Guys, I think we may have another problem on our hands regarding TGMAME. While the Alt-Tab technique got a lot of attention, I realized there's another way to pause MAME without the hassle - F4 (the palette viewer).

While it's true that using this to pause doesn't make the screen visible (like Alt-Tab), it DOES suspend the game in progress. So you can stretch out, get a snack, go to the bathroom, have sex, whatever, it'll still be sitting there until you push F4 or Esc.

After messing up on a Roc 'n Rope inp, I decided to try pushing F4 several times throughout the recording to see if analinp could catch it. I don't see any decrease in frame rate recorded, and I don't see anywhere else this data might go. I'd post some sample data to the board but I think the HTML would get screwed up (and it's easy enough to reproduce anyway).

Please tell me this has been common knowledge...

-Matt

-- Anonymous, March 15, 2001

Answers

So you mean to say that all I have to do to have sex is press F4? :-)

Yes, now that you mention F4, I remember that somebody (I think it was Mark himself, or was it Pat?) mentioned it a long time ago, but I think everybody (at least I) has forgotten about it more or less since then. I don't think anybody had ever investigated changes in speed when hitting F4.

I think I even located the F4 key in the source code and made a note on how to disable it for MAMETE. At least during recording. Same with F10. In MAMETE, F4 and F10 will be disabled during recording, but not during playback or regular play.

No, "external" keys like Tab, `, F4, F9, F10, F11, F12, etc. are not recorded in an .inp.

And to someone using F4 to pause, not having the screen visible might not even be a biggie. One can always press F12 to take a screenshot right before pressing F4...

Cheers, Ben Jos.

-- Anonymous, March 15, 2001

Yea, it's been a little while since we discussed this and fortunately thus far it's not become common knowledge. I think Ben Jos was going to address these issues in his next release. So how's that new version of TMAME coming along?

-- Anonymous, March 15, 2001

Well, like I said, there really is not much to be done anymore. But, so far, I have not yet been able to force myself to finish those last few bits. I'd love to make a promise as to when I'll finish it, but I'm afraid I might break that promise. The past few weeks, I had intended to do it during the following weekend, but I never did. I guess the best thing I can promise is that I'll TRY to do it next weekend. There just are some other things for me that take up a lot of my free time and a lot of my concentration. Which reminds me... I still have to do my taxes too. :-)

Cheers, Ben Jos.

-- Anonymous, March 15, 2001

now why'd you have to go and ruin my march and say taxes were due! :)

darn i didn't even remember that one, i'm very surprised that it doesn't record reduced framespeeds, I figured the frame rate timer wouldn't know the difference between if the pause was from a 'P' or a 'F4'. [Ben Jos] this deserves some investigation as to why F4 mame35tg3 would NOT record a frame rate drop....

The only way i see it not recording the time difference spent between frames is if the timer was starting after the F4 returned and sotped before the F4 key could get noticed...

-- Anonymous, March 15, 2001

My first guess is that switching applications (Alt-Tab) is very time-intensive and has a very high priority in Windows. So it temporarily suspends all other running applications...

Cheers, Ben Jos.

-- Anonymous, March 15, 2001

Suspending the application shouldn't affect the time it takes to start to display one frame till the time it was done, which is what should be recorded for mamete ? unless the suspend happened immediatley inbetween the code that stops a timer. But there shouldn't be any timers involved, the tournement mames should be taking clock snapshots and taking the difference between the two between frames... no amount of pausing can stop that from not recording one frame at a larger time difference.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001