Unfortunately, the MAME developers don't care about optimisation at all. Like I've said lots of times before, I think it's very sad that a game that ran fine on a, say, 10 MHz 68000 processor is not emulated at full speed on my 225 MHz Pentium MMX. Emulators like HiVe show that the emulation speed can be an awful lot better than it is in MAME.(posted 9155 days ago)As a result, it's sad that people who don't have the means or intention to get a faster computer can't compete with others, but the fact remains that MAME is meant to emulate every game as close to "the real thing" as possible, and that, beyond any discussion, includes the speed at which the game runs. There are lots of games that won't run at full speed on my computer without reverting to using no sound or playing with frameskip. As a rule of thumb, I nowadays won't even TRY to run a game on MAME released after 1986 or thereabouts.
So, it is my belief that since MAME tries to be as close to the actual arcade machine as possible, anything that differs significantly from that should not be allowed. I think that people should have the decency to not upload scores to MARP for which they know they had an unfair advantage because it ran a lot slower on their computer. Unfortunately, for some people, this does not seem to be the case. Just another example: I can't run Galaga '88 on anywhere NEAR true framerate on my computer, so I find it very hard to believe that someone using a Pentium 166 can put up the top score on MARP and claim it ran at true framerate on their computer. After all, true framerate on slow computers means you have to use no sound and/or frameskip, either of which makes most games at least somewhat harder.
Again, I truly believe that if you know you have an unfair advantage because the game runs too slow on your computer (and it's extremely easy to see that by hitting F11), you should NOT upload your score to MARP or TG or anywhere else where you are competing with people who play the game as it was designed to be played. In my opinion, knowingly uploading those recordings is the same as cheating intentionally. If you want to allow it, then create a place where everything is allowed. People made tongue-in-cheek remarks about having separate Olympic Games where steroids were allowed right after (one of) the Ben Johnson incident(s). This no longer seems so ridiculous to me. I myself could put up a lot of incredible scores by slowing down my computer or using other types of cheats (re-recording, autofire, ...), but I am not because it's not fair within the set framework of rules. I could relatively easily skyrocket my way into MARP's top 10 if I cheated, because I have enough knowledge about a lot of things to do so. Cicca has already shown that by slowing down his computer, he was able to score a lot higher on Crystal Castles than he would have been able to do otherwise, and, just to experiment, I myself happened to play Jr. Pacman on 25% speed yesterday, and in my FIRST attempt, I scored more than 33% more than the best I have EVER scored in a few hundred attempts on regular speed.
I can definitely see that some of the people I suspect of cheating (and whether their computer just can't handle the game's "real" speed or whether they intentionally slowed it down doesn't make any difference in my definition of "cheating" as I've indicated) on MARP have clearly studied the games they play, but that does NOT give them the right to then play it at a low framerate and submit it.
What I should really like to see is these people sending in something in the neighbourhood (say 75%) of their scores on MARP using a version like Mark Longridge's upcoming TG3 version of MAME. I bet a lot of them couldn't. Sure, they may be rusty on some games, but it shouldn't take that long to get back to somewhere close to your original level after some practice.
I know this post probably won't have any effect. Cheaters won't be converted by it. But having been attacked once myself because basically one person doubted one of my scores (without even bothering to look at my recording), this matter has become dear to me. So I had to give my opinion.
What good does it do you anyway to have incredible scores on MARP if most of the people doubt you? And you won't win any money or prestige from it. And does it feel good to know you have the high on MARP, but you know you cheated? I don't think so...
Ben Jos.