Punchout inp playback

[LN2]

I have had various issues trying to play back even inps I record with punchout.

I play in MacMAME 0.60 and the inp can playback just fine.
I am trying to get it to also playback correctly in mame60 in VPC but having issues where as I change the setup even it varies how the playback goes.

I did a search on these forums and saw it states punchout played back correctly with sound off but that was for a quite old version of mame.

That's fine, except when launch with the -nosound or -soundcard 0 option in mame60 or mame32-60 the emulation of the game fails to launch. The game itself reports a failure in the sound so refuses to play. The only way I have been able to get punchout launched in mame60 or mame32-60 is by having sound on. The sounds are stuttering quite a bit though from my slow frame rates of playback. Punchout runs fine with no sound in MacMAME.

BTW it actually plays back the first 2 fights correctly with certain settings, but then gets out of sync with Bald Bull. It's odd it is in sync for 2 whole fights then loses it so I think with the right settings it all might play back ok. I can change the settings just a little bit and then even the first fight isn't in sync. It might just be an issue of the slow 20-25fps I get in playback in VPC. I tried frameskip 0 and that does change when it goes out of sync but it still does. mame32 goes out of sync at a different time versus mame60 as well.

I think it all might just be from performance issues in this case.
Any suggestions appreciated...
I think next I was going to try recording a sample test with sound off and frameskip 0 in macmame to see if that has any effect on playback in mame60 or mame32-60. In MacMAME it is easily able to maintain 60fps though so no frames should be skipping already.

I guess for now I will play other games. It would be great if MARP can get a couple Mac players as possible confirmers of inp playbacks soon.

I think there are more MacMAME players around than you think.

[Chad]

thanks for looking into trying to get macmame recordings to playback with other versions. It would be very cooll to figure out more information about why different platforms playback differently. We know there is (or was) a header issue where macmame and xmame would not record the header, but even putting in dummy headers in the inps wouldn't get the xmame macmame recordings to playback under windos. I too get that wierd error when nosound is specified in the 60 mames even dosmame. i think this issue has been resolved in mame61, i think i was just able to play something with no sound and mame61 with out troubles.

[mahlemiut]

As far as I know, XMAME inp headers are the same as DOS/Win32 CLI inp headers.

And MacMAME quite simply has NO header.

I really doubt many MacMAME recordings, certainly most of those that use a 68000 CPU, would ever work on a Mac, as the CPU cores are different, and the 68k core in MAME is in x86 ASM and cannot be run on a Mac (other than by emulation, of course).

[LN2]

I am puzzled why many keep referring to MacMAME as a 68000 CPU core code.

Is the 68k code you are referring to the assembly for the emulated game CPU itself or the Mac CPU? Mac CPUs are RISC now since the PowerPC. I can vaguely remember playing macmame 0.29 on my 68k mac though. It could play the pac man games but not much of anything else.

Well for punchout I guess I will have to wait for macmame 0.61 before trying that. I have not tested playing back my macmame 0.60 in mame61 though...that might be worth a shot just to see what happens.

1 thing I need to try and confirm again is in MacMAME with punchout recording inp in Mac OS X resulted in an inp that wouldn't play back in the exact same MacMAME but in OS 9.x! I think that shows just how picky punchout is. However I can playback the inp in the same MacOS it was recorded in just fine.

I am considering installing xwindows(x on x) so I can perhaps compile and try XMAME in MacOS X. Odds are the performance would be close to what I currently get I think unless there is no video acceleration running that.

I almost wonder for some games if it is just a matter of a byte swap. There is an endian issue where on PCs variables are often stored in reverse address/byte order versus on the Mac. If something like this is the issue then the macmame guy can perhaps emulate the byte swap for compatibility as an option. I have only tested a handful of inps/games in each but it almost seems like for some games the way the monsters/enemies start on the first stage in MacMAME is the opposite way they start in dosmame or mame32.

I will have to try that experiment mentioned above also to make a test inp in dosmame itself with the correct settings etc. then save that as a header for the macmame inp file and see if that has any affect.

[mahlemiut]

I'm referring to the 68000 emulation core in MAME, where in DOS, Win32, and Linux, there are two, one written in C, and one written in ASM. The ASM version is what is compiled in the DOS and Win32 version (as well as MAME32), and the C version is the default for Linux. Of course, the ASM core is written in 80x86 ASM, and cannot be run directly on a Mac (unless you use an emulator of course). I don't know what the CPU cores are like in MacMAME at all, but it would certainly not use the 80x86 ASM core.

[LN2]

Well 5 of the last 5 games I have tested have all failed to totally playback a MacMAME recorded inp correctly...so I guess there are more than a few games with this issue. This weekend I tested punchout, berzerk, the various mspacman games, mario brothers, jrpacman and a couple others. The inp itself actually plays back fine in all of these cases. The displayed movements of the player are correct. It's just the monsters/enemies are not doing the same thing they did when I recorded in MacMAME so you end up with different results which usually results in quick deaths.

All I can hope I guess is MARP gets a/some referee(s) that have a Mac so MacMAME submitted scores can be verified. That would seem to be the easiest solution. Perhaps if the score submission form added macmame 0.60 and other recent versions to that list MARP could get more of a sense of how many mac players are out there. mac36 is the last version shown in that form. It isn't likely many are using 0.36 nowadays.

If I submit some scores with inps that only playback correctly in MacMAME will they be accepted even if none of you guys have a mac to verify it? Perhaps some other macmame user(s) can view and verify the score etc. I realize it goes a little beyond just watching it at times though like checking to make sure they didn't do any tricks/easter egg tricks if disallowed for the rules of playing.

The only other possibility is if the PCMAME and MacMAME guys get together and try and have the code so the monsters have the exact same initial start and behavior for certain key games like those listed above. Odds are if they got those handful matching up then most others would also. It might end up being something simple like a nice little byte-swap in the code. There are often endian issues between macs and pcs that are solved simply by a byte-swap.

I downloaded Xdarwin and XMAME and am going to see if it's not too much trouble to get XMAME to build so I can run that in MacOS X. Perhaps in that case the inp files would play back the same as those using XMAME in linux on PCs at least.

[mahlemiut]

Uploading a MacMAME inp that won't playback on a PC version of MAME isn't a problem, certainly seeing as Tech-D is about the only other active MARPer that uses MacMAME, he'd be about the only one that can tell us if it really doesn't work. I suppose a Mac emulator might help, although how well those would run MacMAME, if at all, I don't really know.

[LN2]

The only Mac emulators for PC I know of are 68k CPU based. Those wouldn't be able to run any recent version of MacMAME which is for PowerPC CPUs.

Mention of MARP likely has never made any mac gaming web site news etc. for the Mac community to find it.

The only way I actually found this is through the forums at Twin Galaxies. I had actually submitted a couple inps to TG for record consideration before I even joined here.

Ok, I will be sure to just specify when I have a recording in macmame that doesn't play back in VPC in dos/win/mame32 of the same version.

I know many other mac gamers that have played some MacMAME at times etc. Based on the #downloads of MacMAME at popular mac sites there are 1000s that have played it. There is http://www.macmame.org that has all the various builds etc. and general news. There is http://www.macmame.net that has links to several other macmame web sites.

Yet none of these at least at glancing has any links to MARP....hence the MacMAME players likely just don't know about this place. I bet if MARP was linked on the macmame web sites and the submit form show modern versions of macmame for the inp submission I bet far more macmamers would be around.