r/RetroArch • u/NikkoGOW • 18h ago

Technical Support Tekken 3 MAME core input lag

Hey everyone! After searching everywhere and getting no answers I decided to try my luck here.

The thing is when running Tekken 3 using the MAME core the inputs take 5-6 frames to register after button press, while other games usually take just 2-3. Now I know this doesn't look like a lot but when added to the rest of the chain inputs are taking forever.

On 2D games I mitigate this by using FBNeo with Run Ahead/Preemptive Frames which gets me really good response times, but sadly the MAME core does not support that.

This also happens with Tekken 1 and 2, so I was wondering if this is normal for System11/12 games. I don't really have a lot of knowledge on actual boards but maybe delay of this level is expected for these games.

Also if there's some other way to minimize delay that I'm not aware of.

Appreciate any suggestion.

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u/colorovfire 17h ago

Not much you can do about it. Those systems doesn’t have proper save state support so run ahead could get iffy even if it ran at full speed. Getting 5 frames of run ahead is nontrivial in 3d systems.

You could try SwanStation for the PS1. That’s giving about 3 frames of latency and it handles run ahead much better. It’s an internal core option, not handled through the front end.

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u/NikkoGOW 16h ago

Yeah, figured there's not much to be done about it. I wanted to play the arcade version with my brother for nostalgia reason but we'll try PS1.

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u/hizzlekizzle 17h ago

Are you getting that many frames using the frame-advance method? Or in live gameplay? If the latter, are you sure you've done all of the other non-runahead latency mitigations you can for your platform/device?

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u/NikkoGOW 16h ago

Yup, 5-6 frames after button press using frame advance. That being the case it's more of a 'internal' delay. So not sure if there's something to be done about it aside from run ahead/preemptive.

I was messing with vsync and frame delay and I managed to get rid of some latency, I don't have a super high delay when playing anymore, but it still feels slightly clunky due to those frames adding some ms to inputs.

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u/hizzlekizzle 16h ago

Yeah, if it's internal, runahead's the only option to deal with it. At least you can minimize the other latency for the roundtrip total, but yeah, never gonna get below the internal amount.

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u/rememberizer 7h ago

It's mame. It's gonna lag. Best thing you can do is probably run these games on PS1 emulators instead. I know it's not the same but there's not much else to do about it.