Can't get Donkey Kong to work?

[rdowdy95]

Guys I cannot for the life of me get Donkey Kong to work.  I have the dkong.zip and when I run the program, my monitor goes funky like white and I can kind of hear some sounds, but it will just not display properly.  I have also tried to use dkongo.zip as well.  I have the .106 version of Mame.  Anyone else get the Donkey Kong to work?

Thanks

[leapinlew]

Yeah - works here. Have you tried a different version of mame? On a different machine? Are you outputing to a lcd, monitor, tv or arcade monitor?

[rdowdy95]

I am outputting to a Viewsonic VA521 15inch LCD Monitor.  In the next couple of months I am building a cabniet with a 27 inch Sharp TV with components and S-Video.  But for now I am using an LCD.  I can hear the sounds when I start a game, but the video is totally weird my LCD just starts to fade with weird lines to white color.

[leapinlew]

Any chance you can try it on a standard monitor or television?

Some LCD's have a hard time changing to different resolutions.

[rdowdy95]

I can't do anything about it right now, but you sound correct.  Sometimes when I boot the computer on.  I shouldn't say sometimes it happens all the time.  I get the same effect for like a second or two when booting up Windows.  Tommorow I will go out in the gararge I got a sucky old CRT monitor in there somewhere, and I will check it out.  Thanks for the help man!

[shardian]

since we are on the subject of game problems, I can't get Galaga to work in ANY version of mame. Depressing to think my vertical cabinet won't have the game at the top of my list...

Donkey kong is good to go though. I'll trade you problems.

[leapinlew]

Whats the problems your seeing in Galaga?

[Quarters]

Sounds to me like a MAME version vs. rom version problem. Try updating your dkong roms with clrmame pro or try older versions of mame.

[Crowquill]

One other thing to try might be launching other games that use the same driver and resolution (DK Jr, DK3).

Both Donkey Kong and Galaga have had multiple versions of the ROMs as versions of MAME have progressed.

[rdowdy95]

Hey guys thanks for all the support.  I dug out my old 17inch Viewsonic CRT.  Man that thing is heavy.  Anyways I plugged it in to my computer and it showed Donkey Kong just fine.  However on my vertical games like Donkey Kong and PACMAN.  It barely cuts off the top of my screen.  I can still see player 1 up and the score and all, but a little portion of the top part of the numbers are cut off.  I am using a horizontal computer monitor.  Happens on my 15inch LCD and the 17inch CRT.  Any others having the same problem on horizontal screens.  Also soon when I build my cab I am putting a TV in there will that show the top portion or do you think the top portion will still be cut off cause I am playing vertical games on a horizontal screen.

Thanks

[leapinlew]

Depends on your video card, resolution and television.

My tv cuts off about 1/4" off each side but displays the top and bottom fine. I had a video card that would shrink everything to about 50% size on a crt.

Just experiment.

[rdowdy95]

What size and what kind of TV you got?

[pcates]

Hey guys thanks for all the support.  I dug out my old 17inch Viewsonic CRT.  Man that thing is heavy.  Anyways I plugged it in to my computer and it showed Donkey Kong just fine.  However on my vertical games like Donkey Kong and PACMAN.  It barely cuts off the top of my screen.  I can still see player 1 up and the score and all, but a little portion of the top part of the numbers are cut off.  I am using a horizontal computer monitor.  Happens on my 15inch LCD and the 17inch CRT.  Any others having the same problem on horizontal screens.  Also soon when I build my cab I am putting a TV in there will that show the top portion or do you think the top portion will still be cut off cause I am playing vertical games on a horizontal screen.

Thanks

You need to play around with the resolution settings in mame. Many game had different resolution settings that will be partly cut off on the monitor. I have even had this problem with horizontal games. The resolution is just slightly larger than the screen and the the score or credits get cut off.  I changed alot of the horizontals to 640 x 480 and it looks great on the monitor and TV. Verticals I just played with until I had the largest screen on the monitor, without anything cut off.
Good luck, Patrick

[rdowdy95]

How do you change a games resolution?  Do you change the resolution in the game's actual ini file?  Or the game config file?  How would I change all the games to 640 X 480?  Most of the time MAME auto does everything for me.  Where it just looks pretty good.

[rdowdy95]

Actually I misread what you said.  You just changed some of the horizontals to 640x480.  I just need to check all the games I guess and make sure they show good on my 27inch tv when I get the computer built.  But I would like to know how to change to diffrent resolutions for diffrent games.

[ahofle]

If you're using the command line version of MAME, then add "-r 640x480".
If you're using MAME32, then you just select it from the drop down of available resolutions in the advanced tab of the properties dialog for a particular game.

[rdowdy95]

I am using the command line of MAME, but I have MameWah that I use for my front end.  I think there is a way I can change the game's ini config file.  I will have to look into it.

[trcroyle]

Have you tried editing Mamewah's mame.ini to change {nosafelaunch} to {safelaunch}? If the rom works on one monitor and not another it sounds like an unsupprted resoltution issue. Sometimes switching to {safelaunch} will fix those.

Guys I cannot for the life of me get Donkey Kong to work.  I have the dkong.zip and when I run the program, my monitor goes funky like white and I can kind of hear some sounds, but it will just not display properly.  I have also tried to use dkongo.zip as well.  I have the .106 version of Mame.  Anyone else get the Donkey Kong to work?

Thanks