Serious lag when games are launched

[cathaldub]

Thought this was a problem with my pc or ipac
When in hyperspin everything looks good and movement is ok.
But if I launch a game, say Pacman, all my keystrokes are a second behind.
Example: if you hold left for a full run accross the screen then push up it takes a second for the up to register.
This is not just with pacman but with all games
Is anyone else having this problem, am i missing something, I can video this happening if that helps.
I've just tried doing the exact same in mala and everything works perfect, no lag at all, tested some more advanced games like SF2 CE, etc

[The Loafer]

Games work perfect over here, not sure what your problem could be. Try running without the front end using the same mame.exe (ie: run the same game as your example "pacman" but from the command line.

[cathaldub]

Yea they run fine from dos prompt and from mala using mame 127 and mameplus too.
will have another messaround later

[cathaldub]

Anyone else having this problem?
I can video this on my camera to demonstrate if it helps, anyone any ideas?

[BadBoyBill]

Try running hyperlaunch from the command line to narrow it down like this:

HyperLaunch.exe mame simpsons

[cathaldub]

I'll try this out at 5 when I get home

[tk375]

What are the specs on your computer?
I tried a pentium 4 1.7 512MB RAM and it run find, after I install more themes it started to run slow and there was that one second lag you mention.

I switch to a dual quad core.

[cathaldub]

Its a 2.8ghz P4 with 2gb of ram, I wouldnt mind a bit of lag in hyperspin but its in the games.
I'm going to do a bit of testing later on when I get home

I really dont wanna upgrade to dual or quad core cause its a shuttle box and i'll have to change, mobo, cpu, case, psu, ram

[tk375]

Well, I don't think you should have that kind of lag. Hyperspin should run just fine. do you think you might have some software like a firewall, or script blocker turn on? Babboybill mention that Hyperlaunch is a script, so do you think something like your firewall or even antivirus is affecting the performance of Hyperspin?

[joebells]

well firewall shouldn't affect it

[cathaldub]

I've tried everyhting, every version of hyperspin, using hyperlaunch and not, turning on and off
[themes]
themes_only = true
in the mame.ini file
and also
[Backgrounds]
Animated = false
UseAdvanced = false
in the settings.ini

and this is the result
see video below


If I launch pacman from a dos prompt or mala or mame32 or mameplus it works fine
The windows firewall is turned off

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=OdXwyebgwZY

I'll post my ini files too if anyone can spot anything wrong with them either
Its doing my head in, I'm almost certain that it wasnt always like this although I usually spend more time tinkering than actually playing games so I couldnt be 100% sure.
Its only if you hold a button down, see another video of just tapping direction
this is present in all games just easiest to see and video in pacman
http://www.youtube.com/v/y_rhx_tbBh4

[cathaldub]

My ini files can be download here
http://mihd.net/281h5uq

[brian_hoffman]

Post the mame.ini frim your mame directory (not hs)
If you dont have one open a command prompt and navigate to your mame directory.
run

MAME.exe -cc

Then post the ini

[cathaldub]

Post the mame.ini frim your mame directory (not hs)
If you dont have one open a command prompt and navigate to your mame directory.
run

MAME.exe -cc

Then post the ini
heres the one from my mame directory
http://mihd.net/bk5r724

[brian_hoffman]

# FULL SCREEN OPTIONS
#
triplebuffer 1
switchres 0
full_screen_brightness 1.0
full_screen_contrast 1.0


Change Tripple Buffer to 0 and see if that fixes the choppy games

[cathaldub]

If I put triple buffer to 0 I get screen tearing, games aren't choppy
its like if you hold the controller in a direction it stays in that direction for a second after
I'll change that when I get home and see what happens, I wouldnt have thought it would be a setting in my mame.ini in the mame directory as if the games launched outside of hyperspin its fine

[BadBoyBill]

I'll try to look into whats could be causing this issue. Sounds like its not a mame issue at all and on the HS side. Not sure what could be causing it but I'll have a closer look.

And have you tried my suggestion to see what happens when you run HyperLaunch from the command line.

Try HyperLaunch.exe mame mslug

[cathaldub]

I'm going to try this at lunch today, only setup hyperlaunch last night, also gonna do a fresh new install of hyperspin and move the old folder

[cathaldub]

Just tested that bill and it works perfect

its actually only a 2.4ghz processor, when hyperspins running heres the performance with pacman theme on screen
http://i35.tinypic.com/ej7f45.jpg

and below with pacman running from hyperspin
http://i36.tinypic.com/hu0h3a.jpg

[BadBoyBill]

I was saying maybe just run pacman from Hyperspin but from Hyeprlaunch via the command line to see what your results are. Leave HS off for now. Unless I misunderstood your post and you say its running from HL perfect.

