[HN Gopher] MAME Turns 25
___________________________________________________________________
MAME Turns 25
Author : tosh
Score : 210 points
Date : 2022-02-07 13:23 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mameworld.info)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mameworld.info)
| koz1000 wrote:
| MAME saved my bacon. True story:
|
| I was working on code for a pinball machine for Stern back in
| 2005. I had a memory corruption issue and Stern's crusty old 6809
| hardware didn't have anything resembling a real-time debugger
| that I could use. There was no time or budget to get a 6809 ICE
| procured and running.
|
| So I loaded up my code in PinMAME and let it run. I was able to
| watch memory in real time and caught the bug in an afternoon. It
| would have taken me a week or so doing it by hand.
|
| So thank you, MAME.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Isn't pinMAME a complete different project from MAME? Either
| way, thanks for sharing your story. I'm a pinball fan and love
| hearing stories like this!
| koz1000 wrote:
| I recall PinMAME being a fork of MAME, the UI was identical
| and they borrowed a lot of cores like the 6809 and various
| common sound boards that video used, like the Williams Yamaha
| 2151 and Midway DCS AD2105 DSP.
|
| For a while they tried to keep the manufacturers happy by not
| allowing modified ROMs to run, I got a special build from the
| developers to let me run anything I wanted. I think those
| restrictions do not exist anymore.
| [deleted]
| tanseydavid wrote:
| Were you acquainted with Lyman Sheets (RIP), or possibly a co-
| worker at some point?
|
| I was very sad to learn about his recent passing.
| koz1000 wrote:
| I knew Lyman from USENET in the early 90s and then I worked
| with him at Williams. We started around the same time and got
| laid off together in '99 when WMS shut us down. Lyman was at
| my wedding.
|
| It's extremely sad. It's a huge loss.
| classichasclass wrote:
| Well, out with it: which pin? (There's a Stern Sopranos in this
| house, though I think that was developed before this story
| would have happened.)
| koz1000 wrote:
| Stern NASCAR
|
| https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=5093
|
| Sopranos was around the same time, but there were actually
| two versions of the code. One was in the old 6809 and the
| other was a test version of their new ARM-based hardware.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Mr Do!
| asciimov wrote:
| My family purchased our first PC the summer of '97. It took me 6
| weeks to go from Packard Bell Navigator to discovering MAME and
| other emulators.
|
| I miss those early internet days, when finding new things online
| seemed magical.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| MAME is a great piece of FOSS. When I was learning JAVA in high
| school, we had to make a program with a GUI component, and I made
| a front end for MAME implementing the options I used a lot. It
| was like a pared down MAMEUI.
|
| Anyway, here's to 25 more! (and hopefully, there will be new
| arcade machines to emulate in 25 years).
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| The amazing thing about MAME is that it almost doesn't matter
| if there aren't new machines to emulate, because it so
| perfectly preserves the past. It really is almost perfected.
|
| (OpenEmu and Retro Virtual Machine are also worth the time; the
| latter particularly if you have fond memories of the very
| underrated Amstrad CPC)
| mattl wrote:
| CPC will have its day eventually.
| sfblah wrote:
| Can any MAME enthusiasts on here recommend the ideal computer
| configuration to use in a MAME cabinet? I have an old joystick
| setup I built many years ago, but the cabinet that went with it
| is long gone. I had some interest in setting it up again with the
| screen as a TV set attached to the wall and with the joystick box
| either attached to the wall or up on legs like a table. Seems
| like a fun project, but I'm not sure what's computer and OS to
| use for the job. I'd like to spend a "normal" amount of money on
| it - maybe under $1000?
