MMMC - Berzerk

[scooterb23]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v643/scooterb23/mameclub.jpg

Welcome back everybody. Today we get the game that has been on the official list of requested games the second longest amount of time (sorry Dr. Micro, your day will come).

Today we get the arcade classic BERZERK

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7096

http://www.klov.com/images/11/1181242060237.png

I loves me some Berzerk. Probably one of my favorite arcade games of all time. Even if the first time I played it, I was terrified of Evil Otto. (Of course, I was only 6 at the time).

Club Rules

01. You do not need to sign up for the club. If you want to participate, simply download the game of the week and post about it!

02. At the end of the week, I will randomly select a game from a list of nominations.

03. The current MAME Club Pick of the Week can be found every Monday stickied at the top of the Arcade Alley.

Need the ROM?

ROM will be hosted by Flack at http://www.robohara.com/mameclub/

Previous MMMC games: Jump Coaster, Rampart, Jungler, Ninja Emaki, Port Man, Psycho Soldier, Metamoqester, Gunbarich, Sengoku (series), Snacks'n Jackson, Metro-Cross, Moon Shuttle, The Real Ghostbusters, Moonwalker, Black Widow, Kid Niki, Joust 2, Super Contra, Shoot-Out, Raiden, Golden Axe: Revenge of Death Adder, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Dead Connection, Gate of Doom, The Outfoxies, Popeye, Baseball Stars 2, Intrepid, 1943, Super Pac-Man, Samurai Shodown II.

Everyone have a fun week, have a good Thanksgiving (if you celebrate) and we'll catch you next week.

[jb143]

One of my favorite arcade games. I always end up getting back into it every few months or so, so I guess this week I will be as well.:)

[Ed Oscuro]

I had tried this game before and really didn't get it. I still don't like how the game often puts you face-to-face with an enemy, and how you have to run away from the robots to have some reaction time (especially after "Chicken! Fight like a robot!").

But I have to say that I like this top-down action game a lot more than many of those that came after it in the mid-80s, which took the same single joystick and single button controls and somehow didn't improve on it at all. The only reason Super Contra / Super C's top-down sections could be compared is that you can actually tell where your weapon fire is going to come from looking at the player sprite (but it's easy enough to memorize it with Berzerk). That game didn't have the challenge of Berzerk, either; pure memorization takes away the adrenaline.

6800 points. Was feeling quite close to the second extend, but I didn't see where I came into the last level and so ran straight into the left wall on starting. Pretty decent though, way above all my previous runs.

Also, randomly, there's a shareware strategy game based somewhat on Berzerk from maybe the early to mid 90's where the goal is not to shoot the robots, but make them crash into each other, turning into piles of scrap that catch other robots in even bigger demolition derbies (unfortunately there's not much of a visual to it, just the single pile of scrap that began). Adds a hyperspace button (to warp somewhere, good or bad) instead of the laser, and a "run full speed" button once you've set a trap up for the robots to rush into each other.

Edit: Suggestions for the next MMC - Horizon, 1985 Irem; Surprise Attack, 1990 Konami.

[TheDomesticInstitution]

While not recently, I've put a lot of time in this game via MAME. It's quite a bit harder than the 2600 version if I remember, because in this game the robots can shoot diagonally.

Despite it's simplicity it's a very nerve-wracking game. Your character becomes outmatched in firepower and speed pretty quickly. Maybe that's why I sweat when I play it. Anyway, cool pick, I'll be playing it in MAME and on the 2600 later this week.

[TripppsK]

This is one of my favorite classic games. It's so simple to learn and hard to master. I actually got some free time and put in an hour or so on it today. I had a high of 10,750, but I couldnt get in a groove to approach my 23,200 high score.

[Ed Oscuro]

23,200 high score.
For some reason I was expecting the user high score for this game to be over 22K. Nicely done. I'll have to try again sometime.

[jb143]

I was a bit rustier than I had hopped. I only managed to crack 4000 last night. This is one of those games where it is really hard to keep from playing it again once you loose, because you just KNOW you can do better next time.

[Ed Oscuro]

Agreed, plus games are short enough that you'll have a good shot at it too.

