Curiosity: AVGA resolution for specific games

[Boz]

I'm curious. As I'm walking through the Mame Resolution Tool setting up specific resolutions for the games to use, I'm wondering what resolution anyone else uses for PACMAN. I ended up with 352x288 and it seems to look pretty good.

What do *you* have it set for in your pacman.ini?

[RayB]

Are you talking AdvanceMame or ArcadeVGA?

With ArcadeVGA I let MAME "choose the best" which is presumably the game's original resolution. No configuring required at all!!

[Boz]

Are you talking AdvanceMame or ArcadeVGA?

With ArcadeVGA I let MAME "choose the best" which is presumably the game's original resolution. No configuring required at all!!

Hmmm... Well Mame doesn't always choose the best resolution though. Configuring game specific INI's gives you more control over what you see (i.e. native resolution matching) and just because you are using the AVGA, you still might NOT be getting the full benefit out of your hardware. If you are using an arcade monitor you might consider this. Of course, be sure your arcade monitor supports the below resolution.

Pop open a command prompt and change to your mame directory

mame pacman -noreadconfig -video ddraw -nohwstretch -switchres -verbose -resolution 352x288

If you use -resolution auto, which I think is the mame default, I think it paints the screen at 640x288.


I was just curious if anyone else is setting game specific INI's in conjunction with an Arcade VGA card, and what you are using for some of the classics.

[RayB]

Someone back me up here. I'm sure my configuration has MAME choosing native resolutions. That's the whole point of an AVGA card!! Mame knows what the game's original res is supposed to be.

[Boz]

Someone back me up here. I'm sure my configuration has MAME choosing native resolutions. That's the whole point of an AVGA card!! Mame knows what the game's original res is supposed to be.

I had this big response all ready to post until I ran mame with just the Ultimarc recommended settings (which I've always done), but without setting a game-specific INI with resolution settings.

--global mame.ini settings
video ddraw
hwstretch 0
switchres 1

--pacman.ini that I didn't use
resolution 352x288

Mame instructed Direct Draw to paint the best resolution for the game which is 352x288 (since the AVGA doesn't support pacman's native resolution of 224x288). So, now I find myself wondering three things.

1) Andy mentioned on Ultimarc that Mame doesn't always pick the best resolution. How does he know this and under what circumstances does this happen? How often does it happen?

2) What decision-making process does Mame initiate to display the best resolution? How would it have decided that 352x288 was better than 640x288 (both AVGA supported resolutions)?

3) If Mame or DDraw is choosing the best possible resolution supported by the card for displaying native game resolutions, what's the purpose of the "Mame Resolution Tool"? What benefit can I gain from using it?

[horseboy]

Someone back me up here. I'm sure my configuration has MAME choosing native resolutions. That's the whole point of an AVGA card!! Mame knows what the game's original res is supposed to be.

Honestly, I don't have an AVGA, but I thought this was the whole reason that everybody got one.

[shorthair]

I was inclinded to think so, too.  Just PnP...but, as Boz said, Andy did say such things (it was almost verbatim, and I was wondering if Boz had gotten it from there). Regarding the Mame res-decision question, I bet one would ask at Mameworld or even the devs.  I have the feeling most of them don't have arcade monitors, hence the reason there are 'effects'. Regarding question number 1, I took it he meant any particular game might or might not, vs this or that time you ran that game.

I've had my avga, but computer issues have kept me from exploring it, yet.  Hopefully tonight.

[Boz]

I did a quick check with my own 108 installation and on the 5th game I tried (out of a collection of my own 50 classics), Carnival doesn't display with the best resolution. There's another, better resolution to match the native resolution of the game. It's not in my classics list, but journey doesn't either.

Now I know why I use the Mame Resolution Tool and why I set game specific INI files for resolution.

Some games will be displayed properly using nothing more than Mame to select the best resolution. Other's will not.

It may be my humble opinion or it might be fact... Anyone who just uses an AVGA out of the box without walking through and setting game specific INI resolutions is only getting part of the functionality of the AVGA you paid for.

[RayB]

Alright then! 

[Boz]

Alright then! 

Naw, don't be like that. 

