ArcadeVGA: to stretch or not to stretch

[mohrt]

I have an ArcadeVGA AGA card with a D9200 arcade monitor. I ran avres against the games to get the optimal settings. When I play games like donkey kong or gauntlet, there is a large black border around the game screen. I can let the game stretch to fill the screen, but its not quite as crisp. I'm curious what others do in this situation, stretch or no?

[Epyx]

All in the FAQ on Ultimarc.com

HARDWARESTRETCH MUST BE OFF
YOU MUST USE DIRECT-DRAW NOT DIRECT 3D
SWITCH RESOLUTIONS MUST BE ENABLED

[Epyx]

Also, AVRES does not always find the "right" resolution...I have had to tweak a few, particularly the NeoGeo/CPS1/2 games and lots of single type games...it works for the vast majority but some you just need to set by hand.  I have the same setup as you with a D9800 instead of the 9200 and all my games look as close to the original as possible on a horizontal so just tweak and adhere to the settings Ultimarc recommends and you will be fine.

[mohrt]

Hmm the FAQ is a bit vague, it just says you must adjust the resolutions. What do you have donkey kong set to out of curiosity?

[Epyx]

What do you have donkey kong set to out of curiosity?

352x256

[mohrt]

That is what I have. Does it come up with donkey kong smallish in the middle of your screen, or does it fill the screen?

[Epyx]

Not sure what you mean by smallish? Looks normal to me? Take a screenshot and post it.

If you mean does it have borders on the side? Then yes of course...it is a vertical game being displayed on a horizontal monitor so you don't want it touching the sides or it would look stretched.  If you want it to touch the sides then you need to rotate your monitor in a vertical position.  However, with the resolution I posted, my game screen touches the top and bottom of my monitor flush.

Remember vertical games are a "compromise" on a horizontal monitor...you can get them to look good but they will never look like they did in their native vertical...for one the scanlines are in the wrong direction and two, they will have bars on the side.

[mohrt]

ok there is the difference. Yes of course there is space along the vertical sides. But I have quite a bit of space above and below the game as well. I'd say the donkey kong gamescreen fills about 60% of the vertical space, with 20% of space above/below the game. I can fix that by turning on hardware stretching, but then it loses clarity. I'll see if I can get a screenshot posted tonight.

[Epyx]

Don't use hardware stretching...use the controls for your monitor to adjust the screen. Mine touches top and bottom but only after I adjusted the monitor settings.

[mohrt]

I will look into that too, thanks! Although some games do fill the screen, and the windows XP screen fills it, and so does the frontend software, so kind of odd to me...

[mohrt]

maybe the monitor will recall settings per screen refresh frequency used?

[Epyx]

maybe the monitor will recall settings per screen refresh frequency used?

Not sure about your 9200 but my D9800 does. Since my initial round of tweaking I have been able to leave everything alone and it has stayed fine.  Only occasionally do I add a game to my MAME favourites that requires tweaking as most were added long ago.

[mohrt]

Just one more thing I noticed, the game "gauntlet" is showing up with wide black borders all the way around. I know this is a horizontal game and used the exact same monitor size as the D9200. It should just fill up the screen. Hopefully the monitor adjustment is what I'm after, and not some setting in mame I can't find that is throwing things off.

[Epyx]

I will take a look for you and see what mine is set at. Give me 30 mins or so.

[Epyx]

I am running it at the native 336x240:



You can see there is a tiny bit of border but not much:



Top Left:



Bottom left:


Yours should look like this...if not just use your monitors controls to adjust it a bit (center/expand/move left/right etc).

[mohrt]

It's not my monitor controls. My borders are way too big, and the monitor controls only change it a little bit. I'll post screenshots in a few.

[mohrt]

Here is my gauntlet screen (sorry about the glare):



You can see how the game only uses the inner portion of the available display. I am using the very latest mame.exe (0.138)

Here is my gauntlet.ini (from avres):

Code: [Select]

## gauntlet ##

screen0 \\.\DISPLAY1
switchres 1
hwstretch 0
bezel 0
backdrop 0
resolution 336x240
resolution0 336x240@0

And my full mame.ini file:

Code: [Select]

<UNADORNED0>              

#
# CORE CONFIGURATION OPTIONS
#
readconfig                1

#
# CORE SEARCH PATH OPTIONS
#
rompath                   roms
samplepath                samples
artpath                   artwork
ctrlrpath                 ctrlr
inipath                   .
fontpath                  .
cheatpath                 cheat
crosshairpath             crosshair

#
# CORE OUTPUT DIRECTORY OPTIONS
#
cfg_directory             cfg
nvram_directory           nvram
memcard_directory         memcard
input_directory           inp
state_directory           sta
snapshot_directory        snap
diff_directory            diff
comment_directory         comments

