MAME 0.188 and new insights into the METAL bug

Last week, MAME 0.188 arrived, as always, with a lot of improvements. As regards game improvements, it is very nice to see that the first Game & Watch titles are released with SVG backgrounds built inside, so there is some very nice progress going on.

One of the first G&W titles with SVG backgrounds

On the Mac side of things, I figured out by coincidence that the MAME builds released by r0ni (considered to be official MAME builds for the Mac) have a working METAL backend! r0ni explained to me that he builds under 10.9 (updated LLVM using MacPorts) with the following command:

make PTR=1 TARGETOS=macosx TOOLS=1 NOWERROR=1 -j5

This set of instructions does not work on my system and ends with an error:

ld: warning: ignoring file /Library/Frameworks//SDL2.framework/SDL2, file was built for x86_64 which is not the architecture being linked (i386): /Library/Frameworks//SDL2.framework/SDL2

Undefined symbols for architecture i386:

This means that it is a good idea to work with this build of SDL MAME for the Mac:

http://sdlmame.lngn.net

So it might be that compiling under 10.12 does not work out nicely as far as the METAL backend is concerned ?!?

Mid-Year MAME 0.187 with no big news on the Mac side of things

Game & Watch titles look promising, but are apparently missing the overlays for proper gaming experience - as presented by Definitely Russian here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8IYCHueuso

BGFX/Metal bug still seems to be in place

Otherwise another solid release

Erockus Arcade 4.0 and MacScene Emulation Forum

As suggested by some of you, I gave Erockus Arcade a try. I was testing the new version 4. Unfortunately my testing did not turn out nicely. Here is a short summary.

1. Erockus is a bare bones frontend without any screenshot or even video preview options. This can fit you if you want to just head for the games and nothing else. But for many of us, MAME is not just playing, but it is about preserving the original feel.

2. The Erockus configuration writes directly into your mame.ini and does not accept manual configuration (at least not of the options it directly handels). An existing mame.ini is backed up. This can be ok, if you are aware of it. 

3. However, after three starts, Erockus stopped working on my system with the latest MacOS Sierra installed. After a startup time of more than two minutes (full romset), it ends up with an error. In my last attempt for this post, Erockus just froze after 3 minutes without any message, so I had to Force Quit.

This is why I could not do any further testing, and I also cannot provide screenshots here. All in all, the software might be ok for your if you are looking for fast gameplay - if it works on your system. In my case, unfortunately.

I also want to mention the MacScene Emulation Forum this time, although I did not succeed registering for some reason ;-). If anybody of you has an idea how to register (is it still alive?), I would consider again. Thanks. One thing is clear: When it comes to emulation, Macs are still a rather difficult environment (to say the least)...

MAME 0.186 is out

The Change Log for that version is more than impressive, and I very much look forward to hearing Cheeky Mouse sounds again after so long :-). Space Cyclone and first working Game & Watch gems are other things that caught my immediate attention. 

Mac Binaries are available, including a new Homebrew Formula. More to follow.

CLRMame Pro 4.032 with Wine: Scanning ROMs on your Mac

As of this post, I am doing my first scan tests with the newest CLRMame Pro 4.032 under MacOS. This is possible thanks to the Wine layer that itself can be installed rather flawlessly via Homebrew.

Installation
Assuming that you have already Homebrew and Homebrew Cask installed, install XQuartz cask and then wine with Homebrew:
brew cask install xquartz
brew cask install wine-stable
You may also want to head to this excellent summary.

Then download the zip version of CLRMame Pro, then unzip the directory containing the program files to a place of your choice. That's basically it.

Usage
Open the Terminal, cd to the CLRMame Pro directory and start the program with

wine cmpro64.exe

This is where I am right now, and now it's time to learn the program with these instructions here. Still being a newbie in correct rom management, I might revert back later until I got comfortable with the process. Enjoy!

MAME 0.185

Also this update from Wednesday brought no surprises. 

The binary bottle in Homebrew has also been updated. And the BGFX Metal bug is still with us.

I am currently quite occupied with MAME on my Raspberry Pi, which is sometimes a completely different ballpark due to its performance limitations. Still it is incredible fun, and there might be some learnings for low-performing Macs as well. 

