MAME

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The MESS system info box for the CPC6128
MESS also has (still somewhat glitchy) support for the GX4000 and CPC+ series.

MESS (Multi Emulator Super System) is an emulator for vintage computers, gaming consoles, chess computers, and calculators. It is a descendant of the MAME arcade emulation project and just like MAME, the most important goal of MESS is highly accurate emulation, not speed. MESS and MAME are mainly preservation projects that aim to reproduce the behaviour of the real hardware perfectly.

Supported systems and compatibility

Currently, over 660 systems are supported, including the CPC and CPC Plus ranges and the GX4000. This is probably the main reason for using MESS, that a single download is enough to emulate more or less every home computer and gaming console that ever existed in the late 1970s and 1980s—provided one can find a ROM set that works (see below). MESS does not have the depth of other emulators, but it sure has enormous breadth. Its flexible input mapping and MAME-compatible pixel shader effects make MESS particularly suited for gaming.

MESS runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD. If you also use MAME, you may want to get UME instead, which combines MESS and MAME into a single executable with a shared configuration file, ume.ini.

Command line arguments

Name Argument Allowed file extensions
Printer -prin .prn
Snapshot -dump .sna
Disk drive A -flop1 .dsk; .d77; .d88; .1dd; .dfi; .imd; .ipf; .mfi; .mfm
Disk drive B -flop2
Tape -cass .wav; .cdt
Cartridge -cart .cpr; .bin (Plus series and GX4000 only)

(info from sysinfo.dat)

Supported file types can also be shown with the "-listmedia" command line option.

You can use zipped disk images too. If there is more than one DSK image in the zip file, treat the zip file like a directory, e.g. "-flop1 disk.zip/disk0.dsk".

Keyboard options

MESS generally supports two keyboard mode command line options: emulated (the default; based on key position) and natural (command line option "-natural"; based on the character generated by a key, e.g. pressing "z" will always generate a "z" on the emulated system, even if the keyboard positions are different).

In emulated mode, keys can also be remapped from the emulator menu: first press Scroll Lock to enable the MESS control keys, then press Tab to open the menu, and finally select Input (this system).

If you have e.g. a German keyboard, start MESS with "-keymap -keymap_file /usr/share/sdlmame/keymaps/km-de.txt" (Linux) or something similar so that MESS will know where the umlaut keys etc. are located on the keyboard.

ROMs

Just as in MAME, some MESS ROMs have parent ROMs that also need to be installed. E.g., cpc6128.zip also requires cpc464.zip to run.

ROMs often only work with a specific version of MESS. This does not seem to affect CPC ROMs, but other systems sometimes give an error message when ROM filenames or checksums do not match what MESS expected.

GUI front-ends

Various GUI front-ends for MESS exist for Windows, Linux, and OS X—see the list here: [1]

MessMenu on OS X with a CPC ROM selected. Currently, seven different CPC models are supported, including some regional variants (French and Swedish).

CRT simulation

GLSL shader example
HLSL "1980s" shader (detail)

Like MAME, MESS can use shaders to simulate typical CRT graphics artifacts such as scanlines, colors bleeding into each other, jitter, and display curvature. This involves editing mess.ini (or ume.ini if you use UME).

Mess.ini works the same as mame.ini, so MAME tutorials can be used as a starting point. Some example configurations:

  • Windows (using HLSL shaders)
    • A scripted setup with separate "1980s" and "1990s" CRT configs: [2] (huge post is halfway down the page)
    • A German shader tutorial: [3]
  • Linux (using GLSL shaders): MAME tutorial [4]

Remaining issues with CPC emulation

  • MESS may fail to read DSK images that use certain kinds of copy protection.
  • MESS cannot write to disc images in DSK format; only MFI (MESS floppy image) and MFM (HxCFloppyEmulator floppy image) are supported for writing.
  • Some demo tricks may be broken in MESS, e.g. overscan pictures are horizontally misaligned (shifted to the right).
  • Loading extension ROMs is also not supported.
  • CPC+/GX4000 emulation still has some obvious graphics glitches.

JSMESS, a JavaScript port

There is an experimental port to JavaScript, see the JSMESS article for details.

Links

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