Force games into 4:3 to stop attract mode woes

[Dan_Dan_91_07]

Games I have not yet played/configured will sometimes look pretty bad when my attract mode loads them up, these are games that will load-up really small as MAME defaults to an artwork display mode but I have bezels and the like set off by default (as there are not many games that I use them with, so I just manually set them as on for those few games).

I could remedy this if I could force non-configured games to load-up in 4:3 and I was thinking I may be able to do this within the "default" .cfg file, however I couldn't get it working.

Can anybody help?

[Howard_Casto]

I'm not sure what you mean by "my attract mode" but if bezels are turned off then games should fill the screen (with the proper aspect in tact of course).

The aspect setting for mame is NOT the aspect of the game, it is the aspect of your monitor in it's current resolution.  Mame then uses this to get the aspect of the game right.  If you are using a crt monitor then the aspect should always be set to 4:3.  If you are using a 16:9 or 16:10 display then the aspect should be set to reflect that BUT your game resolution should be set to the maximum that your monitor allows.  This is because said monitors are capable of resolutions in both aspect ratios....

example:

A 16:9 display with the resolution set to 1024x768 will not utilize the rest of the screen and thus you are actually displaying things in 4:3.  This is NOT what you want, because mame's artwork can utilize the extra space on the screen if you use the monitor's full resolution.

Also artwork options are configured in the mame.ini, not default.cfg.  Setting "artwork" to 0 will turn off artwork. 

All of that being said.... understand that what you are describing does not sound like a software issue.  It sounds like you aren't using hardware stretch or your card doesn't support it.  Either that or the physical settings on your monitor are set to do centered timings instead of scaling the screen.


We would need a lot more info from you to help out.

[Dan_Dan_91_07]

Appreciate the reply.

I am using a 4:3 monitor and with bezels turned off, what sometimes happens is, for example when MAME loaded up Light Bringers (a game which I had not configured manually), it would load it up in "Upright Artwork" mode which gave me the troubles described. When I configured this game to use 4:3 using the tab menu however, the picture utilise the full screen, plus a .cfg file was saved telling MAME how I want it displayed and it is now using these settings when loading the game. This is where my .cfg idea came from. There are lines in the .cfg files referring to display settings and I thought I could edit the "default" .cfg to stop my issue.

This happens, as far as I know, whenever "Upright Artwork" is selected by default. However, perhaps it does not happen in all of these cases. But when I first loaded up, for example, Metal Slug X, I was greeted with a 4:3 screen. I then navigated to the tab display menu where I found it had defaulted to "Marquee with Mini" but with the Bezel and Backdrop turned off it was displaying it in 4:3 - this is what I want.

You said it's possible to disable artwork by setting artwork to 0, however I can't find that setting within my .ini (just settings for cropping artwork or applying bezels etc). If I could do this, I would effectively be doing what I wanted to do with my .cfg idea if I could then manually set some games to use artwork with out any problems.

You got a bit too technical for me at this point, sorry if my response isn't very clear or what was needed.

Edit:

Oh yeah, by attract mode I mean the feature available in GameEx. After a set amount of inactivity time, GameEx will activate attract mode where It will load up games at random and each game will be loaded for a set amount of time in till you either insert coins and play the game loaded or activate another input that will take you out of attract mode and back to where you were.

[Howard_Casto]

Sorry... it looks like they've taken that option out.  Why I don't know.   

If you turn artwork crop on and the rest off then it should give you the same effect.


That being said if you have tinkered with the artwork settings to a game while you are in mame, that gets saved to the games cfg file.  You'll have to set those games back manually or either delete their cfg files.

[Dan_Dan_91_07]

Right I thought, as some games artwork is capable of being cropped (differing to MAME displaying them in 4:3 instead when this option is selected, which often happens to me), it wouldn't always work so I was seeking a better option.

But thanks man! I'll be cool with doing this and I have realised that it doesn't even happen with that many games.