Mame32 is a five year old program; it is mature, complex, and robust. However, since the Mame project itself is a documentation effort, and development is continuous, there will be times when changes to the core program effect Mame32. Since Mame32 is effectively a front end which passes user input from the GUI to the Mame[w] engine, any problems that occur in the Mame[w] engine will be inherited by Mame32. When problems do occur with a specific game in a specific version of Mame32, a previous version of Mame32 may be used easily, toggling off the Enable version mismatch warning check on the Options • Interface Options menu. Prior to reporting problems against Mame32, verify that the issue is not a known, core defect in Mame[w]. The Mametesters site is designed to track and report bugs in the baseline Mame[w] version. The current list of known Mame32 issues and defect tracking is available at Mame32QA.
ROMs Related Topics
If receiving
missing ROM error messages when attempting to run a game, secondary click on
the game in the list and choose properties, do an audit on that game [or use Alt-A]. The audit will determine which files are
missing from the ROMset currently being played.
Mame32 will not run a game which fails its internal audit.
Mame is an
ongoing documentation project. Sometimes old ROM sets are found to have
miss-dumped, missing, or damaged ROMs, which need to be replaced. As new
versions of Mame are released, the Mame developers add support for these new
iterations of ROMs, supplanting or renaming the old supported versions. Thus, often, older versions of ROMs which did
work in older versions of Mame32, will not work with newer versions of
Mame32 because they are now read as incomplete or wrong. Mame32 will not play the game in question
until the updated ROMs are utilized.
Mame32 utilizes
the idea of a parent / clone relationship for its games. If trying to
play a clone or a bootleg of a game, Mame32 will need the ROMs for the clone
game, and the parent set. Mame32 indicates the parent set of a
clone at the bottom of the game’s properties tab.
Mame32 utilizes
the idea of having single zip files to house the BIOS files for a large number
of similar games. The NeoGeo games for
example, share four BIOS files in every game. Mame will look to
neogeo.zip as the BIOS zip, if this file is along with the other NeoGeo games,
it will use it. Otherwise, Mame32 expects the BIOS files in every NeoGeo game.
DECO cassette, CVS, PGM, and Playchoice are also BIOS games. An error
message will occur if the BIOS files are not present and those games are
run. Additionally, occasionally, new
ROMs will need to be added to the BIOS packages themselves, this occurred most
recently with the ‘ng-lo.rom’ in the NeoGeo.zip
F5 / View
• Refresh in the GUI. (Do this anytime ROMs are altered, renaming, etc.)
If games are not
displaying in the game list, ensure the appropriate folder view on the far left
is toggled, i.e. 'all games' and it doesn't have filtering on it to stop the
display of the game being searched for.
Use the Options •
Reset to default menu choice and check all of the items, restart Mame32.
Final option,
manually delete the registry key for Mame32 by running regedit.exe:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Freeware\MAME32
Crash Related Topics
Delete the .hi,
.cfg, or .nv files for the game that's crashing.
Check to see that
the zip file is valid and that it's not corrupt or read-only.
The game’s entry
in the external database, hiscore.dat, may be causing the crash, remove the
entry by editing hiscore.dat with a text editor.
If crashing
during an audit or an [F5] refresh, it could be a corrupt .zip file.
Extract it and re-zip. Pkunzip -t *.zip. Note the file that dies during
the audit and concentrate on that one. Also verify that if zip files are not
used, that the folder is not empty, or contains partial or damaged ROMs.
If seeing crashes
or weird screen coloration, try disabling running background apps [in Win98,
use msconfig.exe], Norton Crashguard, PnP programs like Kaaza,
eDonkey, LimeWire, popup
killers, viruscans, MS Office Fast Find, the Microsoft Office Bar, Intellimouse,
even IE subscription updates, etc. Try moving Mame32 away from compressed
[DriveSpace, DoubleSpace, stacker] drives. IntelliMouse and Office
Toolbars have been known to cause conflicts. Also disable items in the
system tray, like the CD player, etc. It may also be necessary to
download and install the latest version of DirectX from Microsoft to prevent
some errors.
Some recent viruses
which attach to .exes will cause page faults and access violations in Mame32
when it's run. Use an anti-virus check and verify Mame32 is not infected.
On rare occasions
malformed or damaged *.dat files [history.dat, mameinfo.dat, cheat.dat] can
cause Mame32 to error on startup when it tries to read them. Remove those files individually to check for
the one causing the crash.
