Posted by pink on 25, 2001 at 7:23 PM:
In Reply to: bye bye DOS Mame ? posted by Elvis_P on 25, 2001 at 11:53 AM:
Given the number of questions about the Windows version of MAME, I thought I'd try to answer some of them:
* DOS MAME is not going away any time soon.
* Windows MAME is NOT THE SAME THING as MAME32 ... it is more like DOS MAME converted over to using Windows interfaces, removing some features that aren't possible under Windows (tweaked video modes), and adding some new features that Windows makes available (running in a window, hardware scaling)
* Windows MAME has no user interface, apart from the built-in MAME one. All options are specified on the command line.
* Because Windows MAME has no UI, MAME32 should still appeal more to the average Windows user.
* Since we're not running in a DOS box, Windows puts up more protection against trashing memory (especially under Windows NT/2000). This means you may see some games crashing in the first few releases, until these bugs are stomped out (we've already fixed a few of them). MAME32 users are probably familiar with some of these issues already. In the end, this results in more solid and better-tested drivers.
* Currently, specifying refresh rates is not supported. I will look into adding this soon.
* Multiple mouse support has been written, but not tested.
* There is no reason to put off releasing this until the next beta cycle. There was one very small change that was made to the core to add this support. Everything else lives exclusively in the Win32-specific code. If you want to keep using the DOS version, the chances that MAME will be less stable as a result are almost zero.
* Performance in a window should be approximately the same as full-screen performance for most people with recent video cards.
* Running under Windows 2000, it smokes DOS MAME on my machine (and on several other devs machines as well). However, in order for it to perform better than the DOS version, you likely need a decent machine and a fairly recent video card. Your mileage may vary.
* The reason I did this was primarily so that I could work on MAME without having to switch back from Windows 2000 to Windows 98. I also hated how I could take down Win98 by trashing memory (common mistake!) Plus, I missed the hardware stretching and debugging in a window from MacMAME.
Aaron