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| MAME will always have a special place in my heart. Thank you to
| all who contributed. And to the original creators of all the
| games it supports.
| system16 wrote:
| I was late getting into computers, and back in '98 just got my
| first Windows PC. I struggled, but eventually figured out how to
| get MAME installed and loaded up a long forgotten arcade game I
| used to play as a kid at my local corner store.
|
| It's hard to describe the sense of wonder I felt when when the
| ROM check sequence flashed to the title / insert credits screen
| and I knew it worked. It might sound silly, but few moments in my
| life have been so eye opening. It was definitely a key factor in
| me starting my path to becoming a developer.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| It was great seeing the ROM check and initial graphics, but for
| me it were those first bits out of sound out of PacMan that
| really sealed the deal and made the game come alive.
|
| So impressive what the team has done over these years to
| preserve retro arcade games, consoles, and computers (now that
| MESS is part of MAME).
| stutsmansoft wrote:
| And still not version 1.0
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Can someone explain why this is being downvoted? Or at least
| explain why MAME has never reached 1.0?
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| I don't know how serious they were being, but a couple of the
| developers have suggested over the years that "MAME 1.0"
| represents MAME perfectly emulating all platforms.
| chriscjcj wrote:
| If any of the MAME devs are reading this, I would like to say
| thank you for all the amazing work you've done. I started playing
| with MAME in 1998. Watching how it's progressed has been jaw-
| dropping. In my opinion, it belongs in the arena a "human
| achievements." It's not just a technical achievement. Hundreds of
| people from all over the world cooperate with each other to move
| the ball forward with every release. I've never been a developer
| and know nothing about what goes on "on the inside," but I have
| to believe there has been conflict, politics, and infighting
| among the various participants over the last quarter century. But
| the perseverance, tenacity, and dedication shown by everyone who
| has given selflessly to create MAME is inspiring. These people
| sure aren't doing it for the money. There's a lot of love
| there... love for the games, the history, and the nostalgia. And
| we all benefit from it. I'm so grateful to all of you for what
| you've done and continue to do.
|
| A couple of anecdotes....
|
| There's been some episode where the development team has made
| some unpopular choices. Sometimes moving the ball forward on full
| emulation is at odds with end-users' game-playing enjoyment.
|
| Asteroids was my game as a kid. I dreamed and obsessed about it
| when I was eight, nine, and ten years old. Asteroids was quite
| playable on MAME even in its early stages, but only the video was
| emulated. Asteroids' sound is generated by analog circuitry and
| emulating it took many years to tackle. In the interim, MAME used
| samples to play its audio. Enter Derrick Renaud! He fully
| emulated Asteroids' audio. At first, it wasn't perfect and a lot
| of people (who have no idea what goes into making MAME possible)
| were angry that their game didn't sound right anymore. It slowly
| got better, but there was one thing that kept bothering me. The
| interval between the "thumps" was a major third instead of a
| minor second as it was supposed to be. Rather than creating
| tension, the thumps sounded strangely cheerful. I managed to find
| the forum where the MAME developers hung out and left a very
| polite and detailed message about the thumps. I included
| recordings from an Asteroids cabinet to show how the pitch of the
| thumps wasn't accurate. Derrick never responded to my message,
| but it was fixed on the next MAME release. So, THANK YOU Derrick.
| Asteroids sounds amazing. Now, if only someone made a monitor
| that even came close to simulating the incredibly bright CRT used
| in the cabinet, I would be on cloud nine. Maybe some future
| iteration of HDR will get us there. :-)
|
| https://www.retroblast.com/articles/Renaud_interview_AR-IN-0...
|
| A more recent episode was similar... The Votrax SC-01 voice
| synthesizer chip used in several classic games had never been
| emulated. Consequently, games like Q _bert, Gorf, and Wizard of
| Wor used samples as well. Someone managed to put a Votrax under a
| powerful microscope and document its exact functionality. (I just
| went looking for the photo of it, but couldn 't find it.) Again,
| starting at some MAME revision, any game that used the Votrax
| chip no longer triggered samples, but used Votrax emulation
| instead. At first, it really sounded bad. Gorf sounded like it
| had sucked off of a helium balloon. It was a long time before
| things improved. I posted a question on reddit's mame subreddit
| and received an interesting reply from a MAME developer:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MAME/comments/e2cdr4/mame_0216/f8xa...
