Low res MAME user interface font

[krick]

In recent versions of MAME, the built-in user interface (hit the TAB key) font looks really bad on low resolution games on an arcade monitor.

For and example of what I mean, take a look at berzerk.  The text on the initial "game info" screen looks terrible, and the text in the MAME user interface menus looks really bad.

I don't spend a lot of time in those menus, so it's not a huge deal, but I think it would be nice if was readable when I did have to look at it.

Anyone have a good solution?

[headkaze]

Using a different renderer can yield different results. ie. d3d vs ddraw vs gdi. You can try the different settings although performance wise d3d is recommended.

You can also try using different fonts provided by Mr Do's MAME Fonts page

There is also an interesting project called ID4 Mame 106 (Ver. 20121217) which uses a bitmap font for the menus.

[krick]

I've discovered that you can modify a setting in mame.ini...

uifont    default


...just remove "default".  This causes MAME to fall back on some kind of low-res bitmap font that looks reasonably decent on an arcade monitor.