Help with some random GroovyMAME questions

[Dochartaigh]

I hope it's OK to post a catch-all topic like this. I'm in the middle of setting up everything and have questions that could go in quite literally 10+ different topics, but I didn't want to be (even more annoying and pepper the forum everywhere so I thought this might be easier...

Computer/MAME info: Running Windows 10, CRT Emudriver on my HD6450 card, outputting to a 15khz CRT. GroovyMAME version 0.200.

So some questions I have:

1.) Is the Windows desktop always in 480i? I know that can make text more readable but it flickers like crazy on my CRT monitors. Is that switchable to 240p? It goes away as soon as I enter a game, but even the default Mame64.exe's navigation menu (even the menu when I hit Tab in a game flickers) is in 480i as well and likewise flickers and is giving me a headache!

2.) I have this computer setup to run to my 4K TV as well for regular internet-browsing tasks and the like (via the motherboard's built in HDMI port). As soon as I run MAME, it takes control of the mouse (which I'm NOT using in MAME itself, I setup a fightstick to go through the menus). Is there a way to have the mouse un-leashed from GroovyMAME so I can use it on the 4K TV so I can research as I go (and reply to topics like this...which I'm typing on a separate laptop now since I would have to exit out of GroovyMAME to use the regular Windows PC it's running on).

3.) I'm running a merged set. In the regular "unfiltered" MAME menu I can see WAY more games (since each merged .zip is split into all the different versions of the same game contained in that .zip), BUT, I started using the "all killer, no filler" game lists, which I access by going to the "Category" section, and when I try to play a game which is supposed to be 3/4-player (Crime Fighters), it's only letting me play the 2-player versions of it (crimefght), instead of the 4-player version "crimefghtu". How can I get into the options to load that one instead (poked around EVERYWHERE and can't seem to find the option).

4.) I've come across two vertical games (I have added a vertical.ini file so those automatically come up in their correct orientation so I can play them on my turned-sideways "TATE" monitor) and these games (Avengers is one of them) rotate the opposite way as EVERY other vertical game does (rotated 180º in the opposite direction so it's upside down). I've gone into Configure Machine > Advanced Options, and tried every Rotation Option I can, and I can get it to rotate correctly (honestly forget which exact setting I tried since I tried it so many times), BUT, when I exit back out to the Mame64.exe GUI the GUI is now rotated! I can quit out of MAME, and launch Mame64.exe again and it's fine, but I have to be missing something here...

5.) I have a feeling this is covered in depth somewhere, but there's a way to scale the image and adjust the left/right/up/down centering, correct? Can this be done on a per-game basis? And I have a feeling that if my monitor's geometry settings (H Size, V Size, H Center, etc.) is calibrated for 224p games (which it is - for actual physical console systems like NES and SNES), that any game which runs in 240p is going to have the top and bottom cut off a little bit, correct? And there's no way around this?

Again, if I'm breaking any rules by posting a combo topic like this PLEASE let me know - just trying to get my system running the best it can and I know I'm going to have more questions as I start going through more games, and learning more about all this stuff (which isn't easy - I have to say, experience is definitely needed to figure out all the nuances about this - but I'm learning at least!). Thanks, -J

[Zebidee]

1.) Is the Windows desktop always in 480i? I know that can make text more readable but it flickers like crazy on my CRT monitors. Is that switchable to 240p? It goes away as soon as I enter a game, but even the default Mame64.exe's navigation menu (even the menu when I hit Tab in a game flickers) is in 480i as well and likewise flickers and is giving me a headache!

You can set desktop with ArcadeOSD (comes with groovymame & VMM package). You can also set desktop with display manager, but ArcadeOSD is better.

2.) I have this computer setup to run to my 4K TV as well for regular internet-browsing tasks and the like (via the motherboard's built in HDMI port). As soon as I run MAME, it takes control of the mouse (which I'm NOT using in MAME itself, I setup a fightstick to go through the menus). Is there a way to have the mouse un-leashed from GroovyMAME so I can use it on the 4K TV so I can research as I go (and reply to topics like this...which I'm typing on a separate laptop now since I would have to exit out of GroovyMAME to use the regular Windows PC it's running on).