Use the Options •
Reset to default menu choice and check all of the items, restart Mame32.
Final option, manually
delete the registry key for Mame32 by running regedit.exe:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Freeware\MAME32
Performance Related Topics [sound scratchiness and stuttering]
Mame32 will start
to crackle, scratch, or echo if the game running is too taxing for the
processor [Taito F3, Midway Wolf Unit, CPS2 games require a lot of
horsepower]. This can be visually confirmed by turning on FPS display
with [F11], and frame skip to auto with [F8]. If the FPS
dips anywhere or frame skipping rises anywhere during the game play, the game
is maxing out the CPU and sound breakup could occur. The blitter effects
[partial scanlines, RGB effects] will impose further strain on the CPU, upwards
of 50%. As a data point, an AMD Athlon 1900 XP is able to do all current
Mame32 games [.58] at greater than 100% fps at a resolution of 1600x1200x32
using RGB effects [the most stressful Mame32 settings]. If upgrading
machine components, provide Mame32 with as much hardware as possible. Suggested
Mame32 settings are available on the Mame32QA site.
If seeing a severe slowdown in games that historically
didn't, ensure that the Use less CPU time if possible menu item is toggled off
in Options • Default Options • Miscellaneous. This happens to laptop
users particularly.
The Midway games
from the mid 1990's like MK2, MK3, NBA Hangtime, etc. have a problem in
their driver that will cause the sound to become un-synched and skip or scratch.
This is being looked at by the driver's author.
Certain games in
Mame32 perform better on machines that cannot handle them 100% if auto-frame skipping is turned off.
If games are
running too fast, verify in the Options • Default Game Options menu that
the throttle option is turned on, that sync to monitor refresh is turned
off and Wait for Vertical Sync is turned off in the Options •
Default Game Options • Advanced menu.
Mame32 video performance can be greatly enhanced by ensuring
AGP Fast Writes are toggled on in the motherboard BIOS. The videocard drivers also need to support
this setting, some recent ATI card drivers do not.
There are some videocard/video driver combinations that
can do hardware stretching, but are slower than running with hardware
stretch off. If games are too sluggish with the hw stretch on, toggle it
off if possible. Some PCI graphic cards have been seen to have this
problem.
The higher the
resolution of the original game, the more CPU power is required to emulate it.
Performance can be increased on these games by ensuring that Mame32 is not using
any of the RGB/Scanline effects in Options • Default Game Options • Display.
Set the effects to 'none' and uncheck scanlines. This will allow Mame32 to
run these games at the fastest speed. [additionally, the higher the resolution
of the original game, the less likely it is that the RGB/Scanline effects will
even be seen, so it's recommended to turn them off.]
With the advent of Mame32 .62 there are games
supported that are not playable at 100% speeds on any
commercially available
machine. These will
run at half speed or lower, they include the Namco System22 3D games like
Propcycle and Midway games like Cruis’n USA and Cruis’n World.
Eventually PC CPUs will advance to the point they can be run, it is
estimated a P4 4Ghz or AMD 3700+ would be able to
handle the games. These games benefit from
turning off auto-frame skipping. Benchmarks of some
current systems are available at the Mame32QA Benchmark
page.
Joysticks / Mice / Gamepad / Lightgun Related Topics
Gamepads and
mouse are disabled by default on first Mame32 launch, enable them by toggling
their check boxes on in Options • Default Options • Controllers.
Lightgun aware
games will not allow their individual mouse settings to be toggled in game
properties. To play these games with only a mouse, it is necessary to
either check lightgun, or enable mouse control in the global Options • Default
Game Options • Controllers section. Then the mouse check box will still be
grayed, but it will be checked. Additionally, it is possible to use the
mouse if lightgun is checked and there is no physical lightgun attached.
Mame32 relies on
DirectX’s DirectInput for joystick support, ensure the game pad is seen as
present and active in the game controller control panel: start menu • settings
• control panel • game controllers.
Verify the
joystick is seen as ID #1 in the game controllers control panel rather than
being assigned a higher number. If using multiple gamepads, ensure each
one has its own ID#.
Daisy chained
gameport Microsoft Sidewinders [original] in Win2k or XP do not work very
well. Use USB gamepads instead. Single Sidewinders may also cause odd
behavior like ghost button presses.
