In the absence of any sort of average FPS being embedded into the recordings I thought it might be interesting to know what spec machines fellow MARPers are using for their recordings and what the minimum percentage is you feel the game must be running at before you will make a recording ?!

I'm running a K6-2(3D) 300 mhz machine running at 100mhz on the mother-board, 64 megs of DIMMs and a Viper V330 video. (Yes I'm looking forward to the next release of Retrocade !!! ;-))

So, what spec machines are you other MARPers running with and what's your minimum percentage of original arcade speed that you need to obtain before you'll make/submit a recording for a game ?!

Cheers, BeeJay.

-- BeeJay (bjohnstone@cardinal.co.nz), November 07, 1998

Answers

re: What spec machines are fellow MARPers using ?!

Interesting thread, I have often wondered about this but never asked.

I actually just got a new machine for home, which will now become my primary place for recording scores (as opposed to my work machine before). The new system is a P2-450, 128MB RAM, and a Viper v550 video card. So far, it has run everything I've tried at 100% with no frameskip (hehe). (FYI, the work machine I was using before was a P2-300)

Regarding the minimum percentage of original speed for me to playback, I'd have to say between 90-100% (only ranging down to 90% because I noticed a few games that seemed to be 100% were actually running 5-10% slower). If I notice the game running slow, I will adjust the frameskip to get it to 100%.

=Angry=

-- Angry (greggg@ix.netcom.com), November 07, 1998.

re: What spec machines are fellow MARPers using ?!

Unfortunately not all of us have speedy machines.. I have a P166, 16MB RAM, and a stock standard 1MB Trio64 vid card. Most older games run at 95-100% without frameskip, late 80's Data East games like Robocop need a 1 frameskip while newer games especially System16 and CPS1 need no sound and a 2-3 frameskip to achieve a good percentage.

Of course Neo Geo games are a joke on my PC, but thats no great loss to me.

-- JSW (jwilson@sv.net.au), November 07, 1998.

NeoGeo games no great loss ?!

Actually not being able to run the Neo-Geo games at full speed could be considered a loss from the point of view of missing out on potential leaderboard points !!! ;-))

I've only recently upgraded from a P90 (well two months ago now but it still seems recent) and had to record lots of games with Frameskipping and no sound or else use my P233 at work. This explains why I didn't previously record some of the recent releases as my minimum speed for recording is 95-100% of original arcade speed.

Cheers, BeeJay.

-- BeeJay (bjohnstone@cardinal.co.nz), November 07, 1998.

Maybe from a points perspective

But I'm not a fan of Neo Geo, so I probably wouldn't submit any scores even if I could play the games at full speed.

I agree with Frode's suggestion that games played below 90% shouldn't be allowed to be submitted, but that's not to say all ppl with MHZ challenged machines can't submit. I'm sure most, if not all MARPers with crappy pc's make sure they get at least 95% speed using frame skips or disabling sound. I for one can never submit a 1941 score because the game moves at snail pace even with a frameskip of 3. I could 'cheat' by playing the game at 70% speed but it's so slow I'd probably fall asleep before I even get to the first boss!

-- JSW (jwilson@sv.net.au), November 07, 1998.

You're right most Neo-Geo games are crap....

But there are some good shooters and some good puzzle games in there.

If you exclude all the crappy fighting games however, then you're probably only missing out on about 1 dozen games or 120 possible points so I guess you're not really missing out on much.

Actually, I prefer to play games I enjoy rather than just trying to get to the top of the leaderboard - although that is a nice side affect of getting several good scores. ;-)

Cheers, BeeJay.

-- BeeJay (bjohnstone@cardinal.co.nz), November 08, 1998.

What's wrong with the NeoGeo fighting games?

I enjoyed playing Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting and World Heroes at the arcades. Not quite SF2, but I thought they were pretty good. Usually people that didn't like AOF were the ones that weren't any good at it...

-- Barry Rodewald (bsr@hn.pl.net), November 08, 1998.

ummmmm, everything as far as my tastes go......

I've never liked fighting games and probably never will.

You may be right though - it could be because I suck at them and could never be bothered to learn the right move to use on XYZ opponent. It just didn't interest me enough to bother trying to work out which moves to use.

BeeJay.

-- BeeJay (bjohnstone@cardinal.co.nz), November 08, 1998.

I agree with BeeJay...

I agree with BeeJay on this one. I personally like only the shooters and the puzzlers (especially Magical Drop!) I'm really not a fan of the fighters, unfortunately. Once I find a sight where I can download neo geo roms (still can't find Magical Drop) then I will start uploading inps.

