13 replies to this topic

[thevaik]

I just got my EEE PC today (4g nonsurf version) and wanted to install mame on xandros.

Problem is, this is the first time I've ever even touched a linux build. I dont even know where to start. All this talk about repositorys and tars has given me a headach and has made me want to install XP.

Anyone have a "for complete idiots" guide to getting SDLMame or XMame installed?

[prurigro]

I have no idea if I did something wrong- but I tried both xmame (sdl and xv) and sdlmame today and they were both so mindnumblingly slow that I'd say its not really worth the effort. On that note however, pcsx-df runs playstation games at fullspeed... so maybe I just missed some acceleration option when playing around with them. This is on an archlinux system with all the latest libs installed.

[thevaik]

thanks for the reply

as much as I like Xandros, i think I'll be putting XP on my eee pc. Playing shockwave games and mame was one of the major things I was looking to do with it in my uhm... "unproductive" hours

[Von Floppy]

The way I did it was to go to packages.debian.org, search for mame, download xmame-sdl and xmame-common. The version isnt up to date but then again, I dont really have up to date roms either.

Install the packages by starting up a terminal and typing:
sudo dpkg -i xmame-sdl.deb
sudo dpkg -i xmame-common.deb

Then run it by typing xmame.SDL -rp <path to roms> <rom name>

SDLMame debian package you can geta at package.ubuntu.org. Its up to date I believe but my roms aren't.

[toto]

hi all! where is the repository where I can find xmame and gxmame? (I would avoid to run roms by terminal...)
thank you

TOTO

[Kithera]

Von Floppy just said where to get them, Toto.

[LS650]

Von Floppy, how did you find the performance of xmame?

[Kithera]

I did a custom compile of SDL MAME on my machine, and found the performance to be quite good. There IS some nearly unnoticeable frame skipping, but over all the animations are very smooth. Games I tried it with:

Sunset Riders
TMNT (1 and 2)
Dungeons and Dragons (1 and 2)
Last Blade (1 and 2)
Metal Slug (1, 2, X, 3 and 4)
Battletoads

[prurigro]

did anyone find sdlmame to give speeds that are even approachably playable? If anyone has I might give it another go :)

[skaroth]

Quote

The way I did it was to go to packages.debian.org, search for mame, download xmame-sdl and xmame-common. The version isnt up to date but then again, I dont really have up to date roms either.

I tried Von Floppy's instructions and they worked very well on my 4G EeePC running stock Xandros, in advanced mode. I'm getting 54fps on Robocop, with occassional short freezes.

I've taken the liberty to start a wiki page on this, if anyone would like to add to it/clean it up, as I think getting MAME running on a stock EeePC is something lot of people would be interested in:

http://wiki.eeeuser....to:install_mame

Thanks Von Floppy!

[windracer]

Thanks for the wiki article!

I ended up taking a different approach, though. I downloaded and compiled sdlmame. It took a loooong time, but finally gave me the 30mb mame binary. Now I'm using the XLAMEGUI java front-end.

sdlmame is nice because it allows you to dynamically resize the mame window in the normal way (no need to mess with command-line parameters). So I can run a ROM and then just re-size the window to my liking.

I've got everything on a SD card and it seems to work just fine. Cool! :D

Edited by windracer, 15 May 2008 - 01:37 AM.

[rhusted]

Would it be possible for someone to post a binary of xmame for the eeePC (windracer perhaps - since he's got it working)? I can't seem to get xmame installed - I keep getting the following errors:

/home/user> sudo dpkg -i xmame-sdl_0.106-2_i386.deb
Selecting previously deselected package xmame-sdl.
(Reading database ... 72575 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking xmame-sdl (from xmame-sdl_0.106-2_i386.deb) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of xmame-sdl:
xmame-sdl depends on xmame-common (= 0.106-2); however:
Package xmame-common is not installed.
dpkg: error processing xmame-sdl (--install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
xmame-sdl

/home/user> sudo dpkg -i xmame-common_0.106-2_all.deb
Selecting previously deselected package xmame-common.
(Reading database ... 72578 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking xmame-common (from xmame-common_0.106-2_all.deb) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of xmame-common:
xmame-common depends on xmame | xmess; however:
Package xmame is not installed.
Package xmame-sdl which provides xmame is not configured yet.
Package xmess is not installed.
Package xmess-x which provides xmess is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing xmame-common (--install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
xmame-common

Does anyone have some suggestions? Where would I go to configure xmame? I'm not sure what step I'm missing.

Thanks,

- Robert :)

[Kithera]

list both packages on the command line at the same time, that is how you can solve the circular dependantcies.

sudo dpkg -i xmame-sdl_0.106-2_i386.deb  xmame-common_0.106-2_all.deb

[LuisMW]

Hi, I have a different problem with each of these Mame versions.

In xmame I can't seem to get both fullscreen and correct aspect ratio, particularly with cps2 games.

Meanwhile, sdlmame, which is my preferred choice, doesn't quite run as smoothly as it should. I end up overclocking and auto frameskipping to get reasonably smooth gameplay. Neo Geo games are the ones running slower, by the way.

For instance, with Metal Slug, the game most of the time runs OK with 5-6 frameskip, but once things get ugly (such as the boss of level 1) and there are many sprites running around, frameskip jumps to 10 (the limit) and then there is a very noticeable slowdown of gameplay (about 80% speed).

I tried compiling sdlmame myself with no apparent improvement (it looks like it is compiled with -O3 by default, so that's not a surprise).

One little trick I found, though: sdlmame will run at about half a frame per second with the default opengl renderer. Change it to opengl16 to get a major fps boost (it's still not good enough for me, I'm afraid).

Reading here that people are getting good speeds with Neo Geo games, is there anything I'm missing?