artman999999

64bit MAME 174 patched with no-nag, no white windows, hi-score and forced direct input. Key items with this release: I promised an emailer earlier that I would put this out, and if I say I'm going to do it...it's gonna happen. So here it is. PLEASE stop asking for x86 versions, MAMEUIFX, etc. My rig doesn't use either one, so I don't compile them. Not being a jerk (at least, not deliberately). The good news: I don't THINK you need to update your file structure with this release. So you should be able to just overwrite your MAME 173 with the attached .exe and you're off and running. If you're upgrading from 172 or prior, do a full install from the MAME DEV website, then the overwrite the main program with the attached .exe. You might want to back up your mame.ini file and generate a new one, as the nonag diff used for 174 is much more integrated and KISS than ever before. EDIT - Skipgameinfo needs to be set to "1" in the mame.ini for all messages to be suppressed. The nonag allows you to keep the gameinfo if you still want it, but removes the "click OK or go LR" dialogue. The bad news?: On a minor note, the HLSL programming has changed, AGAIN. So the video settings you tweaked for hours to get "just right" might not look exactly the way they did in 173. The description of the changes was accidentally left out of the "whatsnew" file for this version, but can be seen at the very bottom of the Change Log below. Apparently one of the devs forgot to update that part of the .txt file when it was sent out to the dev team 2 days prior to release date. Not saying the changes are bad - it's just that your screen might not look exactly the same as it did in 173. If you're using 172 or earlier, you should already know the new file structure has completely changed the way HLSL settings are handled. Read my 172 or 173 download descriptions for more details on that. 6/8/2016 - IMPORTANT EDIT - The post.fx file in this release had an error that has since been corrected in the .git. Not my fault - it was part of the 174 source. MAME devs have since corrected the error and uploaded it to github. But if you don't want to wait for 175, I've already gotten it for you. It's now included as a second attachment - just overwrite the 174 post.fx file in the HLSL directory with this one and you're GTG. On a major note... Oh I'll just come out and say it... Who really cares about this release? It's not faster. If anything, the restructuring of the drivers, carts, etc continues to slow down the emulation. YES, I KNOW IT'S MORE ACCURATE TO THE WAY THE REAL HARDWARE WORKS. But when you just want to play the games do you really care? And what's new? MINOR bug fixes. Yet another incredibly-obscure title that now works on the Tiger Game handheld MESS emu and some improvements to the Apple 2 driver? More clones added? The improvement to Golden Tee Fore is notable, but it's really just a fix from the break that occurred from 172 to 173. The better support for DirectInput 8 is great and appreciated, but if your rig already works you don't care about this. The work on the MAME project is vast, requiring hundreds, perhaps thousands, of man-hours to produce. And to think of how far it's come in the last few years...astonishing. As a simple end-user, I am humbled and grateful to the MAME dev team. But guys...how about fixing Sega Model 1? Virtua Fighter is still broken. YEAH, IT RUNS, but look at it - shameful. HydroThunder? Or get Sammy Atomiswave / Naomi / Sega Model 2 to play at full speed? Who doesn't love some Capcom VS SNK? MetalliC over at Demul has done an EXCELLENT job with some of these. And Bart and Ian dev-ing Sega Model 3 over at SuperModel continue to pioneer development in the true spirit of bringing old games back to life. I told my emailer I wouldn't rant on this post, but it has to be said. This compile works great, so feel free to use it. And if you're using 173 already, I guess there's really no reason not to upgrade aside from the potential HLSL issues and romset updating. But personally, I'm still using 172 and couldn't be happier.

