GroovyMAME 0.192 and ArcadeVGA 3000

[sean_sk]

Hey Calamity thanks for your hard work as always.
Anyway, up until today I had been using GM 0.171 since I pretty much got everything working perfectly. System is Windows 7 using ArcadeVGA 3000.

So I decided to try GM 0.192 d3d9ex version. When running a game, such as The Simpsons, it seems it's not choosing the correct resolution and is running in interlaced mode instead. It "looks" like it's running in 288x240 (and machine info even says it is) but it has interlace flicker, doesn't fill the screen horizontally and speed constantly varies.

Have attached the necessary files.

Thanks again.

[Calamity]

Hey Calamity thanks for your hard work as always.
Anyway, up until today I had been using GM 0.171 since I pretty much got everything working perfectly. System is Windows 7 using ArcadeVGA 3000.

So I decided to try GM 0.192 d3d9ex version. When running a game, such as The Simpsons, it seems it's not choosing the correct resolution and is running in interlaced mode instead. It "looks" like it's running in 288x240 (and machine info even says it is) but it has interlace flicker, doesn't fill the screen horizontally and speed constantly varies.

Have attached the necessary files.

Thanks again.

IIrc you were one of the few users of the Powerstrip implementation, is that still the case? If so, you have the correspoding setting disabled.

[sean_sk]

IIrc you were one of the few users of the Powerstrip implementation, is that still the case? If so, you have the correspoding setting disabled.

Yep that's right. If I enable powerstrip in mame.ini The Simpsons seems to run with the correct amount of lines but there are a lot of horizontal scaling artifacts so horizontal scaling is a problem. I have included the appropriate files.

I don't get horizontal scaling artifacts in any vertical games running on the horizontal monitor. In GM 0.171 I had powerstrip set to off in mame.ini and only turned it on for those vertical games where I have set custom ps_timings to get the right refresh rate. The effects of leaving powerstrip on for all games is too unpredictable such as choosing bad timings that cause the screen to wobble.

EDIT: GM overwrites Powerstrips default and custom display profiles. So for example if I play Mug Smashers which is 320x240 I get screen wobble in-game because of timing settings. Then If I go back to desktop and I change the desktop resolution to 320x240 I now get the same wobble permanently (even on restart) because that timing profile has now been changed by GM.

[Calamity]

Your log does not suggest any scaling problems, all related options look correct. So it must be an obscure issue I can't figure out remotely. Try setting -nomodeline_generation with pstrip option disabled.

[sean_sk]

Your log does not suggest any scaling problems, all related options look correct. So it must be an obscure issue I can't figure out remotely. Try setting -nomodeline_generation with pstrip option disabled.

Thanks Calamity for your suggestions.
Ok I disabled both modeline_generation and powerstrip options and that has fixed the video issues I'm having, but refresh rates are now being ignored and 61Hz vertical refresh rate is selected regardless of game. Please note that the results I've just mentioned occur regardless of whether powerstrip option is enabled or disabled. It seems setting modeline_generation to '0' is what is making the difference.

[Calamity]

but refresh rates are now being ignored and 60Hz vertical refresh rate is selected regardless of game.

I guess it's because of the -refresh_dont_care option, try disabling it. I know it was required for the AVGA in the past but not sure if it is any more.

An alternative could be running it with your original options but giving admin rights to GM (so it doesn't fail when trying to access the registry).

[sean_sk]

I guess it's because of the -refresh_dont_care option, try disabling it. I know it was required for the AVGA in the past but not sure if it is any more.

OK, I'll give that a go.

An alternative could be running it with your original options but giving admin rights to GM (so it doesn't fail when trying to access the registry).

The unusual thing is that GM is already running in admin mode. I'll continue to play around with things and let you know.

[sean_sk]

I've confirmed that GM was already set to run as Administrator.
Disabling refresh_don't_care didn't make any difference. All horizontal games are still being arbitrarily set to 61Hz vertical refresh rate.

[Calamity]

Hi sean_skroht,

The change that caused this issue must have happened around August 2016 so I need review the changelog to see what could have caused it. In order to make this task easier, I'd need two logs, one from v0.171 and one from v0.192, to see what was different back then.

[sean_sk]

OK no probs. I'll get onto it in the next day or so. Thanks for that Calamity.

[sean_sk]

Ok I'll try to be as methodical as possible.

I have attached GM 0.171 mame.ini and simpsons log in which all is working fine.

Also attached is GM 0.192 mame.ini. Settings should be pretty much identical to GM 0.171. Simpsons log shows that game is running 640x480 interlaced.

I have also included a simpsons log with -nomodelinegeneration which shows correct resolution being selected but correct refresh rate is being ignored. Refresh rate selected is 61Hz

Please note: The 300 games (all vertical) where I have created a custom pstrip option all work fine in 0.192. So in order to not confuse the issue we should ignore powerstrip. My problems have to do with normal games where GM is not automatically selecting correct resolution or refresh rate.

I hope this helps Calamity.

[Calamity]

From your logs, 0.171 is equivalent to 0.192 (-nomodelinegeneration). Both ignore the refresh: as you can see the speed is 103.12% in both cases. So the refresh issue was already there in 0.171.

Version 0.192 (probably before) introduced a change that turns switchres off when the timings update fail. This was done to deal with other existing issues. Because timings are read-only in the ArcadeVGA (with -nopstrip) timings update will always fail, therefore GM turns switchres off. So your current desktop resolution is applied instead.

