Tiny Screen

[Chazz]

Hey all!!

I'm sure this has been covered a million times, but for some of my games the screen is centered and very tiny (Donkey Kong, Pac-man).  

Is there some setting I should have set in MAME?  I'd rather not use AdvMAME as I found it very slow, and I never did get it to work right.  

Can someone tell me what settings I should have in MAME to get the games to be full screen?  

If I have to use AdvMAME is there a guide somewhere on how to get it to work?  

I'm using a "ATI Xpert 98 Pro AGP Rage Pro Turbo 8mb" video card.  Any help would be great!!

~ ChaZz

[jdsabin1]

Chazz,

Sounds like the exact same problem I was having a few days ago. A few questions though ... is this an arcade cabinet (i.e. - Not a PC)? Are you using an arcade monitor?

I am using an actual arcade monitor and my video card that I WAS using (integrated onboard video .. some VIA hybrid junk) was doing exactly what you describe. I went to provantage.com and bought a PCI Trident Blade 3D video card for $21, slapped it in, moved to AdvanceMAME and never looked back. The vertical games on my horizontal now look amazing.

I've found that the video card really drives everything in MAME as far as making sure video works correctly. I have a Duron 700 and AdvanceMAME is blazingly fast.

I hope that helps some.

-Jeff  

[Chazz]

I'm using an actual arcade monitor.  I was told that the ATI card I'm using should work nicley with MAME.

[Vectoraster]

I know you aren't all the keen on Advance Mame, but you gotta give it another try.  It's amazing when you get Smash TV running on Advance Mame and an Arcade Monitor.  Or keep MAME 37b16 handy to run tweaked modes for the games you mentioned.  Donkey Kong never looked better.

[jdsabin1]

I do use AdvanceMAME and I agree, when it works it's great. I am having a problem though and nobody on the AdvanceMAME mailing list seems to be able to solve it so I thought I would give it a shot here. Can anyone help me?

Using ADVV, one of my available modes is 640X480. If I have device_video set to 'auto' in my advmame.rc file, I can start Tempest and it sets the video mode automatically to 640X480 and looks great. The problem is when I go to start several other games (The Simpsons for instance), I get an 'Unable To Start Video Emulation' error.

If I change device_video from 'auto' to 'vbeline/vbe3 vgaline', all of those games that didn't work like 'The Simpsons' now work fine but Tempest (which still works) will not work in 640X480 and it looks like total crap. The   640X480 mode isn't available to me either when I check video in game and I assume it's because I took svga out of the picture(?). The only video modes I see are the non-interlaced ones.

How can I get Tempest to work in 640X480 but yet still be able to run the other games also?

I am so confused and my brain is fried from messing with this for hours now.

Any help would be so appreciated....

-Jeff
jdsabin1@mchsi.com

[Ambrocade]

I do use AdvanceMAME and I agree, when it works it's great. I am having a problem though and nobody on the AdvanceMAME mailing list seems to be able to solve it so I thought I would give it a shot here. Can anyone help me?

Using ADVV, one of my available modes is 640X480. If I have device_video set to 'auto' in my advmame.rc file, I can start Tempest and it sets the video mode automatically to 640X480 and looks great. The problem is when I go to start several other games (The Simpsons for instance), I get an 'Unable To Start Video Emulation' error.

If I change device_video from 'auto' to 'vbeline/vbe3 vgaline', all of those games that didn't work like 'The Simpsons' now work fine but Tempest (which still works) will not work in 640X480 and it looks like total crap.

How can I get Tempest to work in 640X480 but yet still be able to run the other games also?

I can't guarantee this will work with the latest version of AdvancedMAME/Menu since I am still using the older pre "rc" config files.  I'm still using version 0.55.  I imagine it will work though...

Anyway, I wanted to be able to use the svgaline drivers since they were supposedly faster.  They seemed to work fine on my Voodoo3 card if I used scale2x which I liked anyway.  Problem is some of the games ran to slow when using scale2x so I shut off that option for those games.  When I did this though, the display showed a black horizontal line right through the middle of the game.