|
| A few months later, a new MAME release made some huge
| improvements to Votrax emulation. And, while not perfect, it
| sounds really really great. It's particularly important on
| Q_bert, because so many of the strange sounds that the characters
| make are generated when random phonemes get sent to the Votrax.
| When Q*bert dies, his expletives are different each time. When
| you're using samples, it's not really possible to achieve that.
|
| Anyway... enough of my musings. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to
| the whole MAME team. You've put a million smiles on my face and
| the faces of my friends, co-workers, and my kid. And for that I'm
| so very grateful.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I guess I have built over half a dozen MAME cabs. Having kids was
| a great excuse to build them. All of my daughters kick ass at
| "Joust" and were born decades after its heyday.
|
| For me, I finally got to enjoy games like "Robotron" that I
| sucked so bad at I couldn't, at the time, justify spending a
| quarter on about a minute of game-play.
|
| MAME allowed me to discover games (I guess mainly Japanese ones?,
| "Guwange" is an example) I had never experienced in the arcade. I
| had also missed "Metal Slug" series, happy to discover these
| games in MAME.
|
| With MAME I rediscovered games I had only briefly seen in the
| arcades before they were gone: "Tail Gunner", "Omega Race".
|
| I also tried games with MAME I would have passed over in the
| arcade like "Golden Tee Golf". Really enjoy that one (you need a
| track ball though!).
|
| MAME did sort of ruin "pay-to-continue" games like "1941". But I
| sort of hate those games now anyway for having a "pay-to-
| continue" model.
| lochlan wrote:
| Pay-to-continue is a concession to the reality that an arcade
| is designed to generate money. The balanced and high-intensity
| gameplay gets you interested, the continue feature just takes
| your money. The solution is to never continue! Try for a 1
| credit clear.
| digisign wrote:
| Yes a confirmed blog post or similar link would be nice.
| wiz21c wrote:
| how hard is it to build a cabinet ? Do you use real CRT ? (I
| know there are lots of info on the web, but well, a first hand
| experience is always nice!)
| germandiago wrote:
| One of my most favorite projects ever.
| kingcharles wrote:
| There is the old apocryphal story of how eBay was started with
| Pez dispensers. But in 1997 when MAME launched, 99% of eBay was
| CDs of ROMs, and Beanie Babies. eBay gave no fucks back then
| (people were buying and selling kidneys) and most people were on
| dial-up, so buying CDs with 1000 ROMs on it was heaven.
| boilerupnc wrote:
| Cheers to MAME! A wonderful FOSS, indeed. Fond memories of
| running it on a hacked XBOX console many moons ago. My Gen Z son
| was exposed to the beauty of Dig Dug, Burger Time and Joust
| before he turned 5 :-) with eyes of wonder. This is the way.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Past MAMEage:
|
| _Build you own SGI Indy workstation with MAME_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28127607 - Aug 2021 (21
| comments)
|
| _A guide to running IRIX 6.5.22 in MAME_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25716625 - Jan 2021 (8
| comments)
|
| _Real VT102 Emulation with MAME_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23662907 - June 2020 (30
| comments)
|
| _MAME devs are cracking open arcade chips to get around DRM_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14854013 - July 2017 (4
| comments)
|
| _MAME is now Free and Open Source Software_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11226131 - March 2016 (91
| comments)
|
| _MAME and the New Emulation Reality_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9608945 - May 2015 (46
| comments)
|
| _MAME is going completely open-source to be a 'learning tool for
| developers'_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9553940 - May
| 2015 (65 comments)
|
| _MAME 0.151 ROMs_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6974938
| - Dec 2013 (46 comments)
|
| _Full MAME emulator for non-jailbroken iOS_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5198002 - Feb 2013 (28
| comments)
|
| _The Day MAME Saved My Ass_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1996885 - Dec 2010 (44
| comments)
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Back around 2003, my buddy and I were walking home from our
| college classes and we saw a 1981 track and field arcade cabinet
| next to a dumpster. We hauled that thing home in the rain, gutted
| it and made a MAME cabinet that took quarters for credits and
| soldered a keyboard up to the controls. We learned alot about
| keyboard ghosting and were pretty good at soldering by the end of
| the whole thing. We got so much enjoyment out of that box for
| years.
