3 ms·

It’s usually got the “best” everything emulator. As long as by best you mean most accurate. It may not be the fastest (usually never is) and may not be the mos

It’s usually got the “best” everything emulator. As long as by best you mean most accurate. It may not be the fastest (usually never is) and may not be the most compatible (because it may not be complete vs hacks in other emulators) but what it does emulate is usually pretty close to perfect & will converge on that at least. It’s Genesis emulator is a great example of that: about as perfect as non-hardware can get… but definitely not the fastest or most fancy

philistine 3y ago
Nah, there is a whole cadre of emulators who have pushed emulation to the next step in the early 2010s, kind of spearheaded by Higan. They achieved cycle-accurate emulation of systems by eliminating the use of shortcuts. Behaviours are adequately reproduced, performance comes second. MAME has never held the crown of most acurate emulator, except in its field of expertise, the arcade. MAME of course has gone in the same direction, but the project is known for its portability. So it means it has many emulation options to use less cycle accurate methods to run on RaspberryPi for example. From my limited experience, those far older emulators filled with performance-focused shortcuts are the default in MAME. So if you want the most acurate emulation, MAME isn't really it.
- RB_MAME 3y ago
  That's not actually correct. MAME intends to be as accurate as possible (we emulate the actual microcontrollers running the actual firmware inside the keyboards for PC, AT, and PS/2 keyboards as one example) but it's not always there. Sega Genesis is a poor example; MAME runs the entire commercially released library fine, but some homebrew stuff that seeks to stretch or break the hardware doesn't do well (notably the Titan demos). On the other hand, MAME's 8-bit Apple II emulation is cycle-accurate and you can raster-split mid-scanline by counting cycles (as some people crazier than me have done). So it really depends on the specific driver.
- newiln3_5 3y ago
  This is literally just wrong. Are you confusing MAME with RetroArch? Because that's a completely different project.
  - philistine 3y ago
    Yeah, I confused MAME with retroArch. MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE.
  - photonerd 3y ago
    They definitely are thinking of RetroArch. It’s mame cores suuuuuck too! So it’s compounding their confusion it seems. The rest of their post is about as accurate too
  - mips_r4300i 3y ago
    He's right, having been in the MAME source myself, it was designed as hardware documentation, not necessarily the most accurate emulator. Just look at the source for most any 3d polygon rendering platform. Take the gaelco stuff or the Midway V platform. The CPU might be well emulated (enough), but the GPU is very frequently only simulated at the highest level. Someone might look at the displaylist generated by the CPU and pick out the vertex format, then they copy-paste a generic triangle rasterizer in its place and try to implement whatever features can be figured out. Attention is only paid to things such as interrupt timing and DMA timing, Fifo timing and so on only to the extent that is blocks operation or crashes the CPU. This is not to dismiss the incredible work in MAME. It is frequently the first and only source of documentation at all. But parent is correct that it's common for more specialized emulators to go dig up more details and get more things correct than MAME.
- photonerd 3y ago
  You appear to be highly confused. None of what you said is accurate
newiln3_5 3y ago
You can't be serious. MAME's Genesis driver is far from perfect and most definitely less accurate than BlastEm. mametesters.org/view_all_bug_page.php?filter=125692
- G3rn0ti 3y ago
  Try playing Lightning Force aka Thunder Force IV — it’s famous for its heavy metal soundtrack. In Higan it does not work, in Genecyst the sound is crappy (on older emulators on Windows I also were out of luck). In MAME it runs just fine w/o tweaks. Haven’t tried BlastEm though.
- photonerd 3y ago
  BlastEm is great but—despite is vaunted accuracy claims—is buggy as hell too. It plays more games but that’s not the same thing as accurate. MAMEs emulation is incomplete, that’s why there are bugs.

philistine 3y ago

Nah, there is a whole cadre of emulators who have pushed emulation to the next step in the early 2010s, kind of spearheaded by Higan. They achieved cycle-accurate emulation of systems by eliminating the use of shortcuts. Behaviours are adequately reproduced, performance comes second. MAME has never held the crown of most acurate emulator, except in its field of expertise, the arcade. MAME of course has gone in the same direction, but the project is known for its portability. So it means it has many emulation options to use less cycle accurate methods to run on RaspberryPi for example. From my limited experience, those far older emulators filled with performance-focused shortcuts are the default in MAME. So if you want the most acurate emulation, MAME isn't really it.

RB_MAME 3y ago
That's not actually correct. MAME intends to be as accurate as possible (we emulate the actual microcontrollers running the actual firmware inside the keyboards for PC, AT, and PS/2 keyboards as one example) but it's not always there. Sega Genesis is a poor example; MAME runs the entire commercially released library fine, but some homebrew stuff that seeks to stretch or break the hardware doesn't do well (notably the Titan demos). On the other hand, MAME's 8-bit Apple II emulation is cycle-accurate and you can raster-split mid-scanline by counting cycles (as some people crazier than me have done). So it really depends on the specific driver.
newiln3_5 3y ago
This is literally just wrong. Are you confusing MAME with RetroArch? Because that's a completely different project.
- philistine 3y ago
  Yeah, I confused MAME with retroArch. MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE.
- photonerd 3y ago
  They definitely are thinking of RetroArch. It’s mame cores suuuuuck too! So it’s compounding their confusion it seems. The rest of their post is about as accurate too
- mips_r4300i 3y ago
  He's right, having been in the MAME source myself, it was designed as hardware documentation, not necessarily the most accurate emulator. Just look at the source for most any 3d polygon rendering platform. Take the gaelco stuff or the Midway V platform. The CPU might be well emulated (enough), but the GPU is very frequently only simulated at the highest level. Someone might look at the displaylist generated by the CPU and pick out the vertex format, then they copy-paste a generic triangle rasterizer in its place and try to implement whatever features can be figured out. Attention is only paid to things such as interrupt timing and DMA timing, Fifo timing and so on only to the extent that is blocks operation or crashes the CPU. This is not to dismiss the incredible work in MAME. It is frequently the first and only source of documentation at all. But parent is correct that it's common for more specialized emulators to go dig up more details and get more things correct than MAME.
photonerd 3y ago
You appear to be highly confused. None of what you said is accurate

newiln3_5 3y ago

You can't be serious. MAME's Genesis driver is far from perfect and most definitely less accurate than BlastEm. mametesters.org/view_all_bug_page.php?filter=125692

G3rn0ti 3y ago
Try playing Lightning Force aka Thunder Force IV — it’s famous for its heavy metal soundtrack. In Higan it does not work, in Genecyst the sound is crappy (on older emulators on Windows I also were out of luck). In MAME it runs just fine w/o tweaks. Haven’t tried BlastEm though.
photonerd 3y ago
BlastEm is great but—despite is vaunted accuracy claims—is buggy as hell too. It plays more games but that’s not the same thing as accurate. MAMEs emulation is incomplete, that’s why there are bugs.