Saving machine state in MFME

[Beads]

Just curious...

As some of the newer machines take ages to initialise (scorpion5 & MPU5 in particular) each time it is launched, is there any way of saving the machine state after initialisation so that it loads quicker next time?  Have tried F7, ctrl-s and alt-s etc. but they don't seem to work. 

Not sure if this has been asked before, couldn't find anything searching the forums, but any guidance on this would be appreciated.

Cheers!

[wearecity]

It's a great idea, but no.

Save state, in MFME, means saving the stats of the machine internals, so it knows where it is % wise. Everything is saved stat wise, but the machine is always in a switched off state, when loading the layout.

Older versions of the emulators used to have a speed setting, where you could speed up or slow down, but I believe, to ensure maximum and smooth emulation of certain technologies, that wasn't possible.

Had the author sadly not have passed away 5 years ago, I'm pretty sure, he would have come up with something. 

[dondplayer]

The only two things I can think of are:

If you are running MFME in a virtual PC environment - because you can save the state of everything (RAM included) like chop did in his vid for the betcom cheating deal game.

Use a tool like cheat engine to speed up MFME temporarily for game boot ups.

Both are not really smooth methods though.

[Mort]

@johnparker007 did work in the Arcade Simulator to speed up these boot up initialisation routines iirc but when using MFME normally you are out of luck I'm afraid, as @dondplayer says Cheat Engine is your only real option.

[Beads]

Thanks for the responses - totally understand that the emulation is absolutely inviolable, which has to be a good thing.

Using cheat apparatuses and virtual machine solutions seems dishonest in a way doesn't it? 

I guess if I had the means and space to own one of these marvels at home I would have to wait for it to initialise anyway, so doing so virtually with MFME isn't really that bad I guess!

Thanks again for your feedback!

[Chopaholic]

I only went down the virtual machine route to test a specific hypothesis - (that Betcoms cheat on the 'box reveal' on their DOND games, spoiler alert, they do!) - day to day I just run the emulator normally and accept that some machines take a little while to boot up. The worst I can think of off the top of my head is the EPOCH tech iteration of Poker Face which is literally several minutes.

Mind you, we have to keep virtualisation in mind as one day it might become necessary, for now MFME works on Windows 11, but at some point a version of Windows might come along, or some sort of update for Windows 11, that breaks MFME, at which point virtualising an OS just for MFME will become necessary.

Already we're seeing some people get a few weird errors with MFME on Windows 11.

[Boulderdash]

3 hours ago, Chopaholic said:

I only went down the virtual machine route to test a specific hypothesis - (that Betcoms cheat on the 'box reveal' on their DOND games, spoiler alert, they do!) - day to day I just run the emulator normally and accept that some machines take a little while to boot up. The worst I can think of off the top of my head is the EPOCH tech iteration of Poker Face which is literally several minutes.

Mind you, we have to keep virtualisation in mind as one day it might become necessary, for now MFME works on Windows 11, but at some point a version of Windows might come along, or some sort of update for Windows 11, that breaks MFME, at which point virtualising an OS just for MFME will become necessary.

Already we're seeing some people get a few weird errors with MFME on Windows 11.

The Betcoms have the longest load times in general. They spend about 30 seconds looking for a note changer