this project will probably never end, I believe that it is a very nice moment to grab the repo and enjoy the new stuff. Comments as always much appreciated.

MAME Shader Roundup - GLSL Configuration Working Again! Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everybody!

With a very big MAME 0.227 release, I took some time to sum up the options that Mac Users have in terms of shaders - please read at least this post first for an overview, and I follow up on that one.

Out of the box: When you run MAME without any tweaks, it only smoothens the pixels, but does not apply any shaders. By this, every operating system starts MAME games, while shaders are often very OS-centric.

When to use this: Only if you have a system that does not cope with any of the below options nicely.

GLSL is back again! For quite some time I thought that the good old OpenGL shaders no longer work, but they actually do. Let me summarise how to configure two variants of the CRT-GEOM shader for MAME GLSL.

Setup MAME 0.227 from scratch on Macs (Update December 2020/January 2021)

Another update on how to configure MAME from scratch in the very preferable way, which is

via its internal interface MEWUI (default MAME UI since 0.171) and a text editor.

  

If you are willing to work with your Terminal and a Text Editor, it is by far the best way to set up and maintain MAME, irrespective of which frontend you wanna use later on.

So let's go step by step from scratch. 

MEWUI - click to enlarge

Step 1 - Basic Homework 

Download and install SDL 2 as explained here. Download a good text editor - I now use Atom - https://atom.io, which needs a bit of a learning curve, but it's a very decent Open Source editor.

Change Finder Settings in order to display hidden folders and files, e.g. with Deeper (you need access to your User Library folder, which is by default a hidden folder). Another very smart way to display hidden folders and files is this key combo in the finder: SHIFT-CMD-. 

Shift - CMD - . and you see the hidden files greyed out, but fully accessible, very neat!

Of course, download MAME from here and unzip it into the place of your choice. Obviously this is the SDL version of MAME complied for Macs.

Recommendation: I currently keep my running MAME version in the folder 'mame' and keep only older versions in a version-related directory. This definitely helps you further on to stay consistent and carry on your work from version to version.

Step 2 - Create .ini files in the Terminal and manually configure ini paths

After a lot of testing, my recommendation is to create your first .ini files from the Terminal. This should save you from a lot of headache by multiple .ini files that just cause confusion.

• Start Terminal and cd into your directory of MAME (recommendation: name your main directory mame, see above)
• Now in the Terminal and in the right directory, the command ./mame64 -cc generates the three default config files in your mame directory:

mame.ini - your overall configuration file for MAME
plugin.ini - your configuration file for activating and deactivating MAME Plugins
ui.ini - your configuration file for the MEWUI interface

• By default, mame.ini contains the following multiple ini paths:

inipath  "$HOME/Library/Application Support/mame;$HOME/.mame;.;ini"

Recommendation: In my own experience, this is rather unfortunate, because you may end up with multiple .ini files at multiple places rather easily. Since MAME then considers all these .ini files in a certain order, you may be lost in chaos. Right now, I actually prefer having all .ini files in the MAME sub-directory called ini, thus I reduce this line as follows:

inipath                   ini

This means of course that you have to move the three .ini files created in the first step into the ini subdirectory. As long as you do not forget about the ini directory when moving to a new MAME version, this is probably easiest to handle, and the /Library/Application Support directory stays clean of MAME config files. 

 Step 3 - Start MEWUI (the right way)

Open Terminal and switch to your MAME working directory (easiest way: type 'cd' and then drag the mame directory from the Finder into the Terminal -> press Return in the Terminal window)

Warning: starting mame64 with double-click does not work in the right way -> so start via Terminal as explained here. So you must be in the MAME working directory!

MAME and MacOS Catalina (Update December 2020)

Update 28 December 2020: I finally updated my iMac Late 2013 to Catalina - and everything works in MAME as expected. 

Interestingly, nothing of the concernes raised in the community back in January actually turned out to affect the Open Source community. Homebrew has now been in Catalina development for more than a year, and this update took quite a while, some hickups included, which I however could resolve with Google.

Intel UHD (bad for MAME) and macOS Big Sur 11.1 first impressions

As already anticipated in this post, probably any Intel Macs with Intel UHD Graphics are a quite bad choice for MAME. Here is new proof with the probably very latest Intel Mac mini, a machine that I otherwise very much like. 

But as also barefeats.com explain here, these Mac minis 'scream for an eGPU' when it comes to gaming and other GPU-intensive tasks.

This Mac mini has it all - except for the GPU.

For all Mac Users out there that are struggling with MAME performance - just check your GPU and forget about the rest. If you have some Intel UHD Graphics installed, you already know the culprit. Shaders will then not perform nicely, and also Bezel Artwork. So here is some numbers with identical MAME versions and identical ROM files.