I really want to try to beat my world record score I got on Magical Drop of 950K+ I just can't find this dam game! Argh!!!!

** Steve Krogman **

-- Stephen Krogman (skrogman@concentric.net), December 07, 1998.

I use a p2-400 BX system with a G-200 graphics card. Most games run at 100% so I seldom have to run with frame-skipping and the like.

My opinion is that recordings done with slow computers (emulation below 80-90 %), should not be allowed. The games are not supposed to be played this way, and the scores would certainly not be 'legal', in the sense that you probably wouldnt have achieved it if the games was running at full speed.

Hope the mame-team add a function that saves machine information/emulationspeed-information in the recordings.

Frode

-- Frode Gjerde (frogjer@online.no), November 07, 1998.

specs...

Now I'm glad I've got a P2...

My system is a P2-233Mhz (66Mhz board), 64MB RAM, Win95 OSR2.1, and video card which I don't know what it is - except that it has a Cirrus GD-5465 chipset.

-- Barry Rodewald (bsr@hn.pl.net), November 07, 1998.

Machine specs

I also have wondered what machine people are using, some of the scores I have seen are pretty amazing, signs of a mis-spent youth I think.

My machine is P2-300mhz with 64mb ram. All games run at 100% with no frameskip so far. Rapidly running out of disk space now though - damn those neo-geo games - :)

The other question to come from this, is what settings do people use for each game? I always use default settings unless there is a TG setting. Obviously higher scores would be easier on easy settings. Can you see what settings people use from their recordings ??

-- Dave Hunt (griffith500@hotmail.com), November 08, 1998.

Specs

As mentioned before, I have a Hewlett-Packard P2-450, 128 megs of SDRAM, 10 gigs of HD space. The only games I've had to use frameskip with on MAME are a few Neo-Geo games... I can't believe how slow Blazing Star is!

I used to have a Pentium-90, but my friend who had a mild interest in emulation let me do some recordings on his P2-266 too. I've tried to keep my recordings "legit" too, I'd do whatever it took to get the game running 100%, whether it was frameskipping or turning off sound. If I couldn't get full speed, I just left the game alone.

-BBH

-- BBH (lordbbh@aol.com), November 09, 1998.

Finally, my own Arcade machine!

Me and my friend built an arcade machine a few weeks ago, installed an ordinary PC with latest version of MAME, and connected the keyboard curcuit to 2 8-way arcade joysticks. We also added support for coin insertion, player start etc. with special keys. A trackball is working as our mouse and can also be used with some games.

This whole project turned out to be the most addictive machine I have ever seen! Its just about as close you get without actually playing the real arcade. All my recordings from now on will be done using this arcade machine :)..

If you want more info about building arcade cabinets : www.arcadeathome.com (theres also a picture of our fine machine somewhere)

Frode Gjerde

-- Frode Gjerde (frogjer@online.no), November 23, 1998.

at home i have a k6 2 300 with 3d vodoo2 card and 128 megs of ram

at my other home in NJ i have p3 500 with 512 megs of ram and a dimond viper card

no frame speed problems here in fact on my k6 kof98 runs too fast

-- richard kevin stewart (rayden239@aol.com), March 29, 1999.

I'm running a Cyrix 6x86 166 with 32 megs of ram and a 2 meg Trident video card. Most of these ancient games will run at 100% by tweaking the frameskip and/or turning sound off, but as far as Neo Geo or CPS-1 games are concerned it may as well be overclocked Scramble hardware. Since I usually wasn't playing the popular machines in the arcade (until SFII), the sound was almost always off anyway.

With the old frameskip (m34) I set the games however it takes to get them 100% speed for recordings. With the new frameskip, I watch the framerate in a few test games to make sure it's hovering around 100% to make sure the autoadjust is able to work correctly. Mortal Kombat runs at something like 40% at frameskip 11, so it'll have to wait for an upgrade :(

-- Aquatarkus (aquatarkus@digicron.com), March 29, 1999.

The computer fairy blessed me with a brand new machine yesterday (Cyrix MII-333), so I'll be able to run my sorely missed fighting games again. That, and some nice MAME person FINALLY fixed the sound in Demolition Derby :)

Still watching the frameskip, but it's so much easier now.... Aqua

-- Aquatarkus (aquatarkus@digicron.com), June 24, 1999.

PII 350MHZ mmx with 64MB ram. I would consider anything under 100% to be cheating, and wouldn't post. Some old scores I do wonder about...

-- Chris Parsley (cparsley1@hotmail.com), July 09, 1999.