GroovyMame for arcade monitors version 0.146u4_013f

[bent98]

Extended display identification data (EDID) is a data structure provided by a digital display to describe its capabilities to a video source (e.g. graphics card, Set-top box). It is what enables a modern personal computer to know what kinds of monitors are connected to it. EDID is defined by a standard published by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA). The EDID includes manufacturer name and serial number, product type, phosphor or filter type, timings supported by the display, display size, luminance data and (for digital displays only) pixel mapping data.

What ATI video cards don't have EDID? I'd like to see if it solves the HS problem.

[krick]

What ATI video cards don't have EDID? I'd like to see if it solves the HS problem.

I thought that EDID was in the monitor and the video card driver could query it using Plug and Play API in Windows.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

What ATI video cards don't have EDID? I'd like to see if it solves the HS problem.

I thought that EDID was in the monitor and the video card driver could query it using Plug and Play API in Windows.

this is correct. edid is generated by the monitor, queried by windows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_display_identification_data

[Calamity]

What ATI video cards don't have EDID? I'd like to see if it solves the HS problem.

It's a monitor's feature actually, as they're saying.

You'd better try the HS workaround I posted above.

[bent98]

I'm testing a possible workaround for the HS issue. Basically the idea is to only create 32 bpp modes. As Windows reports 16 and 32 bpps modes as different ones, by doing that we are dividing by two the total number of modes in the system, possibly allowing HS to start. I can confirm it works with   v6.5 for xp64. If any of you are willing to try, please post your crt_emudriver version and for which xp system it is, as can only test this one version by now.

So use your own custom vmmaker.ini file but make sure to add this line (see the vmmaker.ini included):

   Only32BPPModes = 1

Apart from that, I've re-included the RestrictedModes feature to restrict most of the driver's native modes to help saving space. Though this works fine in 6.5 xp32/64 and possibly 9.3 xp64, I'm suspecting it could cause some blue screens on 9.3 xp32, so be carefull and in the worst case reinstall the driver.

cotmm68030 tested this on 9.3 xp64(?) and had to lower the total number of modes to 100 to make HS load.

Finally, be aware some emulators can only use 16 bbps modes, so this trick will affect them, as is the case of neoraine for what I'm seeing.

What is 16bbps? 16 bit color?

[Calamity]

What is 16bbps? 16 bit color?

Sure, 16 bits per pixel.

[jimmy2x2x]

Any idea why these 2 games select 640x480 when they are 320x240 games?

Brave Blade
Aero Fighters Special

Should I need to enable throttle to get juno first running at 100%? (runs at 200% with throttle disabled)

[Calamity]

Any idea why these 2 games select 640x480 when they are 320x240 games?

Brave Blade
Aero Fighters Special

Should I need to enable throttle to get juno first running at 100%? (runs at 200% with throttle disabled)

According to maws those games are 640x480 indeed. Paste your logs so we can have a look at the 200% speed issue.

[jimmy2x2x]

juno first log http://pastebin.com/PLQhEged

weird about those other games, they show as 320x240 in game information when running the game and that looks like the correct resolution to me.

[Calamity]

For juno first you need to enable -redraw option, as it originally runs at 30 Hz.

For the others, have a look at your logs and see what logic its using to pick that resolution, remind to use the -md 4 param. Here aerofgt reports 320x224. Are you setting your rotate options right?

[jimmy2x2x]

Thanks Calamity, just to clarify:

I only enable -redraw for Juno First (and any other games running at 30hz) or can I enable for all games?

I have built my own version of Groovymame from the supplied diffs, is the -md 4 param enabled in this build (did not work here)
I think I must have used one of the supplied binaries for the -md 4 option previosly, I will check next time

The rom for Aero Fighter Special is: aerofgts.zip (brvblade.zip is the other, same oberservation)

when you load the rom, press tab and select game information it says 320x240, groovymame selects 640x480
is the res incorrect or maybe the game uses resolution switching?

[Calamity]

Yes, I've tested aerofgts and it switches resolutions: 640x480 -> 256x240 -> 320x240 so you need to enable the -changeres option.

You can enable -redraw globally as it won't hurt games that don't need it. Same with -changeres.

[jimmy2x2x]

ok I have enabled both options

Juno First is still running at 200% with throttle off

Aero Fighters Special looks like it is staying in 640x480 res

do you have different results?

Thanks

[Calamity]

Here juno first runs 100%, and the others change resolutions as expected. I'm suspecting either your binary is missing the groovymame patches (your logs have no mention to the switchres part) or you have the -modeline option disabled?.

[Gray_Area]

The 32 mode limit for nVidia cards is not something that I've tested myself, but that read in the great documentation on different video cards made by Sailorsat for the German site.

