Help Wanted (arcade game owners)

Tafoid

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Hello,

As an arcade video game player of well over 30 years and a former owner of a couple different arcade games, I'm trying to bring my zeal for the MAME Project to those who might have wanted to help the Project, but were looking for a more 'common man' way to do so.

I am moderator and help run the MAMETESTERS.org site for the MAME Project. Over the last couple years, through the use of the MANTIS Bug Reporting system, there has been a great deal of work attempting to categorize, identify and fix problems in emulation for games of all eras so that the presentation of such games are preserved, long after the original pcb's have died out.

Some of you are regular MAME users and may have already noticed problems with emulation in games in which you own the actual PCB. There are also games which MAME doesn't currently support or list which could, at the very least, get properly documented as existing (different revisions or version numbers), even if you decide not to share the romsets.

I humbly invite anyone who has original source material (PCBs, manuals, schematics or cabinets..) to help the Project. You can contact me privately, in a forum (here or mameworld.info is good), or even as a Tester at http://mametesters.org if you have any information you'd think would be useful in furthering MAME's goal of accurately emulating and documenting all manner of amusement machines.
 
I for one appreciate the work that you guys do . Without MAME, mine and many others chances of enjoying the classics would be non existent.

Although i do enjoy the few original cabs that I have, I'm glad that I have the option to play any of the other games that MAME offers ...let's face it, how many people have the space , the money and the technical knowledge to own many, if any of the originals.

Well done to all involved with the project....keep up the good work.


BTW....you wouldn't happen to know why the Crazy Otto ROM's never got dumped for inclusion into MAME ?



john


.
 
I for one appreciate the work that you guys do . Without MAME, mine and many others chances of enjoying the classics would be non existent.

Although i do enjoy the few original cabs that I have, I'm glad that I have the option to play any of the other games that MAME offers ...let's face it, how many people have the space , the money and the technical knowledge to own many, if any of the originals.

Well done to all involved with the project....keep up the good work.


BTW....you wouldn't happen to know why the Crazy Otto ROM's never got dumped for inclusion into MAME ?



john


.

While my knowledge on that specific subject is limited - it was my understanding the roms are dumped, just not in MAMEDEV hands. Once they are distributed or shared, that particular game will be added quick quickly.
 
While my knowledge on that specific subject is limited - it was my understanding the roms are dumped, just not in MAMEDEV hands. Once they are distributed or shared, that particular game will be added quick quickly.

Don't hold your breath. Since it is known that only one person has the ROMs it's brain dead obvious who to go after should they find their way into MAME. Fear of a life-altering lawsuit from Namco will prevent us from ever seeing this game.
 
I also just wanted to chime in and thank you guys. There are many people on here that think that mame is the devil, but it's the exact opposite. They tend to lump all of mame together with the horrid-looking, aircraft-carrier-sized control panel hellcades some morons build, ruining cabs, but the mame project itself is an awesome thing.
 
I also just wanted to chime in and thank you guys. There are many people on here that think that mame is the devil, but it's the exact opposite. They tend to lump all of mame together with the horrid-looking, aircraft-carrier-sized control panel hellcades some morons build, ruining cabs, but the mame project itself is an awesome thing.

I honestly was curious on the type of reception I would get with a general asking for help. Generally, KLOV'er do understand what MAME is about, documentation and preservation. What I hate seeing is people taking perfectly good cabinets and making MAMECAB's out of them. While I understand there are certain conditions and certain games which don't lend themselves to restoration, if you are fortunate enough to obtain a working or mostly working cab - you should keep it original or sell it to someone who is willing to do that little extra to regain it's glory.
 
Well you've already got the proper ROMs for this game, but I'm going to post this here anyway since it's always bugged me: in the game Anteater, the background is supposed to be black, not blue. But every version of MAME I've ever played has had the background in the maze (below ground level) blue just like the sky, but on my two Anteater PCB's, the background is black below ground, and doesn't change - that goes for the attract mode as well; I don't know why MAME makes it all blue...
 
