NEW MAME Port for pocketPC's....

[airwolf]

A new MAME port was recently released. It is at this site:

http://www.pocketcult.com/home.php

I tried a few games and they ran pretty good. This port is based of of the version that is out for the Gp2X portable Linux handheld. You have to use MAME .34 romset.

One thing I noticed is that there seems to be an issue with the X50v in that any game, when it starts, is shown in a very small 1:1 pixel screen at the top center of the X50V (that is what I have). I have WinMobile2003se and ROM version A03. I tried this emulator with Emulamer 1.11 GAPI tweak with all different combinations of settings and the same thing happens.

Emulamer, do you think you could fix this so it works with the V50V/GAPI tweak like you did with MegaMAME 9.5? Thanks.

[Rishad]

its still in beta stage but looks better than anything I've tried before. heres the original thread that the author created.. http://www.aximsite.com/boards/showthread.php?t=117838

..maybe you should ask him to make the improvements.

[mcastrillo]

Originally Posted by airwolf

One thing I noticed is that there seems to be an issue with the X50v in that any game, when it starts, is shown in a very small 1:1 pixel screen at the top center of the X50V (that is what I have). I have WinMobile2003se and ROM version A03. I tried this emulator with Emulamer 1.11 GAPI tweak with all different combinations of settings and the same thing happens.

I'm working to fix this issue. I added an assembler scaler routine for VGA devices but in the case of x50v/x51v it does not work as I wanted because the screen vsync (I think), also I made a OpenGL version using the PowerVR SDK which really looks better, the scale is very smooth, but since the 2700g chip needs 37ms to update the textures it does not accelerate the scale too much. I downloaded the documentation about the 2700g registers from Intel and I'm making some tries using the specific flag to make pixels 'double sized' using the hardware of this machine, it should work fine.

I made some evaluations using DirectX in my x51v and it works faster than the OpenGL version, but how many users have WM5 installed?

Regards

[Rishad]

Once again.. great job man!! looking forward to the next version..

[airwolf]

Originally Posted by mcastrillo

I'm working to fix this issue. I added an assembler scaler routine for VGA devices but in the case of x50v/x51v it does not work as I wanted because the screen vsync (I think), also I made a OpenGL version using the PowerVR SDK which really looks better, the scale is very smooth, but since the 2700g chip needs 37ms to update the textures it does not accelerate the scale too much. I downloaded the documentation about the 2700g registers from Intel and I'm making some tries using the specific flag to make pixels 'double sized' using the hardware of this machine, it should work fine.

I made some evaluations using DirectX in my x51v and it works faster than the OpenGL version, but how many users have WM5 installed?

Regards

Thanks....cant wait. How about a config for input? So we can set up the buttons for the various controls ourselves. MegaMAME 9.5 has this but you have to click 'save changes' everytime you restart the emu to get the emu to remember how you previously setup the input. Thanks again...

[MaystenG]

Originally Posted by mcastrillo

I'm working to fix this issue. I added an assembler scaler routine for VGA devices but in the case of x50v/x51v it does not work as I wanted because the screen vsync (I think), also I made a OpenGL version using the PowerVR SDK which really looks better, the scale is very smooth, but since the 2700g chip needs 37ms to update the textures it does not accelerate the scale too much. I downloaded the documentation about the 2700g registers from Intel and I'm making some tries using the specific flag to make pixels 'double sized' using the hardware of this machine, it should work fine.

I made some evaluations using DirectX in my x51v and it works faster than the OpenGL version, but how many users have WM5 installed?

Regards

Nooo, please stay away from directX. There are so many 2003se
users. *maybe it is time to switch to 2005?*

[Demigod121]

There are still too many issues with WM5 for me to upgrade to it on my x50v.

When there is a certified stable release, then I might.

So let's not have a version of this that relies on DirectX please...!

[PocketBrain]

It runs, it runs!
Now I have to find my Galaga '88 ROM.

