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How to have good smooth games on Mame

AREZ God of War

The Crazy BeastMaster
I noticed alot of people love UMK3 and are very great players but tend to frown on Mame and feel it is laggy. I have learned alot about Mame and CPUs since I started playing on Mame and it is definitely NOT the EMU itself. I have many lag-less games with people on a fairly regular basis, and I have also noticed that alot of the people who hate lag and complain about it are the very individuals who bring the lag to the game, so I'd like to share this info with others in hopes that they can follow this advice be able to enjoy UMK3's best port as much as i do in a BYOC environment. Let us begin:

1.) NO wireless internet. Wireless will not yield a smooth gameplay to any extent despite your internet speed. My best friend has over 20 MB and has no choice but wireless and it's LAGGY even w/ 20 Megs. Even a 50 foot....no even 100 foot cable will be 20X better than ANY wireless connection. This is the #1 culprit for preventing people from enjoying ggs on Mame. UMK3 simply can NOT be played properly on a wireless connection, regardless of how many people disagree. If the game is not playing at 53.5 FPS, it's not being run properly.

2.) Have a good solid internet, perferably cable. A game like UMK3 that was never made for online and still has a shitty net-code should not be played w/ a few MB of DSL. Instead, use high-speed, with a good fast Upload. Even if u have a good connection, say 15 MB D/L, .5 MB U/L....it will not be suitable enough - an Upload of 2-3 MB is minimal standard to keep it running properly. Mame also uses alot of PC-power, up to 80% of your PC's overall capacity, use the option for power-conserve in your UMK3 menu which will remove much of the strain from the CPU itself.

3.) Don't run any applications or other programs during gameplay. Absolutely nothing should should be on when Mame/UMK3 is playing. No phone jacks, no MSN, No AIM, no Browser, nothing at all. This includes sharing bandwidth with another person in the house and internal recording/streaming devices.

4.) Find out who has the fastest Upload and have them be the host. Ensuring the person with the fastest Upload speed host the match will make everything smoother and faster.

5.) For the most part, "excellent" will provide the closest to offline play. "LAN" (Local Area Network) is not good for higher pings and even when you are very close geographically will drop inputs if both connections are not great. Unless you are actually ON a LAN, using it is absolutely pointless. The inputs don't reach the server often as a result of the constant packet-dropping on LAN, which results in numerous lag-outs and more annoyingly, missed combos. From what i can tell "good" simply has far too much input delay for playing the game remotely close to 53.5 FPS.

6.) Avoid in-game chat. Chatting has a tendency to lag up the game and makes unnecessary spikes. If chatting becomes excessive, simply type "/muteall" to prevent it from ruining the game.

This is mostly all I can think of at the moment, but please be sure to follow these guidelines for your own enjoyment, as well as not to ruin the enjoyment of others. You absolutely can NOT make a judgement call of how good an EMU Mame is unless you are sticking to there guidelines. Follow this guide and soon you will also see Mame is very good EMU for anyone that has enough power to run it properly.
 

AREZ God of War

The Crazy BeastMaster
AREZ God of War said:
I noticed alot of people love UMK3 and are very great players but tend to frown on Mame and feel it is laggy. I have learned alot about Mame and CPUs since I started playing on Mame and it is definitely NOT the EMU itself. I have many lag-less games with people on a fairly regular basis, and I have also noticed that alot of the people who hate lag and complain about it are the very individuals who bring the lag to the game, so I'd like to share this info with others in hopes that they can follow this advice be able to enjoy UMK3's best port as much as i do in a BYOC environment. Let us begin:

1.) NO wireless internet. Wireless will not yield a smooth gameplay to any extent despite your internet speed. My best friend has over 20 MB and has no choice but wireless and it's LAGGY even w/ 20 Megs. Even a 50 foot....no even 100 foot cable will be 20X better than ANY wireless connection. This is the #1 culprit for preventing people from enjoying ggs on Mame. UMK3 simply can NOT be played properly on a wireless connection, regardless of how many people disagree. If the game is not playing at 53.5 FPS, it's not being run properly.

2.) Have a good solid internet, perferably cable. A game like UMK3 that was never made for online and still has a shitty net-code should not be played w/ a few MB of DSL. Instead, use high-speed, with a good fast Upload. Even if u have a good connection, say 15 MB D/L, .5 MB U/L....it will not be suitable enough - an Upload of 2-3 MB is minimal standard to keep it running properly. Mame also uses alot of PC-power, up to 80% of your PC's overall capacity, use the option for power-conserve in your UMK3 menu which will remove much of the strain from the CPU itself.

3.) Don't run any applications or other programs during gameplay. Absolutely nothing should should be on when Mame/UMK3 is playing. No phone jacks, no MSN, No AIM, no Browser, nothing at all. This includes sharing bandwidth with another person in the house and internal recording/streaming devices.

4.) Find out who has the fastest Upload and have them be the host. Ensuring the person with the fastest Upload speed host the match will make everything smoother and faster.

5.) For the most part, "excellent" will provide the closest to offline play. "LAN" (Local Area Network) is not good for higher pings and even when you are very close geographically will drop inputs if both connections are not great. Unless you are actually ON a LAN, using it is absolutely pointless. The inputs don't reach the server often as a result of the constant packet-dropping on LAN, which results in numerous lag-outs and more annoyingly, missed combos. From what i can tell "good" simply has far too much input delay for playing the game remotely close to 53.5 FPS.