I have a version of Crazy Kong that's not in MAME. It looks almost identical to the Alca bootleg (ckongalc), but it's got one ROM different (according to romident). It has a ladder missing on the 2nd row, which I assume is the difference. How do you go about submitting a different ROM version?
Also, since you asked, there are some things in Crazy Kong (well, at least some versions) that aren't emulated right. One is on both of my boards. I have the above mentioned one (very similiar to the Alca one in MAME) and a Falcon Crazy Kong Pt 2. When you clear the barrel and elevator boards, Kong doesn't immediately run up the ladder. He doesn't start moving until after the little music finished playing. On MAME, he moves to the right and up the ladder right away as soon as you clear the board. Another is when you get points (jumping over a barrel, knocking out a rivet, etc), many times it does a similar sound as Kong's chest beat, only lower pitched (especially if you're running. It'll also do a static type sound, which is present in MAME). To see what I mean, watch this youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bvk9_0FMz4
The delay at the end of the board doesn't happen on every version though. This one, which is an Orca board, doesn't have it (note: the sound is a bit different on this one. I don't know if it's the version, or just that particular PCB):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhFkZvkIOiU
Another thing that was "fixed" recently (don't remember which version, and I can't check at MAWS because it seems to be down), they fixed Kong floating 1 pixel above the beam. On my board running Falcon CK Pt 2 (and possibly on the other one, but it's got some graphical issues, so I'm not 100% sure), all the moving objects appear to be floating 1 pixel above the beams. This includes Mario, the barrels, the normal looking Kong (the one that looks like Donkey Kong) in every scene (including in the Falcon cage in attract mode), the fireballs, pies and springs. The taller goofy looking Kong during the regular gameplay on the conveyor belt, elevator and rivet level doesn't have this gap. I notice the gap, because whenever something moves in front of a ladder, you can see the bottom row of pixels of the ladder.
I know some of this sounds anal, but if you're striving for 100% emulation, well... :D Kong's missing delay when clearing the board and the missing lower pitched chest beat sounds are what bug me the most ;)
Another issue I've noticed is the sound emulation of the AY-3-8910 chip. While it sounds right pitch-wise to me, I think it decays a little too quickly. I've noticed this on several games (including Crazy Kong and Macho Mouse) that use this chip. It's mostly when games are playing musical tones. This is mostly from comparing it to my board and the above youtube videos (for Crazy Kong) and that coinopvideogames.com arcade sounds site (for both Crazy Kong and Macho Mouse)
 
Well you've already got the proper ROMs for this game, but I'm going to post this here anyway since it's always bugged me: in the game Anteater, the background is supposed to be black, not blue. But every version of MAME I've ever played has had the background in the maze (below ground level) blue just like the sky, but on my two Anteater PCB's, the background is black below ground, and doesn't change - that goes for the attract mode as well; I don't know why MAME makes it all blue...

That's a great example of something which original materials and actual PCB ownership helps. If you would be so kind and it's within your power to take a photo or two (best quality possible) to show specifically the issue and give Dev's a reference to work with that would be great!

There is another bug, which I remember, which a game had contrasting blue/black backgrounds which I guess was due to some wire hack on the board which either wasn't on all boards or never fully documented. It might also be the case in this game, where a wire mod is needed in the same way. Actual PCB pictures, if possible, would help identify if that is an issue quickly enough. You can read about it here:
http://www.mametesters.org/view.php?id=3565

Hopefully, we can get this fixed up one way or another for ya :)
 
I have a version of Crazy Kong that's not in MAME. It looks almost identical to the Alca bootleg (ckongalc), but it's got one ROM different (according to romident). It has a ladder missing on the 2nd row, which I assume is the difference. How do you go about submitting a different ROM version?

There is a submission form on http://mamedev.org/contact2.html?=team , choose the Mame Team (general) as the recipient and detail what you have to submit. I don't believe there is a way to attach files, so a simple link to wherever the roms might be stored (private web or public download service rapidshare/megaupload/fileshare-type is fine). Once Devs get it in their hands, it doesn't take long for it to be included and documented.
If possible, also include supporting sources, like specific PCB pictures (both sides if possible) or notes about on board chips/devices also helps.

