newbie: resolution issues and performance

[big daddy]

Couple of newbie questions.

I have the full .86 romset and I'm running on my pc with Mame32 while I'm building my cabinet (just started).  I have a pentium 1GHZ, 512MB RAM, and a nvidia 64MB video card if that info helps.

1) Several of the games look fine (pacman, donkey kong, captain america, street fighter, etc).  But when playing some of the games (like double dribble for example) the games look horrible..much worse then even the screenshot in mame/snap directory for that game.  I understand the old graphics were very low resolution, but this is beyond just low resolution..I mean in double dribble, you could barely tell that it was a player and you couldn't read the text.  I remember this game in the arcade and it wasn't like this.  This is true for a couple of the games.  My question is, is it because I'm running on a pc monitor and because it's resolution is too good? Is it because it can't quite get the right resolution for some of these games?  Will this go away when I get an arcade monitor for my cab?  I just want to make sure I'm not forgetting to do something on the games (set certain resolution on it or whatever).  I just want the arcade games to look like they used to look (bad resolution and all), but what I'm seeing on some of these games isn't how it used to look and doesnt' even match up with how the screencaps show it should look.  Ideas?

edit : I removed the 2nd item because I missed the newbie FAQ discussing it.

[Minwah]

I expect you have hardware stretch turned on - this usually means that the image is being stretched and blurred.  Edit your mame.ini file and set 'effect sharp' - this should improve it somewhat.  Turn off 'hwstretch' in mame.ini for even more sharpness, and play around with scanlines to see what you like.

But basically yes, this is down to you using a PC monitor.  The games will look just as they always did when you get an arcade monitor *

* bear in mind low / medium / high res. games used different screen types.

Edit: sorry, you're using MAME32...the 'stretch using hardware' and 'effect' options should be in the 'video (general)' menu or similar.

[Tiger-Heli]

Couple of newbie questions.

I have the full .86 romset and I'm running on my pc with Mame32 while I'm building my cabinet (just started).  I have a pentium 1GHZ, 512MB RAM, and a nvidia 64MB video card if that info helps.

1) Several of the games look fine (pacman, donkey kong, captain america, street fighter, etc).  But when playing some of the games (like double dribble for example) the games look horrible..much worse then even the screenshot in mame/snap directory for that game.  I understand the old graphics were very low resolution, but this is beyond just low resolution..I mean in double dribble, you could barely tell that it was a player and you couldn't read the text.  I remember this game in the arcade and it wasn't like this.  This is true for a couple of the games.  My question is, is it because I'm running on a pc monitor and because it's resolution is too good? Is it because it can't quite get the right resolution for some of these games?  Will this go away when I get an arcade monitor for my cab?  I just want to make sure I'm not forgetting to do something on the games (set certain resolution on it or whatever).  I just want the arcade games to look like they used to look (bad resolution and all), but what I'm seeing on some of these games isn't how it used to look and doesnt' even match up with how the screencaps show it should look.  Ideas?

edit : I removed the 2nd item because I missed the newbie FAQ discussing it.

Very hard to say whithout knowing exactly what you are seeing, but there are three possibilities:

1)  Double Dribble might be messed up in 0.86 and that is causing the problem.  I'm not very familiar with this game, but it's possible it would work with an older MAME version, or if many games are messed up, that would tend to rule that out.

2)  You might be overly picky.  See http://www.oscarcontrols.com/monitors.shtml and if you can't stand the PC monitor image, that's probably it.

3)  You might be letting MAME pick the resolution for you and it might be picking badly.  Go to the Options - Default Game Properties screen, Advanced tab, and check Use Direct Draw, and Stretch Using Hardware, and try specifying 640x480, or 800x600, or 1024x768 and see if you get better results.