#
# CORE STATE/PLAYBACK OPTIONS
#
state                    
autosave                  0
playback                  
record                    
mngwrite                  
aviwrite                  
wavwrite                  
snapname                  %g/%i
snapsize                  auto
snapview                  internal
burnin                    0

#
# CORE PERFORMANCE OPTIONS
#
autoframeskip             0
frameskip                 0
seconds_to_run            0
throttle                  1
sleep                     1
speed                     1.0
refreshspeed              0

#
# CORE ROTATION OPTIONS
#
rotate                    1
ror                       0
rol                       0
autoror                   0
autorol                   0
flipx                     0
flipy                     0

#
# CORE ARTWORK OPTIONS
#
artwork_crop              0
use_backdrops             0
use_overlays              1
use_bezels                0

#
# CORE SCREEN OPTIONS
#
brightness                1.000000
contrast                  1.000000
gamma                     1.000000
pause_brightness          0.650000

#
# CORE VECTOR OPTIONS
#
antialias                 1
beam                      1.0
flicker                   0

#
# CORE SOUND OPTIONS
#
sound                     1
samplerate                48000
samples                   1
volume                    0

#
# CORE INPUT OPTIONS
#
coin_lockout              1
ctrlr                    
mouse                     1
joystick                  1
lightgun                  0
multikeyboard             0
multimouse                0
steadykey                 0
offscreen_reload          0
joystick_map              auto
joystick_deadzone         0.3
joystick_saturation       0.85
natural                   0
uimodekey                 auto

#
# CORE INPUT AUTOMATIC ENABLE OPTIONS
#
paddle_device             mouse
adstick_device            keyboard
pedal_device              keyboard
dial_device               mouse
trackball_device          mouse
lightgun_device           keyboard
positional_device         keyboard
mouse_device              mouse

#
# CORE DEBUGGING OPTIONS
#
log                       0
verbose                   0
update_in_pause           0
debug                     0
debugscript              
debug_internal            0

#
# CORE MISC OPTIONS
#
bios                      default
cheat                     0
skip_gameinfo             1

#
# WINDOWS DEBUGGING OPTIONS
#
oslog                     0
watchdog                  0
debugger_font             "Lucida Console"
debugger_font_size        9

#
# WINDOWS PERFORMANCE OPTIONS
#
priority                  0
multithreading            0
numprocessors             auto

#
# WINDOWS VIDEO OPTIONS
#
video                     ddraw
numscreens                1
window                    0
maximize                  1
keepaspect                1
prescale                  1
effect                    none
waitvsync                 0
syncrefresh               0

#
# DIRECTDRAW-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
#
hwstretch                 0

#
# DIRECT3D-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
#
d3dversion                9
filter                    1

#
# PER-WINDOW VIDEO OPTIONS
#
screen                    auto
aspect                    auto
resolution                auto
view                      auto
screen0                   auto
aspect0                   auto
resolution0               auto
view0                     auto
screen1                   auto
aspect1                   auto
resolution1               auto
view1                     auto
screen2                   auto
aspect2                   auto
resolution2               auto
view2                     auto
screen3                   auto
aspect3                   auto
resolution3               auto
view3                     auto

#
# FULL SCREEN OPTIONS
#
triplebuffer              0
switchres                 0
full_screen_brightness    1.0
full_screen_contrast      1.0
full_screen_gamma         1.0

#
# WINDOWS SOUND OPTIONS
#
audio_latency             2

#
# INPUT DEVICE OPTIONS
#
dual_lightgun             0


[mohrt]

I just found an error, my "switchres" setting is 0 and should be 1. I changed that, and now when I try to launch any game I get:

"Unable to initialize Direct Draw"

I already had this problem earlier and thought I had solved it, but no go

I have the latest DirectX updates and XP updates too. The direct draw tests that come with XP work just fine.

[mohrt]

I re-installed the ArcadeVGA ATI video drivers. The error went away. The gauntlet screen is still the same, too small, and now donkey kong is full-screen but horrible out of focus, like the screen isn't getting the right resolution settings. arg!

[Epyx]

I have the latest version of MAME as well but am using MAMEUI32.

Not too sure about the regular version but all your settings below look correct, yet it still appears as if something is overriding your global settings in Gauntlet.  Even though you have backdrop/bezel set to 0 it looks like they are active...that is what usually causes the small screen you are seeing.

Do you have MAMEUI handy to test? 

The good news is that your drivers and hardware have nothing left to do with the equation you are purely looking at MAME to fix the issue...just a setting we are missing somewhere.