CrazyKongFan said:
Also, since you asked, there are some things in Crazy Kong (well, at least some versions) that aren't emulated right. One is on both of my boards. I have the above mentioned one (very similiar to the Alca one in MAME) and a Falcon Crazy Kong Pt 2. When you clear the barrel and elevator boards, Kong doesn't immediately run up the ladder. He doesn't start moving until after the little music finished playing. On MAME, he moves to the right and up the ladder right away as soon as you clear the board. Another is when you get points (jumping over a barrel, knocking out a rivet, etc), many times it does a similar sound as Kong's chest beat, only lower pitched (especially if you're running. It'll also do a static type sound, which is present in MAME). To see what I mean, watch this youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bvk9_0FMz4

With the video, I see both of the issues you describe quite clearly. I have to assume that's an original PCB (in general, japanese posters of videos do not use MAME .. against the rules, I guess) :) I'll see that proper bug reports are made for these. The chest beats can be heard in some way.. as a white noise sample. Perhaps we have bad sample roms in MAME, or they are not being accessed correctly.

CrazyKongFan said:
The delay at the end of the board doesn't happen on every version though. This one, which is an Orca board, doesn't have it (note: the sound is a bit different on this one. I don't know if it's the version, or just that particular PCB):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhFkZvkIOiU

Given the way MAME was originally, there may have been a lot of assumptions when it came to clone sets. There was some instances of roms from parents sets being used to fill in roms for found clones that has bad roms when attempting to dump therefore assuming the parent/working set was correct. Not saying this is the case here, just speculating the issue might be more romset related than emulation related, especially regarding this obvious delay.

CrazyKongFan said:
Another thing that was "fixed" recently (don't remember which version, and I can't check at MAWS because it seems to be down), they fixed Kong floating 1 pixel above the beam. On my board running Falcon CK Pt 2 (and possibly on the other one, but it's got some graphical issues, so I'm not 100% sure), all the moving objects appear to be floating 1 pixel above the beams. This includes Mario, the barrels, the normal looking Kong (the one that looks like Donkey Kong) in every scene (including in the Falcon cage in attract mode), the fireballs, pies and springs. The taller goofy looking Kong during the regular gameplay on the conveyor belt, elevator and rivet level doesn't have this gap. I notice the gap, because whenever something moves in front of a ladder, you can see the bottom row of pixels of the ladder.

"0.123u3: Zsolt Vasvari cleaned up the video driver, mainly via tilemap conversion. This fixes the ape sprite positioning in Crazy Kong - no more gap between feet and platform. Swapped gfx1 roms ($1000, 2000)."

That's what you are referring to, right?

Well, it might have been an unneeded aesthetic change in the code. Sometimes this happens when there are no source materials to prove the illogical behavior and things are made to look better and more logical. If you can get a snapshot of this on your original PCB board, that would be great for documentation.

CrazyKongFan said:
I know some of this sounds anal, but if you're striving for 100% emulation, well... :D Kong's missing delay when clearing the board and the missing lower pitched chest beat sounds are what bug me the most ;)

You own the original - you have the right to critique the hell out of the emulation. If you have the evidence and the romsets match MAME - MAME should be able to produce an accurate experience. There is no anal in wanting to preserve something as accurately as possible.

CrazyKongFan said:
Another issue I've noticed is the sound emulation of the AY-3-8910 chip. While it sounds right pitch-wise to me, I think it decays a little too quickly. I've noticed this on several games (including Crazy Kong and Macho Mouse) that use this chip. It's mostly when games are playing musical tones. This is mostly from comparing it to my board and the above youtube videos (for Crazy Kong) and that coinopvideogames.com arcade sounds site (for both Crazy Kong and Macho Mouse)

AY-3-8910 emulation, as I'm aware, is probably about 95%. There are some missing features which effect only certain games. Also, there are often discrete filters which in large have not been implemented due to lack of schematics or time to do so. Sound cores are hard to narrow down entirely correctly - there is so much that can happen. Even now, the sn76496-family of chips are still getting much attention and fixes many many years after things were thought to be 'fine'. That site, coinopvideogames.com a fine resource and has been used many times in the past to help fix audio bugs. It's the next best thing to having the PCB's right there to test.