MAME 0.184, Xcode 8.3 and 10.250 pageviews :-)

Today brings version 0.184 of MAME, which I compiled under brand new MacOS 10.12.4 and Xcode 8.3. I am also very happy to report 10.250 pageviews of this blog, which is very encouraging.

Compile was flawless as always. Performance seems in line with previous versions, BGFX Metal bug is still here. So it seems fine for us MAME users to upgrade.

Page statistics show the clear need for shader documentation, in particular BGFX, as well as Artworks. Quite as I anticipated, and I will try to keep focus here. Thanks for your interest.

MAME 0.183 - Solid 20th Anniversary Release

Today brings us a special MAME release, and changes are many. The Mac binary compiles nicely as always from source and some performance tests indicate that this is rock stable. Also the Homebrew version of MAME made a jump to this version and is now up to date. All in all everything works as expected - and also does not work. Thus no news on the BGFX-METAL bug, but that was not to be expected anyways.

Porting Retropie/Retroarch Artwork in 16:9 (John Merrit) to official MAME

Short Update October 2019: Mr. Do provides a very nice simple MAME .lay file generator here:

http://mrdo.mameworld.info/mame_lay.php


There is incredibly realistic MAME Artwork for Retropie/Retroarch systems out, and I started re-writing them to run for the official MAME build. Work is mainly based on John Merrit's great work and Mr. Do's Layout Files, and the effect is amazing. This also shows the power of the yet simple MAME artwork system. Creativity is your only limit.

Update: I modified the layout file in a way that you can now switch on/off the scratches and reflections on the screen. 
Update 2: I started a Github repository (see below link).

Within the Video Mode options, you can now choose between:

• Clear Screen - the screen is shown without any reflections and scratches

Clear Screen - Click to Enlarge

• Scratch Screen - the screen shows all the reflections and scratches. On top, you can manipulate the Screen Alpha Channel separately from the cabinet. - thereby you manipulate the intensity of the scratches on screen only!

Scratch Screen - Click to Enlarge

Attract Mode for OSX MAME - Setup Part 2

Mini-update January 2024: In current versions of RetroArch, the cores are placed under "Application Support" of your user. This path must also be set in "....", otherwise RetroArch does not start. Corrected below and marked in red.

After successful completion of Part 1, there are many further opportunitites to tweak Attract Mode for MAME for your own needs. Here is a collection of useful hints for further fine tuning of the Attract Mode setup:

• Configure the Attract Mode Intro Video
• Configure history.dat to display within Attract Mode
• Assign game-specific configurations for Attract Mode only
• Other Emulators (WIP)
• Including RetroArch Cores (WIP - huge!)

Here are the details:

MAME 0.182, and BGFX-metal Bug registered

I compiled yesterday's MAME 0.182 and today's QMC2 0.71 without issues - and the BGFX_metal bug still persists. 

But I finally made it into mametesters.org and managed to file a bug report here. As it turns out today, it was the MacOS Password Manager and Safari that kicked me out from mametesters.org at previous attempts. A manual login via Firefox after password reset did the trick. So if you want to login to Mametesters as a Mac user, I strongly recommend you to avoid Safari and Mac Password Manager if you run into strange problems like me, being blocked from the site. If you are at Mametesters.org and are able to confirm the bug, please leave a note there - thanks!

Update: While the Mametesters Bug Report has been closed, a Bug has been opened with the BGFX Github repository: https://github.com/bkaradzic/bgfx/issues/1032 - let's see.

QMC Alternative: Attract Mode for OSX MAME - Setup, Part 1

Updated September 2018
This is huge, but needs work during setup. If you are willing to spend the time, it's probably the best MAME frontend around. 


If you are ready for manual text edits, this is what you get:
- best layouts in town with video previews that are compatible with the Retropie Attract Mode layouts
- game settings at ROM level
- very flexible and rather intuitive joypad control
- leave your current MAME/QMC2 installation unchanged and play with identical versions in this frontend
- fast at startup
- very accessible text configuration files

Since all of the following has been trial & error, I start with setup instructions from scratch.

