How to rotate non-MAME emulators using MALA on a cocktail machine

[displacedtexan]

I have built myself at MS-Pacman style cocktail and would like to run non-MAME emulators (like fceUltra or Fusion) on it.  Of course I am having difficulty with them using my vertical monitor.

The best video settings for MALA/MAME seem to be a default resolution of 800 x 600 using MALA's rotate feature and MAME's -rol setting.  Everything works fine (most notably horizontal games like Outrun fill up the entire width of the screen).

Unfortunately when I use fecUltra, the screen is rotated 90 degrees. 

But, if I try to rotate the screen using Nvidia's built in tools, everything works fine except black bars appear around all sides (including the left and right side) of horizontal MAME games like Outrun, making the picture really really small.

I know I am not the only person to use MALA/MAME/console emulators on a vertical monitor.  What settings have people successfully used with NVidia's cards?  Specifically, do people use Nvidia's screen rotate, etc?  If so, how what settings (both resolution and mame.ini settings) will allow horizontal MAME games to be displayed properly?

Thanks in advance for the help in making my MAME machine be all that it can be!!

[loadman]

Yeah...

I went down that road once and found that a few mame games do not like be rotated by other software .. 

[Howard_Casto]

Honest opinon?  Get an ati card with hardware rotation support... every card nvidia has ever made in the history of the company as been crap when you look at visual quality/settings alone. 

[displacedtexan]

Honest opinon?  Get an ati card with hardware rotation support... every card nvidia has ever made in the history of the company as been crap when you look at visual quality/settings alone. 

I don't want to start a flame war, but I have the same feelings when it comes to ATI and linux support.  Now, if your setup is doing exactly what I want mine to do, I may give it a second thought...

Nvidia does have built in HW support for rotation, it's just a matter of getting to it.

I am heading down the right path though.  I have downloaded a program called iRotate at http://www.entechtaiwan.net/util/irotate.shtm which calls my video cards HW rotate function, and can do it via command line... so under MALA's "Other Emu Config" -> "Execution" tab's pre  execution command line I have added the following:

C:\Program Files\iRotate\iRotate.exe /rotate=90

and post execution:

C:\Program Files\iRotate\iRotate.exe /rotate=0

Now I just need to make sure the focus is correct on everything and adjust the emulators screen size to my liking...

Definitely making progress...

 

[Howard_Casto]

Well linux is a poor choice for a mamecab anyway, so linux support isn't an issue. 

Your are on the right track... nvidia's weakest link (amoung an entire chain of weak links) is it's software interface.  I use irotate myself for my ati cards and it works well. 

[kelroy]

ATT: the key to successfully rotating games and emulaters is once you have your desktop rotated how you want it you need to locate emulaters that support desktop resolutions. example i have a computer moniter rotated 90degrees to the right, normally unrotated i keep the resolution at 1024*768 but when my desktop is rotated the resolution i have set is a vertical resolution at 768*1024 notice the smaller value to the right. that is 768 wide by 1024 high. in order to rotate other games and emulaters you need launch the game or emulater and go to the video prefrences. you need to look for video modes that are vertical resolutions e.g the frist number needs to be smaller.  my suggestion is to get an emulater and mess around with all the video modes until it rotates. now to the second issus once the game is rotated you need to set the emulater to strech in order to fill the most possable screen area. emulaters that i suggest and that work flawlessly are- nestopia,stella(NOTE:does not display to full screen uses about 75% of viewable area. snes9x(does not quit with the excape key and the menu does not auto hide but if you want to use this one then i have a script to fix this.) project 64 note:you said you wanted to use fusion it does not rotate properly but gen+ does. another problem with rotation of games and software if you do not have a somewhat alright videocard they will be hard to configure. they may run choppy, my suggestion to fix this is once again just jack around with the video settings in the emulater until you get s crisp emulation. all the emulaters i listed work the best if you want any others to work just let me know and ill help you configure them. i would frist start off picking a virtical desktop resolution that works good with all the emulaters--- the higher the resolution the slower and chopper the games will emulate. you have no need for super high resolutions. another suggestion is if you wanted to use a higher resolution for your desktop you could use yoru video card driver to create profiles that will launch each emulater at a certin resolution. jsut ke.ep messing with all the resolution settings and eventually everything will be oriented properly. ~Alhadrad
yet another note: some emulaters are retarded and wont let you map the quit command to quit the emulater i can make scripts to fix that so if you need them feel free to ask plus some emulaters dont auto hide the menu bars when you load a fullscreen rom but once again i can write scripts to fix.

questons feel free to ask: Alhadrad@gmail.com

[juggle50]

Check out MESS. (www.mess.org)  They have tons of computer and console emulators (not always perfect emulation but still very good) and it is based on the mame core so it's rotation features work just like MAME.  I'm a big fan.

[displacedtexan]

I'll have to check out both this weekend.

Kelroy,

So, your desktop is set to 1024 x 768 and then you rotate each using its emulator's video settings?  Thanks for the list of emulators that you have found to work.  It will be very useful.

I'll also have to check out MESS...

More to follow after some testing...

[kelroy]

update sorry i said that fusion does not work i mixed myself up it is accutally the contrary it is the only sega gen emulater that i have found that rotates properly and has a crisp emulation

[kelroy]

no my desktop is set to 768x1024

[blueznl]

iRotate rotates fine on Ati and NVidia. The problem is that DirectX does not (always) work properly on rotated stuff. I've been playing a little bit with it, and it worked just as unreliable on ATI as it did on Nvidia 

Some fancy NVida drivers may allow you to add 'black borders' left and right when dealing with widescreen monitors, maybe in combination with iRotate you may be able to add such borders at the top and bottom.

[loadman]

iRotate rotates fine on Ati and NVidia. The problem is that DirectX does not (always) work properly on rotated stuff. I've been playing a little bit with it, and it worked just as unreliable on ATI as it did on Nvidia 

I think that is what i found too