[MPlayer-dev-eng] XMAME petition

[Federico Ferreres]

>Hi,
>
>> Hi! I know this is a bit offtopic, but could it be at least remotely
>> possible that anyone understanding vidix (nick, arpi, etc) or XV, to
>> contribute a display driver for those to be used in xmame
>> (x.mame.net)? XMAME doesn't use acceleration for the games, 
>> except for the DGA 2 mode which is still Real Slow.
>
>I've checked the xmame thingie.
>anyway, what is the sense of a game emulator without games? something
>like mplayer would be without codecs...
>
>anywya i don't think it can be faster using Xv or vidix, they
>accelerate yuv conversion and scaling, it has no use for such things

I can describe two problems, and i think they are scaling related:

- Lots of games that have a tall aspect ratio (1.5:1, etc) need higher
resolutions (than 320x240). The total pixels calculated is not much more
than that of a 320x240 one but you do need a higher resolution. Somehow,
these modes eat a LOT more CPU (this is in my Celeron 433 laptop using a
mach64 mobility I go from 0% skip frames to a 33% skip). Could this be
improved or is it just inevitable? 

- Lots of game look like the original only if you enable things like
scanlines. There are 3 scanline modes. Of course, this also needs a
higher resolution. I don't think it should eat much CPU this fake
scanlines, yet with the actual xmame code, you get a huge penalty like
40% less frame rate (ie: a celeron-A starts dropping a lot of frames).

It may be a trivial non-chanlenging thing to do, yet you'll be making
happy a _huge_ number of xmamers :)...

I can imagine a good mplayer DVD session with friends and food and for
desert, an xmame net frag fest :) !

Anyway, thanks for the reply. It was just being selfish (not many people
have celeron 400s these days!)

Federico

>A'rpi / Astral & ESP-team
>
>--
>Developer of MPlayer, the Movie Player for Linux -
>http://www.MPlayerHQ.hu