In Game Setup

[danfman]

I recently upgraded from Mame .126 to the latest .131 including the High score/nag screen patch.  The roms work well, the high scores are retained, the nag screens are gone, but I have 1 problem.

When I bring up the In Game Setup menu to try to change the dip switch settings, instead of seeing the menu I'm use to seeing, all the letters in the words have been replaced by white squares. 

So instead of seeing the typical,

Input (general)
Input (this game)

I now see something like,

00000 00000000
00000 00000000000

(But instead of 0 they are squares)

If you've ever taken a word document with special font and opened it up on a computer without that font loaded you see weird characters.  Other than being unreadable the menu still appears to be functional (i.e. I can enter sub-menus and back out).  This happens with any rom I try.

[Tafoid]

I recently upgraded from Mame .126 to the latest .131 including the High score/nag screen patch.  The roms work well, the high scores are retained, the nag screens are gone, but I have 1 problem.

When I bring up the In Game Setup menu to try to change the dip switch settings, instead of seeing the menu I'm use to seeing, all the letters in the words have been replaced by white squares. 

So instead of seeing the typical,

Input (general)
Input (this game)

I now see something like,

00000 00000000
00000 00000000000

(But instead of 0 they are squares)

If you've ever taken a word document with special font and opened it up on a computer without that font loaded you see weird characters.  Other than being unreadable the menu still appears to be functional (i.e. I can enter sub-menus and back out).  This happens with any rom I try.

Font problems with can usually be fixed by clearing the font cache file that MAME creates (ui.BDC).  Somewhere along the line - it likely got corrupted.  Delete that one file and restart MAME.  Barring that, you might check your video drivers or DirectX installs.

[jasonbar]

My text displays properly but I do I get this problem if I'm running MAME full-screen & alt-tab to some other application & then alt-tab back.  It gets fixed when I quit MAME & re-run it.  (and breaks again if I alt-tab again to another application).

Are you doing that, by any chance?

-Jason

[moonchilddave]

I'm having exactly the same problem.  Compiled .131 with the hiscore and nag screen diff.  Was running stock .131 before.  Now my compiled version has the blocks in the in game menu as well.  I'm not running anything else as the computer boots right into Mamewah.

[moonchilddave]

Font problems with can usually be fixed by clearing the font cache file that MAME creates (ui.BDC).  Somewhere along the line - it likely got corrupted.  Delete that one file and restart MAME.  Barring that, you might check your video drivers or DirectX installs.

I'm still trying to figure this one out... quite annoying.  Everything worked fine in the original version.  I've looked for the "ui.BDC" file but can't seem to find it... where does that file generally live?  I'm running the latest DirectX, but think it's only the runtime.  Do I need the Direct X SDK for compiling MAME?

[Ummon]

It's in the diff folder. I use wordpad to read it.

[danfman]

I have been experimenting for a few days and have come up with the following info,

I can download and and run Mame no problem (font is fine).  If I compile Mame without the 'high score' patch, Mame runs no problem.  If I patch Mame with the 'high score' patch then the font is screwed up in the 'Game Setup' menu. 

I have two PCs, my everyday PC which is hooked up to the internet and receives regular updates.  My other is in my arcade cab with a busted network card.  Both are loaded with the latest copy of DirectX.  When I run Mame with the high score patch on my everyday PC it works fine (font is fine), but when I take the same copy and load it to my arcade cabinet PC it has the font problem. 

I have looked everywhere for ui.BDC but cannot find it (before or after compiling).  The closest file I can find is C:\Mame 131 with hiscore patch\obj\windows\mame\temp.BDC  I also see no diff folder.

I have attached pictures of what the problem looks like.

Questions,

1.  The compilation works with 1 PC but not the other.  I have copied all the files in C:\Windows\Fonts  What is missing from the other PC?

2.  If I compile without the 'high score' patch - no problem.  If I compile with the 'high score' patch then the font problem arises.  What does the 'high score' patch change that would effect the font?

[moonchilddave]

I don't have a "diff" folder either (where is that located, under the mame directory?).  If you use wordpad to read the file, what exactly is in it?  I went ahead and created it under the mame directory (along with memcard, sta, and inp which I didn't have either), but nothing is being dumped into the diff directory.  Looking at the patch file, it appears that directory is the directory to save hard drive image difference files.

I just tried adding the lines to my mame.ini file that allow you to disable parts of the patch.  It looks like the problem lies somewhere in the patch code for the nag screen, because if I use the following in my mame.ini the font problem / block character issue goes away:

#
# DISABLE PATCH OPTIONS
#
disable_hiscore_patch   0
disable_nagscreen_patch   1
disable_loading_patch   0

As soon as you enable the code for the nag screen patch, problem reoccurs.

danfman: Just out of curiosity, what kind of video card (and driver version) are you using on the system that has this issue?

[headkaze]

.bdf fonts are *not* Windows fonts so you do not copy them into C:\Windows. You do not need to have a .bdf because the default is compiled into the executable. Mr Do has some .bdf fonts you can download and place into your Mame's root folder to change the default UI font. I'm not sure if it will solve your problem or not but you can try it by downloading them from here

Some other things to try are to open up your mame.ini and change the "video" value to be "ddraw" or "gdi" or "d3d".

Another suggestion is to download the latest video driver for your video card and install it.

[danfman]

I changed the "video" value from d3d to ddraw.  Now everything works.  Thanks.

[Ummon]

Hmmmm. That might suggest video drivers. Or that you need to adjust the settings for D3D in them. D3D is necessary for some of the artwork features, for example the scanline effects, which don't display properly with ddraw+hwstretch.

[moonchilddave]

Same result here... ddraw and it works.  However, I did find that I did not actually have the latest drivers installed.  So I installed the latest and the menu now works along with d3d.  However, now I have a new issue that the sound in some games stutters badly where it didn't before with the older driver.

[danfman]

I also updated the driver (most changes seemed insignificant), but the only thing that seemed to make a difference was changing "video" value from d3d to ddraw. 

Hope this helps others going forward.  Pay it forward.  Good luck

[speedklz]

Did we ever find a true fix for this?