Try disabling mouse in your mame.ini file

3.) I'm running a merged set. In the regular "unfiltered" MAME menu I can see WAY more games (since each merged .zip is split into all the different versions of the same game contained in that .zip), BUT, I started using the "all killer, no filler" game lists, which I access by going to the "Category" section, and when I try to play a game which is supposed to be 3/4-player (Crime Fighters), it's only letting me play the 2-player versions of it (crimefght), instead of the 4-player version "crimefghtu". How can I get into the options to load that one instead (poked around EVERYWHERE and can't seem to find the option).

Directly edit the relevant ["all killer, no filler"].ini file to include the variants you want. You must have installed it somewhere? I expect it'll be in a subfolder of your groovymame install directory, maybe "category" or "folders" or even "dats".

4.) I've come across two vertical games (I have added a vertical.ini file so those automatically come up in their correct orientation so I can play them on my turned-sideways "TATE" monitor) and these games (Avengers is one of them) rotate the opposite way as EVERY other vertical game does (rotated 180º in the opposite direction so it's upside down). I've gone into Configure Machine > Advanced Options, and tried every Rotation Option I can, and I can get it to rotate correctly (honestly forget which exact setting I tried since I tried it so many times), BUT, when I exit back out to the Mame64.exe GUI the GUI is now rotated! I can quit out of MAME, and launch Mame64.exe again and it's fine, but I have to be missing something here...

Edit mame.ini, set the relevant rotate options there

5.) I have a feeling this is covered in depth somewhere, but there's a way to scale the image and adjust the left/right/up/down centering, correct? Can this be done on a per-game basis? And I have a feeling that if my monitor's geometry settings (H Size, V Size, H Center, etc.) is calibrated for 224p games (which it is - for actual physical console systems like NES and SNES), that any game which runs in 240p is going to have the top and bottom cut off a little bit, correct? And there's no way around this?

In most cases you should be able to adjust the relevant V-size setting on your "15khz CRT", depending on what exactly that is (sometimes you can't easily adjust v-size for TVs, but pretty much all arcade monitors have V-size adjustment).

[Calamity]

2) You can't do that. GM uses exclusive full screen mode. Exclusive means GM won't share the video card with other apps. Even if you're using a different video card (the motherboard's gpu) for the other desktop, there's a window that has the focus on it (GM's) and clicking on the desktop will make it loose the focus and minimize it to the taskbar: this is the price of exclusiveness.

4) In order to handle vertical monitors, instead of using the MAME's rotation options, use GM's -orientation option. Set either -orientation rotate_r or -orientation rotate_l.

[Dochartaigh]

Thank you both for putting up with my questions! (and have a couple more below).

You can set desktop with ArcadeOSD (comes with groovymame & VMM package). You can also set desktop with display manager, but ArcadeOSD is better..

So I launched ArcadeOSD, hit 2 to make it switch to the 15khz monitor (have a 4K HDMI monitor running as well), 'Attach OSD to current monitor', then I choose a resolution, and selected 'Set as Desktop mode'. I tried EVERY single resolution and the desktop still flickers worse than I've ever seen it before (even with 480i consoles). This simply doesn't make sense to me because the games themselves don't flicker (so if I choose a 320x240 - or the super-resolution version of that - 240p, this looks PERFECT on the monitor...but when showing the desktop it looks horrible). I also tried this on, no joke, 10 different CRT's (everything from Sony PVM/BVM's, to consumer TV's with a RGBS to YPbPr converter).

Directly edit the relevant ["all killer, no filler"].ini file to include the variants you want. You must have installed it somewhere? I expect it'll be in a subfolder of your groovymame install directory, maybe "category" or "folders" or even "dats".