Thanks for the information. Feel free to update or reply further. Hopefully the administrators here will allow this thread to continue to allow others who want to help the opportunity.
 
That's a great example of something which original materials and actual PCB ownership helps. If you would be so kind and it's within your power to take a photo or two (best quality possible) to show specifically the issue and give Dev's a reference to work with that would be great!

There is another bug, which I remember, which a game had contrasting blue/black backgrounds which I guess was due to some wire hack on the board which either wasn't on all boards or never fully documented. It might also be the case in this game, where a wire mod is needed in the same way. Actual PCB pictures, if possible, would help identify if that is an issue quickly enough. You can read about it here:
http://www.mametesters.org/view.php?id=3565

Hopefully, we can get this fixed up one way or another for ya :)

Yeah, the game runs on a hacked Super Cobra boardset with major wire hacking. I 'll try and get some pics for you tonight...

EDIT: here's the issue I'm talking about:

MAME with blue background:
AnteaterMAME.jpg


PCB running with black background:
AnteaterReal.jpg
 
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one thing i'm kinda curious of is why tron and satan's hollow don't show the 'snow' in attract mode between screen changes in mame, like the arcade counterparts do.
 
Maybe it's some sort of interference on the monitor? (just a guess). I know what you're talking about. On Tron, put in 1 coin and hit player 2 start and the trigger repeatedly, and you'll see all sorts of snow (doing that cycles between the board demo screens).
Also, I'll be posting a response on the Crazy Kong issues, but it'll take me awhile (I wanna get some screenshots of mine in action first)
 
Although I do enjoy playing arcade games in their original state,I think MAME is fantastic and support what you're trying to accomplish 100%. If only I already had the technical knowledge and the game collection to really help this project.(Both works in progess!)
 
No screenshots of the actual game right now, but I will include a screengrab of my ROM's running in the current version of MAME (136). Anyone familiar with either Crazy Kong or Donkey Kong will notice the missing ladder on the 2nd row. This was done by renaming my ROM's so they matched up with what MAME was expecting. I also had to include 3 color proms from one of the regular sets (I think that's what they are. They were named ck6t.bin, ck6u.bin and ck6v.bin and are only 32 bytes each). It complained about the checksums on 2 of my ROM's, ck10.bin (the one I suspect has the barrel board change), and ck12.bin (probably a sound ROM, it's used in some other Crazy Kong sets, as well as Crazy Climber and a couple versions of Cannonball, just not ckongalc). I chose to try running it as ckongalc (Crazy Kong Alca bootleg) since it was the closest version to mine. It still doesn't have the delay when you clear the barrel and elevator boards, so it must be the emulation, not the ROM's.

attachment.php


OK, I'll try to respond to some of your replies:

With the video, I see both of the issues you describe quite clearly. I have to assume that's an original PCB (in general, japanese posters of videos do not use MAME .. against the rules, I guess) :) I'll see that proper bug reports are made for these. The chest beats can be heard in some way.. as a white noise sample. Perhaps we have bad sample roms in MAME, or they are not being accessed correctly.

I have no idea if it's an original PCB or not. It has some text on the page, but it's all in Japanese. It runs just like the board I have running Falcon Crazy Kong part 2. I've got a couple other videos I've downloaded from youtube, but that was one I could find easily with a quick search. And since it goes thru 2 complete levels (including using the jump cheat), and had the complete attract mode, I figured it was a good one to sample against.

Given the way MAME was originally, there may have been a lot of assumptions when it came to clone sets. There was some instances of roms from parents sets being used to fill in roms for found clones that has bad roms when attempting to dump therefore assuming the parent/working set was correct. Not saying this is the case here, just speculating the issue might be more romset related than emulation related, especially regarding this obvious delay.