| timmg wrote:
| Dumb question: is there a way to legally _buy_ ROMs (meaning
| licenses) that can be played in MAME?
| dleslie wrote:
| Everyone is saying No, but that's not strictly true.
|
| GoG has a slew of arcade games for sale, that are essentially
| emulator+rom combinations. Double Dragon, Metal Slug, Neo Turf
| Masters, etc are all available for purchase with a good ROM.
|
| There are also licensed miniconsoles and cabinets (Arcade 1Up
| and others) that are likewise just hardware+emulator+rom
| combinations, and you can legally extract the roms for your own
| purposes.
|
| And there's more. I have a sizeable legally-acquired ROM
| collection, now. Even console games - Genesis games on Steam,
| PSX games on PSN, etc.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| What's not clear though is if you're allowed to extract the
| ROM to be used in another emulator. While copying the ROM for
| "backup purposes" is likely legal, any other kind of copying
| is grey, at least as grey as downloading a ROM for a game you
| own on physical media.
| themikesanto wrote:
| Unless there is some language in the purchase
| agreement/terms of service that specifically prohibits
| extracting the ROM, you are in the clear. I highly doubt
| such language exists.
|
| But who cares? You purchased the software, you can do
| whatever you want with it, and going this route is already
| going above and beyond what most normal people do, which is
| pirating the ROMs.
| dleslie wrote:
| The GoG and Steam sources I mentioned don't have any
| copyright circumvention prevention, at least as far as I
| could find, and so DMCA provisions against circumventing
| those digital locks shouldn't apply.
| flatiron wrote:
| A lot of commercial software uses mame under the covers (capcom
| classics for example). IANAL but if you bought that and were
| able to extract the roms from it that should be fully legal.
| Just don't distribute it.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| The short answer is probably not.
|
| However, some games are freeware [0], I guess you don't
| technically buy those, but they certainly are legal. Some
| homebrew devs might be selling ROMs this way, too, but you'd
| have to reach out to the devs. If you want to license
| individual games, you'll have to figure out who owns them &
| ask. They likely won't part with it, as these deals aren't
| really B2C. Plus, you might be competing with Arcade 1 up,
| whatever they think they can get from selling on services like
| PSN, etc.
|
| 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Robby_Roto!
| 1024core wrote:
| Archive ( https://www.archive.org ) has a massive set of ROMs.
| I just downloaded a 14GB file of them over the weekend.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| That's neither "legal" nor "buying".
| [deleted]
| chriscjcj wrote:
| For all intents and purposes, the answer to your question is
| no.
|
| You can find a handful of ROMs that are actually free on MAME's
| website:
|
| https://www.mamedev.org/roms/
|
| There aren't many and none of the really famous titles is free.
|
| I would imagine that posting links in HN to such content would
| be verboten. Perhaps it would be acceptable to offer a hint.
| There used to be a site called Pleasuredome that shut down
| recently. They were the place to go to obtain any and all ROM /
| CHD files. I would suspect that if one were to search using the
| word "Pleasuredome" along with other obvious related key words,
| one could quite easily find what one was looking for.
| anthk wrote:
| World Rally from Gaelco was released as freeware by its
| creators.
|
| https://archive.org/details/arcade_wrally
|
| Proof: https://web.archive.org/web/20090218020517/http://gael
| co.com...