GUI Related Topics & Miscellaneous Tips
If seeing icon
palette corruption in the GUI when returning from a full screen game, try
increasing the desktop color depth to 24bpp or 32bpp.
Mame32 will read freestanding icons in the \icons
directory first, then icons in the icons.zip file.
Sometimes icons in large icon view may appear to
be missing their white color or have portions transparent, this is the result of
having white chosen as the windows desktop window setting in Control Panel /
Display. Change the window setting to slightly off-white or another color
to return the icons to their appropriate look.
Quickly navigate
through games in the details view by simply typing the first few letters in the
name of the game, the highlight will jump to that game and become more granular
as the name is typed out.
To return to a blank gray background in the GUI,
delete the bkground.png file in the \mame32\snap directory.
Select a random
game with [Ctrl-R].
Audit an individual game with [Alt-A].
Games that support
.chd [compressed hard drive] images [Max Force, Area 51,
Vicious Circle] have to have their ROMs and .chd files in a certain hierarchy.
The .chd files go in a directory named for the driver one layer beneath the
ROMs, e.g. mame32\ROMs\area51.zip [for the small ROMs], and mame32\ROMs\area51\area51.chd
[for the large single .chd file]. Additionally, to play successfully, a
directory called mame32\diff needs to be present [do not put the *.chd
file in the \diff directory]. Also, do not zip the .chd file, it remains
freestanding.
If Stretch using
hardware is grayed out in Options • Default Options • Advanced, verify the
desktop is set to 16bpp or 32bpp and not 24bpp.
If it is still grayed out, the video card does not support the hardware
stretch capabilities Mame32 needs.
If there are
screenshots in the \snap directory and the default Mame image is the only thing
being displayed in the screenshot area on the right, Mame32 is currently
toggled into another art mode. Click, or
secondary-click the screenshot area to toggle between: screenshot, flyer,
cabinet, marquee, and titles views.
The GUI text may
disappear from the folder view if the GUI font color chosen is very close to the
Windows system background color scheme.
To alleviate
screen tearing in some scrolling games, it is necessary to check use triple buffering
and match game refresh rate, while setting refresh to ‘auto’. This will
set the output monitor’s refresh rate down to 60Hz or the closest the monitor
can do to the game’s refresh rate.
Vector games like
asteroids look and work better if hardware stretch is disabled. Increase
the vector intensity to 3, and use a set resolution like 1024x768x32 instead of
auto.
The included custom \folders\*.ini files are set
to read-only to prevent accidental dragging and dropping of files into them, and
will produce and error message if that is attempted. If desired,
change the read-only attribute at the OS level.
If experiencing
odd behavior with Mame32 saving files or not appearing to clear its settings,
verify that there are not multiple shortcuts pointing to different versions, or a shortcut pointing to an old version of the
.exe.
If playing games
in windowed mode on a 1280x1024 desktop, change the aspect ratio in Options •
Default Options • Advanced to 5:4 instead of 4:3, this also works for
full-screen vertical games.
If when attempting
to play a game the monitor displays a message that the signal is out of
frequency or the monitor goes into sleep mode, Mame32 is trying to use an auto
video mode that the monitor doesn't support. Use a set resolution in the
Options • Default Options • Display menu, or uncheck the Switch resolution to
fit, and uncheck Switch color depths to fit.
Some anti-virus
packages will slow down or report spurious messages about Mame32.exe because of
its UPX .exe compression method. These
are false positives and the anti-virus vendors should update their virus
signature. It may also be possible to
exclude the mame32.exe from real-time scanning as a workaround.
If having trouble
saving keyboard mappings and configuration, verify that the *.cfg files are not
read-only and that a \mame32\cfg directory is present.
If the in-game [TAB]
menu is no longer working or can’t be accessed, it has been mapped to another key; delete the default.cfg file in the \mame32\cfg
directory.
Some of the largest
games supported by Mame32 [NeoGeo mainly] can run into the hundreds of megabyte
range when they are uncompressed into memory, this combined with Mame32 in
memory, plus OS overhead can lead to very slow performance as Windows swaps the
information out to disk if there is not enough physical memory. 256M or
512M is recommended for all current games [.58].
The screenshot
area was grayed out in Windows XP because of the inclusion of a preliminary
file in Mame32 version .54 called Mame32 manifest. Remove that file to
view the screenshot area artwork again.
2003-01-06 09:24 AM -0800