Why aren't games displaying at the proper resolution?

[javeryh]

I asked this in the Software and Monitor forums but no one has responded so I thougt I'd try here... maybe I'm not describing the problem properly? 

Anyway, I just recompiled MAME 0119u2 and installed MaLa 1.04.  After setting everything up and launching a game, everything appears very pixelated like the wrong resolution is being used or something.  The snaps behind the game list all look fine as does the FE display generally - the problem is when I launch a game.  Is there a setting I could have inadvertantly triggered that would be causing this?  All of the games played fine before I updated (from .87).  I have a Happ Vision Pro 19" Shelf Mount VGA/SVGA Monitor (49-1337-VP2LG).

Any help would be great - I finally decided to update my cocktail cabinet with MaLa instead of GameLauncher because it's way more user-friendly.  I'm even thinking about getting an iPac4 and swapping out my iPac2 so I can take advantage of the game rotation features and stuff.  Anyway, I really want to get everything to display properly before this weekend but I'm not sure which settings to tweak and stuff.

Thanks!   

[spacies]

It could be heaps of things and all I will say is: Welcome to MAME and all it BS and tweaking.

It really takes the fun out of it sometimes.

Sorry I can't be more of a help but I am sure someone here knows more than me.

[bluevolume]

Theres a few things you can try.  First, rename or move the mame.ini file.  This will force MAME to use default settings.  Something I've found that's very helpful is to load up MAME32 and use its GUI to set resolutions and other settings for each game.  The changes are saved in the cfg folder, and regular MAME will use them.

[leapinlew]

Theres a few things you can try.  First, rename or move the mame.ini file.  This will force MAME to use default settings.  Something I've found that's very helpful is to load up MAME32 and use its GUI to set resolutions and other settings for each game.  The changes are saved in the cfg folder, and regular MAME will use them.

all good advice.

[ARTIFACT]

switchres 1
hwstretch 0

try that...

it will attempt to display each game to its original resolution.
SOME games may appear stretched/wrong, but just make a game_name.ini file with this option set to 0 for each special case to tweak each game settings
MOST of the time, this will just work...

It works like this on my 27" Multisync monitor (pro video editing monitor) plugged via VGA > BNC Leads (RGB)

If you don't set these things, MAME will try to "blur" and stretch all your games to a single resolution (640x or something very different from original game res)

I hope this helps!!!

[rockin_rick]

Are you using direct draw (or wanting to)?  (not sure if this is the preferred/desired setting with a VGA monitor...)  But if you are, you have to modify mame.ini to do this, changing the mame options in Mala will not work (at least with the version of Mala that I'm using).  I struggled with this for a while trying to get mame to look good on a CGA.

Rick
 

[ARTIFACT]

Good point - I forgot to say

change D3D to DDRAW

and see if it works better


Again though... on a "case by case" basis, you can use D3D if it works best for SPECIFIC games via the individual INI files.
from my experience, and even as someone who loves D3D "technically", I get "blurry" picture no matter what options I set using D3D... They COULD get D3D "SHARP" technically, but for some reason the "Resampling" filters they program in there just doesn't look right compared to the DDRAW + SWITCHRES + NO HWSTRETCH

Give us an update! Good luck!

[javeryh]

Thanks guys.  I've been out of pocket for a few days but I will give this stuff a try soon. 

Also, my monitor is no longer displaying anything (other than an "out of range" message).  It started when I changed the resolution of the GUI (MaLa with a gamelauncher skin) to something my monitor obviously cannot handle (I was just messing with random settings to try and get the games to display properly).  Now when I reboot the computer I see the initial "Windows XP" boot up logo with the bar underneath but by the time I hear the chimes the monitor is already displaying the "out of range" message).  I set MaLa to be launched upon boot up.  How do I get the picture back in Windows?  I can't change any settings or do anything until I resolve this issue!!  HELP!!!

[bluevolume]

Boot the machine in Safe Mode, then uninstall the video driver.  Reboot.  Re-install video driver.