This game (and others with this problem), don't have an individual .zip because they're merged sets, so every version of a game is in the one .zip file. As I went through more games last night, I noticed (when still using the all killer no filler game lists) that there was many which upon launching the game it gave me an option screen of which version I wanted to load (Japan, USA, Taiwan, etc. different versions), BUT this one game crimefght doesn't give me the option to load crimefghtu, so I can't play the 4-player version of it. Anything to do or just download that single (split) ROM if I can find it?
**EDIT** Found out how to do this if it helps anybody: when you choose the sub-folder the All Kill No Filler list is opening you can select to show clones (or not), this was default turned OFF for the "Multi" game list, turned it on and I can now see the correct 4-player ROM (from that merged rom) and play it.

Edit mame.ini, set the relevant rotate options there

When I first tried to get the horizontal games to play natively (i.e. on a TATE'd monitor, and not rotated to fit my regular orientation one) I tried EVERY single option of 1's and 0's in mame.ini to get it to work - nothing worked. Only making the vertical.ini with "rotate 0" worked (found that tip online after about 2 hours of trying everything else). So if I were to try it this way, which lines in mame.ini should I edit (and should I remove that vertical.ini file?)?

4) In order to handle vertical monitors, instead of using the MAME's rotation options, use GM's -orientation option. Set either -orientation rotate_r or -orientation rotate_l.

Would this have to be set on a per-game basis (I'm launching all games through MAME's built in front-end)? And would I be able to set it in the MAME frontend? Or is this for launching a single game from command line like "mame64 avengers -orientation rotate_r" (or whatever is the correct way to launch from command line - I've never really done that much).

Besides Avengers, for others which give me this problem I've been able to either go into the dipswitches, the F2 game setup/config menu, or from the Video Options and it's been working pretty well - just a couple which I wasn't able to fix this way.






For new questions I came across last night:

6.) Is there a way to skip loading screens, ROM checks? Fast forward is only 120-130%... some of these ROM checks and whatnot can literally take a a minute or two (which kinda makes the kids --ok, me too -- want to pull their hair out while they're waiting).  The extremely long Raiden Fighters "999 Now Updating” countdown is extremely annoying (at least it only has to do that once...unless you exit out of it, and it corrupts it, then you can't launch the game again and spend a half hour googling how/where that corrupted data is stored to delete it and then again have to wait 999 seconds for it to rebuild

7.) I have a handful of games switching from 480i/60i to 575/50i (NTSC/PAL?) like Flying Shark )took a video of that happening it was so weird), and it does this constantly and won't stop. Some monitors are ok, where others freak out like this. They're all Sony PVM/BVM monitors, and can switch from NTSC to PAL resolution. Maybe using the "Arcade 15.7khz - standard resolutions" is giving too wide of a frequency range (or whatever), and those particular monitors can't handle it? Better off using the standard 15Khz modelines through VMMaker instead? (honestly not too many games at all, was just wondering)

8.) Is there a way to normalize sound? It’s literally ALL over the place - from screaming loud, to barely a whisper. Many of the problematic (WAY too soft) games, have a volume slider, and it's always set to 0 (or maxed out - can only go softer).

9.) For games where this isn't an option to add rapid fire for a certain button, is there a way to turn on rapid fire for every games (mostly SHMUPS/Shoot-Em-Ups). I have arthritis and it's honestly killing my hands when I play these (and SHMUPS are my absolutely favorite games). I'm open to any plug-ins I can try as well which work with GroovyMAME (I don't know if plug-ins areuniversal, or if they only work for regular MAME or what).

10.) Stupid question...I hit a key in the stock MAME frontend and my information panel on the right (which tells you things like the name of the actual .zip/rom), and despite pressing every non-character key on the keyboard (character keys just start searching for that game), I can't get it back for the life of me.
**EDIT** fixed this one too but leaving in in case it helps someone: This is super simple, there's a little dot on the right which you click on and the information window expands. Problem is GroovyMAME is displaying an image WAY wider than my monitor can display (so even under scan didn't make it show) - had to shift the image ALL the way over with my Extron RGB 203 Rxi (with the DDSP dipswitch OFF - which leaves a skew on the top but enables the controls to shift the image at least, which they can't do with DDSP turned on).