[pmcizhere]

I know I would love a Directx version, as would all the other X51v users out there... Perhaps you could release the OpenGL version first and then, if you had the time, release a Directx version. But whatever you decide I'm sure it will turn out great!

[badbob001]

Originally Posted by mcastrillo

I'm working to fix this issue. I added an assembler scaler routine for VGA devices but in the case of x50v/x51v it does not work as I wanted because the screen vsync (I think), also I made a OpenGL version using the PowerVR SDK which really looks better, the scale is very smooth, but since the 2700g chip needs 37ms to update the textures it does not accelerate the scale too much. I downloaded the documentation about the 2700g registers from Intel and I'm making some tries using the specific flag to make pixels 'double sized' using the hardware of this machine, it should work fine.

This sounds familiar. Check out this post made by Tala, who created the opengl-enhanced version of pocketsnes. He too found the included texture libraries to be too slow so he made his own, which cut down the delay from 34ms to less than 6ms: http://www.aximsite.com/boards/showp...64&postcount=4

Originally Posted by Tala

It is about as fast as emulamers build using picards GAPI tweak.
Infact emulamers build is as fast as it gets, since it just transfers the framebuffer to the 2700g. The OpenGL build needs to convert the frambuffer into a texture(which has a really strange format) and renders the texture to a quad using bilinear filtering. The conversion to a texture format is done in software and takes about 5.6ms using a custom assembly routine, while the second step is done in hardware and is almost neglible.
I first used the standard OpenGL implementation of texture conversion and almost gave up, since it took 34ms!!! Then i wrote the conversion in assembly and it was much faster

Tala has pretty much been missing, so you may be on your own if you want to duplicate his work. Good luck!

[badbob001]

anyone figure out how to quit the emulator? the doc says something about tapping the screen three times in a second or tapping the screen every three seconds... I end up having to reset to quit.

[Rishad]

no.. you tap and HOLD on the screen for about 3 seconds.. and when you let go.. you quit.

[mcastrillo]

Originally Posted by airwolf

Thanks....cant wait. How about a config for input? So we can set up the buttons for the various controls ourselves. MegaMAME 9.5 has this but you have to click 'save changes' everytime you restart the emu to get the emu to remember how you previously setup the input. Thanks again...

With PocketCultMAME 0.4a you can configure the controls and will save the configuration individually for every game, also analog controls will be emulated using the stylus (analog controls does not works in the current version). I hope to release this version in two or three weeks.

Originally Posted by pmcizhere

I know I would love a Directx version, as would all the other X51v users out there... Perhaps you could release the OpenGL version first and then, if you had the time, release a Directx version. But whatever you decide I'm sure it will turn out great!

With the time, WM5 will be more extended and I suppose that more devices will include 3D acceleration chips. I will release the OpenGL version for PocketCultMAME 0.4a and I'll make a Direct3D version too in a future, I want to make PocketCultMAME as compatible as I can for the most devices. I trust that next releases of the PowerVR's libraries will be more optimized.

Originally Posted by badbob001

Tala has pretty much been missing, so you may be on your own if you want to duplicate his work. Good luck!

I have read the post of Tala and sounds interesting, thanks!

Originally Posted by akheron

Once again.. great job man!! looking forward to the next version..

Thanks Akheron for your encourage, thanks also for add PocketCultMAME in your software list ;-) I hope that you will like next releases of PocketCultMAME

Regards

[badbob001]

Thanks for the info on how to quit the emulator.

I hope you get the scaling working since on my x50v wm5, the game screen is about one inch by one inch. Maybe that is why most games are running at 50-60fps.

Also for some reasons, some games run in landscape mode, which makes it hard to use the device controls. I hope you can force all games to be at the same orientation.

When I load a game, I see the contents of the game zip being loaded. Is the game being extracted to a temporary folder or is it just being extracted into memory? I'm just don't want too many temp files hiding somewhere on my device.

Anyway, great work!

[Menneisyys]

Guys and gals, don’t forget to check out my latest, related article at http://www.aximsite.com/boards/showthread.php?t=152879 – you’ll LOVE it!