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MAME Debugging
- mise_en_place 3y agoMAME is definitely one of the most interesting projects in emulation. Just the sheer amount of compatibility with old titles is amazing. The built-in tooling is great as well, didn’t realize they have Lua scripting available.
- nuc1e0n 3y agoMAME's debugger is pretty neat. Added to the fact that MAME supports most CPU types ever used in an arcade machine or computer and it's like having super powers.
- jhbadger 3y agoYes, the latter is worth mentioning more. Many people think MAME is just an emulator of arcade machines, but it really is an emulator of nearly everything with a CPU including classic home computers (even very obscure ones like the Mattel Aquarius), gaming consoles, UNIX workstations, and even handheld LCD games like the Game & Watch series. Of course with thousands of systems not everything completely works yet but it is still in active development despite being over 20 years since the project started.
- nuc1e0n 3y agoOf all the debuggers I've ever used, I'm most keen on the one that's part of openMSX as you can rewind time in the emulation with it to see how the registers and system ram came to have the values they do. It's been a while but can you rewind time with MAME's debugger these days?
- jhbadger 3y agoYes, there is a a rewind feature in the MAME debugger -- I haven't used openMSX so I don't know how similar the feature works.
- peterfirefly 3y ago> UNIX workstations It has Sun 4/20 (and others) but it (they) don't seem to be in a good state yet.
- unleaded 3y agoFor SGI computers (Specifically indy) it's the best/only good emulator right now, and Sony NEWS seems to be in good shape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2l39pndEJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2l39pndEJ4 , https://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=44666&page=532 https://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Num... There are also more obscure UNIX systems like Apollo and Intergraph workstations: https://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=113877 https://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Num... Good luck finding software to test them with though..
- johndoe0815 3y agoApollo DomainOS install tapes and firmware dumps for some machines can be found on bitsavers: http://bitsavers.org/bits/Apollo/ http://bitsavers.org/bits/Apollo/ Finding Intergraph stuff is much more difficult, though...
- MegaDeKay 3y agoNot to mention a variety of music synthesizers as well!
- cheerioty 3y agoMatt at it again, nice post! Make sure to check out his other posts if you get a chance, really enjoyed those as well.
- vardump 3y agoMAME's cheatinit is just like ye olden C64/Amiga Action Replay and Final Cartridge days. Scan the RAM, die once in the game, scan again for decreased values, repeat until just one address left. Then patch that address for unlimited lives.
- beebeepka 3y agoI remember having cheats for thousands of games but they stopped working after to what was the latest version at the time. That was like 15 years ago. I have been playing without cheats ever since. It's a shame because some games don't work well with saves, and others are just hard to beat no matter how many lives i have.
- rzzzt 3y agoLOSE A LIFE AND REFREEZE
- jareklupinski 3y agoi dont know why, but i thought puzzle bobble always had rotary control.... sure makes sense to add it in! looking forward to replaying it in a new way :)
- imp0cat 3y agoI still play quite a lot of Puzzle Bobble (and other Taito classics) on my Super Pocket. I'd love to try this!
- MegaDeKay 3y agoI remember playing MAME's first releases and how amazing it was to have Pacman and other classics emulated so well * on my very own PC *. It just gets better every release, and that it has been going on this long says a lot about the project. Other emulators are often faster, but it is important to keep in mind that MAME is more a documentation project than anything. Emulation is just a Happy Accident. Other projects like MiSTer FPGA will refer to its code to get an understanding of how a machine works. Bugs they find get rolled back into MAME, and so it goes.
- clktmr 3y agoI was recently working on getting Golang running on an N64[1]. While the hardware emulation was far from perfect, the easy to use debugger helped me a tremendous amount to get started. [1]: See https://github.com/embeddedgo/go/pull/6 https://github.com/embeddedgo/go/pull/6 and https://github.com/clktmr/n64 https://github.com/clktmr/n64
- guiambros 3y agoWhat a great article; thanks for posting it. Too bad it didn't get more traction; hope it get posted again and gets more attention.
- dang 3y agoWe put it in the second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), so it'll get a random placement on HN's front page. All: if you see a great article that deserves a second chance, let us know at hn@ycombinator.com! It's best if it's just something interesting you randomly ran across. (People usually email asking for boosts for their own stuff, but that's a different conversation. What makes our eyes light up is if you just run across something HN-good.)