Turning -modelinegeneration off, however, bypasses the update timings step and so switchres is not disabled, making it equivalent to the old behaviour.

Is it possible that you had missed this issue before, or am I missing something?

[sean_sk]

Is it possible that you had missed this issue before, or am I missing something?

Well I'll be....... It is definitely something I have missed.

I did a comparison between the two and they are definitely running at the same speed. Wow!
I rely heavily on the information provided by switchres and in 0.171 it was reporting 59.186Hz (V) 15.625kHz (H) so I naturally assumed all was well. Saw the following in the 0.171 log:

Code: [Select]

SwitchRes: [simpsons] (1) horizontal (288x224@59.185608)->(288x240@59.185608)
   rng(0):  288 x 240_59.185608p 15.625000 [integ] scale(1, 1, 1) diff(0.00, 0.00, 0.0000) ratio(1.000, 1.071)
SwitchRes: Modeline "288x240_61 15.625000KHz 59.185608Hz" 6.000000 288 304 336 384 240 243 246 264   -hsync -vsync
and also assumed all was well. But then on close inspection I missed the fact that it was indeed choosing 61Hz and of course the 103% average running speed at the bottom of the log.

So does that mean that switchres in 0.192 is reporting refresh rate correctly whereas 0.171 wasn't? Is there a fix to this that doesn't involve turning on pstrip as a blanket setting for all games? The reason I ask this is if I allow the pstrip option to arbitrarily choose it's own timing then the effects are unpredictable. Sometimes it will be fine but that is rare. Usually there are scaling artifacts or screen wobble due to a slightly off timing.

I have included two videos. One for Mug Smashers which shows screen wobble, and Simpsons which shows scaling artifacts. The other issue is that once pstrip sets those timings they are permanently changed and if I switch to those resolutions at desktop I will get the same scaling aftifacts or screen wobble. I then have to manually reset the timings for those respective resolutions.

By the way I beleieve speed is correct for both games when pstrip is activated.

- Mug Smashers
- Simpsons

Calamity let me know if you would like logs, although with a previous log I submitted you mentioned it didn't show any issues with scaling.

Thank you for your imformative posts Calamity, I do enjoy the technical aspects of GM.

[Paradroid]

What's your aversion to ATI cards? Thanks to Calamity's continued work on the drivers, there are so many options these days...

[sean_sk]

I don't, and never said I did, and I don't see how your post is helpful or relevant to this thread.

I'd also like to thank Calamity for his continued work on helping out those that, for reason that don't have to be spelled out, would like to use AVGA's. If at the end of the day it can't be done, then I'll consider other options. For the time being I'd like to try and make this work, not only for myself, but other AVGA users.

[Paradroid]

I don't, and never said I did, and I don't see how your post is helpful or relevant to this thread.

Relevance is my curiosity. All good! As you were...

Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk

[Calamity]

So does that mean that switchres in 0.192 is reporting refresh rate correctly whereas 0.171 wasn't?

Yes

Is there a fix to this that doesn't involve turning on pstrip as a blanket setting for all games? The reason I ask this is if I allow the pstrip option to arbitrarily choose it's own timing then the effects are unpredictable. Sometimes it will be fine but that is rare. Usually there are scaling artifacts or screen wobble due to a slightly off timing.

The ideal solution would be setting Powerstrip on all the time changing timings automatically. This unfortunately is problematic on some cards because some of the dotclocks that Powerstrip programs are unstable. You can't know whether they'll be unstable beforehand. If it turns out the screen wobbles or the scaling looks crappy then you know it's unstable. A workaround would be implementing a manual blacklist but that would add unnecessary complexity, and at the end of the day the fuss for the user is equivalent to creating manual ps_timings when required.

Probably unstable dotclocks are more prone to happen for low values, so another workaround would be forcing -dotclock_min to a high value so double-width modes are used instead, but then you hit with the lack of exact double-width modes in the AVGA (e.g., 288x240 but no 576x240).

If you have a spare hdd and time to waste, you may try installing CRT Emudriver 2.0 on your AVGA. Believe it or not, I'm not sure if anyone has ever tried.

[sean_sk]

I have resolved some of the issues by setting min dotclock to 7.0. Some games are fine, and others require aspect being forced, ie: Simpsons has a resolution of 288x224 so GM chooses 640x240 and game ends up extremely narrow on screen so if I force 4:3 it does stretch out but there are still black bars either side. Is there perhaps a better method of stretching available that I'm overlooking? Creating manual pstrip settings for individual games does completely solve the issue of refresh rates, it just up to the user to do so on a per game basis I guess.

If you have a spare hdd and time to waste, you may try installing CRT Emudriver 2.0 on your AVGA. Believe it or not, I'm not sure if anyone has ever tried.

I have tried this several times in the past and tried again a few hours ago as per your suggestion. AVGA has a unique vendor ID and initially CRTemudriver setup wouldn't detect the card so I copied over the vendor id from the AVGA inf file into atiilhag.inf. Setup then detected the card as "Ultimarc ArcadeVGA3000" and reported that the driver was installed correctly but, after a restart, device manager reported problems with the driver. To correct that issue I did a basic driver install from the AVGA .inf file through Device Manager but it pretty much made the CRTemudriver setup process ineffectual.

Anyway I'll keep plugging away. Thanks for you suggestions Calamity.