forums.marpirc.net

In recent times I've had no trouble playing back most of the submitted recordings on MARP. Alpha Mission 2 recordings still seem to give me a lot of trouble though. Bubble's recently submitted recording goes out of synch after the first couple of minutes. Has anyone managed to play it back?

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tjmorrow@bigpond.com

alpham2 does have it's problems i haven't tried the recent bubble
recording but his previous mame34 recording played back fine, i think
the recordings are "iffy" from this game since bubble also recorded a
mame35 that wouldn't play back for me (it would get out of synch after
a certain point no matter what i changed) but it played back for bbh
just fine....

<p>

I'll bet some people will playback this particular recording fine and
others not, i'll have to try it when i get home...

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churritz@cts.com

Here we go again Alpham2 always seems to give problems while
playing back. The new recording actually scores 100k less than the
previous one, and I sent it since I thought it might play well with
more recent MAMEs. From what I tested with other persons (it always
plays back in my machine btw) it does seem to play alright with speed
throtling on, that in, playing back at 100% speed. I guess I'll give
it another go within a few betas...

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bubble@mail.pt

Interesting...
I hate to say it, but it played back fine for me, at least until got
bored of watching it - which was somewhere around area 8 or
something. Certainly not the couple of minutes mentioned...
For the record: I used MAME 0.36 beta 16, sound on, no frameskip.
I seem to remember switching off autoframeskip (by using F9) and
using frameskip 0.

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bsr@hn.pl.net

Ok, I tried it with -frameskip 0 and it didn't make a scrap of
difference. It goes out of synch at exactly the same place (ships dies
after about 30 seconds). Alpham2 seems to be inp unfriendly. A shame
because I've been waiting for years to see someone play right through
this game. I'm curious to know exactly what it is that makes one PC
play it back ok and another to reject it. I've got a P2 450, 128Mb ram
and I'm using a NVidia RIVA TNT card. I'm running Win98.

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tjmorrow@bigpond.com

Well, I tried to play it back again, under DOS mode this time, and it
still works fine. All areas finished, with 4 lives remaining (only
one lost that I saw).

<p>

I used MAME 0.36 beta 16 under Win95 OSR2.1 in DOS mode with sound
ON. Auto frameskip, 100% speed. My system is a P2/233MHz, 64MB RAM,
Win95 OSR2.1, nVidia TNT2 Model 64, Yamaha OPL3-SA3 soundcard.

<p>

I'll send you a screenshot of the highscore table if you want.

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bsr@hn.pl.net

Actually, the old recording didn't work completely for me. What
happened is that it went all the way through the game the first time,
and then mysteriously lost sync on 2-2. (or whatever the stage number
is). I had sped up most of the recording on the early levels with
acceleration throttled at fskp 11, but slowed it down on later levels.

<p>

As for the new one, I've had no success whatsoever. I've tried a
combination of sound on and off, throttled acceleration on and off,
and frameskip - and no combination has gotten past the Stage 1 boss.

<p>

We KNOW Bubble can do it though.

<p>


-BBH

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lordbbh@aol.com

Thanx for the confidence BBH. I promise not to go after your scores
for...hmmm...30 minutes at least
Anyway, I recorded it using mame36b16, win98, cheap 16-bit sound
card, banshee agp 16MB video card, PIII 500 cpu. Here's my config
part of mame.cfg:

<p>

[config]
scanlines=yes
stretch=yes
artwork=yes
samples=yes
vsync=no
waitvsync=no
triplebuffer=yes
tweak=no
vesamode=vesa3
antialias=yes
translucency=no
vgafreq=-1
alwayssynced=no
depth=auto
skiplines=0
skipcolumns=0
beam=1.500000
flicker=0.000000
gamma=1.200000
frameskip=0
norotate=no
ror=no
rol=no
flipx=no
flipy=no
ym3812opl=yes
soundcard=1
samplerate=22050
samplebits=16
stereo=yes
volume=0
mouse=no
cheat=no
debug=no
cheatfile=CHEAT.DAT
historyfile=HISTORY.DAT
mameinfofile=MAMEINFO.DAT
profiler=no
resolution=auto
monitor=standard
centerx=0
centery=0
waitinterlace=no
joystick=4button
hotrod=no
mmx=auto
dirty=auto

<p>

Hope that helps you folks who want to see the game. I DO promise I
will re-record it as soon as mame's inp recording for the neogeo
improves, maybe when last blade 2 finally plays back?

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bubble@mail.pt

Thanks for posting your cfg file Bubbles - it helped me work out what
was going wrong!

<p>

Let me explain what I did to make it work. First I looked through both
cfgs (yours and mine) and noticed several differences like
triplebuffering, translucency, beam, flicker, gamma, ym3812opl,
samplebits and several others. Your cfg also has some cfg strings that
I don't have at all. Anyway I tried tweaking them one at a time and
trying them out with no success. After a few I just copied your entire
cfg replacing mine and ran it. It worked perfectly...

<p>

Now I really wanted to know what the offending cfg difference was. It
turned out it wasn't the mame.cfg that was at fault at all.

<p>

After trying your mame.cfg and getting the inp to work I restored my
original cfg and ran it and was astonished to find that it worked too
(previously it didn't). I double checked that I did have my original
cfg - yep! I then figured that something in the alpham2.cfg or
alpham2.nv or memcard.000 had to be stuffing things up. I ran the inp
again with my mame.cfg and it failed which corroborated this theory. I
deleted the 3 files and reran the inp and it worked.

<p>

Conclusion - the problem is with the 3 files above and not with
mame.cfg at all. Deleting the 3 files prior to each playback works
perfectly. Hope this works for others trying this inp. Let me know.
Also if anyone can shed more technical light on what is actually
happening I'd love to hear it.

<p>

Oh and thanks for the awesome inp - it was great. Like I said I've
been waiting to see someone finish this game for years. I didn't
actually know that it finished after the second time through. That
second pass through the game is positively wicked. Well done!

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tjmorrow@bigpond.com

I can concur with Tim's findings except that the only file that seems
to make it muck-up for me in the nvram file. Removing that seems to
be all that I needed to do to get the game to playback properly.
<p>

I wonder if the same will happen with some of the other Neo-Geo games
that have not played back previously such as LB2 etc, or perhaps the
nvram and memcard files should all be deleted prior to recording and
prior to attempting playback ?!

<p>

BeeJay.

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brianjohnstone@jade.co.nz

Thanks Tim, That'll save me 2 hours of re-playing it

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bubble@mail.pt