The NEW Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Main => Monitor/Video Forum => Topic started by: Jakobud on August 07, 2002, 01:30:02 am
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Maybe I'm just not getting something here.. but it make the playable screen area quite a bit smaller when using some sort of bezel....
I'm not knockin the mame developers. Its definatly a cool idea to really emulating the real deal. Too bad you have to sacrifice so much screen area though. I guess there is no other way to do it.
Jakobud
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what you mean???i cut my bezel..and i get all the viewable screen area :)
use happ bezel..they are just very pretty :) also what was the problem here? ???
did not quiet understand...
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what you mean???i cut my bezel..and i get all the viewable screen area :)
use happ bezel..they are just very pretty :) also what was the problem here? ???
did not quiet understand...
SNAAAKE,
Jakobud is talking about the new artwork handling in MAME 0.61 which allows you to view bezel artwork around the game playfield 8)
Jakobud,
True, there is no other real way to do it. I agree, it sacrifices a lot of screen area on a 17" or smaller monitor. It also eats a lot of CPU cycles on a slower PC.
Keep in mind that a lot of die-hard MAMEr's (some on this board, not myself, though) are playing on a 27" or a 31" TV. Given that many of these games only used a 19" screen in the actual arcade, the actual screen area lost is not that bad.
What I am excited about for vertical games on a horizontal (PC) monitor is the image shown here:
http://www.fraggersxtreme.com/museum/Temp/mame1943.jpg
This does not reduce the screen size at all, but uses the bezel artwork to fill in the "black" areas on the side of vertical games that is otherwise unused.
NOTE: This feature is not directly supported in MAME 0.61. I had to manually crop the bezel artwork image and modify the 1943.art file (thanks Smitdogg ;D) to get it to work.
I have posted this on the www.mame.net board and Aaron Giles has indicated that he will add a "Crop to 4:3" option to the artwork handling in a future build. No promises on when and please don't pester him about it.
Just my thoughts!!!
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I too think the new artwork system is cool, but the ones which reduce the game screen are not good for general 'playing'. Even with a massive monitor I would still prefer to have a larger playing area.
Tiger-Heli's idea is certainly very good, as it doesn't reduce the playing area.
The Battlezone bezel is superb, although I find a massive performance hit on my (pretty quick) PC.
Again, just my opinion :)
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I too think the new artwork system is cool, but the ones which reduce the game screen are not good for general 'playing'. Even with a massive monitor I would still prefer to have a larger playing area.
Tiger-Heli's idea is certainly very good, as it doesn't reduce the playing area.
The Battlezone bezel is superb, although I find a massive performance hit on my (pretty quick) PC.
Again, just my opinion :)
Thanks for the compliments.
For BattleZone, use R36B12 or previous (before alpha blending). You have to use the old artwork files (and samples?), but I get 100% speed at 0 frameskip on a pentium 200 MMX.
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Some really make the game thought
Warlords is MUCH better then before.
Redbaron is great!
I have a 27" monitor and I don't notice the size decrease on most games. I will definately be removing some though.
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Agreed, the overlays/backdrops certainly make some games look incredible. Again, performance seems to be greatly affected on my setup tho :(
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Agreed, the overlays/backdrops certainly make some games look incredible. Again, performance seems to be greatly affected on my setup tho :(
Just wanted to add a note on performance here for those who are not totally immersed in MAME.
Several recent changes have affected MAME's performance.
First, alpha-blending (transparency effects) has been added to many drivers.
Also, the new artwork appears to be redrawn with each screen refresh, slowing performance.
There was a move from sound samples to discrete sound emulation, which slows performance.
Also, the method of "blitting" to the screen was also changed and 8-bit color modes were dropped.
The net effect of this is that more complex games should be faster, while older and simpler games may take a significant speed hit.
The ideal solution would be for MAME to use less sophisticated routines for older games and more complex routines for newer ones.
Why doesn't MAME do this?
Here's my opinions:
First, MAME is not really designed to make the games play as fast as possible on as minimal hardware as possible. It is designed for accuracy and realism to the original arcade board.
Next, MAME is designed for portability (there are versions of MAME for cellular phones and digital cameras) and expandability (it wouldn't support 3,300 games if you had to choose which core functions to use with each game).
Finally, if you are a MAME dev and writing code for MAME, you probally don't sweat spending $1000 for a 2.2 Ghz processor, 512M of Ram, 128M GeForce 4 Ti 4200 video, and 7200 RPM harddrive. (I can't blame them). And if the above is your development system, you may not notice that Pac-Man doesn't play very well on a Pentium 90 anymore.
In closing, before you take the above as pure jealousy, there is another justification for supporting the more complex games: If your 2.4 Ghz Pentium 4 isn't fast enough to play Stun Runner, there's not much you can do. If your Pentium 90 won't play PacMan, you can always upgrade or use a previous version of MAME. Therefore, it make sense to optimize the most complex games to get them playable on near-current hardware.
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lol you guys kill me with your puny system specs...
if you can afford it, treat yourself to a new system.
I good emu cab should have about a 900mhz or higher i it with 256+ megs of ram. That way you can enjoy all of the newer emulators and never have to worry about speed issues in mame. You can get away with a smaller system but with computer prices lowering all the time, I wouldn't.
;)
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First, MAME is not really designed to make the games play as fast as possible on as minimal hardware as possible. It is designed for accuracy and realism to the original arcade board.
This should be stressed more: "Mame is not designed to make games play fast, period. It is designed for accuracy and realism to the original arcade board; playability and speed are side issues."
Next, MAME is designed for portability (there are versions of MAME for cellular phones and digital cameras) and expandability (it wouldn't support 3,300 games if you had to choose which core functions to use with each game).
Agree.
Finally, if you are a MAME dev and writing code for MAME, you probally don't sweat spending $1000 for a 2.2 Ghz processor, 512M of Ram, 128M GeForce 4 Ti 4200 video, and 7200 RPM harddrive. (I can't blame them). And if the above is your development system, you may not notice that Pac-Man doesn't play very well on a Pentium 90 anymore.
There are at least a couple mameDev with only a Pentium 200mhz or below.
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lol you guys kill me with your puny system specs...
if you can afford it, treat yourself to a new system.
I good emu cab should have about a 900mhz or higher i it with 256+ megs of ram. That way you can enjoy all of the newer emulators and never have to worry about speed issues in mame. You can get away with a smaller system but with computer prices lowering all the time, I wouldn't.
;)
Tsk tsk HC. you know most people's arcade cabinet PC is an older PC due to upgrading their normal PC to something new....
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puny specs my cab will have amd 1800+
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lol you guys kill me with your puny system specs...
if you can afford it, treat yourself to a new system.
I good emu cab should have about a 900mhz or higher i it with 256+ megs of ram. That way you can enjoy all of the newer emulators and never have to worry about speed issues in mame. You can get away with a smaller system but with computer prices lowering all the time, I wouldn't.
;)
Tsk tsk HC. you know most people's arcade cabinet PC is an older PC due to upgrading their normal PC to something new....
So your telling me that people actually spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars building/converting a cab just to cheap out on an extra 300 or so to build a killer pc to put in it? That seems kinda --I'm attempting to get by the auto-censor and should be beaten after I re-read the rules-- backwards to me.