advancemame

[danboid]

sdlmame is unbearably slow on your average 1 GHz armv7 SBC and whilst recent versions of AdvanceMAME fare a bit better they're still too slow to be playable. MAME4ALL and MAME4ALL-Pi can build and run under ALARM with some tweaking and provide the most speed but their ROM compatibility leaves a lot to be desired.

My research and experience indicate that older versions of AdvanceMAME provide the best balance between speed, features and ROM compatibility for low to mid-end ARM devices. Specifically, advmame 0.94 seems to be when advmame reached its performance peak.

After installing advmame, run it once with no options and that will create the ~/.advance folder which amongst other things contains the advmame.rc config file and the rom folder where you need to copy any ROM zip files you wish to play. If you want advmame to run fullscreen, edit ~/.advance/advmame.rc so that:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'device_video_output auto')
Is commented or removed and add the line:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'device_video_output fullscreen')

Enjoy!

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
# AdvanceMAME 0.94 for Arch Linux ARM PKGBUILD
# Dan MacDonald, 2016
pkgname=advancemame
pkgver=0.94.0
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="Unofficial MAME version with an advanced video support for helping the use with TVs, Arcade Monitors, Fixed Frequencies Monitors and also for PC Monitors"
arch=('i686' 'x86_64' 'armv7h')
url="http://www.advancemame.it"
depends=('sdl' 'alsa-lib' 'expat' 'freetype2' 'slang')
license=('GPL')
source=("http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/${pkgname}/${pkgname}/${pkgver}/${pkgname}-${pkgver}.tar.gz")
md5sums=('9081296d33bfeb69552b12d56e346bcb')

build() {
cd $srcdir/$pkgname-$pkgver
./configure --prefix=/usr || return 1
make || return 1
}

package() {
cd $srcdir/$pkgname-$pkgver
make bindir="${pkgdir}/usr/bin/" \
datadir="${pkgdir}/usr/share/" \
mandir="${pkgdir}/usr/share/man/" \
pkgdocdir="${pkgdir}/usr/share/doc/${pkgname}/" \
install
}')