[mohrt]

As a test, I extracted mame 0.138 into a new directory, created mame.ini with "mame -cc", then edited the three items in the mame.ini file:

video  ddraw
hwstretch 0
switchres 1

Then installed the dkong.ini file avres generated into the ini directory, then ran donkey kong:

mame dkong

It picks up the dkong.ini for sure, but it is still small on the screen:



I'm just using the mame.exe that comes from the 0.138 download. I'll see if I can try MameUI next.

[Epyx]

Yes try it because somewhere a setting is incorrect. Try MAMEUI with the options I posted in my screenshot above and with the Ultimarc required settings.  Let me know as I am sure it will be fine with MAMEui then just a matter of figuring out which regular mame setting is incorrect and where

[mohrt]

Well I installed the MameUI32.exe and MameUI32.ini file into the mame folder and launched it, it seems to think NONE of the games are available. They show up fine under mame.exe. The roms are under the /roms folder as they should be.

[Epyx]

Just re-audit...in the GUI you will see an option to audit all games. Make sure the folder is pointing to where the ROMS are and then audit.

[mohrt]

OK I setup mameui32 with the new rom dir and it rescanned. then I set the directdraw, no hardware stretch and switch resolutions settings. And... mameui32 has the exact same problems, showing the games small in the middle of the screen. I'll try the re-audit just in case.

[Epyx]

Post a screenshot of the mameui settings for gauntlet.

[mohrt]

Ok here is a screenshot of the mameui32 settings, and a shot of the game:

[Epyx]

Did you recycle the .cfg or .ini files from the other version of mame? If you did, delete them...start completely fresh.  There is some setting or file overriding the settings.  On MAMEUI also check the backdrops/artwork on the gauntlet property tags and make sure they are off.

[mohrt]

I ran avres to create all the .ini files. I also tried Mamewah res tool, but didn't get any better results, and switched back to avres again.

So you are saying remove all .ini files for all games and just try the default mame settings?

Also, are you using the "gauntlet" rom? there are several to choose from.

[mohrt]

I tried putting mameui32 into a new directory, untouched, and dropped the "dkong" rom into the roms directory, ran an audit. Donkey Kong ran full screen, but I'm not sure if its using ArcadeVGA to its full ability because the default settings in mameui32 are "Direct3D" instead of "DirectDraw", and hardware stretching is on an switch res is off. I tried flipping those settings to the ones recommended by ArcadeVGA and it looked like hell, fuzzy and out of focus.

[mohrt]

If I put the dkong.ini from avres in the ini directory and run MameUI32 unchanged, the screen is full, albeit not as sharp (stretched). If I change Direct3D to DirectDraw, turn off hardware stretch, and turn on switch res to fit, I get the same small screen I have been getting.

Another thing, I can't seem to set game-specific settings in MameUI32 because my screen is too short (640x480) to view the buttons on the bottom of the game options window. How do you drag an XP window without grabbing the title bar?

[Epyx]

Let me give you my .ini file etc...ill msg you when I have it on IM.

[AndyWarne]

Why not eliminate Mame altogether and start from basics to try to find the problem.

Try all the resolutions using the Galaga icon on the taskbar, on the Windows desktop. Adjust the monitor to fit all resolutions. The monitor should remember all the settings with the possible exception that some resolutions will "overlap" if they have close settings and only occupy one memory "slot" in the monitor, but that should not be an issue.

Its a good idea to set up an ATI hotkey in the Catalyst Control panel to be able to return to a known good resolution in case the monitor cant display one of them.

Andy

[mohrt]

I think I solved it. How about something even easier. How about having the VGA cable plugged into the correct VGA adapter on the card *shakes head*. The other port works perfect, except when playing the actual games, it shows them small. I notice the 640x480 desktop is flickery on the new port though, the other one had it rock solid.

[ahofle]

Sounds like you need to install the tri-sync utility for the non-interlaced 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions.

[Epyx]

Sounds like you need to install the tri-sync utility for the non-interlaced 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions.

Yep

I think I solved it. How about something even easier. How about having the VGA cable plugged into the correct VGA adapter on the card *shakes head*. The other port works perfect, except when playing the actual games, it shows them small. I notice the 640x480 desktop is flickery on the new port though, the other one had it rock solid.

Good to hear  and yep that will do it lol

[SailorSat]

Hm...
Where are your .INIs stored?

Your MAME.INI says "inipath                   ." which means all .INIs are placed right in the same folder as MAME.EXE
Should be "inipath ini" or something like that.

[mohrt]

Hm...
Where are your .INIs stored?

Your MAME.INI says "inipath                   ." which means all .INIs are placed right in the same folder as MAME.EXE
Should be "inipath ini" or something like that.

Yes it should be ini, that was fixed