Indeed, I've got an nVidia in this laptop and have defined about 100 modes using Powerstrip, that after all has to use the driver resources to make them available, so it seems likely that the driver itself let us define that amount of modes. But... the problem is that, like with Ati cards, there are two registry keys used for defining a video mode, first one is just the xres,yres,vfreq thing, second one is where you actually define the custom timings. The problem is that the driver can't read more than 32 of these second registry keys, so you can have many video modes but probably can't define a custom timing for more than 32 of them...

I guess you'd have to test it. If that isn't the way, then somehow AdvanceMAME dynamically programmed the video board without 'a list of modes'. It wonder whether svgawin works with Vista or 7.

[Calamity]

I guess you'd have to test it. If that isn't the way, then somehow AdvanceMAME dynamically programmed the video board without 'a list of modes'. It wonder whether svgawin works with Vista or 7.

Sure, AdvanceMame used its own video driver to handle harware directly.

[jimmy2x2x]

When I use this:

groovymame64_0142.012o.exe.7z 10.64 Meg   April 29 2011 21:28:30

Juno First runs at 100%

Aero Fighters Special still seems locked to 640x480 (at least I think so, looks interlaced and was expecting non interlaced in gameplay demo)

also my screen is displayed upside down for all games and I cant seem to resolve this (its fine in my base 142+hiscore+gm diff build)

aero fighters log http://pastebin.com/RV54F5UC

mame.ini http://pastebin.com/8xVr4ybE

[Calamity]

Yes, I'm seeing the same issue here, I'll have a fix for it later today.

[Calamity]

Aero Fighters Special still seems locked to 640x480 (at least I think so, looks interlaced and was expecting non interlaced in gameplay demo)

also my screen is displayed upside down for all games and I cant seem to resolve this (its fine in my base 142+hiscore+gm diff build)

New groovymame32_0142.012o_test.rar uploaded that should fix those issues.
Notice that' I've changed the default direction that monitor is supposed to be rotated.

[jimmy2x2x]

Juno First runs at the correct speed

Monitor rotation is now correct

Aero Fighters Special http://pastebin.com/w94cSsHi / Brave Blade http://pastebin.com/SjC67dFR still seems to be locked to 640x480

MKChamp options are present in the newly generated .ini but hiscore support seems to be broken in this build

Thanks Calamity.

[kalars123]

What are the res for those games? Could it be gmame is defaulting to 640x480 because it cant find a sutiable resolution

[jimmy2x2x]

I think its 320x240 In game

If I force that res from command line, in game looks perfect to me

and thats the res listed in 'game information' in game for each game.

[kalars123]

Im betting that thats whats happening, is that gmame is defaulting to 640x480 because it cant find a sutable resolution, fimd another 320x240 game and see if it does 640x480

[jimmy2x2x]

ddonpach runs at 320x240, along with countless others

[kalars123]

Im out of ideas then lol, guess its something calamity will have to figure out

[jimmy2x2x]

Thanks anyway!

You could try running 'aero fighters special' or 'brave blade' see if your results are the same as mine if you like?

[kalars123]

mine actually selects 760x240 lol, it's got the correct A/R though centered in the middle of the screen vertical like pacman or galaga.

[Calamity]

Juno First runs at the correct speed

Monitor rotation is now correct

Aero Fighters Special http://pastebin.com/w94cSsHi / Brave Blade http://pastebin.com/SjC67dFR still seems to be locked to 640x480

MKChamp options are present in the newly generated .ini but hiscore support seems to be broken in this build

Thanks Calamity.

New test version uploaded, should fix aerofgts issue.

I don't have a clue why hiscore patch would not work, I never check that so probably it got broken in my test build some time ago, how do you check if it works?

[jimmy2x2x]

Play an easy game to get a hiscore, say galaga

once you have beat the highscore, end your game by getting killed

quit mame

reload mame

you new hiscore should be displayed (and should also be in the mame\hi folder as galaga.hi)

if it doesnt work, the old hiscore will be displayed

[jimmy2x2x]

Also..

Grab the latest hiscore.dat from here http://highscore.mameworld.info/download.htm
Make sure you have a 'hi' folder in your mame folder
Make sure you don't have hiscores disabled in MKChamp options in mame.ini


Juno First running great!

Aero Fighters Special running great!

Brave Blade running great!

Calamity, If you manage to fix the hiscores, could you provide a .diff or possibly compile a 64 bit version?

Thanks

[krick]

New test version uploaded, should fix aerofgts issue.

Is the problem with aerofgts related to the gauntleg resolution switching issue I posted about earlier in this thread?

[Calamity]

Calamity, If you manage to fix the hiscores, could you provide a .diff or possibly compile a 64 bit version?

Yes, I need to do that .diff anyway to make sure I preserve the new patches until they can be added to the mainline groovymame. Hopefully during the weekend I have some time for that. The hiscore patch not working could be due to the patch for the 3-threads model built in the test version, will need to test that. I can't compile a 64 bit version at the moment as the build tools for that won't work on the 32 bit system I use for compiling.