Edit: Doh, don't try to exit the top of a room as close to the left as possible. I got zapped immediately on starting the new room by a wall extending forward out of that wall. Probably goes for skirting the corners of any exit.

[scooterb23]

I'm having a lot of trouble adapting to the robots being able to shoot diagonally. This is completely wrecking my mojo with this game.

My best so far is about 2150.

Also: here's the list of games I wish to add to the nomination list :)

Qix
Rush 'n Attack
Bump n Jump
Mappy
Gun.Smoke

[TheDomesticInstitution]

God I suck. My previous high score on MAME was 1950 and I have yet to beat that. I just got done playing about 30 minutes worth, and it completely kicked my ass. I picked up a spare CRT computer monitor ($3 for a 19") from a thrift for my MAME PC, so now I have it set up in a spare bedroom... I'll probably be going another few rounds later. I need to crack at least 2000 this evening.

[jb143]

Should everyone playing this be required to check in at least once each day just in case someone dies of a heart attack?

[InsaneDavid]

That's not a Berzerk player, that's a monkey.

[TheDomesticInstitution]

Should everyone playing this be required to check in at least once each day just in case someone dies of a heart attack?

Still not dead.


Alright, here's another 30 minutes of work. BTW, I'm playing with the default settings. And that's my brand new $3 monitor. 1950 was my highest score until this evening.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2614/4131733681_6bfa13d637.jpg

[jb143]

All I can say is that when the DPServBot becomes self aware and tries to take over the world, I'm glad it's a yellow robot and not a green one.


:2gunfire: http://www.digitpress.com/forum/images/avatars/gallery/Avatars%20I/a-berzerk_y.gif

[Ed Oscuro]

Unfortunately for us all, the robots constantly shift color. Pretty sure the robots eventually turn yellow again - by which time they run as fast as you do and shoot constantly.

[TheDomesticInstitution]

I have a question for the MAME veterans.

Does this game slow down for anyone else? I have a 2.39 Ghz Celeron 4 with 512k RAM, and it slows down often when multiple laser blasts and speech are occurring. And forgive the question... but would upgrading the RAM help alleviate any of the slowdown? The only reason I would ask such a dumb question is that I've heard (maybe incorrectly) that MAME relies heavily on the CPU and not so much the RAM. Is my Berzerk slowdown a RAM or CPU issue most likely? Or is it my version of MAME (ver. 0.132.0.0)? A lot of the other games I play don't encounter slowdown like Berzerk, which is what got me wondering.

[scooterb23]

I've not had any slowdown at all with Berzerk. I run a 2.0 GHz Pentium Dual Core with 3 GB of RAM. You may want to try to play (blasphemous I know) with the sound turned off in MAME, because the sound does use some CPU cycles. I've found in the past that can help with games that used to slow down on me.

I have no idea if increasing RAM will help with this issue, but it can't hurt.

[TripppsK]

I havent noticed any slowdown either, and I am running on an older computer. Not sure of the specs on it, but I will play a few games and look specifically for any slowdown.

[Ed Oscuro]

8,510 just now in Berzerk. White robots (just past the bright yellow ones). Sometimes this game is kind, sometimes it isn't. It wasn't kind after I reached the white robots.

DomesticInstitution: If Berzerk is slowing down, try turning off all the other programs you're running.

You're using a single core CPU, most likely.


All I can say is that when the DPServBot becomes self aware and tries to take over the world, I'm glad it's a yellow robot and not a green one.
I just realized that the DP ServBot is not the low-level dingy yellow robot, but the dangerous bright yellow one (as I said just now, right before the white ones). That's at about 8K points. Be very, very scared. Of course, if you can find an alleyway and flood the rest of the area with DP ServBots you'll be fine.

[TheDomesticInstitution]

I havent noticed any slowdown either, and I am running on an older computer. Not sure of the specs on it, but I will play a few games and look specifically for any slowdown.

FYI: If you're running a PC, you can right click on the "My Computer" icon on the desktop and then click "Properties," which will reveal your Processor and Memory.