11). ArcadeOSD...is there a tutorial on this I'm failing to find? Is it something which is only for GroovyMAME? I can get it up and lock it to the 15khz screen, but don't know what to do with it after that.

I can't bring this up in a game, correct? I tried to edit the "OSD KEYBOARD MAPPING OPTIONS" in mame.ini to be "HOME" to bring it up in-game and it didn't work...that was probably the totally wrong option for this anyway...

BUT, Arcade OSD is supposed to let me change the centering (doesn't seem to be scaling?) for each and every modeline? How do I bring up the test grid? (did this once by accident and can't find the keypress again). I tried to change things like move the image left, and hit "Test", and the image isn't shifting at all so I must be doing it wrong. Any tips on how to use this to fine-tune the different resolutions would be GREATLY appreciated - everything seems to be off. No default settings I can do which will apply to all of them at once? (like the taskbar in Windows is cut off, and the image is shifted to the left - right off the bat for example).



So that's it - thanks again. What I really find amazing about all these questions is I'm pretty darn good at Google (I thought), but either this is really specialized information or I just stink at googling this stuff - as I thought these would be pretty common problems and I'm simply not finding anything which helps... (not YouTube either).

[krick]

Edit mame.ini, set the relevant rotate options there

When I first tried to get the horizontal games to play natively (i.e. on a TATE'd monitor, and not rotated to fit my regular orientation one) I tried EVERY single option of 1's and 0's in mame.ini to get it to work - nothing worked. Only making the vertical.ini with "rotate 0" worked (found that tip online after about 2 hours of trying everything else). So if I were to try it this way, which lines in mame.ini should I edit (and should I remove that vertical.ini file?)?

4) In order to handle vertical monitors, instead of using the MAME's rotation options, use GM's -orientation option. Set either -orientation rotate_r or -orientation rotate_l.

Would this have to be set on a per-game basis (I'm launching all games through MAME's built in front-end)? And would I be able to set it in the MAME frontend? Or is this for launching a single game from command line like "mame64 avengers -orientation rotate_r" (or whatever is the correct way to launch from command line - I've never really done that much).

MAME has a system of configuration files that allow you to apply settings only to specific games.  One of these configuration files is "vertical.ini".  Anything in this file will get applied when you run a vertical game in MAME.  There's also other useful files like "vector.ini".  More info here:  https://docs.mamedev.org/advanced/multiconfig.html

Basically, if you want to have settings that only apply to vertical games and override your "default" settings in mame.ini, then you should create a new empty file named vertical.ini and add ONLY the individual settings that you want changed for vertical games to that file.

So if you want to follow Calamity's suggestion, you would add one (and ONLY one) of the following lines to vertical.ini depending on which way your monitor will be rotated...

orientation rotate_r
orientation rotate_l

NOTE:  There is a bug in MAME where INI file settings do not get reset between games when using the internal MAME user interface.  So if you're testing using the internal MAME GUI it's something to watch out for.  This bug will be fixed in MAME 0.203...   https://github.com/mamedev/mame/commit/f522870d8acf3e12ab0845272844561d9195fe4d

6.) Is there a way to skip loading screens, ROM checks? Fast forward is only 120-130%... some of these ROM checks and whatnot can literally take a a minute or two (which kinda makes the kids --ok, me too -- want to pull their hair out while they're waiting).  The extremely long Raiden Fighters "999 Now Updating” countdown is extremely annoying (at least it only has to do that once...unless you exit out of it, and it corrupts it, then you can't launch the game again and spend a half hour googling how/where that corrupted data is stored to delete it and then again have to wait 999 seconds for it to rebuild

I think you want to enable savestates.  When you exit the game it will save the state of the game and when you launch it again, it will load the savestate and pick up right where you left off.  No more long loading.  Note that not all games support savestates but it's worth a shot.