Is the problem with aerofgts related to the gauntleg resolution switching issue I posted about earlier in this thread?

Maybe, I'm not sure. I needed to change the place where the changeres patch was inserted inside the render.c file, as the resolution switching was triggered in some situations where it shouldn't, i.e. when maximizing/minimazing the window. In addition, that change turned out to be the one needed to make aerofgts work properly. There is an extra issue yet with the changeres patch, that only affects vertical games on horizontal monitor which switch resolutions, I still need to fix that one.

Finally, 12o version's implementation of the find best mode algorithm has a logic flaw that happens when a resolution is virtualized. This had worked great before but I've noticed rthat the last mainline verison doesn't always pick the best resolution in these cases.

[jimmy2x2x]

Great news Calamity, keep up the fantastic work!

[ahofle]

I finally got around to getting this up and running and all I can say is WOW.  So much for the argument about arcade monitors being too much trouble.  This thing picks absolutely perfect refresh rates and resolutions for every game I've tried so far on the auto setting.  This is also the only time I've ever seen MAME with absolutely no screen tearing or sound glitches.  I'm especially impressed at the vertical games like DoDonPachi which groovymame picks a custom 320 line resolution at exactly the correct refresh rate on my D9400.  Thanks so much for this software.
 

How difficult would it be to release a mame-ui based build of groovymame?

[abispac]

Groovy mame needs it's own forum section.

you got your 5 minutes of fame and allready want a forum section, ive seen posts larger then this threat, i remember uncle t having its own section,not to mention powermame and skjukebox and dos sections are dead...

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Groovy mame needs it's own forum section.

you got your 5 minutes of fame and allready want a forum section, ive seen posts larger then this threat, i remember uncle t having its own section,not to mention powermame and skjukebox and dos sections are dead...

But I bet they are still full of relevant information for whomever might want to run them, or have run them in the past.

Between the Groovy build and the drivers, there are a lot of possibilities for different configurations on different display devices that would be more easily serviced in individual threads. Even if it were abandoned in a year there would still be a good bit of searchable information there.

Currently I'm running on an SVGA monitor, but essentially using native resolutions/refresh rates without visible scaling, and filling the screen on every resolution. I don't think that's something that had been easily done previously. Likewise I recently tested it on an LCD with a variable refresh rate range and was able to run MK1 at ~99% speed with perfect sync-- even on the infamous character scroll screen there was no visible tearing or judder. If the monitor had supported a slightly wider range of refresh rates it would have been synced at 100%.

I think there is too much active development going on for a single thread to be a viable place to discuss it. Even a dozen threads on an existent board would be scattered and hard to correlate.

[krick]

Groovy mame needs it's own forum section.

you got your 5 minutes of fame and allready want a forum section, ive seen posts larger then this threat, i remember uncle t having its own section,not to mention powermame and skjukebox and dos sections are dead...

I don't understand why you just posted that.  You sound like adding a dedicated GroovyMAME forum here at BYOAC somehow personally harms you.  Are you paying for the bandwidth, storage, or other hosting fees here at BYOAC out of your own pocket?

[Gray_Area]

I guess you'd have to test it. If that isn't the way, then somehow AdvanceMAME dynamically programmed the video board without 'a list of modes'. It wonder whether svgawin works with Vista or 7.

Sure, AdvanceMame used its own video driver to handle harware directly.

I'm wondering....maybe it circumvented the card drivers and made direct vga calls?

[androtaz08]

I finally got around to getting this up and running and all I can say is WOW.  So much for the argument about arcade monitors being too much trouble.  This thing picks absolutely perfect refresh rates and resolutions for every game I've tried so far on the auto setting.  This is also the only time I've ever seen MAME with absolutely no screen tearing or sound glitches.  I'm especially impressed at the vertical games like DoDonPachi which groovymame picks a custom 320 line resolution at exactly the correct refresh rate on my D9400.  Thanks so much for this software.
 

How difficult would it be to release a mame-ui based build of groovymame?

Agreed, I would love to see a UI in a future build. I would also like to see a build for misiftmame as it is no longer being updated and I enjoy playing UMK3 juggernaut hack on my cab with perfect resolution and refresh.

[gabe]

Agreed, I would love to see a UI in a future build.

Disagreed. A GUI seems like a waste of limited developer talent.

I challenge anyone who wants a GUI to go ahead and create one. This IS open source software, after all.  

I'd rather see the brains behind this operation go to keeping up-to-date with current versions of MAME, squashing bugs, and polishing existing features... But I'm not going to ask for any of those things. Instead, I will extend my thanks to bitbytebit and Calamity for burning their free time to create this fine piece software.