I've not had any slowdown at all with Berzerk. I run a 2.0 GHz Pentium Dual Core with 3 GB of RAM. You may want to try to play (blasphemous I know) with the sound turned off in MAME, because the sound does use some CPU cycles. I've found in the past that can help with games that used to slow down on me.

I have no idea if increasing RAM will help with this issue, but it can't hurt.


Thanks for the tip Scooter. I'll try and disable the audio and see if it helps, just out of curiosity. But I'd rather have it slowdown and hear the audio, than not. Otherwise I might as well play the 2600 version.


If Berzerk is slowing down, try turning off all the other programs you're running.

You're using a single core CPU, most likely.

This is only a MAME computer and I only ever have the MAME program running. I've also disabled most of the startup processes to make it quicker too. And yes, it's only a single core.

[Ed Oscuro]

By the way, you don't have 512K of RAM; that's either 512MB of RAM or 512KB of L2 cache (on the CPU itself, and that number would be somewhat high for an old Celeron). I would bet that's your RAM.

Edit: I wouldn't mess with startup processes too much. What might be helpful, though, is to go to System Properties (as you explained earlier) by right-clicking My Computer. Then go to the Advanced tab and hit the performance tab. I don't think those tweaks will make or break your speed issue, but it's worth a shot (and I like the older-style Windows look, so I turned off the Fisher-Price XP look, along with most of the other visual "enhancements" of XP).

It might be helpful to do some digging in MAME's settings. Go Options -> Default Options, see about turning off Hardware Stretch or Bilinear Filtering, especially if the graphics are very weak. Turning on (graphics) hardware stretch theoretically could help, but only a little, so it'd be worth playing with it.

Also take a look at thread priority (should be 0 or normal by default, not lower), Sleep When Possible (should be checked but you can try unchecking it, just keep in mind it may heat your box a bit more than usual), and auto frameskipping (I have it at 0 always; if you want consistent speed but don't mind dropped frame, put it at auto frame skip). This can also be achieved in game by cycling through auto frame skipping, and skipping 0 (never skip frames) to skipping all 10 frames (roughly equivalent to F10 fast forward toggle) with F8 and F9, in any MAME build).

Another idea is to go looking for a Pentium 4-optimized build of MAME.

Yet another idea is to make sure your computer isn't clogged with dust or something wacky.

[TheDomesticInstitution]

By the way, you don't have 512K of RAM; that's either 512MB of RAM or 512KB of L2 cache (on the CPU itself, and that number would be somewhat high for an old Celeron). I would bet that's your RAM.

Yeah it's 512 MB RAM. I said RAM but just made the mistake of denoting it "k." I'm not that dumb... but after reading this site all day and I hear people talking about this Apple II or that C64 having X-amount of "k" memory, it starts to go to the brain after a while.


It might be helpful to do some digging in MAME's settings. Go Options -> Default Options, see about turning off Hardware Stretch or Bilinear Filtering, especially if the graphics are very weak. Turning on (graphics) hardware stretch theoretically could help, but only a little, so it'd be worth playing with it.

Also take a look at thread priority (should be 0 or normal by default, not lower), Sleep When Possible (should be checked but you can try unchecking it, just keep in mind it may heat your box a bit more than usual), and auto frameskipping (I have it at 0 always; if you want consistent speed but don't mind dropped frame, put it at auto frame skip). This can also be achieved in game by cycling through auto frame skipping, and skipping 0 (never skip frames) to skipping all 10 frames (roughly equivalent to F10 fast forward toggle) with F8 and F9, in any MAME build).

Another idea is to go looking for a Pentium 4-optimized build of MAME.

Yet another idea is to make sure your computer isn't clogged with dust or something wacky.

While I'm above average PC user, I'm still kinda a noob at MAME so I'll take a look at a the settings that you mentioned.

Also I've opened and completely dusted the inside of the PC. Anyway I guess my main question would be... does RAM help MAME? Does it make it faster, or is it primarily a CPU thing? I've priced a 1GB stick of DDR RAM at $30, and just wanted to know if it's worth getting the RAM.