See the above text about using my actual ROM code in MAME.

"0.123u3: Zsolt Vasvari cleaned up the video driver, mainly via tilemap conversion. This fixes the ape sprite positioning in Crazy Kong - no more gap between feet and platform. Swapped gfx1 roms ($1000, 2000)."
That's what you are referring to, right?

Yeah, that's the one. Although MAME was only doing it in a couple places, not on all the ones as I described in the other post on my board.

If you can get a snapshot of this on your original PCB board, that would be great for documentation.

I currently have 2 boards (with an ORCA one on the way, thanks to RareHero :) ). The one I dumped the ROM's on (that I used for the MAME screenshot) appears to be a Falcon board. Also, it looks just like the one pictured on the Crazy Kong Alca page at MAWS. Here's their pic:
ckong.png


Mine has the FCK-01 lettering next to the Falcon logo on the bottom right, but is missing ROM #14 though (which is the one missing the mask in the above pic). Mine has the socket, just no ROM in it. Mine even has the same Falcon logo masks over the rest of the ROM's. All my ROM's are 2732's except for 1 and 2, which are 2716's. My other board, which is running Falcon Crazy Kong Part 2, looks almost identical, but doesn't have any Falcon logos on it, in row 11, it has 2516's for 1 and 2 instead of 2716's, 2532's instead of 2732's for 3, 4, 5 and 6, has a ROM in #14, and even though it's stenciled on the board, the location for the dipswitch isn't populated (which I find really odd).

AY-3-8910 emulation, as I'm aware, is probably about 95%. There are some missing features which effect only certain games. Also, there are often discrete filters which in large have not been implemented due to lack of schematics or time to do so. Sound cores are hard to narrow down entirely correctly - there is so much that can happen. Even now, the sn76496-family of chips are still getting much attention and fixes many many years after things were thought to be 'fine'. That site, coinopvideogames.com a fine resource and has been used many times in the past to help fix audio bugs. It's the next best thing to having the PCB's right there to test.

Incidently, the ones I mentioned from coinopvideogames.com, Macho Mouse is Video Games 3, #6, and Crazy Kong is Video Games 7, #15 and 16. On the Crazy Kong one, you can hear the delay in Kong going up the ladder at the end of the barrel and elevator boards (because it takes alot longer to start the next "how high can you try" music) and the lower pitched chest beat sound when you get points (and on the rivet level, it does 2 lower pitched beats most of the time, which my board also does)
 
one thing i'm kinda curious of is why tron and satan's hollow don't show the 'snow' in attract mode between screen changes in mame, like the arcade counterparts do.

As crazykongfan mentions, that sounds more like an hardware interface quirk that cannot be emulated rather than something the CPU purposely does in the process of making the game work. I'm disinclined to think it's a real bug.
 
No screenshots of the actual game right now, but I will include a screengrab of my ROM's running in the current version of MAME (136). Anyone familiar with either Crazy Kong or Donkey Kong will notice the missing ladder on the 2nd row. This was done by renaming my ROM's so they matched up with what MAME was expecting. I also had to include 3 color proms from one of the regular sets (I think that's what they are. They were named ck6t.bin, ck6u.bin and ck6v.bin and are only 32 bytes each). It complained about the checksums on 2 of my ROM's, ck10.bin (the one I suspect has the barrel board change), and ck12.bin (probably a sound ROM, it's used in some other Crazy Kong sets, as well as Crazy Climber and a couple versions of Cannonball, just not ckongalc). I chose to try running it as ckongalc (Crazy Kong Alca bootleg) since it was the closest version to mine. It still doesn't have the delay when you clear the barrel and elevator boards, so it must be the emulation, not the ROM's.

attachment.php


OK, I'll try to respond to some of your replies:



I have no idea if it's an original PCB or not. It has some text on the page, but it's all in Japanese. It runs just like the board I have running Falcon Crazy Kong part 2. I've got a couple other videos I've downloaded from youtube, but that was one I could find easily with a quick search. And since it goes thru 2 complete levels (including using the jump cheat), and had the complete attract mode, I figured it was a good one to sample against.