The way I got around this problem was to set up multiple configurations for AdvanceMame in AdvanceMenu.  I imagine you could do the same.  Actually I even use multiple versions of AdvanceMAME which integrate seamlessly with AdvanceMENU.  

For example, if you like Asteroids, you know the sound has been broken for quite some time and if you like OutRun or various other Sega 16 games, they have been better in older releases.  I use 37b6 for Asteroids and Outrun (I believe I'm not looking at it right now) and I use 37b16 for certain games that don't work right with 0.55.  I also have a vbe version of 0.55 simply by changing the config files.  I have my main roms in the /roms directory and then I have separate directories for other configs.. i.e. - /roms/37b6   /roms/37b16  /roms/vbe etc.  I keep the executables in separate directories also.  I can share /cfg and /hi directories.

Yes, it takes a little longer to setup but with these simple concepts, you can customize each game to work with whichever version of the emu or config that works best and it is totaly integrated in AdvanceMENU.

I guess I should mention that I define each as a separate emulator in AdvanceMENU and I define a group "Favorites" so that I only see the games I normally play.  To see all my favorites, I have to "show emulator" MAME, 37b6, 37b17 and VBE.

I may have made this sound more complicated than it really is but I hope you get what I am talking about.

[jdsabin1]

I do get what you are talking about and I very much appreciate your help. Actually, if I can use separate advmame.rc files (which is the configuration file for AdvanceMAME) I know I could get this to work. Am I understanding you correctly that I can do that? I could then use one advmame.rc file for the non-svga line games, and the svga advmame.rc file for the games that need the SVGA driver.

This could be really cool but I will reread your message a bunch to make sure I understand you correctly.

Thanks again for your response!

-Jeff

I can't guarantee this will work with the latest version of AdvancedMAME/Menu since I am still using the older pre "rc" config files.

[Bugfinder]

I do get what you are talking about and I very much appreciate your help. Actually, if I can use separate advmame.rc files (which is the configuration file for AdvanceMAME) I know I could get this to work. Am I understanding you correctly that I can do that? I could then use one advmame.rc file for the non-svga line games, and the svga advmame.rc file for the games that need the SVGA driver.

This could be really cool but I will reread your message a bunch to make sure I understand you correctly.

Thanks again for your response!

-Jeff

That's correct Jeff, if you're having trouble to make one single game / a group of games with a common setting (in this case a 640x480 resolution) then the best thing you can do is to setup a different directory for those game(s).

Suppose you use everything inside "c:\advmame" so you will need to create another directory named 640x480. In "c:\advmame" you put AdvanceMENU and normal AdvanceMAME which works with almost all games, and in "c:\advmame\640x480" you make your alternative setup with another copy of AdvanceMAME and the ROMs of the game(s) you want to play in this specific configuration. But to avoid duplicates (because this game will appear in both emulators) you should move tempest.zip from the main ROMs directory to the alternative one (in "c:\advmame\640x480\roms") and when running AdvanceMENU, press F4 and select Only present.

Try this... Report any problems in our list.

Bugfinder (Filipe Estima)

[Ambrocade]

I do get what you are talking about and I very much appreciate your help. Actually, if I can use separate advmame.rc files (which is the configuration file for AdvanceMAME) I know I could get this to work. Am I understanding you correctly that I can do that? I could then use one advmame.rc file for the non-svga line games, and the svga advmame.rc file for the games that need the SVGA driver.

This could be really cool but I will reread your message a bunch to make sure I understand you correctly.

Thanks again for your response!

-Jeff

Yes, you got it!    

It does take a little while longer to setup but the possibilites are endless with this type of setup.  I will be building a cocktail cabinet with standard res monitor and I will use this type of setup once again.  Like I said previously, I already use this type of setup on my other cab.

Good Luck!