8.) Is there a way to normalize sound? It’s literally ALL over the place - from screaming loud, to barely a whisper. Many of the problematic (WAY too soft) games, have a volume slider, and it's always set to 0 (or maxed out - can only go softer).

There isn't a global audio adjustment.  Every game being emulated had its own way of adjusting the sound.  For modern-ish games like the Mortal Kombat series, you can enter the "F2" system menu of the game itself and adjust the volume.  For some games, you may only have the option of adjusting the MAME volume slider for that game but I would avoid touching that unless you have no other option.  Try to find any and all in-game volume adjustments possible first.

My advice is to play some audio in Windows and set your windows volume in the middle at 50 and then adjust the volume on your speakers to a level that is comfortable.  Then go into each game and adjust the volume to a comfortable level and don't touch the PC or speaker volume.  Most games should be able to be set to something reasonable volume-wise.  If you find any games that are REALLY out of whack relative to other games or can't be adjusted to a reasonable level, then open a bug ticket on MAMETesters.

[schmerzkaufen]

Regarding rotation; am I the only one who uses the video options ingame to rotate ? (TAB menu)

It saves your choice in the game's .CFG that's created and loaded every time automatically.

[buttersoft]

Regarding rotation; am I the only one who uses the video options ingame to rotate ? (TAB menu)

It saves your choice in the game's .CFG that's created and loaded every time automatically.

GM wouldn't recalculate the modeline then though, would it? I mean that if you're in a vertical cab, say, and you pick a vertical game but tell mame you have a horizontal monitor (because you plan to rotate in game) them GM is going to pick whatever mode is best for that vertical game in horizontal orientation. This might be the native mode but probably not? Also only a problem in cases like this?

[cools]

For some games, you may only have the option of adjusting the MAME volume slider for that game but I would avoid touching that unless you have no other option.

Some? It's the other way around, in game volume control via "F2" is pretty sparse. The vast majority can only be done with the sliders.

[krick]

The games that I often find are too quiet are usually the ones with an F2 in-game menu for volume.  Games with no in-game volume control are usually fine.

[Zebidee]

I suggest that you detach the 4K HDMI monitor.

Volume: I always add an external volume control to my cabs, which makes game-to-game volume variation a non-issue. An alternative is to use a software option and link buttons/spinner to allow you to adjust volume. There are guides available elsewhere on the forum.

Once you have an external volume control: Set the PC volume to max 100%. Set internal volume (ie the one on your audio amplifier) to whatever you want as your max volume. The use the external volume control to adjust for current game/environment/mood.

Verticals: Regarding vertical game behaviour... Groovymame actually does a pretty good job with auto-rotation for vertical games and video mode selection if you just let it do so by default. Try deleting everything in your "cfg" and "ini" folders (seriously! Back them up if you want). Then delete your mame.ini file. run "groovymame64 -cc" by command line from your groovymame directory. Then try again.

ArcadeOSD: This software is pretty intuitive to use. If you edit a video mode, only that mode is affected. "test" applies your changes temporarily - until you quit out of editing. If you want to keep changes then "save".

If you want to change many video modes (eg because they aren't centred properly), then adjust the porch settings in your monitor presets file and run/apply VMM to make video modes again. Once you get the monitor presets right, everything will be much easier.

Comment: Seems that you are moving one PC between various displays, so don't be surprised that they respond differently. In order to get the most out of Groovymame, you need to separately run VMMaker to set video modes (and auto-edit your mame.ini) for each new display (even if your displays are the same make/model, they can still have differences). This will involve selecting the right monitor presets (and maybe editing them to suit for each display), and VMM will automatically update this info to your mame.ini file so that GM knows what your monitor is (and isn't) capable of. Also, pay attention to monitor orientation in VMM (as this info will be passed to mame.ini too). Getting the monitor presets & orientation right for your display is really crucial to getting GM working as well as it could be.