[javeryh]

Boot the machine in Safe Mode, then uninstall the video driver.  Reboot.  Re-install video driver.

1.  How do I boot in safe mode? (Press F1 or something?)
2.  I do not have a video card installed on this computer - does that matter?

Thanks!

[ahofle]

Safe mode: http://www.pchell.com/support/safemode.shtml

If you are still having trouble after the advice in this thread and your monitor only supports VGA/SVGA resolutions (640x480 and 800x600 respectively), then you may just want to run everything at 800x600 with hardware stretch (or use Direct3D) for simplicity.  You aren't going to get arcade accurate video with those resolutions in most cases anyway.  Also, obviously, you can't run any resolutions above or below that or you'll get the out of sync msg.

[javeryh]

OK, I made some progress last night.  ahofle hooked me up with some great advice about getting XP to output at 640x480 so I am now able to navigate windows on the screen.  However, the games were still displaying at a weird resolution when launched (the front end looks fine).  Everything was super pixelated just like before I lost the picture.

Next, I took ARTIFACT's advice and started playing with the mame.ini file.  I changed my settings to

switchres 1
hwstretch 0

and nothing seemed to happen.  Then I changed d3d to ddraw and I started to see some progress!  The game launched (I was using Street Fighter vs. Capcom for testing purposes for no particular reason) and the picture looked perfect... except it only occupied about 25% of the screen - dead center.  I then went back and changed the settings back to

switchres 0
hwstretch 1

and tried again (so now the only thing changed is d3d to ddraw).  The game launched, the picture looked good but it wasn't centered on the screen.  On the left I could see the edge of the viewable area but it was curved and angled... I've attached a rough drawing of what I was looking at.  I'm not sure if I need to play with the monitor settings or the mame.ini settings some more.  Any ideas?  We are making progress!!   

[ahofle]

Try:

switchres 1
hwstretch 1
resolution 640x480

[javeryh]

Try:

switchres 1
hwstretch 1
resolution 640x480

This seems to have done the trick!  The picture is completely rectangular and fills the screen (XP still looks off and so does MaLa but hopefully I can fix that later... well the MaLa gamelist display at least). 

With these settings enabled I'm guessing I'm forcing every game I run to display in 640x480 mode - is this accurate?  Are there any games that look totally messed up running in this resolution to the untrained eye?  I also was able to launch Popeye for the first time ever on the cabinet - every previous attempt I was greeted with an "out of range" error message... it looks a little different than I remember it (not as sharp) but I guess that's the tradeoff, right?

Finally, if I rotate some games will this mess anything up?  Vertical games like Pac-man, Frogger, etc. would be running at 480x640, right?

Thanks for the help!   

[ahofle]

Yes, basically those settings force everything to 640x480 and stretch the picture to fit.
For Popeye and a few others (Spy Hunter) games that run with about 480 lines, change the hwstretch from 1 to 0 in a specific popeye.ini/spyhunt.ini file.  That should give you a pretty much perfect picture on those because your monitor runs at the exact native resolution those games need (VGA).  Tron should also look perfect on your monitor running at 640x480 (rotated).

I don't have any experience rotating, but I'm pretty sure you just keep the settings the same, but set the rotate flag in MAME.

[javeryh]

Yes, basically those settings force everything to 640x480 and stretch the picture to fit.
For Popeye and a few others (Spy Hunter) games that run with about 480 lines, change the hwstretch from 1 to 0 in a specific popeye.ini/spyhunt.ini file.  That should give you a pretty much perfect picture on those because your monitor runs at the exact native resolution those games need (VGA).  Tron should also look perfect on your monitor running at 640x480 (rotated).

I don't have any experience rotating, but I'm pretty sure you just keep the settings the same, but set the rotate flag in MAME.

Thanks.  Where do I find the popeye.ini file?

[ahofle]

In the 'ini' directory.  If it's not there, just create one and add those lines to override mame.ini.