.CHD's Question

[IronBuddha]

I did a little looking into .CHD's for games that require it and I needed a few things answered before I bother using up all of that space on my cpu to store the .CHD files.

Is it just that newer 3D games are just not emulated well? Do the CHD's help run the game better? Or after I have all of the CHD's will the games run but not very well anyways?

I ask mainly for the Killer Instincts, Gauntlet and Cruis'n games (and a few more;)), the KI's and Gauntlet games won't even run without the CHD's and the Cruis'n games are slow and buggy as hell without any CHD's.

In case anyone needs to know the computer I'm using isn't an old slow one, it far exceeds all of the mame's requirements.

Any clarifying would be greatly appreciated!!!

[DogP]

CHDs are images (as in raw data, not pictures :P ) of disks, like hard drives and CDROMs. They're needed for the game to run because they hold game data and code, just like the ROMs do. Typically they don't run very well emulated because it's newer hardware and many times use 3D acceleration, which MAME emulates completely in software (so a 3D graphics card won't help any). Some CHD games will run fine on a fast computer, but others will run like crap no matter what computer it's run on... but either way, if you've got a game that uses a CHD, it's REQUIRED, not optional.

DogP

[IronBuddha]

I messed up on my original post, Cruis'n doesn't use a CHD but runs pretty crappy, I meant to use it as a comparison if the games that do require a CHD if they'll run like that?

Also is there a list anywhere that mentions what games that use CHD will run good or crappy?

[DogP]

I don't know of any list, but I've seen Area 51 played on a MAME before and it was kinda choppy, but somewhat playable... and I think I've heard that Killer Instinct runs okay. I'd just search on google for whichever games you're interested in and I'm sure you'll find plenty of info on whether they're playable or not.

DogP

[jb143]

Those game don't run well in mame for various reasons. It's actually in the mame faq here...
http://mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php/FAQ:Games#How_can_I_play_Cruis.27n_USA_when_it_fra meskips_so_badly.3F

Remember...mame doesn't try to run the games well...just arcade acurate(and sometimes wait for your PC to play catch-up I guess)

You might see if there's a dedicated emulator for the games that run choppy that wouldn't care so much about being 100% arcade acurate.