Ddraw x D3D

[m.andrade1]

Hello Calamity
Unfortunely as we know the mame dev team will not support ddraw anymore, well i have a mame cab CRT with Ati4350, winxp 32 i´m extremy happy with the results, so we have to move on.
My question is, will D3D have the same result as we have onto Ddraw, i mean a perfect emulation without shaders, scanline effects, blooming effects none of this crappy, can D3D render without any effect and let the CRT do its thing.

Thanks
Marcos

[Calamity]

Hello Calamity
Unfortunely as we know the mame dev team will not support ddraw anymore, well i have a mame cab CRT with Ati4350, winxp 32 i´m extremy happy with the results, so we have to move on.
My question is, will D3D have the same result as we have onto Ddraw, i mean a perfect emulation without shaders, scanline effects, blooming effects none of this crappy, can D3D render without any effect and let the CRT do its thing.

Thanks
Marcos

D3D has achieved the same results than DirectDraw since day 1 of GroovyMAME history. In fact, when magic resolutions were implemented five years ago, I strongly recommended using D3D all the time in order to avoid issues. This was all for XP, five years ago. The reason people has sticked with DirectDraw must be due to some kind of superstition.

It was much later that it was found out that D3D had added latency with ATI drivers at least. This was an unexpected point in favour of DirectDraw at the time, but very soon D3D became as good as DirectDraw latency-wise thanks to frame_delay.

[m.andrade1]

Thanks a lot Calamity
My main concern is change the render and lost the beaulty of the originality of the arcae CRT tube, with fancy effects that i tought that were implemented in D3D engine to make it more like CRT, i didnt know that D3D could turn off all these effects like, scanline, blooming, emboss all that crappy, i want to keep more original possivel to get the "feeling" i´m playing acctualy in an arcade machine.

Thank you so much!
Marcos

[MK]

D3D has achieved the same results than DirectDraw since day 1 of GroovyMAME history. In fact, when magic resolutions were implemented five years ago, I strongly recommended using D3D all the time in order to avoid issues. This was all for XP, five years ago. The reason people has sticked with DirectDraw must be due to some kind of superstition.

I still use ddraw for some games because I've never been able to get d3d to display a cropped image.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but I think that can't be done with d3d.

And why do I want a cropped image on some games?
Let's see if I remember this properly.

First, context:
- I have a 15khz arcade monitor (horizontally)
- Some vertical games use 256 lines resolution @ 60 hz (eg. Terra Cresta)
- Monitors like mine can't do x256 @ 60 hz modeline

So, options:
1) use x256 @ 57 hz modeline - I don't like this because scrolll isn't smooth
2) use higher resolution @ 60 hz - I don't like this because interlaced modes flicker in my monitor
3) use x240 @ 60 hz modeline with d3d - I don't like this because image is stretched (actually shrinked) and yes, I've tried prescale and while it helps improve the picture, it still looks bad in my opinion
4) same as above but using ddraw and disabling hwstretch - image gets cropped but it's way better than the other options

I think it's better because you get pixel perfect graphics, perfect refresh rate (i.e. smooth scroll) and the only downside is you lose 16 pixels.
And you can actually determine which of those pixels you don't want to see (top, bottom, or half top half bottom) by scrolling the view area with PGUP/PGDN

I think that's it... no superstition but a very special setup and a user with very special preferences 

[haynor666]

I used similiar setup to cut unneeded part of game screen like black borders or trash. From groovymame 171 it's not possible

[m.andrade1]

Thanks Calamity
Last doubt, if i choose to render thru D3D, i have all this itens applied to the screen ? Can i leave them as a "coment #"
Because as i told you,  dont want and kind of post processing, filter, effect, that could change the picture qualitity as i get on Draw.

#
# DIRECT3D POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS
#
hlsl_enable               0
hlslpath                  hlsl
hlsl_prescale_x           0
hlsl_prescale_y           0
hlsl_write               
hlsl_snap_width           2048
hlsl_snap_height          1536
shadow_mask_tile_mode     0
shadow_mask_alpha         0.0
shadow_mask_texture       shadow-mask.png
shadow_mask_x_count       320
shadow_mask_y_count       240
shadow_mask_usize         0.09375
shadow_mask_vsize         0.109375
shadow_mask_uoffset       0.0
shadow_mask_voffset       0.0
curvature                 0.0
round_corner              0.0
smooth_border             0.0
reflection                0.0
vignetting                0.0
scanline_alpha            1.0
scanline_size             1.0
scanline_height           1.0
scanline_bright_scale     1.0
scanline_bright_offset    0.0
scanline_jitter           0.0
defocus                   1.0,0.0
converge_x                0.25,0.00,-0.25
converge_y                0.0,0.25,-0.25
radial_converge_x         0.0,0.0,0.0
radial_converge_y         0.0,0.0,0.0
red_ratio                 1.0,0.0,0.0
grn_ratio                 0.0,1.0,0.0
blu_ratio                 0.0,0.0,1.0
saturation                1.4
offset                    0.0,0.0,0.0
scale                     0.95,0.95,0.95
power                     0.8,0.8,0.8
floor                     0.05,0.05,0.05
phosphor_life             0.4,0.4,0.4

[sean_sk]

You don't need to comment out any of those lines since they don't have any effect unless you enable hlsl. Just leave them as they are.

[m.andrade1]

Hello sean_skroht
Thank you so much for your help, will try to use D3D from now on, and see how it will be on CRT.

[m.andrade1]

Hello Calamity
Thanks to you i can keep my hobby with the good CRT, i made some tests in this weekend with D3D render, and if you DO NOT enable hlsl_enable  you will have the same results you used to have with DDraw, even with vertical game on horizontal monitors, for me there were no difference, i had a customs setting, that were a tip from Calamity to fix the maximum vertical lines to 256 and turn off interlace, all games run progressive.
And a fearture appear games like Starblade start to work normally.
2 Things i noticed:
a) Mame gui (when press TAB) are much more clear to read
b) same thing (when press F11) to see much more clearly the text
So i jumped from 0.161 to 0.169 now running with D3D
If you were link me affraid to migrate from Ddraw to D3D, you can do with no fear.

Thanks a lot Calamity
Marcos