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Is Zinc Necessary?


newoski

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I use MAME for all the zinc games. It was a pain to setup and MAME ran the games fine to me. At least the ones I tested / played. I would say set it up with MAME, and if there is a specific game that doesn't work to your liking in MAME, try it in zinc and use HL to use Zinc for that specific game when and if you need too.

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The games look way better in Zinc (same with Sega M2/M3 emus) because they're using 3D rendering. It may run at the right speed in Mame but it looks crappy.

Well, if you want to deal with Zinc randomly deciding to eat your configs, go right ahead. :)

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Honestly ....after as many emulator/games ....it does become a bit daunting trying to find some games....as well as there is just too much fluff on my hd....Im thinking about getting rid of all of the stuff I will never use.

Zx spectrum

Alot of the hand helds...etc.

A friend pointed this out to me recently "For as cool as it looks...you have alot of shit on here (garbage)" The more I look...Im beginning to agree.

Getting rid of zinc is the beginning of the uncluttering.

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Well, if you want to deal with Zinc randomly deciding to eat your configs, go right ahead. :)

'eat your configs'... that doesn't even make any sense. Have you setup Zinc before? It really isn't that difficult, just use Aldo's Zinc FE.

The quality difference between zinc (any 3D emu) and mame is drastic. Mame is on the left in the examples below.

mame_eg_zps83aed842.pngzinc_eg_zps5f20270e.png

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'eat your configs'... that doesn't even make any sense. Have you setup Zinc before? It really isn't that difficult, just use Aldo's Zinc FE.

If you've used Zinc for any amount of time, such as I have for over a decade, you'll find out about some of its weird quirks such as suddenly deleting your configuration files, reverting button configs or leaving the Zinc FE completely non-functional at random. These are well-known issues with Zinc. It simply wasn't worth the hassle.

Sure, it looks a little nicer in Zinc, but that's not how the game looked. Much prefer accuracy myself.

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I've been using Zinc for many years and have never heard of it randomly deleting files or had that happen to me. The 'well-known' issue with Zinc is that it can be difficult to setup but it's not as daunting as some people make it out to be, plenty of resources floating around to make it simpler. The end result (to me at least) is worth it. You mustn't have played a lot 3D games in the arcade if you think the way Mame currently renders them is accurate, that's not how the originals looked.

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I've been using Zinc for many years and have never heard of it randomly deleting files or had that happen to me. The 'well-known' issue with Zinc is that it can be difficult to setup but it's not as daunting as some people make it out to be, plenty of resources floating around to make it simpler. The end result (to me at least) is worth it. You mustn't have played a lot 3D games in the arcade if you think the way Mame currently renders them is accurate, that's not how the originals looked.

I'll agree with you on the setup being far less problematic than people say.

I've played most of these 3D arcade games to death. MAME is using software rendering for accuracy whereas Zinc is not. With the exception of some filtering seen in your screenshot there, that is indeed how the games looked in the arcade. Zinc is doing things like using higher resolution textures, texture filtering, higher resolution 3D, etc... it isn't accurate, but is nicer, sure. That's why you're saying "any 3D emu" looks better than MAME, they are all applying higher resolution 3D, texture smoothing, etc... whereas MAME is going for accuracy. I don't know this particular game you are showing images from, but I can definitely say that the other games I've played a ton of are more accurate in MAME (if they aren't buggy, anyways).

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I've played most of these 3D arcade games to death. MAME is using software rendering for accuracy whereas Zinc is not. With the exception of some filtering seen in your screenshot there, that is indeed how the games looked in the arcade. Zinc is doing things like using higher resolution textures, texture filtering, higher resolution 3D, etc... it isn't accurate, but is nicer, sure. That's why you're saying "any 3D emu" looks better than MAME, they are all applying higher resolution 3D, texture smoothing, etc... whereas MAME is going for accuracy. I don't know this particular game you are showing images from, but I can definitely say that the other games I've played a ton of are more accurate in MAME (if they aren't buggy, anyways).

The game is Bloody Roar 2. I don't remember the arcade versions being that pixelated along the straight lines at all, the 3D versions all seem much closer to what I remember though I haven't seen an original arcade version for years. My screenshot is more detailed than the original game would be because we were viewing them on a low res arcade monitors. Kind of hard to tell in the videos I'm looking at:

I would highly suggest anyone considering ditching the 3D emulators at least get one game setup properly (in Zinc, SegaM2 etc.) so you can judge for yourself. I much prefer the 3D versions.

There's MAME versions you can use graphics filters lime MAME++ etc

I only recently discovered this and have been setting up PSXMame and been impressed with the results. It uses similar rendering plugins to Zinc with a mame executable, there are also more supported games. It has it's own little quirks for setup as well though.

It should also be mentioned that some of these games are emulated as well or better in the console version, the ps1 version of Tekken 3 is a good example. This can be a good alternative to both the mame and zinc version in some cases.

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I think the last version of PSXmame was from 2009/09/03 and uses the .133 mame romset. The more common version floating around seems to be from 2009/04/17.

I haven't been able to fully verify a PSXmame rom set using any of the dats I've found or by creating one from an executable.

djvj has a dat file on the FTP site, there's also one in the version I found here that is compiled with no nag and direct input. All of the dats seem to differ, not sure which is correct.

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