wonderboy choppy scrolling

[ZoOl007]

Hi,
I bought a nice sony trinitron scart tv eons ago and I only recently had some time with it.
I am running GroovyArcade and GroovyMame (first timer, basically nothing fancy... btw:  that must have been an insane amount of work! Thank you very much for this very cool thing)
Now at first I had it on generic 15.7khz and wonderboy scrolled nicely. I changed to the PAL preset and wonderboy scrolls choppy.
Why is that exactly with this rom and can I cope with it? And furthermore what is the logic behind it in my case with a pal television?
Taking this example can I force wboy to generic 15.7khz or do I have to use xrandr?
I just want to understand - understanding the problem is half the battle so...  .

kind regards.

[keropi]

I bet it's because wonderboy is a 60hz game and the PAL preset is 50hz - so that 10hz difference affects scrolling. When using scart/RGB there is no need for any PAL/NTSC presets

[ZoOl007]

ok, I went back to the Generic 15.7khz and wonderboy scrolls fine.
Now I configurered the trinitron's advanced settings and all looked fine until I stumbled on this:
the few horizontal games I've tried all looked fine - didn't really look at their resolutions
galaga88 and galaga are 288*224 - both fine
dkong and dkong3 are both 256*224 - dkong3 is fine but dkong isn't. It is too big for the screen.
I mean the top is ok but on the bottom I only see mario's head yet dkong and dkong3 have the same resolution.
I don't understand why that happens.

Now I can adapt the tv's settings but that impact all the other games that run fine...

Can you explain why that happens and what can I do about it?

rgds

[keropi]

This is something one has to live with when it comes to using CRT screens. I have the same issue on my 28" arcade monitor : some vertical games use resolutions that have the same issue you describe. I made the compromise to have smaller-sized horizontal games so I don't fiddle with the geometry/size controls all the time (meaning I adjusted the monitor to fit said vertical games and left it at that - this affects horizontal games with black borders around but I don't mind that on a 28" tube).

That's the price of a bazillion custom resolutions in crt screens , constant size adjustments 

[ZoOl007]

ok - crystal clear

I still don't get why it happens when they report the same resolution - I'm going to dig into it a little bit...

thanks

[big10p]

ok - crystal clear

I still don't get why it happens when they report the same resolution - I'm going to dig into it a little bit...

thanks

That is odd. Maybe you have an INI file effecting this?

[ZoOl007]

ok... brave new world... crt's that is 

well it sure is odd. I looked a little bit further and I launched both games dkong and dkong3 from a shell so I could see the resolution they generate and they are exactly the same.
ok... me back in the trinitron's advanced settings and I wanted to adapt the screen and I noticed that dkong wasn't off screen - the bottom was chopped off 

the same for dkong junior...

ok ... on to 1942 1943 and DonPachi ( a beautiful vertical shooter ) and they ran in slow motion - not stuttering because of the hardware or something like that - just slow motion - sound and movement.

now I must say that groovymame is 0.184 and the roms I use are from a 0.164 set but I doubt that has got anything to do with it. For the rest it is just the normal GroovyArcade livecd installed on an ssd.

[maiki]

galaga88 and galaga are 288*224 - both fine
dkong and dkong3 are both 256*224 - dkong3 is fine but dkong isn't. It is too big for the screen.

Do you realize these are vertical games made for vertically oriented 15 kHz CRTs? You will never ever get perfect resolution on a horizontally oriented 15 kHz CRT with these games.

[ZoOl007]

Do you realize these are vertical games made for vertically oriented 15 kHz CRTs? You will never ever get perfect resolution on a horizontally oriented 15 kHz CRT with these games.

that didn't cross my mind yet no... what you say makes perfect sense.

thx

[haynor666]

I have also two Sony CRTs and from my experience those TV cuts some lines from upper and lower  parts of screen. You can't notice this with 224p modes like CPS1 games or 1942 because for those game 240p modes are use actually but it's clearly visible with Rastan or games that uses 320x240 and frequency close to 59,5 Hz (like some Eighting-Raizing games).

Solution for this is to use a bit narrowed custom crt_range that will make picture a bit shrinked but You will see all those missing lines. Sadly I'm at work right now so I cannot post my custom crt_range right now.

Naturally You can also use ArcadeOSD to manually alter some modelines too (size, position of picture).

[mourix]

The thing with CRTs is that they tend to resize a bit, depending on the vertical resoluton. Biggest difference is between progressive and interlaced modes.

[ZoOl007]

Solution for this is to use a bit narrowed custom crt_range that will make picture a bit shrinked but You will see all those missing lines. Sadly I'm at work right now so I cannot post my custom crt_range right now.

If you could find the time to post your custom crt range that would nice. I'll give it a go then.

[haynor666]

crt_range0                15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.424, 0, 0, 192, 288, 448, 576
crt_range0                15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.324, 0, 0, 192, 288, 448, 576

Please note - these crt ranges will work with other TVs but from my experience only CRT Sony Trinitrons need those. Glowing digits are the only ones that needs modification from standard arcade_15 mode. Try both and see which one is better on Rastan and Battle Garegga.

There is one price had to be paid - due this change Your upper frequency limit will slightly lower. For example with arcade_15 there possible to use for example 320x240@61,5 Hz but with custom crt range maximum for example will be 320x240@60,4Hz (it's example, I don't remember exact limits)

Note 2 - this will not solve problem with cutted picture for many games (like Irem - 320x256@55) in many cases You still have to set geometry in service menu and/or use ArcadeOSD to manually tweak some modes.

[ZoOl007]

Thank you. I'll try and post back. It could take a while though... I don't have much spare time atm.

[ZoOl007]

got a question : am I supposed to do this in GroovyArcade ?

I am in lxde
in mame.ini, core switchres options, add your 2 crt ranges to resp crt_range1 and crt_range2
exit lxde
in the main menu select option 2 Setup (Video, audio...
video setup
custom video mode
mame/switchres
select either crt_range1 or crt_range2 (the string shown corresponds with the adaptation in mame.ini)
then I get HowTo Crt_range
with these options:
1 Values in MAME
2 Values Generated by MAME
3 Manual Values
->what do these do exactly - I tried them all
exit the menu system
start lxde
start groovymame
play
but I don't see a difference - where do I go wrong please?

supplemental question : what is the correlation between a crt and game speed? I have for example double dragon - plays and looks awesome, just as I remember it from the arcade. Double dragon3 on the other hand is a bit choppy yet both emulated at 100.03% speed. I have an lcd in my cab atm and I don't have similar behavior. Don pachi runs at 50% even though the pc is fast enough... I should test some more but does that make any sense to you?

[haynor666]

You are only adding one crt_range. Simply test first then test second crt_range if first does not look good. Test crt_range with Rastan and/or Battle Garegga.

monitor custom
crt_range0                15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.424, 0, 0, 192, 288, 448, 576

Sadly I'm on Windows so I don't know where to put this range outside mame under linux.