See the above text about using my actual ROM code in MAME.



Yeah, that's the one. Although MAME was only doing it in a couple places, not on all the ones as I described in the other post on my board.



I currently have 2 boards (with an ORCA one on the way, thanks to RareHero :) ). The one I dumped the ROM's on (that I used for the MAME screenshot) appears to be a Falcon board. Also, it looks just like the one pictured on the Crazy Kong Alca page at MAWS. Here's their pic:
ckong.png


Mine has the FCK-01 lettering next to the Falcon logo on the bottom right, but is missing ROM #14 though (which is the one missing the mask in the above pic). Mine has the socket, just no ROM in it. Mine even has the same Falcon logo masks over the rest of the ROM's. All my ROM's are 2732's except for 1 and 2, which are 2716's. My other board, which is running Falcon Crazy Kong Part 2, looks almost identical, but doesn't have any Falcon logos on it, in row 11, it has 2516's for 1 and 2 instead of 2716's, 2532's instead of 2732's for 3, 4, 5 and 6, has a ROM in #14, and even though it's stenciled on the board, the location for the dipswitch isn't populated (which I find really odd).



Incidently, the ones I mentioned from coinopvideogames.com, Macho Mouse is Video Games 3, #6, and Crazy Kong is Video Games 7, #15 and 16. On the Crazy Kong one, you can hear the delay in Kong going up the ladder at the end of the barrel and elevator boards (because it takes alot longer to start the next "how high can you try" music) and the lower pitched chest beat sound when you get points (and on the rivet level, it does 2 lower pitched beats most of the time, which my board also does)

Thanks for the information. The bugs are logged as:
http://www.mametesters.org/view.php?id=3743
http://www.mametesters.org/view.php?id=3744

If you feel so inclined, I invite you to sign up for an account. If the Dev's have questions regarding other issues with the game or they need more clarification, you can correspond with them via the note system in MANTIS.

I listened to Macho Mouse from the site - I don't have the ears sometimes to distinguish minute differences in presentation as others do. I'll ask the Administrator, Fujix, to look it over. He's a bit more fine tuned in the audio comparison department :) This might be one of those instances where discrete filtering is needed. The only way to really implement that is to get a very high resolution original PCB picture of the audio area of the board, or some schematics in a manual. My sources don't seem to have a manual available, unfortunately.
 
I don't know what happened to my screenshot in my last post, it was showing in preview mode, but now all I get is a little red X. I'm on a different computer right now, I'll include a screenshot of my ROM's running in MAME, but it's an older version, so Kong is floating 1 pixel above the level (it was done using WolfMAME 106). Anyway, couple comments on your mametesters submissions.
The Kong delay happens on the Falcon version for sure (most of the arcade versions I played were that version and it always did it, as well as my board with the Falcon version running). That other board I have that is similar to the Alca version also does it, and I also have a video that came from youtube (unfortunately I can't find the link), it was from a guy selling a Congorilla machine and had a link to a youtube video of it running. This was also running the same version as my other board, with the missing ladder (so I'm pretty sure mine isn't just a fluke :) His had the delay as well.
On the chest beat sound, the double one is only on the rivet level, but it does a single one most of the time on the other boards. It's also not what the white noise is, that's supposed to be there as well. The white noise is the only thing you get in MAME though.
On Macho Mouse, it's mostly that the notes cut off too quickly on the sound emulation, at least to my ears. It's probably the same thing as the notes on Crazy Kong too, since they both use the AY-3-8910. Good luck finding a PCB though for a high-res scan...been looking for one of those for awhile now (that one, and Super Mouse or Funny Mouse, which are sequels to Macho Mouse)
Anyway, thanks for listening, I'll probably sign up for an account over there too. I do need to get the ROM's for my one board over to the MAME team.
Also, here's that screengrab that should have been in the other post (not using the current version).
attachment.php
 

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