playing DK in MAME

[aarontruitt]

I have run some older emulators on the raspberry pi as wel as Wolfmame .172 and .175 on Windows 10. I've tried a couple of keyboards and a home brew arcade controller (with an IPAC2 and Happ Competition switches, buttons, and stick). I feel like I experience lag on all platforms and input devices in Donkey Kong, but not so much in any other game (besides armored car fk that game). Maybe I'm just used to my cab or maybe it has something to do with the HDMI out or my LCD television/monitor. I just don't feel like jumpman is nearly as responsive on MAME.

[f_symbols]

I thought the "expert"  consensus was that mame was easier? 

Well sort of.  In that experts opinion there is an order of difficulty.
RU Donkey Kong is the hardest.
Arcade Donkey Kong is Hard
MAME Donkey Kong is Easy
Kong Off Arcade Donkey Kongs are the easiest.

I wasn't talking about Tims opinion, I was using Tim's definition of experts to pinpoint a specific group. 

Also, to be fair, Tim never said RU was the hardest, he simply said it was a 3rd party and he felt that cheating was less likely on this format.

[marky_d]

 

[timhett]

I use an X Arcade for my MAME set up.  I haven't tried keyboard in a very long time to play (years) but the X Arcade works well for almost all of my games.   EXCEPT for DK.  It's basically useless for the game.  Lefts tend to not register, especially in combination with  other movements (moving forward and then back jump suddenly, or my favorite is getting crushed going up the first elevator when Jumpman refuses to live up to his name...)  Hank Chien refuses to play on an X Arcade for the same reasons.

[d!zZy]

Yesterday I was practicing with a savestate for level 4 elevators. I died 5 times in a row (still learning dodging these fking springs...) and the next time I loaded the save state I got a massive lag for some seconds. It felt like the framerate was dropping and the springs were like they're hovering and never actually hit the grider as usual. I think this lag accures from loading the same savestates too fast in a row.

I never played on an original arcade cab so I can't really compare the input on mame with it. But from my subjective recognition I don't receive any input lag while playing a normal game without loading a savestate. Is there a way to show FPS in mame? Maybe we can compare some hardware and config setups on the base of an elevator level (it's the most generic level) with shown FPS.

[Barra]

I never played on an original arcade cab so I can't really compare the input on mame with it. But from my subjective recognition I don't receive any input lag while playing a normal game without loading a savestate. Is there a way to show FPS in mame? Maybe we can compare some hardware and config setups on the base of an elevator level (it's the most generic level) with shown FPS.

Thats probably the only reason why I don't want to play on a cab, because going make to MAME might not be possible, but that could be taking it to the extreme.

Press F11 to show FPS in MAME. It'll give you a % rather than an absolute value. If your frameskip is set to auto, press F9 to set it to 0/0 - this usually fixes the save state issue, but it can depend on version/game.

[d!zZy]

Thanks Barra, I will test some levels on my cab with frameskip 0/0 and the show percentage of FPS. Will post the results and my hardware here!

EDIT: So, I tested Donkey Kong gameplay with frameskip on 0/0 with the said savestate on the elevator level. Everything runs smooth even after loading the state 20 times in a row! Thanks again for that Barra

On MAME 0.175 x64 I have 99% of the FPS on all levels. I thougt the 1% goes off from my scanline DirectX configuration but on wolfmame 0.175 x32 I have 100% of the FPS, even with scanlines configured. Maybe the different versions calculating in different ways because of x32 and x64!? All in all I can say gamelag is not something I have to worry about if I can rely on the FPS prompt.

Let's get our eyes on the input lag. As far as I know mame is using RAW Input if you're using a keyboard or an IPAC USB that is recognized as a keyboard on Windows. So we shouldn't have much input lag by definition (?). I really paid attention onto Jumpman's movement after I heard the click of my Sanwa JLF . I couldn't recognize a delay in the movement but I'm sure there are some milliseconds lag, because where data is transmitted there is always lag, isn't it? I've tested this ony different levels and on both mame platforms.

The only thing I've noticed is that if I play on wolfmame without any scanlines the game seems to react minimal faster. But I think that is more an illusion because I'm used to the scanlines.

My PC specs in my cab are:
Fujitsu Siemens A19-2A TFT Monitor 19'' 1280x1024 on 75Hz
Intel 2500k 3,7 GHz standard clock
with Intel HD 3000 graphic unit
8 GB RAM
on a Biostar H61MLV3 (H61 Chipset) Motherboard
Windows 7 Pro x64

It's overpowered for running mame but I had the parts to spare.

[Hamster]

What is RU Donkey Kong ?

Anyone play DK on a modded Xbox ? I've got Coin Ops 6 and it seem to use an older version of mame . Seems to play pretty good .

[aarontruitt]

What is RU Donkey Kong ?

RU refers to Retro Uprising (http://www.retrouprising.com/)