[cathaldub]

yes with hyperspin off, running "launch.exe mame pacman" from the dos prompt games work fine, no problems at all

Screenshots above are with hyperspin running, just to give you an idea

[cathaldub]

No one else having this problem?
deleted hyperspin and re downloaded from the torrent and still having the same problems:(

[[FAR-Q]]

Yep, I'm also having the same problem.
:(
Exactly the same symptoms. Mame runs fine stand alone, but when launched with HyperSpin then lag. Clean install of HyperSpin BTW (Test Athlon Version).

My specs are as follows:
XP Pro SP3, Athlon 3200 xp , 2GB Ram, Nvidia 6800 GT OC CPU, Audigy 1 Sound Card.

[FAR-Q]

[BadBoyBill]

This is kind of a weird issue, I'll have to look into it deeper, since its a rare occurance, it might be hard for me to find.

[cathaldub]

Yay, its happening to someone else, I bet everyone thought I was :stupid:
bbb if you need anything from my machine give me a shout.
I'm using xpsp2 with .net framework 1.1 and 2.0 installed

[Dazz]

I just tested with a basic setup on my kids computer... 1.2 Athlon XP, 1GB, on board sound and a 5700FX. I only had Ms. Pac theme and Ms. Pac rom and I noticed no lag on that basic of a setup.

[BadBoyBill]

Cathaldub, are you using Norton Anit-Virus, maybe just test with any of that kind of stuff turned off temporarily. Lemme know.

[cathaldub]

No Virus scanner at all, windows firewall off, the only things running on that pc is the arcadevga utility and VNC Server

[BadBoyBill]

I can get with you tomorrow and send you a test build with some changes to see if it helps any.

[cathaldub]

Yes thanks,
I'm going to try it out on my media centre pc I have connected to the TV to see, as its got a much better spec tonight

[paulstevens]

Yes thanks,
I'm going to try it out on my media centre pc I have connected to the TV to see, as its got a much better spec tonight

How did your testing go?

And have you tried it without VNC running? I've heard of other problems related to VNC interoperability with other programs so maybe try it again with VNC not loaded at all.

[cathaldub]

wasnt VNC anyway, stopped that service and restarted.
my spec
ipac2
arcadevga2
p4 2.4/2.8
1.5gb ddr ram

just formatted my pc and installed windows2000 to see if that made a difference, but still the same, weird, maybe i'll have to upgrade it to a dual core!

[cathaldub]

Seems my single core just cant cut it,
Just tried on a Core duo 1.6 with 2gb ram and it works grand, so looks like I'll need to get a new board/ram/cpu
might stick in my media centre board/ram/cpu to check 1st before going out and buying the lot incase its something with my graphics card(ArcadeVGA2)

[ccarlesco]

This issue is purely related to v-sync or triple buffer. It can be replicated on most lower end 1.5-2.4GHZ PC's If you turn on "wait for vertical sync" or "tripplebuffer" or "sync with monitor" it will slow the inputs to a crawl as well as max out you cpu usage.

Works fine outside of hyperspin.

[cathaldub]

This issue is purely related to v-sync or triple buffer. It can be replicated on most lower end 1.5-2.4GHZ PC's If you turn on "wait for vertical sync" or "tripplebuffer" or "sync with monitor" it will slow the inputs to a crawl as well as max out you cpu usage.

Works fine outside of hyperspin.
Have you any idea why it works fine outside of hyperspin and not with hyperspin?
If I turn tripple buffer off I get screen tearing with the ArcadeVGA, I'm using my media centre pc at the moment, so looks like i'll end up buying a new pc just to use this FE when every other FE works perfectly fine with the PC I have:banghead:

will set back up other pc and confirm tomorrow

[ccarlesco]

It seems to be some kind of bug.
I've tried mame32pro 106 and it maxes out the cpu.
I've tried mame 112 and it maxes out the cpu.
I've also tried mame++ 119 and it works fine.

I think it's worth looking into because this type of problem tends to lead to general instability issues.

[killboy35]

I had the same problem....

Then I set hyperspin to match windows resolution....and it's working fine now :)

[ccarlesco]

I've always run windows, hyperspin and mame at the same res and refresh but it didn't seem to help.

[cathaldub]

I'm staying off the demon drink tonight so i'll try them two ideas and see do they work but i'm almost certain that the windows res and hyperspin res were the same

[ccarlesco]

I may have figured this out and if so most of our observations have been coincidental.

Check the default game settings - miscellaneous tab:

Make sure "Sleep when possible" is checked

Try it now.