1. Download and install Attract Mode for OSX: http://attractmode.org/download.html - now at version 2.4.1 it is rock solid under OSX and in par with other Operating Systems

2. Start Attract Mode -> Attract Mode directory is created here:

[$HOME -> this is the home directory of your user in Attract Mode terms]/.attract

Note: You will only see this directory if you have enabled 'Show Hidden Files' (with a tool such as Deeper, otherwise you will not see this directory in your Finder!) 

Remember for all further configuration: $HOME stands for your Mac User home directory, this saves you a lot of time and remains portable to other users 

This is the directory where most of your customization happens! Do not touch the directories of your Attract Mode Program (via 'Show Package Contents'), since this will be overwritten with a program update.

3. Enter Attract Mode Configuration: TAB

MAME 0.181 and 6100 Views in one year :-)

2016 ends with MAME 0.181, which according to its whatsnew.txt contains a row of nice updates. On the Macintosh side, all remains the same: no Metal plugin and the same issues in BGFX as described in detail before. More to come here.

This year ends with 6100 views, for which I am grateful, considering the rather narrow content published here. The interest in this Blog is quite as expected:

Entry Pageviews Getting a Video Retro Effect on LCD - BGFX, GLSL o... Sep 10, 2016, 10 comments 1010 BGFX in MAME - Tweaking and In-Depth Look (plus a ... Dec 18, 2016, 9 comments 785 BGFX Shaders - Finally Working :-) :-) :-) May 25, 2016, 14 comments 409 Performance Tests BGFX vs. GLSL (Update September ... Sep 16, 2016, 3 comments 380 Basic Setup of MAME and QMC2 (Update September 201... Jan 23, 2016, 5 comments 248

One thing: Please feel free to write any comments you may have, they are more than welcome. 

More to post here.

BootCamp for Mac Retrogaming - Is it Worth The Hassle?

This post will be about running BootCamp for Retrogaming. As regards MAME, I am interested in a direct comparison between MAME running on macOS Sierra and Windows. 
Eventually the question is whether it's worth the hassle with BootCamp, or whether you can easily stick with your Mac system.



Bottom Line: MAME on Windows is by far faster than on Macs. However, with some tweaking, you get similar results on Macs, but Windows remains the performance king. Probably it makes more sense to tweak your Mac settings, e.g. faster shaders, than installing BootCamp and keeping a Windows system up-to-date all the time.

Here are the details:

MAME 0.180 is my first MacOS Sierra Compile

Both MAME and QMC2 compiled flawlessly. Another huge ChangeLog in this version.

• Unfortunately the Metal backend is still broken, so I can stay only with OpenGL. This does not make me very optimistic about the future of Metal as far as MAME is concerned.
• Otherwise everything works as it should be. Also QMC2 is another rock solid release.

Let's see further what's inside of this for me...

Off Topic: Preparing Retropie from a Mac (with November 2017 update)

This is not much Mac-related, but I am currently spending all of my 'computer time' with preparing two Raspberry Pi 3Bs with Retropie as Christmas presents. I will collect my insights, and again like it was for MAME, my conclusion is that Macs and Raspberry Pis/Retropie are a good combination.


It is mostly a MAME 2003 romset. But Final Burn Alpha (then with different ROMs) seems to be a very good choice in case of performance problems on the Pi.

After having gone through some learning curve, I cannot give enough kudos to the Retropie project! What an impressive achievement - including some really good online documentation that is up to speed with the development. One thing is clear: You can hardly beat this system in the living room when it comes to a smooth retrogaming experience.