ARCADE - the better MAME for most of us (R0ni build link included)

Update May 2020: R0ni now provides official Mac builds for MAME Arcade in the directory of his site listed below.

There is a subproject of MAME, fully on par with the official project, but which can be easily overlooked. If you are willing to compile and build your own romset, this is the best MAME for most of us.

Website: https://arcade.mameworld.info
GitHub repo: https://github.com/Robbbert/store1

Official binaries: sorry, there are no longer official builds available, and it was not R0ni's decision 😑. So I will look into that once again and may build unofficial Arcade builds - but please look into the easy build instructions below.

The Arcade internal MAMEUI has a customized colour palette, which I much prefer over the standard palette. Otherwise standard MAME functions, which is good.

What is it?

- Working Arcade games only (so skeleton drivers or games booting into a black screen)
- No mechanical games (pinball games etc)
- No casino or gambling games
- No computers, consoles, terminals, etc.
- No games that display a black screen

Standalone Spinner for MAME - The one and only How-To!

Arkanoid ... finally!

Arkanoid was very popular amongst us youngsters. I was one those that managed all 100 levels, but certainly not with just one coin. I also think that this was just manageable in the cocktail table version due to the stamina and focus required for this difficult game. We typically used to take the challenge by two, so that after dying, you could relax a bit while the other guy plays, and that worked out quite well.

A spinner for MAME has always been in my plans simply because of Arkanoid. But I always hesitated because I wanted a standalone spinner (for reasons stated below), while basically all online instructions relate to integrating a spinner into your overall arcade control panel.

Now, finally, it is there and works just perfectly.

My prototype with cardboard. As you can see, very decent styling.
I might even stick with the cardboard version because it works so well.

Funding for OSX MAME Website during Covid19 time - please do consider!

This is a post during the Covid19 Lockdown:

Jay, the maintainer of https://sdlmame.lngn.net/, is directly affected by the Covid19 lockdown, and he kindly asks for assistance to keep his site up and running:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-lngnnet-services?d=tueAWZxgx3lwv%2B67DwkexMpwQQV7JY7L7yRHDj9Qc5g%3D

I did my part, and please consider to do the same. Thanks indeed.

Update MAME 0.217 - Low Latency (WIP) and 60.000 views :-)

Update 15 Jan 2020: Performance tests with nine of my reference games indicate no performance losses when activating Low Latency

In the terminal, cd into the mame folder and run:

./mame64 -video bgfx -str 60 -noafs -bgfx_screen_chains crt-geom -bgfx_backend metal -noreadconfig -nosleep -nothrottle -lowlatency [game]

./mame64 -video bgfx -str 60 -noafs -bgfx_screen_chains crt-geom -bgfx_backend metal -noreadconfig -nosleep -nothrottle -lowlatency [game]

The test results are either identical or even in favor of low latency. MAME 0.217 is also a hot performer, so the BGFX shaders now really perform flawlessly. I could not be happier with current MAME performance-wise.

Update: With MAME 0.217, you can configure Low Latency within MAMEUI! I explained here how to properly access MAMEUI.

Thanks to a visitor of this blog (hi, Borsuk 😊), I became aware of a new MAME option that introduces a mode with lower input latency. 

As so often with MAME, info is rather scarce, both the Github commit and the MAME documentation explain the minimum:
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/commit/eab5bcac0029e4e298e1f194133c21580098508d
https://docs.mamedev.org/commandline/commandline-all.html (search for "lowlatency")

Things to consider:

• In running systems, you need to add the option to your existing mame.ini (and of course also in any game-specific inis).
• Currently the default is 'off' because of the potential side effects in some systems.
• First check whether your mame version is capable. Then you can look into your current configuration. In the terminal, within the mame directory, execute: 
• ./mame64 -showusage - under the header "CORE PERFOMRMANCE OPTIONS" you should find the following entry: 
  -lowlatency          draws new frame before throttling to reduce input latency
• then ./mame64 -showconfig - under the header "CORE PERFORMANCE OPTIONS" you should find: 
  lowlatency                1
• 1 for on or 0 for off. If not, you have to add it in your mame.ini

So is it worth the hassle? I am undecided right now. Further testing is needed.

And this blog reached 60.000 views since I started back in 2016. Thank you for all of you that are still into reading old-fashioned Blog entries. While I see the advantages of YouTube instructions in some cases, I still prefer sharing know-how as text - particularly because I try to update my posts if it makes sense and put them to a later date in this blog.

