DarkMamer
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:45 am

Best Mame flavor for netplay right now

Hi all, first post in here.

I came back to Mame-ing after a while and I'm wondering what the cool kids use nowadays to play Mame games online with their friends.

I used to go with Mame++ with Kaillera, but it is still on that same version from so long ago.

Ideally it would be something that allows me to play online with the same romset I'm using with MAME 0.229 or 0.230

Cheers
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Stiletto
Posts: 96
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2014 4:11 pm

Re: Best Mame flavor for netplay right now

Probably MAMEHub. Community exists mainly on Discord these days, but there's also a reddit.
https://discord.gg/4PDvAX4
https://reddit.com/r/MAMEhub/
- Stiletto
DarkMamer
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:45 am

Re: Best Mame flavor for netplay right now

Stiletto wrote: Probably MAMEHub. Community exists mainly on Discord these days, but there's also a reddit.
https://discord.gg/4PDvAX4
https://reddit.com/r/MAMEhub/
Thanks, I'll check that out
DarkMamer
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:45 am

Re: Best Mame flavor for netplay right now

I did some fiddling with MAMEHub, but it kinda doesn't fit the bill.

The idea is to play with friends which are less tech-savvy. They won't deal with compilers.

Anyone knows of a distribution which is more ready for the layman?
mhoes
Posts: 186
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2016 12:26 pm

Re: Best Mame flavor for netplay right now

DarkMamer wrote: Sat Apr 24, 2021 8:51 pm I did some fiddling with MAMEHub, but it kinda doesn't fit the bill.

The idea is to play with friends which are less tech-savvy. They won't deal with compilers.

Anyone knows of a distribution which is more ready for the layman?
Although I didn't actually try it, the notes I found on Discord didn't mention anything about compiling it yourself. Yes, there is a bit of manual setup to do, but I guess you could do that for people as it's a one-time thing. The only part that seemed difficult to me for non-technical people, is that it requires you to open a command prompt and start the game as 'mamehub64.exe romfilename'. But perhaps that can be circumvented by using a mame frontend that let's you select the binary ? (like perhaps IV-Play ?) (or perhaps even the native/internal mame ui works).

Where did you get the idea people have to compile things for themselves ? And even if compilation was required, you would only have to do this once and can then just distribute the binaries to other people; they still wouldn't all be required to compile it themselves ?
DarkMamer
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:45 am

Re: Best Mame flavor for netplay right now

Google took me to MameHUB github page, and I assumed that was a good place to go. There are no releases there, only code to download and general instructions on how to compile it (packages, dependencies and so on...)

Your comment made me look harder and I went to reddit (where the links for download are broken) and then Discord (as advised initially, I realize). In their discord they outline what needs to be done (the download is locked behind a registration). I'll give that a try, but I have to say they could organize this better, lol.

Did anyone try RetroArch?

It is supposed to be able to netplay, but the current MAME "core" freezes whenever you try to netplay (works fine in single player mode).

I had some degree of success with a core called "MAME-2015plus", actually managed to play TMNT and Simpsons with a friend, but it would randomly lock up. So maybe another core will work, so I'm looking for tips.

I don't know if those "cores" have anything to do with MAME development per se, so let me know if this question is completely out of place here.
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Tafoid
Posts: 351
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Location: USA
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Re: Best Mame flavor for netplay right now

DarkMamer wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 3:30 am Google took me to MameHUB github page, and I assumed that was a good place to go. There are no releases there, only code to download and general instructions on how to compile it (packages, dependencies and so on...)

Your comment made me look harder and I went to reddit (where the links for download are broken) and then Discord (as advised initially, I realize). In their discord they outline what needs to be done (the download is locked behind a registration). I'll give that a try, but I have to say they could organize this better, lol.

Did anyone try RetroArch?

It is supposed to be able to netplay, but the current MAME "core" freezes whenever you try to netplay (works fine in single player mode).

I had some degree of success with a core called "MAME-2015plus", actually managed to play TMNT and Simpsons with a friend, but it would randomly lock up. So maybe another core will work, so I'm looking for tips.

I don't know if those "cores" have anything to do with MAME development per se, so let me know if this question is completely out of place here.

Sadly, RetroArch is neither endorsed nor worked on by anyone on MAMEDEV so there is little support we can or are willing to give it. Just know that in using such 'cores' you are getting a watered down version of MAME of the era mentioned with major chucks of functionality often stripped out. You are on your own.
mhoes
Posts: 186
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2016 12:26 pm

Re: Best Mame flavor for netplay right now

DarkMamer wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 3:30 am (the download is locked behind a registration).
This is because you need to setup an account on their server in order to be able to play; just the executable won't do you any good. The gameplay is not peer-to-peer but client-server; all gameplay goes through their server. The idea is that you put the username and password you created on their server into mamehub specific settings in your mame.ini, and then when you run mamehub64.exe this user/password combo is used to connect to their server.

I must admit that I was somewhat surprised that mamehub was mentioned here at all. Only the mamehub client is opensource, the server part is not only closed source but even binaries of it are not distributed at all. (If I recall correctly the same was true of Kaillera). I kind of expected that the mame devs felt the same way about mamehub as they do about retroarch.
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Stiletto
Posts: 96
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2014 4:11 pm

Re: Best Mame flavor for netplay right now

mhoes wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 2:00 pm
DarkMamer wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 3:30 am (the download is locked behind a registration).
This is because you need to setup an account on their server in order to be able to play; just the executable won't do you any good. The gameplay is not peer-to-peer but client-server; all gameplay goes through their server. The idea is that you put the username and password you created on their server into mamehub specific settings in your mame.ini, and then when you run mamehub64.exe this user/password combo is used to connect to their server.

I must admit that I was somewhat surprised that mamehub was mentioned here at all. Only the mamehub client is opensource, the server part is not only closed source but even binaries of it are not distributed at all. (If I recall correctly the same was true of Kaillera). I kind of expected that the mame devs felt the same way about mamehub as they do about retroarch.
I am not sure any of us had researched it enough. I thought the server side was also open source, or planned to be. As https://github.com/MisterTea/MAMEHub says, "server coming soon". If that is a lie, then that is unfortunate, and we are left with yet another closed source implementation, if only partial. His original ClientServerMAME I had believed the server portion to have been open sourced... I assumed MAMEHub was merely a large update/namechange
- Stiletto
mamelicious
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:24 am

Re: Best Mame flavor for netplay right now

Tafoid wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:02 pmSadly, RetroArch is neither endorsed nor worked on by anyone on MAMEDEV so there is little support we can or are willing to give it. Just know that in using such 'cores' you are getting a watered down version of MAME of the era mentioned with major chucks of functionality often stripped out. You are on your own.
Actually the opposite, retroarch offers save state support on ALL mame games while mame only has this feature on selected games.
There are more things retroarch adds which are not present in mame itself. The biggest feature is full android support (which mame doesn't give at all).
The code in a mame core is a clone of github, nothing is removed. I never saw any difference between retroarch mame core and mame.
Why would they remove anything of mame's source code in the first place? It makes no sense to do that.
The same is true for all other cores it uses like dosbox, dolphin emulator, ... : it are clones of the github code.

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