I guess it all depends on how *exact* one wants to be with the games and their native resolutions. Admittedly, I'm inexorably obsessed about getting them running as perfect as I remember them from my youth. It's just my thing. Other people are happy just to play them and play them fairly close to native.

But, if you were interested. Here's a couple of shots I just took before my camera battery just died (which would probably explain the severe focus problem).

Letting Mame decide chooses a 256x256 resolution for displaying the game

Giving Mame the resolution to draw the game in (401x256)

Of course 401x256 isn't the native resolution for the game, but it looks so much closer to the original than the perfectly square resolution that Mame chose. There's another one that's 256 tall that I didn't try, but you get the point.

Seriously RayB, you might just double check that the game you really like playing are in fact playing close to native resolution. I think you might be surprised how many of them are off just a bit.

[Aurich]

You can't run Pac-Man natively on your setup, you have a horizontal monitor. So just use what looks good, there is no "authentic" solution for you.

[shorthair]

I think Ray was just razzin ya there.  It does appear, though, that there is some tweaking in order to get all you can out of the avga.  I'm a little eager to see, myself.

Aurich: I notice in Mame that when I click 'switch res' (of course, un-selecting 'stretch') that there are natural spaces top and bottom in vertical games. To me, it doesn't look much different, picture quality-wise, just slightly smaller.  Just depends on whether you want to fill the screen as much as possible.

[Aurich]

Aurich: I notice in Mame that when I click 'switch res' (of course, un-selecting 'stretch') that there are natural spaces top and bottom in vertical games. To me, it doesn't look much different, picture quality-wise, just slightly smaller.  Just depends on whether you want to fill the screen as much as possible.

I'm not saying you can't get it looking "arcade-like" but that's not "authentic". So all I'm saying is just do what looks good to you, there's no point in worrying about being accurate when you're running a vertical game on a horizontal monitor, it's not possible.

[ahofle]

It's not authentic, but really the only thing that would be wrong is that the scanlines would be going the wrong way.  The correct number of horizontal lines and correct aspect ratio is what really makes the difference to me.
At any rate, I don't think this is a problem with the AVGA (all it does is provide built in low resolutions to choose from), but rather MAME.  There seem to be some discrepencies with auto resolution on vertical games IMO.  It seems to happen mostly when MAME chooses a 'square' resolution (same number of horizontal and vertical lines).  Of course your monitor is not square so it gets confused maybe -- it picks the appropriate resolution, but it's using too many vertical lines (all 256 vs 224).  I think sometimes it gets confused with the aspect ratio of your monitor or something.  Have you tried forcing the aspect ratio to 4:3 so it doesn't take up the whole screen sides?

I would suggest posting in the mame.net forums with your pictures to see what they say, but they usually aren't too interested in ddraw issues.  Now that we know Aaron has a MAME cabinet in the works, I think we should all pitch in a get him an arcade monitor so he has some motivation to perfect the ddraw/nohwstretch/switchres video stuff. 

[AMDman13]

I am using the AVGA2 with a Betson Multisync and I have always used either mamewah's mame_res_tool or Benson's ArcadeVgaRes to auto write the INI files for all of my roms. However, I have never been able to find any resolution that looks decent for vertical games. I've been running all verts at 640x480 and using -hwstretch.

I'm going to try the above res manually for PacMan tonight and see how it looks.

[AMDman13]

Okay, I tried 356x288 text looks fuzzy on the multisync. Now 512x288 look a lot better on my monitor. The only prob I can see is the refresh rate will not be correct? Pacman runs at 60hz and all available x288 are 51hz for the AVGA. I've always heard that this can cause sound emulation problems.

[RayB]

My "Alright then" had a grin next to it. It was a happy comment. We were both  sorta right and I learned something new today.
 

[ahofle]

Okay, I tried 356x288 text looks fuzzy on the multisync. Now 512x288 look a lot better on my monitor. The only prob I can see is the refresh rate will not be correct? Pacman runs at 60hz and all available x288 are 51hz for the AVGA. I've always heard that this can cause sound emulation problems.

It shouldn't be an issue unless the game scrolls and then you'll get tearing.  You can always set triplebuffer on to fix that though.