64bit MAME 173 patched with no-nag, no white windows, hi-score and forced direct input. Couple of key items with this release: MAME has once again updated files in the installation package, specifically in the "plugin" directory. As such, just overwriting your old pre-v173 mame64.exe with this new one will cause a lua script error at boot. At the very least, you must install the 173 package from the mamedev site, then overwrite your mame64.exe with the one included here. The mame.ini file has ALSO changed AGAIN, with some mame-induced changes and some from the no-nag patch, so re-create it with a mame64 -cc command and adjust accordingly if you don't like the included one. Remember, too, that the HLSL settings for raster and vector games (which covers just about every arcade game ever made) are in the "presets" folder. Changing them in the mame.ini won't do much, as the presets "raster.ini" and "vector.ini" take priority over any common settings. A "hi" folder must be created for your high-score storage, and a "hiscore.dat" must be placed in the MAME root directory. To help make this even easier, and based on some requests last time I posted this, I zipped the entire package for you and it's ready to go as-is. NO ROMS INCLUDED, OF COURSE. Unzip it somewhere safe, populate it with the contents of your current artwork, cfg, nvram, diff, roms, and preset folders and you're off and running. MY HLSL settings are here in their full glory if you want them, or trash them and use your own - what ever you prefer. If you've slaved over your current video settings to get them "just right" or like BGFX, then don't use my preset folder, generate a new mame.ini with the 173 mame64.exe and populate manually it as needed with your current mame.ini contents. 2 Last things: I had some requests after my v172 post to compile versions with raw input, or in 32bit. I'll be honest - I compile this for my system and dinput/64 bit is what I got. 'Nuff said. Secondly - I'm not a huge fan of this release. I actually had to pull the folder from my recycle bin after reading a post discussing the release earlier. IM(Humble)O, there are few reasons to upgrade from 172, and the speed of 173 seems to be slightly slower (about 1% on average) on the most demanding roms. I use mmpork, ibara, and pinkswts to test the speed of the emulator, and typically come in at 99% with v172. v173 is coming in about 98%, even with autoframeskip enabled, etc. I would COPY your critical folders to this version, then test a few roms with it before fully committing to it. If you've got an older system and you're a classic arcade purist, you won't care because you're not rocking CAVE roms, anyway. And you've got a banging MAME PC, then you won't care, either. My mame setup uses a Core i5 with 8g ram and a GTX 560 Ti graphics card. Not a gaming rig, but no slouch, either. So bear this in mind before you upgrade. And if 173 works great for you, that's great. EDIT - After running this on a similar PC with a slightly faster CPU (Core i5 3.3g vs Core i5 2.5g), I couldn't get any of my three test roms to drop below 100% emulation with the setting included in the DL. So no worries if your PC is decent. Final parting thought - BACK UP YOUR CURRENT MAME FOLDER AND COPY THE KEY FOLDERS INTO THE ATTACHED VERSION, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. The only folder I DIDN'T do this with was my roms folder, as it's WAY too big. That way, you get a working version AND there's no risk of losing hard work.

64bit MAME 172 Patched with no-nag, no white windows, hi-score and forced direct input. While hi-score support has been enabled in 172 via lua script, there is still some skepticism over at ArcadeControls whether it's fully functional or not, so hi-score was left in the compile. Install MAME 172 via DL from the MAME Dev webpage, then overswrite the .exe with this version. ***IF YOU HAVE AN OLDER VERSION OF MAME, THERE ARE NEW FOLDERS FOR 172 TO WORK, SO DO THE FULL INSTALL FIRST, THEN THE OVERWRITE***. And if you've never used a patched mame before, don't forget to generate a new .ini file (command line: mame64 -cc), so you have the control lines for the hi-score, etc. It will over-write your current mame.ini, so back that up first if you need to copy over your settings. Lastly, 172 now keeps (most of) it's hlsl settings in the .ini/presets folder, so changing them in the mame.ini (like we've done in every version since hlsl was introduced) USUALLY WON'T WORK - you need to update the raster.ini and vector.ini folders, as well as mame.ini. Since the global hlsl settings are still in mame.ini, I make sure my mame.ini hlsl settings mirror my raster.ini and vector.ini settings to be safe, but that's just me. And there is no more hlsl pre-scaling - that's not the patch, that's MAME 172. It's now a calculated value. Great update to a great emulator, btw. First update in a long time that provides CONSIDERABLE performance gains on the graphical level. I realize that every update requires incredible amounts of time and energy from the programmers, but not since Raiden was properly emulated have I been this amped about a new version. -A