Talk:MAME/Archive 1

Pro-MAME
While this page is quite descriptive, I do feel it is a little too "pro-MAME".. for example saying "rom images don't hurt anyone". Anyone who collects arcades will know the sudden drop in value whenever a game is emulated in MAME. I'll leave this comment for a while, if no-one says anything I'll do some editing...


 * Ah, yes, but is this a good or a bad thing? It hurts collectors, but it means that it's easier for an arcade or other buisness that uses gaming machines to buy a used one cheap, which helps them.

I don't know what it used to say but personally I came away from the article with a low opinion of the project's goals. The bit about their purist view of emulation makes them seem obsessive compulsive


 * Why is that obsessive compulsive? It is just their goal to emulate and preserve the games as accurately as possible since the cabinets are physical objects that are getting more rare over time if not treated with care (in the same way as old automobiles). If you are just looking to play arcade games and not care about if they are 100% accurate, there are other emulators available that do the job. Felsir 06:22, 4 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Indeed. Think of it as a documention project, not just preserving what existed, but their use for existing. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 16:14, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

NPOV compliance
I agree that the page isn't fully NPOV-compliant yet (but perhaps not too far off). The IDSA would probably be good to mention, which is essentially opposed to the distribution of all copyrighted ROM images.

--Furrykef 00:19, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Legal status of ROMs
I've done a bunch of editing related to the legal status of ROMs; someone should probably make sure the pendulum hasn't swung too far in the other direction now.

Also, someone needs to go through and make the capitalization of ROM and ROMs consistent, it's kind of a mess as it is now. I prefer having ROM capitalized because it is an acronym. DopefishJustin 23:38, Mar 19, 2004 (UTC)

Preserving games
MAME is not just to play games for free but to preserve them,although much critizied some games can,t be found in stock also MAME has a Policy of not emulating games more recent than 2 years ago...also i would like to know who erased my post on other emulators similar to MAME i thought this only was made in consense with other users see [Karl-H]]
 * Because this article is about MAME, not other emulators. I also removed a link to a site where you can illegally obtain roms from your comment. --Golbez 20:58, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Selling ROMs
In regards to the legal status of MAME, a site indicates that older roms for games/apps that are no longer offered for sale are legal near the bottom of the page. The link is http://www.copyright.gov/1201/. Please comment.

--cjackson 00:19, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Entirely inaccurate. The only purely legal roms are those purchased as roms (i.e. from StarRoms) or those from copyright holders that no longer exist. In essence, this means only those games produced in (and therefore owned by) the East German government, of which there were one or two. And reading that copyright.gov article, the best I can come up with is that roms for dead systems might not be covered under the DMCA but are still covered under Constitutional copyright. Note that it says exempt from prohibition against circumenvetion of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. In other words, this gets rid of the DMCA law against reverse engineering. But it does not nullify the copyright. Sorry. --Golbez 19:39, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Many problems with license description.
The license description lacked a clear description of why it would not qualify as FLOSS.

"taking revenue from real arcades" -- arcades can't lose what they never had, hence MAME isn't "taking" anything from them. What might happen is that someone chooses not to spend their money on the arcade game because they can play the game without paying money by running MAME instead. There is a lot of unfounded speculation on this topic with regard to commercially distributed music.

--J.B. Nicholson-Owens

NPOV?
I stumbled across this page, and after reading it I have to say that whoever claimed to have made it more neutral hasn't done a very good job, I've found it incredibly pro-MAME. The use of clever language (see the post by J.B. above!) has been employed in several places- making it pro-MAME while still being arguably neutral, but it's not really neutral in that case. Can someone with an account go about sticking a NPOV notice-sticker-banner thing on this article? --195.92.168.165 00:26, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Even anons can do that. Can you explain what non-pro-mame stuff should be added? I don't understand how "pro MAME" is even possible, it's an inanimate object. What anti-MAME stuff should be added? --Golbez 00:29, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

small file sizes
i have a quiestion about the MAME ROMs. why are some of them only few kbs? thx


 * Because a lot of old arcade games were very primitive and only needed a few kbs. --Golbez 04:41, 22 September 2005 (UTC)


 * really? but for some reason, there seemed to be a lot of files missing? does that mean i should use an earlier version of mame to try it out? (i mean, even some of the latest games are less thatn 1 kb)  thx again.  70.70.209.80 04:57, 22 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Some recent games (like simpsons bowling) are only 1k because literally all of the graphics and program info are contained on the CHD. For further info, I suggest you ask the Official MAME message board. --Golbez 05:11, 22 September 2005 (UTC)


 * (hehe, sorry) i guess i'll have to uncompress the file or something right? i actually have more problem with the missing file than anything. i am curious are there known games that cannot just play? even if its from like 2 or more sites.