Christmas 2019 - Updating MAME Bezels - 4k Bezels by ArsInvictus

As a small Christmas present, I have started updating my Github repo consisting mainly of John Merrit's fabulous bezels:

https://github.com/estefan3112/MAME-Realistic-Bezel-Artwork

Main priority is to smoothen down the corners, one of the bigger flaws of these bezels. Just have a look at all bezels until (including) frogger, they look significantly better.

Everything else is explained here:

https://mameonmacs.blogspot.com/2017/02/porting-retropie-artwork-to-official.html

Finally, do not miss out on these incredible new 4k bezels by ArsInvictus:

https://forums.libretro.com/t/new-4k-bezel-overlays/25247/73

On his Dropbox link, you will also find a dedicated MAME directory that already includes the .lay files. With his kind permission, I will include some of his bezels with those of John Merrit because they often match perfectly.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

MAME in Retroarch 1.8.1 - Mac and iOS (WIP)

Work-In-Progress: collection of my experience in using Retroarch on Macs and on my iPad for quite some time, i.e. approx. 2 years; during that time it made tremendous improvements and added a lot of interesting cores

Disclaimer first: Retroarch (at least on Macs and iOS devices) is very fluid and sometimes experimental. Crashes occur. For a stable MAME experience, I still recommend official MAME as the main focus of this Blog.

Valid reasons for trying out MAME in Retroarch:

• Retroarch GUI (RGUI): if you get used to this joypad-centric kind of configuration, it is very useful; during a running game, you switch to RGUI, change config and see results (this is a very disputed topic, and Retroarch opponents will call RGUI as the main problem, but for me, after quite some time, it is a very good way to test stuff) 
• Abundance of configuration options: again, many hat this, but these various config options show how much innovation happens in Retroarch; and they are worth testing
• Joypad support: great to fine tune - you will spend a lot of time here!
• Shader options: you can configure a lot of shader options if you are really into it
• Latency options: are quite interesting for the very competitive gamer
• Cross-core UI: if you run other cores, e.g. for consoles, you gain experience and can use this for MAME as well
• No bezel artwork: if you do not care about MAME artwork
• Because it's fun testing: just for learning Retroarch, I just enjoy experimenting with all these possible configuration possibilities

Mac vs Retroarch iOS

MAME 0.215 - clear BGFX Performance Improvements (WIP)

Yesterday MAME 0.215 came out, and the Changelog also refers to changes in the BGFX shader. While the main change, the implementation of a Vulcan shader, is entirely unrelated to MacOS, my initial performance tests with the usual candidates show massive performance improvements.

System: MacOS Mojave 10.14.6
MAME: official build 0.215 (http://sdlmame.lngn.net/)
Terminal command: ./mame64 -window -video bgfx -str 60 -noafs -bgfx_screen_chains crt-geom-deluxe -bgfx_backend metal -noreadconfig -nosleep -nothrottle (ROMFILENAME

Example 1942 (Revision B): 765.06% in MAME 0.201, 907,94% in MAME 0.215

Details to follow, I hope.

Attract Mode 2.6.0

Two days ago, Attract Mode 2.6.0 has been released, and you can currently grab the Mac dmg only here on the Github website:
https://github.com/mickelson/attract/releases
According to the changelog, this is an interim release that improves stability of the software. This is always welcome and worth a post. It's a great piece of software.

The State of MAME in October 2019

No post for a very long time - because basically everything works on my Mac as it should be. Here is the current state of MAME in October 2019 (updated 10 October 2019 once again).

Core: MAME Mac Binary

First and foremost: MAME, currently v.214, is rock stable in MacOS Mojave. Everything that I wrote in this Blog still applies:

- MAME installation from scratch
- What I said about MAME in November 2018 and further links inside this post

The developers keep staying extremely busy and the system just further evolves. Enhancements in my favourite Arcade games stay moderate, but they are all nearly perfect anyway. Game & Watch enhancements deserve to be mentioned, they all become more and more real eye candies - it is nice to remember these first handheld times.

A fast photo of a Game&Watch game, please excuse the moire.

Frontend:Attract Mode

The same applies to Attract Mode, my favorite MAME frontend on Macs. Version 2.5.1 is nearly one year old, but still rocks. The more adventurous can compile a version with the latest minor tweaks - I explained in my Blog how this works:

- Attract Mode - how to compile
- Attract Mode HowTo, part 1
- Attract Mode HowTo, part 2

Another very stable software for your Mac.

Attract Mode/Cosmo Arcade Display on my Mac - you cannot ask for more

Shaders: BGFX/Metal/CRT-GEOM-DELUXE