[shorthair]

..........I don't like it.  I got my new comp back with the card and drivers installed - and I re-installed them, just to be sure - and it looks like dogsheat.  The flicker and over scan in windows (at 800*600 - and 640*480 is just as bad, but then I can't see the task bar!) is totally blech.  Even in games, when I run them at the resolution they're supposed to be at have these huge scanlines.  And 720 at native doesn't fill the screen! This is so f cking bizarre...oh!, and I d/l'd the benson tool and I get a runtime error/something's missing....and the mamewah res page said not found or some shet.

This is starting to turn out like so many things of this nature can: don't mess with it if you like/it's not worth knowing about it just cause you're curious....(and I generally think inquiry and exploration is good). I mean, Jeff's tv stuff today blew the ---fudgesicle--- out of what I'm gettin.  Regular mame and stretch blows the ---fudgesicle--- out of this.

Oh, and I get no output to my PC monitor.

[RayB]

Boz, your example above... Is your monitor horiontal or vertical? Is that game horizontal or vertical?

[Hoopz]

..........I don't like it.  I got my new comp back with the card and drivers installed - and I re-installed them, just to be sure - and it looks like dogsheat.  The flicker and over scan in windows (at 800*600 - and 640*480 is just as bad, but then I can't see the task bar!) is totally blech.  Even in games, when I run them at the resolution they're supposed to be at have these huge scanlines.  And 720 at native doesn't fill the screen! This is so f cking bizarre...oh!, and I d/l'd the benson tool and I get a runtime error/something's missing....and the mamewah res page said not found or some shet.

This is starting to turn out like so many things of this nature can: don't mess with it if you like/it's not worth knowing about it just cause you're curious....(and I generally think inquiry and exploration is good). I mean, Jeff's tv stuff today blew the ---fudgesicle--- out of what I'm gettin.  Regular mame and stretch blows the ---fudgesicle--- out of this.

Oh, and I get no output to my PC monitor.

Did you turn on wordwrap?   

[Minwah]

Someone back me up here. I'm sure my configuration has MAME choosing native resolutions. That's the whole point of an AVGA card!! Mame knows what the game's original res is supposed to be.

I guess you know this by now but MAME certainly does not pick the best or native resolution in all cases.  In fact nowhere near in my experience...which is why I wrote a program to do it for you.  Several other people have written similar programs too.

I am not sure why this is, but I suppose MAME's idea of 'best' and us AVGA owners idea of best are not the same!

Vertical games look good on a horizontal screen as long as they don't have ~>256 lines.  Any more than that usually requires you squash the vertical size of the monitor down to fit them on but there's also a matter of mis-matching refresh rates which can cause bad framerates.  I use 640x480 hwstretch for vertical games with 288 lines.

[shorthair]

Did you turn on wordwrap?   

F{u}ck an A, dude!

[RayB]

But Minwah, squashing the screen down is what you might need to do if you were to plug in the original game board after having the monitor set for some other game board (Im talking about original hardware).

I guess we need to define what "best" means. There's "best" that will fill the screen and not require any adjustment, and then there is "best" that is what the original arcade hardware used...  Are we all talking about the same thing here?

[CheffoJeffo]

Did you turn on wordwrap?   

F{u}ck an A, dude!

2. Don't work around the profanity filter. People from all walks of life visit here, and I want all to feel welcome. If you post something and the board automatically censors the word, don't use a misspelling, "g33k-sp3@k", or f-unny spa-cing to get around the auto-filter. It's not a contest to see how clever you can be in defeating the auto-censor. If the properly spelled word is censored, don't find a way around it please.

http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade_message_rules.html

 

[Hoopz]

Did you turn on wordwrap?   

F{u}ck an A, dude!

2. Don't work around the profanity filter. People from all walks of life visit here, and I want all to feel welcome. If you post something and the board automatically censors the word, don't use a misspelling, "g33k-sp3@k", or f-unny spa-cing to get around the auto-filter. It's not a contest to see how clever you can be in defeating the auto-censor. If the properly spelled word is censored, don't find a way around it please.

http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade_message_rules.html

 

I was going to do the exact same thing. 

[shorthair]

When I do that, I'll let you know.

[CheffoJeffo]

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