Is Switchres causing this specific game to run really weird?

[DaddyLongLegs]

So this is a weird one I've been trying to solve for a while now.

Carnevil runs really weird on my MAME cabinet. I am using a genuine standard res WG monitor and the latest GroovyMAME (Windows 10) with a 4.0 ghz i7 and 24GB of RAM.

I don't seem to have this issue with any other games but to be honest, I've only tried about 50 out of the thousands MAME supports. Carnevil simply runs too fast most of the time. It isn't even consistent; it seems to "wobble" all over the place. The audio sounds like a cassette tape that's warped. Mostly too fast but it goes back and forth between too slow and too fast.

I noticed two strange things after trying to solve this. Here is the first one:



In the "graphics speed" option area are, to me, some really weird options? It's only things like 45mhz, 49mhz, 51mhz, etc. I was under the impression it should be like 59? Or am I confusing this with screen refresh rates?

Anyway the other thing that gave me pause is this:



1st, it's saying the game runs at 54.124000 Hz and SwitchRes is changing it to 57.000 hz. Would this cause my odd speed issues?
2nd, Switchres didn't change the resolution. I'm used to seeing some huge number for the horizontal resolution with switchres but it's also at 640. Is that supposed to be the case here?

Any pointers helping me solve this year-long mystery for me would be greatly appreciated!

[Alaska]

I had a separate issue but ran down a similar issue to fix it in the end. I think it has to do with the native game resolution and your settings for the custom monitor settings or "crt_range0" in the mame.ini file.

For me I wanted to change to interlaced mode (which is what is shown in your post) for resolutions greater than 256. Calamity mentioned that I can do this by changing these settings in the mame.ini:

monitor custom
crt_range0  15625-15800, 49.50-63.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.160, 1.056, 0, 0, 192, 256, 448, 512

You might compare the native resolution for the game to your mame.ini settings and see if the resolution is greater than the bold numbers in the positions that are bold above. That might be the reason that the game is loading in 640x480 interlaced.

The slow running speed might be due to an audio/video latency problem. Jump into your slider options and change the frame delay from 0 to 1. See if that improves game play. If you have no audio. Check the link above, at the bottom was my solution.

[DaddyLongLegs]

I had a separate issue but ran down a similar issue to fix it in the end. I think it has to do with the native game resolution and your settings for the custom monitor settings or "crt_range0" in the mame.ini file.

For me I wanted to change to interlaced mode (which is what is shown in your post) for resolutions greater than 256. Calamity mentioned that I can do this by changing these settings in the mame.ini:

monitor custom
crt_range0  15625-15800, 49.50-63.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.160, 1.056, 0, 0, 192, 256, 448, 512

You might compare the native resolution for the game to your mame.ini settings and see if the resolution is greater than the bold numbers in the positions that are bold above. That might be the reason that the game is loading in 640x480 interlaced.

The slow running speed might be due to an audio/video latency problem. Jump into your slider options and change the frame delay from 0 to 1. See if that improves game play. If you have no audio. Check the link above, at the bottom was my solution.

Thanks so much for the reply! Here is what my monitor custom crt_range0 looks like:

crt_range0                15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 288, 448, 576

So are you saying I should change mine to this? : crt_range0                15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 256, 288, 448, 512, 576\

?

Also I went into the slider settings, and it seems like changing the screen refresh rate helped A LOT. So doesn't that mean it is in fact SwitchRes messing with the game? Also, is there any way to save the slider settings so I don't need to do it every time I go into the game?

I am in fact getting audio, but you had mentioned "check the link above". What link were you referring to? There's none in your post that I can find.

[DaddyLongLegs]

OK so small topic change but this is weird.

I was able to fix the speed issue. I went into Slider Options and saw this:



The screen refresh rate was set to something like 53. Changing it to 59.124 worked.

However, every time I exit the game, this setting is back to 53. Is there a way to force MAME to keep the settings I chose? Or is SwitchRes forcing it to revert back every time?

[psakhis]

Fps match with frequency habitually, you need to match exact frequency for resolve speed issue.

[DaddyLongLegs]

Fps match with frequency habitually, you need to match exact frequency for resolve speed issue.

OK so what should screen refresh rate be set to?

[DaddyLongLegs]

Never mind. I made a carnevil.ini in the MAME/INI/PRESETS folder, put on the line "syncrefresh 0" without quotes, and the game works perfect now

Should I just make syncrefresh 0 the default in the MAME.ini or does it negatively affect groovyMAME somehow?

[Alaska]

Sorry if I confused you with my first reply. I was only trying to provide some insight as to why your video might be loading in 480i. No need to change your custom CRT settings. My intention was to help direct you to the place within the mame.ini that dictates when interlaced is envoked.

For me I have not had to change the screen refresh rate within the slider options. Typically I change the 'Frame Delay' which is the second option from the top. Default is 0. By changing to 1 it usually fixes the issue.

[DaddyLongLegs]

So Carnevil now runs at the right speed with ""syncrefresh 0" in the custom ini for the game, but now the game has really bad screen tearing (like if vsync wasn't working). When I delete the custom carnevil.ini, the screen tearing goes away, but the game runs way too fast.

Is there any way to have the game both run at the proper speed and also not have screen tearing?

Keep in mind I also have triplebuffer 1 in the ini as well.

edit: Calamity posted the fix in another thread. TripleBuffer was removed from mame. The new code for this game is

carnevil.ini in the mame/ini/presets folder

syncrefresh 0
waitvsync 1

[DaddyLongLegs]

So silly question here, Carnevil looks like it runs at the right speed while I am playing, but it says this at the start of the game:



As you can see, it's supposed to be a 54.124001 hz game but it says SwitchRes is running it at 57.000 hz. Is that what it's supposed to say?

[Calamity]

That's an old bug. Please update to current version.

[makya]

Daddy, please post a log

[DaddyLongLegs]

That's an old bug. Please update to current version.

I am. It's groovymame 0.236.

[makya]

I guess Calamity was joking. Most probably switchres is not causing any weird things. In order to identify which of your settings is making switchres select 57Hz we have to look at the log file.