I always assumed that sleeping would be a bad thing for an emulator!

[cathaldub]

I may have figured this out and if so most of our observations have been coincidental.

Check the default game settings - miscellaneous tab:

Make sure "Sleep when possible" is checked

Try it now.

I always assumed that sleeping would be a bad thing for an emulator!
Is this in mame32?
Is there anyway to change it in the ini file for command line mame?

[killboy35]

Indeed, setting the fe to match windows resolution doesn't solve the problem.

I figured out that it occurs only at some resolutions.....


In my cab some of the "slowdown resolutions" are :

512x448
720x480
800x600
1024x768

I couldn't test every possible one yet but for example 632x264 and 356x256 seem to work fine (well, it's not really pretty but at least no lag)

I also tried the "sleep when possible" thing...and no change at all (wether it be ON or OFF)

Now if someone can tell why it happens only at some resolutions.....

[BadBoyBill]

Try and see if setting the video res of HS using Api instead of DirectDraw matters, they are lower in the list of possible res for you video card in the drop down menu in HQ.

[cathaldub]

Turning Tripplebuffer off it works perfect but then I get screen tearing on side scrolling games ie.ghost n goblins

Tried changing DirectDraw to API and makes no difference
tried every resolution and still the same

[killboy35]

Maybe my imagination but API seems worse :turtle:

[cathaldub]

Maybe my imagination but API seems worse :turtle:
way worse

Done a bit more testing and
Using the settings below is the best I can get but still slight tearing/flicker problems in scrolling games, but the lag issue is fixed


# DIRECTDRAW-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
#
hwstretch 0

#
# DIRECT3D-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
#
d3dversion 9
filter 1


# FULL SCREEN OPTIONS
#
triplebuffer 0
switchres 1

changing tripplebuffer fixes tearing but the problem comes back :(

[killboy35]

It's perhaps not the best solution but when I activate "multithreaded processing", it runs without lag...

And that even though my cab runs on an old single core pentium 4 :flute:

[cathaldub]

Doing that makes my machine go mental when running a game

[ccarlesco]

To modify the sleep mode in mame32 try this:

sleep 1

[cathaldub]

No use, its either tearing or input lag :(
weird the way triplebuffer works fine with other FE's without this problem:(
Its all down to the triplebuffer, without this turned on mame experiences tearing on scrolling games with the arcadevga card and with it turned on you get input lag

[ccarlesco]

I'm using Mame32 pro special - Maybe you can test it with the same?

http://www.fileplanet.com/163620/160000/fileinfo/MAME-32-Pro-Special!-0.106

[cathaldub]

Will test out later or tomorrow after work and report back

[cathaldub]

Testing that now
Have the developers any idea why you cant use the triplebuffer option? or can you with faster machines?

[ccarlesco]

I use triple buffer
I turn off "wait for vertical sync"
I turn on "sleep when possible"

It runs fine on a 1.7gh P4
No tearing

If I don't check "sleep when possible" I get 100% cpu use and input delays

[cathaldub]

I use triple buffer
I turn off "wait for vertical sync"
I turn on "sleep when possible"

It runs fine on a 1.7gh P4
No tearing

If I don't check "sleep when possible" I get 100% cpu use and input delays

testing now with mame32 and triplebuffer seems ok when on but tearing but trying out different settings, but commandline mame is a different storey
are you using commandline mame?

[cathaldub]

Has anyone any idea why in the command line version using tripple buffer cause this to happen but works fine in other FE's?
Maybe its just an arcadevgs thing?

[killboy35]

I don't think it's arcadevga related. I'm currently using soft15KHz in my cab and I still get slowdowns...

cab setup :
- p4 2GHz
- 256 RAM
- Geforce 4MX
- xp sp2 with soft15KHz

and for me, activating triplebuffer gives me input lag whatever I do.



By the way, after burner II and double dragon are slow. It's not input lag, it's just slow throughout the game (I'm not talking about the sporadic slowdowns everyone experiences in double dragon).
anyone has an idea why ?

[cathaldub]

So is this happening everyone using an arcade monitor or just people with single core pcs with arcade monitors?

Can someone with a lcd/pc monitor try enabling tripple buffer with command line mame and test with something like Ghouls N Ghosts and Pacman please?

[cathaldub]

OK, Managed to get this sorted but not sure how, was trying out the windows version and when I changed back it was working YAY!:dancing2:
Only thing now is that the vertical games top and bottom are slightly cut off, some more messing about tonight might fix that though :dancing2:

If anyone else was having this problem just ask and i'll upload my ini files

[killboy35]

yup, it could interest me :itsme: