ArcadeVGA M.A.M.E. Resolution Tool

[Minwah]

I've just uploaded my new ArcadeVGA resolution utility, for those who may want to try it.

Please bear in mind that I haven't done an awful lot of real testing (its mostly theory), so please back up your existing INI files just in case.

Let me know of any bugs, suggestions etc.

http://mamewah.mameworld.net/downloads.html

[rampy]

minwah... may I inquire as to what it specifically does?

Does it vary dramatically from what tom speirs utility does?

I'm curious, not intending to be at all jerky (for a change =P )

rampy

[vitaflo]

Sweet!  I was just going to PM you and ask you when this might be out.

Downloading and testing now...

[Minwah]

minwah... may I inquire as to what it specifically does?

Does it vary dramatically from what tom speirs utility does?

I'm curious, not intending to be at all jerky (for a change =P )

Well if you are happy with the tool you use now, in all honesty there's not much point changing.

Basically, it shows you more of whats going on.  So you can see what resolutions MAME uses, what resolutions are available, and once you have hit the Auto-Select button, you can see which games use which res...

So one reason I wrote it was out of curiosity.  But also because I wanted to add something; my monitor it set up horizontally and is adjusted primarily for horizontal games (at a guess 240-256 lines).  So when I play say Pacman or Galaga at native res (well native but horizontally, 352x288), the top/bottom gets cut off.  My program gives the option to do something about these games, eg run them at 640x480 -hwstretch.  I didn't just want to remove say 288 line resolutions from the AVGA list, since these come in handy sometimes (maybe for certain games which use <288 lines).

One other useful thing is that if you want to manually select or edit a res/options etc., you can do so before creating the INI files, and apply to either a specific game, all games with a certain res, or all games with the same orientation.

Feedback very welcome if you decide to try it

[vitaflo]

Just tried it out real quick.  It's quite awesome, and just about exactly what I was looking for in a tool like this.  Few comments though...

- Does this save your previous settings?  Doesn't seem like it does when I quit and came back (unless I'm missing something).  What I'd really like is to use it like an ini manager for arcadevga.  For example, I set up Darius to a smaller resolution because 1024x768 is out of range on my monitor.  I then had to turn on hwstretch and then did effect sharp so it wasn't as fuzzy.  Then I generated all the ini's.  I quit the program and looked at Darius again and there was no info in the popup window.  It'd be real cool if it just read the current ini file so I could manage it later if need be and remember what the settings are.

- Related to that is that it'd be cool to have the ability to just generate an ini file for one game in particular.  It seems to me you can change one game's parameters, but in order to save it to the ini file you need to generate all the ini's for all the games you have.  Since loading up the program doesn't load in any existing ini info, this could be dangerous yes?  I know there are times when I play a game I haven't played and realize I should turn off triplebuffer or soemthing because its running to slow.  It'd be nice if I could just load this up, change it for the one game, save that one ini, exit and go back to playing.

- I'd also a way to see ALL games for all resolutions in the  middle pane.  If there's a way i couldn't figure it out.  This sorta goes w/ the above.  I know Killer Instict is running slow, I want to turn off triplebuffer and vsync, but I have no idea what res KI runs at, so it takes me a while to find it.  Having a list of all would be nice.

- Lastly, I'd like the middle pane not to center the text of each column.  Being a graphic designer, centered text = no-no.  I'm sure most people don't care, but if there was a config file I could change that (or a right click view option or something) I'd be much happier.

Other than that the program is quite excellent.  I'm sure as I play around with it more, I'll have more comments.  Really cool though.  Great job!

[Minwah]

1- Does this save your previous settings?  Doesn't seem like it does when I quit and came back (unless I'm missing something).  What I'd really like is to use it like an ini manager for arcadevga.  For example, I set up Darius to a smaller resolution because 1024x768 is out of range on my monitor.  I then had to turn on hwstretch and then did effect sharp so it wasn't as fuzzy.  Then I generated all the ini's.  I quit the program and looked at Darius again and there was no info in the popup window.  It'd be real cool if it just read the current ini file so I could manage it later if need be and remember what the settings are.

2- Related to that is that it'd be cool to have the ability to just generate an ini file for one game in particular.  It seems to me you can change one game's parameters, but in order to save it to the ini file you need to generate all the ini's for all the games you have.  Since loading up the program doesn't load in any existing ini info, this could be dangerous yes?  I know there are times when I play a game I haven't played and realize I should turn off triplebuffer or soemthing because its running to slow.  It'd be nice if I could just load this up, change it for the one game, save that one ini, exit and go back to playing.

3- I'd also a way to see ALL games for all resolutions in the  middle pane.  If there's a way i couldn't figure it out.  This sorta goes w/ the above.  I know Killer Instict is running slow, I want to turn off triplebuffer and vsync, but I have no idea what res KI runs at, so it takes me a while to find it.  Having a list of all would be nice.

4- Lastly, I'd like the middle pane not to center the text of each column.  Being a graphic designer, centered text = no-no.  I'm sure most people don't care, but if there was a config file I could change that (or a right click view option or something) I'd be much happier.

1- Well it remembers your settings for the program itself...but no, it doesn't read the existing INI's.  This would be a pretty cool feature, I'll have a think about how difficult it would be to add...

2- Good idea, I'll add the option to create individual INI's, or INI's for all games with [whatever] resolution.

3- OK, I see that this could be useful, I'll see what I can do...

4- That's just picky!