[Ed Oscuro]

I don't think the RAM makes much of a difference. MAME always makes my hard drive grind when displaying the list of games (even when I remove extra categories to sort games by, i.e. romname, orientation, trackball, all that useless crap slows down the GUI list view); but it's only using slightly more than 2.6MB of RAM.

That's only when using the frontend anyway - ingame the only RAM needed is for running the game, and many of these games should be small enough to fit in the CPU's cache.

I'd bet that something is funky with either your computer (like it should be updated at Windows Update and also with the latest DirectX version, something seems to be cutting into MAME's thread for CPU time), or the MAME install itself. You can always try getting a newer version and using that. I've been using MAME Plus! which is always nice to use.

I have to say...interesting problem. I used a 2.8 GHz Celeron, basically the same as yours, for years with MAME games more taxing than this and had no problems whatsoever.

[Gapporin]

Does this game slow down for anyone else? I have a 2.39 Ghz Celeron 4 with 512k RAM, and it slows down often when multiple laser blasts and speech are occurring. And forgive the question... but would upgrading the RAM help alleviate any of the slowdown? The only reason I would ask such a dumb question is that I've heard (maybe incorrectly) that MAME relies heavily on the CPU and not so much the RAM. Is my Berzerk slowdown a RAM or CPU issue most likely? Or is it my version of MAME (ver. 0.132.0.0)? A lot of the other games I play don't encounter slowdown like Berzerk, which is what got me wondering.

If you're using MAME32 (or even if you're not), try changing the video mode from Direct3D to DirectDraw. When I did that, I noticed a huge improvement in speed, plus as an added side benefit, the graphics appear sharper and "crisper", and not smoothed out like they would under Direct3D. Just something to try.

[TheDomesticInstitution]

Well Ed and Gapporin you've convinced me to dig deeper into the problem, since you've ran a similar set-up with no lag. I'll go and do some maintenance on the PC and see if I can get it to run better. And try and change some more settings in MAME.

[Gapporin]

While I'm here, I'd like to nominate Phoenix for the MMMC. I've been playing it recently on Taito Legends (I know, not exactly the same thing) and I'd like to see how everyone stacks against the game.

[Ed Oscuro]

Well Ed and Gapporin you've convinced me to dig deeper into the problem, since you've ran a similar set-up with no lag. I'll go and do some maintenance on the PC and see if I can get it to run better. And try and change some more settings in MAME.
Try Gapporin's suggestion first, it was the one thing I was looking for but just couldn't remember the name of.

[Flack]

Berzerk runs fine on my MAME cabinet, which is 1ghz machine running a slightly older build of MAME on Windows XP. Have they really bloated things that much that the old games don't run on a 2.8ghz machine??

My scores don't match up with most of you guys ... I'm a high 4 digit score earner.

[TheDomesticInstitution]

If you're using MAME32 (or even if you're not), try changing the video mode from Direct3D to DirectDraw. When I did that, I noticed a huge improvement in speed, plus as an added side benefit, the graphics appear sharper and "crisper", and not smoothed out like they would under Direct3D. Just something to try.

If this is a mame setting, I looked and couldn't find it. There are quite a few settings in the ini file, but no direct draw or 3d settings. I use a very basic mamewah frontend. I also tried it just in MAME and it still would hiccup occasionally. It's not bad, so it's livable.

[Gapporin]

I assume you're running the standard MAME flavor, then. I haven't been poking around in that version for awhile now, but I believe this is what you do:

1. Run MAME with the -createconfig command line parameter (i.e. C:\MAME\mame.exe -createconfig). This is assuming you don't have a mame.ini in the same folder already. If you do, just skip to step 2.

2. Open mame.ini and scroll down until you see the section of WINDOWS VIDEO OPTIONS. The first parameter, "video", is set to default as "d3d". Change it to "ddraw" (without quotes, of course).

3. Skip down to the next section, which is DIRECTDRAW-SPECIFIC OPTIONS. Put "hwstretch" to 1 (I think this is the default anyways).

That's it. Of course, you're free to play around with the other settings, but this is the main gist of what my suggestion was. Let me know how it works.

