The Grid Emulation Status

[Patrick McCarron]

One thing that is holding back The Grid from being a popular game, is the fact that it's not emulated yet. It's very difficult and complex hardware, and I doubt we'll see a computer anytime soon that can run it very well.

So far The Grid isn't 100% emulated. Lots of work is still required, but I'll keep updates to the known progress here as the MAME developers figures more out when they have time.

The latest and furthest the game has gotten in being emulated is the following screenshot after the BIOS startup, it's much better than it was last year:



We're hoping progress can be made, I'm hoping to get the MAME developers a motherboard to test on later this winter.

[Tim Static]

Damn, someday soon. I hope!

Any news on the MK4 emu? (sorry off topic, feel free to PM me if you want to keep it out of this thread )

[Patrick McCarron]

It runs, just slowly. No lighting effects, etc. You really need a beefy machine to run these games, my 8-Core machine here may run it decently with multi-threading but I'll have to test that later. Here's a screenshot.

[Kryptonite]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the biggest problem be getting a graphics card that won't lag? I used to do 8-bit game rom editing, like making Mario naked (yeah very mature but I was only 13-15 at the time) or turning Mario into Bowser in SMB1 and editing the levels, and I know the biggest problem with people trying to emulate N64 games back then (98-99) was the graphics cards. I'd imagine a 3GHz cpu and 2GB of RAM would suffice to run these games. You'd just need a top notch graphics card.

[Tim Static]

My machine is beefy:

4.00 gb RAM
Intel(R) Core (TM)2 Duo CPU T9300 @ 2.50GHz 2.50GHz {processor}
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
64 bit OP
320g HD

[Patrick McCarron]

That's not beefy enough TIM. Even my setup runs it a bit slower.

  Processor Name:	Quad-Core Intel Xeon
  Processor Speed:	2.8 GHz
  Number Of Processors:	2
  Total Number Of Cores:	8
  L2 Cache (per processor):	12 MB
  Memory:	6 GB
  Bus Speed:	1.6 GHz

Results without graphics, just CPU computation for MK4 is this: Average speed: 66.65% (89 seconds)

Also your 64bit OS is not going to net you a huge benefit other than allowing you to access more RAM, it doesn't process any faster so don't list it as a "beefy" trait. More RAM wont help you here either, the game is rather small.

With emulation the processor that is the biggest lag, these games aren't very advanced graphically but do duplicate the work of all the processors since it's emulated. So little is known about the hardware the MAME team can't really think about optimizing it yet until they know more. Until then, building a bigger system will only marginally help. It'll be cheaper to buy the arcade game.

[Tim Static]

That's not beefy enough TIM. Even my setup runs it a bit slower.

  Processor Name:	Quad-Core Intel Xeon
  Processor Speed:	2.8 GHz
  Number Of Processors:	2
  Total Number Of Cores:	8
  L2 Cache (per processor):	12 MB
  Memory:	6 GB
  Bus Speed:	1.6 GHz

Results without graphics, just CPU computation for MK4 is this: Average speed: 66.65% (89 seconds)

Also your 64bit OS is not going to net you a huge benefit other than allowing you to access more RAM, it doesn't process any faster so don't list it as a "beefy" trait. More RAM wont help you here either, the game is rather small.

With emulation the processor that is the biggest lag, these games aren't very advanced graphically but do duplicate the work of all the processors since it's emulated. So little is known about the hardware the MAME team can't really think about optimizing it yet until they know more. Until then, building a bigger system will only marginally help. It'll be cheaper to buy the arcade game.

Interesting. I thought a PC that can handle any new game on the market could handle a 10 year old game, lol, but i guess not.

I think your right about just buying the arcade cab, lol.

[Jinko]

Does GPU count to this? What is your GPU Pat?

[Jion_Wansu]

Maybe we could make MK4 for the PC run online instead...It's pretty much arcade perfect...

[Tim Static]

Maybe we could make MK4 for the PC run online instead...It's pretty much arcade perfect...

No, actually its not.

MK4 for the N64 runs closer to the arcade version, believe it or not.

Arcade MK4 is the only version of the game thats really worth playing.

(MKG doesnt count either. The added characters totally broke the game, a la MKT. :/ )

[KornKombat]

And MK4 on the N64 is playable online.

[Patrick McCarron]

Does GPU count to this? What is your GPU Pat?

No it wont do much for MK4. I have an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, I can run most everything way over full speed. It's not the highest GPU card on the market, but more than enough for MK4. Again it's the CPUs needing to emulate all the various chips and GPU of the Zeus setup. It will get better, just not very fast.

[Tim Static]

And MK4 on the N64 is playable online.

MK4 is still a terrible port of the original. But this is getting off topic....

[The Grid]

I'm watching www.aarongiles.com for if or when he's gonna mention something about the Zues II emulation. How/why is emulation so hard with today's souped up computer technology? I used to think that because of having the latest graphics card, ram, overclock or whatever else it would take, it could run anything. Is it the programming part of emulation? Excuse my noob.

[Patrick McCarron]

Yes he has to program your computer chip to act like the computer CHIPS in the arcade board. So that includes the graphics chip as well as the processor chip. Right now he's having problems getting to figure out the low level data stuff.

[The Grid]

Hey, it looks like they're working on the Zues II driver as we speak.

http://www.arcadehits.net/datObase/rom.php?zip=thegrid

*Sighs* We just gotta wait and see. Maybe we could see something for christmas? (Please, let it be!)

[Patrick McCarron]

Yeah they have been working on it last year, but not much progress was made this year.

[KornKombat]

I wish Midway would do us all a favor and release this game already. Playing against each other online would be so damn fun.


Also "The Grid 2" would be sweet on the Unreal 3 engine. If there was more of us demanding it, it would help.

[KillerXtreme]

I'd like to know were you got the rom for The Grid, also what MAME version?

As for a beefy system goes.. That I have..

 CPU - Intel C2D E8400 @ 3.0ghz 
RAM - 2ghz 
GPU - 2x 8800 GTS 512m

I'd be curious how it runs..

[The Grid]

I'd like to know were you got the rom for The Grid, also what MAME version?

As for a beefy system goes.. That I have..

 CPU - Intel C2D E8400 @ 3.0ghz 
RAM - 2ghz 
GPU - 2x 8800 GTS 512m

I'd be curious how it runs..

Anything you wish to find, google makes you feel lucky. As for how it runs, it isn't going to bypass the rom checksum screen.