 * If you have files missing, then you need to find the missing files - simple as that. In the case of games that use CHDs, you need both the .ZIP containing the ROMs, plus the .CHD containing the image of the CD-ROM or hard disk that the game used as well.

anyways, thank you very very much 70.70.209.80 05:32, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

mame 0.100, where is mame.exe ?
I had mame 0.67 and was happy with it, but when trying to play a game it didn't have support for it so i thought it was time to upgrade. I did just that downloading mame0100b, for dos. But i see no mame.exe file in there. There's dmame.exe instead and when running it on dos it says not dos executable ?! Is there something wrong i've done?

 Xhamlliku 


 * See above; this is not a MAME discussion forum. Ask at [www.mame.net/msg the Official MAME board]. --Golbez 23:31, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

CHDs?
Hi, I was wondering if CHDs and roms are the same thing, simply differing due to size or something. can someone clear this up for me? thanks in advance.


 * They're similar, but not identical. A ROM in the context of MAME tends to refer to a file-dump of the data from a ROM chip on a PCB. A CHD is an image of the data on a disk of some type, be it HDD or optical media, that is connected to the PCB. Floppy images thus far are an exception, they're treated as ROMs. By the way, this type of question is more appropriate on the offical MAME board than here on Wikipedia. -{ Le Scoopertemp  |  [tk]  00:01, 15 November 2005 (UTC)}

I prefer seperate emulators for seperatr arcade machines. Nebula is a great one, MAME doesn't specilize on one machine so overall the quality is not as good in my opinion. Nebula rules for CPS1/2 and neo geo. Bye


 * The opinion (or even the idea) that MAME's lack of specialization causes a lack of overall quality is a false one; to whit, MAME is the most accurate of any arcade emulator currently released. It seems like people confuse "being fast" with being of "good quality", when in fact the two are very nearly polar opposites in terms of emulators.
 * Heck yeah! Overtime, as computers get faster, the MAME experience will continue to get closer to the real thing. Family Guy Guy 08:39, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Matrox (Actually it was ATI)
I wrote MAME was developed on Matrox: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MAME&oldid=47923502#Emulation_philosophy But it was actually ATI, according to alt.games.mame: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.games.mame/browse_thread/thread/4b97055d5b7dc46f/8a12e0acf024cd40?q=m1t0s1s+matrox&rnum=1#8a12e0acf024cd40

The link in the post goes here: http://www.mameworld.net/pc2jamma/mamemon3.html

As you can see here: http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=yWfT7RMAAABO0GNt7CFkVJNd-vqMsKJAWMj6vob75xS36mXc24h6ww this person is still active. Maybe if you email him you might find where he found it. Family Guy Guy 08:33, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Image:MAME.PNG
Could someone upload a screenshot of MAME32 v.106 or v.106u1? v.105 or something will do as well but v.97 seems a bit outdated (I'd do it myself but I'm sitting in front of a PPC mac). -- elias . hc  11:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot, Screenshotguy. -- elias . hc  11:53, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Screenshot of XMAME under Ubuntu // MacMAME under Mac OS X
I've replaced the screenshot of Street Fighter II (XMAME, Ubuntu) with one of Progear (MacMAME, Mac OS X).

As for the reasoning: The screenshot of sf2 was JPEG format with visible artifacts, although this could easily have been avoided; it also showed version .86 (october 7th 2004). The new version (which is unfortunately quite huge) is PNG format, looks great and shows the most recent version available for Mac OS X. -- elias . hc  12:13, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Direct 3D
You should all be aware that that latest build on mamedev.com supports Direct3D rendering. This may become important when .107 is released. -red-x


 * D3D rendering has always been supported, this is not the same as 3D acceleration.
 * D3D is used to compose 2D images (artwork + game screen) to form the final display, it is not used to make 3d games faster.
 * read here:  May 25, 2006

.106u2
Well, here it is: the long-awaited video update in MAME 0.106u2. A few important notes about this release.

First, the new video system is not enabled by default. To enable it, you need to enable the NEW_RENDER makefile flag and recompile the entire project.

Second, if you previously configured MAME to use DirectDraw (which was the previous default), then you will get software-only rendering by default. '''You need to explicitly enable Direct3D rendering (-d3d) in order to get hardware acceleration. Software rendering is not very fast, especially at high resolutions.'''


 * look here for more inforamtion on direct 3d: Direct3D -red-x

.106u3
Quote from the changelog ( * ): WARNING: As of this build, the new rendering system is enabled by default. -- elias . hc  08:35, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

( * ) Since direct linking does not work: For the changelog go to maws. In the news from 1st June 2006 there's a link that reads what's new.