[SegaAges]

So I can't kill the smiley face. Should I try to hit it, or just give up and run from it?

[jb143]

So I can't kill the smiley face. Should I try to hit it, or just give up and run from it?

You can't kill Evil Otto. Run from him. Though I think you can in Frenzy but it takes several hits. It certainly doesn't make the game any easier though.



Edit-
I finally managed to beat my high score from the other day. Got to 7270 this time around. This was actually the first time I made it to the purple robots. Some of those high scores you guys are getting seem impossible to me at this point. Though the scores do add up faster the farther you go so I guess that's the secret. I was happy to just get to 5000 but ended up making it to 7000 pretty quickly after that and I was mainly just trying to survive instead of destroying all the robots at that point.

[TheDomesticInstitution]

I assume you're running the standard MAME flavor, then. I haven't been poking around in that version for awhile now, but I believe this is what you do:

1. Run MAME with the -createconfig command line parameter (i.e. C:\MAME\mame.exe -createconfig). This is assuming you don't have a mame.ini in the same folder already. If you do, just skip to step 2.

2. Open mame.ini and scroll down until you see the section of WINDOWS VIDEO OPTIONS. The first parameter, "video", is set to default as "d3d". Change it to "ddraw" (without quotes, of course).

3. Skip down to the next section, which is DIRECTDRAW-SPECIFIC OPTIONS. Put "hwstretch" to 1 (I think this is the default anyways).

That's it. Of course, you're free to play around with the other settings, but this is the main gist of what my suggestion was. Let me know how it works.


So, this post led me to do a little further research. I had no idea MAME had a GUI version as well. I thought that it was all command line stuff, which is a huge pain in the ass for me. I had been struggling with the command line stuff since earlier this year. There are quite a few ini files in my MAME folder, so I had a hard time finding the correct one... and when I did finally find my config folder, it had absolutely no area or section for video... it had artwork, sound, input, but no video stuff.

Earlier this year I was also having a bitch of a time trying to get it to read my joystick/gamepad for certain games, and it took me hours to try and find the right place to do it in the ini file.

So yeah, I've not enjoyed configuring MAME up until this point because I thought you manually had to enter everything you wanted to configure as text. And it sucks because a lot of tutorials online for configuring MAME, always seemed to refer to stuff that wasn't in my ini file. And since I've not done any programming, creating some of these command lines from scratch isn't something I'm comfortable with.

So yeah, up until now I never knew that there was an easier (non-programmer friendly) to use version of MAME. I just thought MAME32 was just another name MAME was known by. It also doesn't help that on the main page for MAME that MAMEUI is further down the page under ports. I downloaded it a little bit ago, and found all the stuff about Direct Draw you were mentioning. I turned off 3-d like you recommended and now Berzerk runs quite a bit smoother.

Anyway I apologize for the wall of text, but I'm pretty happy. MAME suddenly got a whole lot more accessible for me. I sort of feel a bit dumb, that I was making this a lot harder on myself than it should have been. I've only got to mess around with it for a few minutes, but it seems pretty straight forward. I shouldn't have have many more stupid questions from here on out.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hey there, glad to hear you found something new. (Incidentally, MAME Plus! used to have some columns that I found really useful, like "times played" and "total time played" that are gone now, argh; then again there's only two binaries with icons now, instead of three).

The biggest secret about using GUI versions of MAME is to right-click the tabs at the top of the main wnidow (Description, Name, ROMz, and so on) and deselect / move the ones you don't use off to the left (in the last version of MAMEUI I used). Makes the list window show up noticeably faster.

Also, under Default Game Options -> Controls, try setting all the unusual controller types to your mouse. Works better than a joystick or keyboard.

Incidentally, there's no MAME32 anymore; that was the old name of MAMEUI (which is now MAMEUI32 and MAMEUI64 although I don't know if those are official names; MAME UI's lack of important features makes me not care that MAMEUI is a bit cleaner).

[jb143]

Also, it should be pointed out that the command line version of MAME now has a built in "GUI" as well so you don't have to enter a command line anymore. Just run MAME and you get a list of games that you have in your roms folder. I tend to like using it better than the UI versions.