Newbie with some really stupid questions

[rmcelwee]

I'm only on my 2nd day with Mala (haven't really played with my Mame cab for years and it is time to move away from ArcadeOS). I've looked through the doc file but I'm a little A.D.D. and have a hard time reading through docs. I've done some searches on here but have yet to find what I am looking for. I'm using a horizontal 25" arcade monitor, winXP, and soft15khz software. If someone has time to hold my hand a bit I would appreciate some help. Some questions:

1) My screens are too small. If I want to play Joust I see a boarder around the game (depiction of the cardboard boarder that would be on an arcade machine) and the game play screen is only about 15". If I play Mortal Kombat there is no boarder but the game screen is still only 15". I can tell when MAME is loading that it is seeing the full screen but the game is squeezed down.

2) I haven't set up any custom game lists so far (well, I did manage to figure out how to display only horizontal games) and it is taking forever to scroll through the list of games. On ArcadeOS you could move the stick to the right or left to skip ahead/back 40 games or so. Is there a function in MALA to do this?


Thanks in advance for any help you can give me with this!

Oh, any cool "basic" Mala layouts out there? I'd like something neat but not too fancy to start with.

[TopJimmyCooks]

Not an expert and I have questions posted here too, although I have dealt with the two issues you are asking about already:
-on the game resizing to fit the bezel - go to options/mame config/Basics - click on the config button to the right of the mame executable path.  In the Mame.ini editor that comes up, go to display tab, and unclick bezel in the artwork options box in the lower left of the tab.  you may have to change other settings - crop artwork, overlay - something to play around with.

-on scrolling X amount of games at a time or what i use, which is scrolling a letter at a time - go to options/controller/joystick/basic and assign shifted joystick directions to either X up/down or letter up/down drop boxes. 

good luck.

[Eddie_Brock]

2) I haven't set up any custom game lists so far (well, I did manage to figure out how to display only horizontal games) and it is taking forever to scroll through the list of games. On ArcadeOS you could move the stick to the right or left to skip ahead/back 40 games or so. Is there a function in MALA to do this?

I'm at work right now, so I can't give you the step-by-step directions, but there is indeed an option in MALA exactly as your asking. It's in the options menu, in the area where you set up how your controller works with MALA. I believe it's in the 2nd or 3rd tab. Sorry I can't be more direct than that. But have a look in the options, it's there.

[rmcelwee]

Thanks guys! It will be a couple of days before I get to check these suggestions out but I will let you know if it solves my problems.

[rmcelwee]

Not an expert and I have questions posted here too, although I have dealt with the two issues you are asking about already:
-on the game resizing to fit the bezel - go to options/mame config/Basics - click on the config button to the right of the mame executable path.  In the Mame.ini editor that comes up, go to display tab, and unclick bezel in the artwork options box in the lower left of the tab.  you may have to change other settings - crop artwork, overlay - something to play around with.

-on scrolling X amount of games at a time or what i use, which is scrolling a letter at a time - go to options/controller/joystick/basic and assign shifted joystick directions to either X up/down or letter up/down drop boxes. 

good luck.

OK, sorry about taking so long to get back with you on this. I was not able to make the Joust screen any larger by unchecking the bezel option. There were several other ARTWORK options around that bezel option and I unchecked all of them as well. Still made no difference.

I did however set the up/down on another joystick (my machine has 4 of them) to "letter" and it works fine. Thanks! 

[Eddie_Brock]

OK, sorry about taking so long to get back with you on this. I was not able to make the Joust screen any larger by unchecking the bezel option. There were several other ARTWORK options around that bezel option and I unchecked all of them as well. Still made no difference.
I did however set the up/down on another joystick (my machine has 4 of them) to "letter" and it works fine. Thanks! 

If you press TAB when you are in-game (or whatever button you've configured for MALA options) an options menu will pop up. If you go into VIDEO OPTIONS from here, you can select your screen size. for a 25" monitor, you're going to want a 4:3 ratio. Try a couple and see what makes you happy.

Good Luck!