I will summarize my recommendations in the following:

MAME 0.178 - Not Much To Report

I have played around with MAME 0.178 for some time, and there is not much I can report for this release:

• The METAL shader of BGFX still seems to be broken on my machine under El Capitan. I am wondering whether anybody at the MAME team is aware of this fact.
• BGFX still runs much faster if you deactivate Artwork (-nobezel option on the command line) - I am still wondering whether this means that these games also perform so much worse when you throttle them to real time. Or it just doesn't matter - I never reached a value below 100% when activating bezels.
• In my performance testing, I experience significant performance losses in this release of some 20% with some of my games I use for testing (including R-Type, 1942, Gyruss - but notably not Elevator Action).
• New working games are shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHWFphs99Mc

Performance Tests BGFX vs. GLSL (Update September 2016)

Standardized performance testing from the command line explained (so you keep your MAME configuration fully intact - again many thanks for Headrush69 for this insight):

Open Terminal and change into your MAME directory, then execute (example for BGFX/CRT-GEOM-DELUXE testing):

./mame64 -video bgfx -str 60 -noafs -bgfx_screen_chains crt-geom-deluxe -bgfx_backend opengl -artcrop -noreadconfig -nosleep -nothrottle rtype

What this example does: It launches R-Type for 60 seconds with the BGFX/CRT-GEOM-DELUXE shader and the OpenGL backend on full speed. Other configuration options of mame.ini left out. After exiting MAME, the Terminal window provides you with the performance result:
Average speed: 634.69% (60 seconds)

If you want to test the GLSL shaders that you have installed manually, be sure that you provide the full path. Example with bezels disabled:
./mame64 -video opengl -nofilter -gl_glsl -glsl_shader_mame0 /Users/xxxxxxxxxxxx/Documents/mame/CRT-GEOM-DELUXE/CRT-geom-halation -str 60 -noafs -artcrop -noreadconfig -nosleep -nothrottle -nobezel elevator

Conclusions from my performance tests: 

• CRT-GEOM rules both in OpenGL/GLSL and BGFX performance-wise - but take the new OpenGL/GLSL-Halation shaders (discussed here), since they perform much better! You can use Glow both in OpenGL and BGFX without risking a performance hit. 
• If your machine can handle BGFX, the main advantages are that (i) you can fine-tune with sliders in the game and immediately see the result and (ii) you can even switch shaders in the game in real-time, which is extremely cool. Details are here.
• The BGFX/HLSL shaders crawl on weaker machines, while the BGFX/CRT-GEOM shader performs decently on weaker machines as well (in my case it works very well on a MacBook Pro 13'' Mid 2012, whereas HLSL crawls with 40%)
• As for BGFX, I would really like to see a slimmed down version of the default MAME HLSL shader that does not take away that much performance.
• GLSL in MAME 0.163 vs 0.177: Elevator Action: 730% vs 840%, Gyruss 287.15% vs 429.85% -> very nice performance increases also under OpenGL! (However it seems that the 0.178 release predominantly looses these gains again) 

Here are some details

Getting a Video Retro Effect on LCD - BGFX, GLSL or Artwork Effect (Update September 2016)

Consider tweaking your screen output as soon as possible 

Since MAME focuses on exact emulation, the unmodified output is unsuitable for flatscreens. This means that the tube screen feeling must be emulated on top.

Raw MAME Output without tweaking:

Let's face it: This is ugly.

Understand the meaning of these Buzz Words:

• Shader: program parts in MAME that can be activated for tweaking the Raw MAME output
• Backends: sub-sections of a shader that chosen once a shader is activated 
• OpenGL Shader - GLSL: for a long time the most important shader for Mac systems, still the performance king, but not part of the standard package
• BGFX Shader: the new kid on the block, designed for cross-platform experience, official part of MAME
• HLSL Shader: the shader in the Windows environment - don't mix this up with HLSL Backends within GLSL or BGFX - which apparently try to emulate the HLSL Shader in Mac systems

Recommendations summarized:

• MAME STANDARD: bilinear filtering - just comes out of the box and gets rid of the worst pixel effects
• ALTERNATIVE 1: If your machine is powerful enough, go for BGFX with the CRT-GEOM Deluxe Backend (new instructions below)
• ALTERNATIVE 2: If this does not work out, go for GLSL with the CRT-GEOM Deluxe Backend instead (new instructions below)
• ALTERNATIVE 3: If this does not work out, just add an Artwork Effect or - better - head for a new Mac

Here are the details for all three options - complete re-write in September 2016.

Off Topic: Finished Walter Isaacson's Book on Steve Jobs (Finally)

Yesterday night, after several retries, I was finally able to finish this impressive book on Steve Jobs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs_(book)

How does this relate to that Blog?