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| You can get SD cards/USB sticks loaded with ROMs from Ali
| Express if you want to pay money, there are torrents around
| that are completely free, if your a techie the there is
| probably someone in your workplace you can get copies from,
| etc. Nobody really cares as long as you are not making a
| profit. China doesn't care period. Nobody is going to start a
| two ocean war over fifty year old video games.
| tremon wrote:
| So, the answer to the GP's question is basically: no?
| timmg wrote:
| Yeah, I mean, I know it's easy to get the ROMs. Just wondered
| if any of the original manufacturers made them available for
| _sale_.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| It would be nice, but I bet most of them would be hard
| pressed to dig up items from that far back even if they
| wanted to.
| koz1000 wrote:
| Jamie Fenton has released the ROMs for Robby Roto as
| freeware. So that's one.
| koz1000 wrote:
| Actually, there's a whole list here:
|
| https://www.mamedev.org/roms/
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Capcom over the years has had a ROM set you could buy on
| and off. Not sure if they still do. Think it was side by
| side with an arcade controller. I think there is one of
| their current console releases where there are a bunch of
| games and it uses MAME as the core to run their games. They
| are the only one I can think of that has sold ROMs to be
| used in MAME both loose and bundled. There was a service
| about 20 years ago claiming they had the ability to sell
| them but it seemed kind of shady. Also it is not very clear
| cut on many of them anymore who actually owns the game.
| Most of it has very clear lineage but not all of it.
| [deleted]
| robotnikman wrote:
| I remember reading about MAME many years ago, and I was amazed at
| how many arcade systems in could emulate. When you consider many
| arcade systems are one off (or close to one off) designs meant
| for running a specific game, you get a feeling of how much work
| people have put into preserving and emulating them.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| I don't care too much about the arcade emulation, but there have
| been a few times where I wanted to run a microcomputer emulation
| (the MESS aspect of this project). However, I was unable to
| figure how to set it up or even what machines are supported.
| There are myriad red herring MAME sites that are out of date to
| the point of being misinformation.
| unixhero wrote:
| MAME is an amazing open source libre project.
| sylware wrote:
| I stop looking at it once somebody broke its C implementation
| with horrible c++.
| apetresc wrote:
| But why? The compatibility and performance of MAME has never
| been better. What do you see as the effective downside?
| sumtechguy wrote:
| I can take a stab at that.
|
| The perf is fine for a lot of things. The code on the other
| hand is kind of 'odd' to follow. It was a C project. #define
| everywhere to basically create an object like system. They
| now are moving to C++ in some places they use it to good
| effect and stripping out that #define system. Other spots are
| still the same C code from 15 years ago. So now you have a
| project that is both. So it makes it sort of strange in a few
| places. They have over the years made decent progress to
| strip out some of the foot guns that C lets you do. Then on
| top of that 6 different project leads with differing opinions
| on how to run the project over the years. They have also
| smashed together two different 'ROM' systems. One is a static
| system where everything is burned into the code and the other
| is a dynamic system using XML. So context burden is higher
| when trying to change anything. Add to that unless you know
| their system building a new emu is kind of interesting.
|
| But it is still sort of funny seeing people rocking a .34
| version. 'because of performance'. When anything within the
| last year is probably just as performant and wildly more
| capable and accurate. If the chart I saw last week is any
| indicator 241 should have at least a 2-5% speed bump because
| they removed a C'ism and flipped it over to use a C++ style
| parameter in some core calls. Most of this goes back to
| around 110 or so when they flipped over to use C++. Well they
| _also_ added in a decent regression in speed at that time
| too. So those two things became conflated in peoples mind
| that C++ bad. When there was a design issue.
|
| Good place to follow the code and see what is going on.
| https://github.com/mamedev/mame I would estimate they bash
| out about a dozen pull requests a day.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| The .3x versions were the last ones before they put in
| abstraction layers for video and sound, which had a lot of
| benefits, but adversely impacted performance on low-end
| hardware of the time. On modern hardware I don't think it
| is really an issue, particularly for games from the 80s and
| prior. Raspberry Pi 4 works just fine.
| bluGill wrote:
| In summary the project is 25 years old and it shows in the
| code. All old projects have that in some way as 25 years of
| work and mistakes catches up
| 300bps wrote:
| 25 years of a loose confederation of unpaid developers
| working on a code base with frequent updates and
| improvements. If this is the worst that can be said about
| it, they're doing pretty darn good.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| It is the tour-de-force in emulation. If I were starting
| my own emu I would lean heavily on what is in there.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2022-02-07 23:00 UTC)