Getting GM working right is more about setting the right parameters (eg monitor presets, orientation, VMM/video modes) at the start and then letting GM do whatever it thinks is best. Mostly GM will select options automatically, and will get it right. If GM gets it wrong, there's a good chance you set the initial parameters wrong. This might be difficult to accept, at first, for people who are used to optimising vanilla mame via game-to-game micro-management (eg ini, cfg files; video mode/resolution selection, triple buffer, rotation etc).

[krick]

Verticals: Regarding vertical game behaviour... Groovymame actually does a pretty good job with auto-rotation for vertical games and video mode selection if you just let it do so by default. Try deleting everything in your "cfg" and "ini" folders (seriously! Back them up if you want). Then delete your mame.ini file. run "groovymame64 -cc" by command line from your groovymame directory. Then try again.

I'm pretty sure Dochartaigh is rotating their monitor for vertical games.  So in this case, I think a vertical.ini with  orientation rotate_r   OR   orientation rotate_l    is the correct way to handle it.

[big10p]

Re: interlaced mode bad flicker/jittering

I had this problem and solved it by going into arcadeOSD and altering the Vertical total a bit at a time until the image became rock solid (just the usual, slight flicker you always get with interlaced modes). Experiment with altering in both directions - up and down. On my monitor, I had to increase it. Note that to make the changes stick for the default Windows mode, you first have to set the default to another mode, make the changes, then set the default back to your Windows mode.

[Zebidee]

Verticals: Regarding vertical game behaviour... Groovymame actually does a pretty good job with auto-rotation for vertical games and video mode selection if you just let it do so by default. Try deleting everything in your "cfg" and "ini" folders (seriously! Back them up if you want). Then delete your mame.ini file. run "groovymame64 -cc" by command line from your groovymame directory. Then try again.

I'm pretty sure Dochartaigh is rotating their monitor for vertical games.  So in this case, I think a vertical.ini with  orientation rotate_r   OR   orientation rotate_l    is the correct way to handle it.

I understand this, but for now just forget vertical.ini, for a moment.

Do what I said above, delete the .ini and .cfg files, delete mame.ini. Then re-create mame.ini (groovymame64 -cc), and then run VMMaker. Go to "Monitor settings" tab. Select "Monitor rotation" and choose "rotating to the right" from the drop-down list.

Then go to the "MAME" tab. Tick the box "Export monitor settings to MAME". Browse to find your Groovymame executable.

Then click OK. You see in the VMM cmd window

">>config               
Processing config...
Exporting settings to mame.ini..."

Which means it just updated your mame.ini with the right settings! (no need to generate video modes)

Now double-click groovymame and choose a vertical game - it should appear rotated to the right automatically.

If you run vertical games from command line, example: "groovymame64 galaga" then they should also appear rotated to the right as well.

[Calamity]

Getting GM working right is more about setting the right parameters (eg monitor presets, orientation, VMM/video modes) at the start and then letting GM do whatever it thinks is best. Mostly GM will select options automatically, and will get it right. If GM gets it wrong, there's a good chance you set the initial parameters wrong. This might be difficult to accept, at first, for people who are used to optimising vanilla mame via game-to-game micro-management (eg ini, cfg files; video mode/resolution selection, triple buffer, rotation etc).

Thanks for this comment Zebidee, this must be the most accurate description of the idea behind GM, ever. I take the liberty of quoting you in the future.

And still, I understand that automatisms are boring, and we geeks need some knobs to turn in order to feel accomplished. GM allows you that, too. E.g., GM can pick your hand-crafted modeline in a per-game basis.

Unfortunately, the work flow between GM and the CRT Tools is still very rudimentary. I promise to add more knobs in the future.

[Paradroid]

I promise to add more knobs in the future.

[Zebidee]

I take the liberty of quoting you in the future.

You are very welcome to.