6.) Avoid in-game chat. Chatting has a tendency to lag up the game and makes unnecessary spikes. If chatting becomes excessive, simply type "/muteall" to prevent it from ruining the game.

This is mostly all I can think of at the moment, but please be sure to follow these guidelines for your own enjoyment, as well as not to ruin the enjoyment of others. You absolutely can NOT make a judgement call of how good an EMU Mame is unless you are sticking to there guidelines. Follow this guide and soon you will also see Mame is very good EMU for anyone that has enough power to run it properly.


Following these guideline results in very very close to offline results and gameplay. I can't stress enough that once you follow this guide to a "T", you will soon change your opinion.
 

AREZ God of War

The Crazy BeastMaster
Tim Static said:
close to offline is still shit imo.

hell you can play the PS3 port of UMK3 on MKAK and have very very close to offline results and gameplay........when your playing offline lol.
Playing me on my new connection would make even YOU enjoy online again, Mr. Static :) If you are following the guide, it should be close to perfect. We should give it a test-run. You vouching for this would mean a LOT in this community considering the icon you have become, possibly enough to bring back Mame, UMK3 and lag-less gameplay.
Phil and I are planning a series soon, if u want, I can have him call you and I'll host a 3 player series and we can do Quarter-matches like when we were all kids. :p You have my WORD, I wont allow anyone in the room that doesnt have a hard-wired, cable connection....believe me if there were a competition for "people who hate UMK3 online lag", I'd probably beat you by a cunt-hair :)
 

Vert

Noob
Additionaly:
Use P2P if possible. In most cases it is way much better than server. However not always...
Not every server supports LAN.


For many of us playing offline is IMPOSSIBLE.
You will always meet people that keep crying their heart out because of the connection/lag/delay, even if their ping <15-20. Usually they are sore losers or born haters...

Good thread though. Mame was always the best port and even depiste of old net code it still delivers the greatest online experience.
 

AC1984

Kaballin!
Online is no good....no matter what. I've played online in my home country with 0 ms with ded_ who lives like 15 miles away from me and the delay is still there even tho its playable.
 
ZAQ said:
Truth. It is literally impossible to have no delay online, even in 0 ms. I do recommend everything that BlackHeart suggests to make it as close to 0ms as possible though.

If it were possible, life would be so much easier for tons of people. The perfect netcode would exist and you would never buy another game with bad online play.

Unfortunately, the universe and laws of physics just don't want to cooperate with online gaming.

Before p2p I used to setup a computer to run my own personal server to play Agent007 when he got back from work late and he lived about 5mins from my home (and a few other east coasters). That may not be a bad idea for some of you NY guys that would prefer to play multiplayer instead of 1v1 over and over.
But doesn't that just kill out the entire social aspect? if they're that close they should all meetup and just play.
 

Tim Static

Adminerator
XUtility said:
But doesn't that just kill out the entire social aspect? if they're that close they should all meetup and just play.
sorta. most of us old timers have kids etc and most cant do it everyday, so you have to resort to netplay to get matches more often than not.
 

nwo

Noob
Mame also uses alot of PC-power, up to 80% of your PC's overall capacity, use the option for power-conserve in your UMK3 menu which will remove much of the strain from the CPU itself.
Mame uses more CPU (processor) power than anything, I think the option is called "Use Sleep" under the "Rendering" tab, in Mame32k .64. With this box checked, it basically cut my CPU usage in half.

Offline will always be faster than Online in any game, but this is great advice AREZ, in making the best of it.
 

NobilityV3

Smalls deep.
I can play MAME flawlessly with no lag, but there is indeed a delay, and it's very much noticeable. For example, Sub-Zero's reset on characters like Nightwolf literally have to be timed a second earlier than usual. I'll stick to my console version, or MKAK PC.
 

AREZ God of War

The Crazy BeastMaster
Thanks for the heads up Arez, most of this is commonplace knowledge to me but it's good to have the info out there :p
LOL, you'd be amazed at how uncommon common sense is and the amount of people I've had to explain this to over and over again in long drawn-out painstaking in-depth explanations.
 

y0da

Noob
Does anyone else encountered this annoying input delay while playing on MAME? The MKAK version on Steam allows me to make Kabal's spin in no time, like one button after another. On MAME it needs like a half second more between Backward and Forward - it's freakin' driving me mad! Same goes for moves like spears etc. Or is it just my issue? I'm talking about offline gameplay right now.
 

nwo

Noob
Does anyone else encountered this annoying input delay while playing on MAME? The MKAK version on Steam allows me to make Kabal's spin in no time, like one button after another. On MAME it needs like a half second more between Backward and Forward - it's freakin' driving me mad! Same goes for moves like spears etc. Or is it just my issue? I'm talking about offline gameplay right now.

Offline? HAH, yeah that means its your issue for sure. MKAK is easier on your processor and harder on the graphic card than MAME, MAME is the other way around, so my guess its your processor. What version of MAME are you using?
 

y0da

Noob
Offline? HAH, yeah that means its your issue for sure. MKAK is easier on your processor and harder on the graphic card than MAME, MAME is the other way around, so my guess its your processor. What version of MAME are you using?
As it supposed to be - MAME 0.67 and I have quite a good notebook, Compal KHLB2.