Lost resolutions after running vmaker

[outrunner]

Hi everyone, please can somebody help me with what is probably a simple misunderstanding on my part?

OK, so I’ve been playing around with groovymame teamed with an old ATI card connected to a PAL scart TV. To begin with everything was looking great, custom driver installed and I can see tons of resolutions in switchres, groovymame was selecting the correct resolutions for my games and the only issue was slight overscan on some games. Then I decided to run vmaker which is where it all went wrong. After editing the vmaker.ini file to point to gmame.exe it said it was extracting XML info and now I only have a handful of resolutions left.

Can somebody please explain to me why this is? I’ve tried this on two completely different rigs and as soon as I run vmaker it removes almost all of the resolutions. Guess I should of just left it alone.

Thanks in advance.

[Calamity]

You need to use the updated VMMaker version (1.3c), since they changed the xml format in recent versions of MAME. Get it here:

http://mame.3feetunder.com/windows-ati-crt-emudriver/

[outrunner]

Thanks for the quick response Calamity, but I'm already running VMMaker 1.3c, at least I think so (I'm not at home at the mo so can't check my PC)  1.3c Is the version I have on my pendrive and I only installed GroovyMame a couple of weeks ago, so the file should be the most recent from 2012-06-16.

Any other ideas as to why this might be?

Do I even need to run vmaker if it worked prior to running it?

Thanks again.

[Calamity]

No, you're probably running the old version which is packed with the drivers. Download the new one

[outrunner]

OK cheers Calamity. I'll try it tonight when I get home.

[outrunner]

OK so I've just checked and as suspected I'd previously run an old version of vmmaker, but after downloading and running the newest (version c), although adding a load of resolutions I'm still missing some, specifically 384 x 224 which was definitely present and working prior to running vmmaker.

To get 384 x 224 and any other missing resolutions back should I just uninstall reinstall the driver?

Thanks

[Calamity]

Hi outrunner,

VMMaker's default configuration rounds yres to 240 because 224-line resolutions are redundant from GroovyMAME point of view. The result is exactly the same. If you still want to have those resolutions available, edit vmmaker.ini, YresMin_XML = 224 (or whatever), then run VMMaker.

[outrunner]

In end I reinstalled the driver and got 384 x 224 again, so back to how it was.

I must say that I'm confused buy your reply, 384 x 224 seems to be a common resolution for a lots of games, therefore why we would vmmaker not create it by default. Are you saying that running a 384 x 224 at 384 x 240 should look exactly the same? I'm completely confused as I thought the whole point was to run games at their native res.

Oh well, I'm happy with how it all looks for now, just need to try and find the service manual for one of my sets to reduce the overscan.

Thanks again for your help.

[Calamity]

Well that was a brute force approach but hey

Are you saying that running a 384 x 224 at 384 x 240 should look exactly the same? I'm completely confused as I thought the whole point was to run games at their native res.

Yeah, this is a well known fact. Keep in mind GroovyMAME won't stretch the vertical height up to 240, it will leave black borders up and down and still draw the native 224 active lines only. From the modeline point of view, 240p and 224p will have the exact same timings, so it's a waste of space in the mode list.

Some emulators are not as smart as MAME, in those cases you are forced to calculate the exact resolution to avoid stretching.

[outrunner]

I really just don't understand all this. So on the nag screen the game res and quickres could be completely different but actually be right?

Is there any suggested background reading for beginners that might help in understanding all of this? I really want to understand so that I can get the most out of it, at the moment I feel completely lost.