I am new to the whole mame thing so try not to treat me to harshly :)

my problem is when i run raiden (it happens in some other games too, but not as noticable), when there is a few enemies on screen it really slows the game down, does this happen to everyone, is there anything i can do about it, without breaking those rules and regulations that are set out for posting scores?

i am running a PIII 128mb ram plenty of hdd space, 16mb nvidia display card and am using mame32 ver36 final release.

any help would be much appreciated. thanks jarrod.

-- Jarrod (jcalati@hotmail.com), May 15, 2001

Answers

the real key is your CPU speed, but PIII's usually have really good speed, 500mhz at ~minimum. Sometimes just setting a few things in mame can help a lot, try running with out sound (single best speed saver but no sound is sometimes annoying) , or unclikcing the "disable" mmx, unclicking double screen size, and the best switch by far, set frameskip to "Auto", displaying every frame is greate if you have a speedily emulated game but if it's hard to draw you have to up the frameskip to get it close to normal. autoframeskip is pretty good at smoothing out the slow emulation parts of a game...

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), May 15, 2001.

Well, before you go taking pains to speed up your game I'd hit F11 to see if MAME is in fact running at 100% speed. A machine with your specs should be able to handle Raiden, and the game does slow down if I remember right (which is as it should be, it's being emulated correctly and that's what it did in the arcades). It's been a little while since I've played, admittedly.

Brian

-- Brian McLean (bmclean84@hotmail.com), May 15, 2001.

Unluckily, there's nothing you can do, as they are the same slowdowns featured by the original arcade.

-- Vaz (mrvaz@inwind.it), May 15, 2001.

In some games the emulation of the CPU speed is incorrect, resulting in slowdown even if your game is running at a constant 60fps. This is definitely the case with Raiden as I recently played the arcade and it did not slow down any near as much as it does in MAME. Other games I've noticed with worse slowdown than the arcade are Double Dragon, Renegade and Chelnov.

cheat.dat and some versions of MAME allow you to overclock the CPU in the tilde menu, this can alleviate the slowdown however it's probably illegal to use overclocking in a MARP submission.

-- JSW (usagi@dingoblue.net.au), May 15, 2001.

thanks to all your help guys,

yeah i do remember raiden slowing down a bit when i played at the arcades, but not to the extent that it does, but then again i haven't played the arcade version for ages, i'll try playing round with the mame settings and see wat i can do, but either way i will survive :)

thanks again jarrod.

-- Jarrod (jcalati@hotmail.com), May 15, 2001.

Some Roms are Incorrect or Possibly Damaged, u Can download it off another Site and it May work Better, The game Raiden was Created back when Overclocking Arcades made em Overheat so it's Settingz were Minimal and the System ran Directly from the Arcade (Your Computer is running at the Speed of the Arcade while Running Windows, any open Applications, or even Online) U can change the Direct Sound (mame w) in the File/Properties, But that just makes the sound Echo....

There's another Version of Raiden u can Download which has The Settings Changed, I Only have problems With NBA Jam, NBA Hangtime, and Some Fighting games (Most are Neo-Geo) I Just turn off the Sound and Listen 2 Music.... No Matter how Powerfull of a Computer u Have, Mame is a Slow Emulator (When it comes to Large Games) So U'll Still have 2 skip a Few Frames if u Wanna Emulate the game Properly, there's CPS1 and CPS2 Emulators that r More Powerful, I Recommend 500mHz+ and 128RAM+ (And Close all Applications) If u wanna Play the games Without any Problems....

-- Fuker Da WhoreLord (cr_42069@hotmail.com), June 23, 2003.

how come on double dragon the sound slags but the action is constant and normal?

-- metalgearman (vincevega918@msn.com), November 11, 2003.

It Could b The Sound Card u Got, Or The Rom u Downloaded Suckz....

Anytime The Sound Effectz the GamePlay or Iz Makin Awkward Soundz, Just Turn the Sound off....

The Only Way 2 Correct Anythin iz By Downloadin The Same File From Another Site.... Most of the Time they're All The Same So it Suckz, But Wat u Really Expect? U Get the Shit 4 Free....

-- Fuker Da WhoreLord (cr_42069@hotmail.com), November 18, 2003.

i remember all the arcade games i used toi love and double dragon on my pc is spot on ive got a 600mhz p3 with 256meg ramand hd disk space too oh and 64meg graph but the games i have trouble with are mortal kombat 2 and 3 i know most of the tweaks but isnt there someone who knows how to configure it properly like optimal performance on a crap machine so when you put it on your own half decent one it runs better

-- Sha (dlads2000@yahoo.com), December 16, 2003.