Software Support > GroovyMAME
GroovyMAME and vector games
JODY:
It seems this version of Mame isn't the only one running some vector games too fast. I have an Asteroids cocktail and the latest version of MameUI64 has Asteroids running a lot faster than my cocktail machine. I didn't realize Mame had it so wrong.
Gravitar:
--- Quote from: JODY on July 22, 2012, 03:06:17 am ---It seems this version of Mame isn't the only one running some vector games too fast. I have an Asteroids cocktail and the latest version of MameUI64 has Asteroids running a lot faster than my cocktail machine. I didn't realize Mame had it so wrong.
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I was wondering about that as well... MAME vector games feel too fast and they got faster compared to the previous MAME versions.
Can you please report it here.
http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=mamechat&page=0&view=expanded&sb=5&o=
krick:
--- Quote from: Calamity on July 10, 2012, 08:31:53 am ---
Currently, a default resolution of 640x480 is used for all vector games. As you say, this ignores orientation, which is the problem of tempest and others. But we're also making a suboptimal use of the monitor's potential resolution. We should always go for the highest possible resolution, but this is refresh dependent. The 'virtualize' feature in GroovyMAME does right this: it calculates the highest possible resolution for a given refresh, within the monitor specs. So this is indeed what we should do for vector games: virtualized resolutions - now, most people are used to set an unique 'highest' resolution for all vector games, so they will complain about this behaviour, and specially about those crazy high resolutions above 640x480 they will want to remove with my-monitor-just-supports-up-to-640x480 kind of argument, but that's a different story -
On the other hand we have the odd refresh these games usually have. For raster CRTs we normally move in the 50-60 Hz range, so what GroovyMAME does with a refresh that's outside our defined limits is to set either the minumum or the maximum, depending on the value. Thus 40 Hz will become 50 Hz, etc. As -syncrefresh on is the default behaviour now, that means it will run at 125%. You can override this by enabling -triplebuffer manually, but it seems like a good idea to implement this programmatically.
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Is there anything that can be done in a vector.ini (or game-specific ini files) to fix tempest and other vector games in GroovyMAME, or does it require programming changes?
If programming changes are required, are they complex, or is something I could fiddle with myself? I've looked at the GroovyMAME code, but I don't really know what, specifically, needs to be changed to fix the problem with vector games. It would be cool if we could get this worked out before MAME 0.147 is released.
Calamity:
Hi krick,
By now, disabling -cleanstretch in the command line seems to do the trick, however it's important to notice that it's not the same thing as adding the option to an ini file. As you know, there are priorities for options in MAME, depending where they're stated. The Switchres patch in GM can modify some options on its own, overriding anything specified in an ini file. However, the Switchres priority was designed to be just below the command line priority. Now it seems reasonable to modify this so that the Switchres priority is below the game's ini but above the main mame.ini file. This should be particularly easy to modify in the code.
However, adding a dynamic resolution support for vector games, as explained above, will need a partial rewrite of the Switchres code. I've schedulled a full review of the Switchres code for this August, as soon as I am on vacation, hopefully the stars line up and I can finally get a spare week to mess with this stuff.
krick:
I played around with GroovyMAME 0.147u3 SwitchRes v0.014 tonight.
I'm using XP x64, a Radeon X600XT, and a Hantarex Polo "standard" resolution monitor.
I'm using the "H9110" preset in VMMaker, as well as in my mame.ini.
I only tried three vector games, but the results seemed a little odd. It's possible that I don't have something configured correctly, or that my monitor needs a cap kit or something.
Basically, with Tempest, the screen had to be squashed down (think mega-letterboxing) to get a clear picture. If I tried to use my monitor adjustments to stretch the picture vertically, the convergence (I think that's what it's called) got all out of whack. Basically a doubled, blurry image.
Space Fury, on the other hand was infinitely more weird. The image was rotated 180 degrees and mirrored for reasons I don't understand. It was also somewhat difficult to get a clear picture, but it seemed to be somewhat better than the last build of GroovyMAME where it was nearly impossible to get a picture that wasn't doubled.
I tried Star Wars, and the only problem was that it was very dark. I created a custom vector.ini which seemed to make it much better. So good job there.
I've attached logs for your viewing pleasure.