Edit summary
I was going to type I don't think this should be added when I accidently hit enter. -- elias . hc  15:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I made another mistake in the this summary: Of course 106u9 is in no way outdated - the old version of the image (which looked the same to me) showed an outdated piece of software, though. Still I don't see how the screenshot of mame32 plus plus 106u9 was any better than the current one. -- elias . hc  18:04, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

MAME 0.106u5 and multi threading
June 08, 2006

Another release is now available at the releases page. This one is a bit experimental again in that multiple threads are now being used. I'd especially like your testing if you have a hyperthreaded or dual core machine to see how the system behaves. There is definitely some more tweaking needed in the unthrottled case, but normal execution should be fine.

mamedev.net


 * This is not a MAME chat page; I fail to see how discussing each beta will be useful to crafting the article. --Golbez 18:19, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

because as the new builds are created when version 107 becomes final the information can be added to the article as new features or history

Linkspam
DoRunRun, your behavior is vandalism. Only because I'm not going to act against the 3RR rule it doesn't mean your edit(s) was/were getting any better. -- elias . hc  16:16, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I know there's a way to bring such things to the attention of admins, but I forget how. Link spam is such a problem on gaming pages though, and when people's pages are taken down they seem to just put it right back up as if it's as importent as an official homepage or whatever....♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 16:21, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Illegal Builds
Could people please refrain from posting links / references to Illegal builds of MAME on these pages. There are only a few authorized builds. MAME is not true Open Source Software, and a number of restrictions apply. See

http://mamedev.org/trademark.html and http://mamedev.org/license.html

A number of unauthorized builds continue to appear in the links / screenshots etc.

MAMEPlus http://mameplus.emu-france.com/ and MAME32FX http://mame32fx.altervista.org/home.htm are both authorized builds.

Anything with Netplay isn't, nor are console ports to systems which are officially closed to homebrew development.


 * I'm not convinced. Can you explain why the particular builds you pointed to are "illegal"? Also, if they are well-known, they are suitable for mention in Wikipedia even if they are illegal, just as (for instance) we have articles about mass murderers ... --FOo 05:42, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * They haven't been approved by the developers, they rely on additional closed source library files

To use the MAME name permission needs to be granted by Nicola, and furthermore from the license.

Redistributions that are modified from the original source must include the complete source code, including the source code for all components used by a binary built from the modified sources. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

Many, especially those adding Netplay or 3d Rendering Plugins fail with this point.

These builds may exist, but so do sites selling DVD-Rs full of ROMs, or copies of MS Windows. Just because MAME is a 'free' program doesn't prevent copyright laws from applying to the actual emulator, not just the games it emulates.


 * OK. "Illegal" conceded. However, how does that make them irrelevant to mention in a Wikipedia article? As I mentioned above, we have all kinds of articles about egregious criminals and criminal operations. "Illegal" is no kind of reason to remove information from a Wikipedia article, as evidenced by the number of articles we have on all manner of illegal things, from marijuana to murder. --FOo 07:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I can acknowledge that Wiki articles can contain information on things deemed Illegal, however, posting links to these sites is akin to me editing the Photoshop Wiki article and posting a link to a Warez site hosting Photoshop and a list of serials to install it. While the articles you mention do deal with Illegal activities they too fall short of for example giving instructions on the most effective way to commit murder, a list of places to buy Illegal weapons, or a list of possible contacts for buying drugs.


 * It's hardly the same, but I agree that if the port is in violation of terms set by the developers then it really shouldn't be included. However, if you want to keep it off the page you're probably going to have to fight a revert war with the guy who kept complaining about Fileplanet downloads, since I believe he was the one who changed the image in the first place (I think I added it back at one point, but only because I was trying to find a compromise between different versions, I didn't realise at the time that it was violating licensing conditions). Mark Grant 11:42, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, he appears to be trolling the article, I've reverted it back to a legal build again, his argument about it showing more is very weak. Is a screenshot of a port even really appropriate for a section of front-ends. Mame32 is, as the article even mentions, a full port with the `front end` built in. A screenshot of a real front-end such as Emuloader which can be found at http://www.mameworld.net/emuloader/ may be more relevant to the section.


 * Possibly: he seems to dislike MAME32 because it uses Fileplanet for downloads, so if you can find a more valid screenshot for that section it may be a safe compromise. Mark Grant 14:20, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Which doesn't fully make sense, as the shot he keeps replacing is from Mame32 Plus!...which is something seperate and doesn't use Fileplanet (which, again, has free accounts anyway).

More to the point, though, I don't see anything wrong with mentioning the existence or them in the article somewhere (to help point that the popularity of the program led to illegal builds), but showing a screenshot of one is certainly wrong, yes. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 16:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

The shot has now been replaced with a screenshot of a real Front End. There is little harm in mentioning that Illegal builds exist, but mentioning them by name isn't neccessary, just as while the article mentions that Illegal ROM downloads can be found on the Internet it doesn't provide any links or clues as to where.