Is it possible to configure MAME with Full HD resolution?

[mickael28]

Hi,
x
I saw a few videos the other day in youtube with people mentioning they were playing games with MAME in Full HD (1920x1080). I've been trying to find those settings in MAME itself (by clicking on the TAB key to reach the Video options) or via a MAME UI (where the resolution is set to Auto and cannot be changed).

Do you guys know how it would be possible to configure MAME resolution?

Thanks.

[Titchgamer]

Whats the point in playing a 8/16/32 whatever bit game in HD?

[haynor666]

First of all MAME is by default playing games in Your desktop resolution so if You have 1920x1080 set for desktop then games will be prescaled for this resolution. Setting prescale option to 3 will improve video sharpness. You may also try additional effect to simulate CRT display on LCD screens.

[mickael28]

Setting prescale option to 3 will improve video sharpness. You may also try additional effect to simulate CRT display on LCD screens.

Do you know where I could find those settings?

I was not talking about playing games from the 80's in FHD, but there are some games that might be able to look better, like Killer Instinct, Metal Slug, Street Fighter III, etc... at the moment mine are loading with pretty large pixels...

[Malenko]

I was not talking about playing games from the 80's in FHD, but there are some games that might be able to look better, like Killer Instinct, Metal Slug, Street Fighter III, etc... at the moment mine are loading with pretty large pixels...

They still render at their native resolution and are scaled to the higher resolution.

[mickael28]

They still render at their native resolution and are scaled to the higher resolution.

But as an example, I've got this one, KI2.png attached. If you see it full screen, the quality is so bad.

However, there are videos where in theory it's displayed in Full HD?

The quality is miles ahead in their configuration...

[haynor666]

Filters and effects are applied, that's all.

[Malenko]

Filters and effects are applied, that's all.

^This.

try some scanlines to soften the "sharpness/blockiness"

[mickael28]

I see, thanks guys.

I don't see any effect or the options you mention on the Mame UIs or MAME itself that I'm using, I thought it was a setting that had to be configured there, but I'll research to see what I need to add to my config to be able to smooth those pixels.

[vwalbridge]

I've had this video bookmarked forever. Don't remember if it's still accurate today but it might help you:

[mickael28]

Indeed it helped, I ended up there. What a difference a config file can do in the game... wondering now, is there a reason why MAME doesn't come with those HLSL settings and filters applied by default? It looks pretty bad with the standard mame.ini file...

[vwalbridge]

is there a reason why MAME doesn't come with those HLSL settings and filters applied by default?

Many people are running MAME on older computers that can't handle the filters. So they just release it with the most basic settings enabled and let the user decide weather or not they want to enable HLSL later. This ensure maximum compatibility.

[BadMouth]

They bog down the processor.  I have HLSL disabled on most of the 3D games because my computer can't run them full speed with HLSL enabled.
(you can do it per game in the game's individual ini file located in the ini folder)

[Titchgamer]

Looks like your sorted

Yeah higher res does not mean better quality for old games.

Low res and some filters give much better results!
And scan lines help alot LOL

[mickael28]

Confused now :S.

The quality improved a lot when I used the mame.ini file from the youtube video above. However, I couldn't see any scanline (even though I can see the 'scanline_alpha' field you mention in the ini/mame.ini file, but then when I click TAB and select 'Slider control' the scanline option is not appearing there, I've just got a mini subset of options it seems...

That's the only mame.ini I can see in my ini folder. No further .ini under presets or anything related to the game, but still... the options I can see under 'Slider control' are:
https://image.ibb.co/eXgrkw/slider_control_options.jpg

To confuse the thing further, I deleted the complete ini folder to start from scratch, and this time MAME didn't load the large pixels I found originally, it just loaded the good quality image (without the scanlines), same as when I copied those changes a while ago.

Any idea what could be happening with the mame.ini file in this case? Where the current settings are being read from or why I cannot see the scanline settings?

[voltz]

I'd like to know why mame can't use it's settings outside of HLSL to upscale a x2 video where every line is off to simulate scanlines?  With filtering, they look a lot more natural then just some overlay.

[mickael28]

Any idea what could be happening with the mame.ini file in this case? Where the current settings are being read from or why I cannot see the scanline settings?

Just for future reference, it turned out, that I was using a MAME version from last year it seems and it didn't have all these options we were talking about in its settings (somehow it worked when copying the mame.ini that I found in youtube), but updating to the latest MAME, I can see the options myself and change them accordingly.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction