How do I change MAME's aspect ratio for MK3?

[Raiden13]

I tried changing the aspect0 value in the mame.ini file. It says "illegal aspect ratio value."
The lousy documentation doesn't tell me how to do it.
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is wider the 4:3.
I think the correct ratio is 1.59, which is in between 4:3 and 16:9.
At 4:3 all the characters are too skinny. I don't like that.

[adder]

see the 'post from mr.do' part:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,121491.msg1372021.html#msg1372021

[Raiden13]

I figured it out. I put put 8:5 as the value for aspect0 in the mame.ini file.
I also set the screen0 value to \\.\DISPLAY1, which is my giant HDTV.
Now it looks perfect. The MK3 title logo has a perfectly round circle in it now.
8/5 = 1.6
399/253 = 1.577 (the game's resolution)

[TheManuel]

This is really interesting.  I always thought there was something "off" with the look of the characters in MK3 but assumed it was me not remembering the original well, since virtually all games back then used 4:3 monitors.

Does this mean that the original used a 1.6:1 monitor or did it use a standard 4:3 with black borders on top and bottom?

Are there any other notable games that used an aspect ratio other than 4:3?

[Haze]

4:3 is right, maybe some ops stretched the screen and cut bits off, but the monitors were 4:3, all of them*

MAME gives you horizontal / vertical stretch controls under 'slider controls' if you want to adjust it in the same way.  Many games look better with slight adjustments.



* bar some very special exceptions, but the MK games were 100% standard.

[TheManuel]

Thanks, Haze.  I'm glad to see you active in this forum.

Sounds like the game was meant to be seen in a 4:3 aspect ratio, then.  Perhaps the units I saw did have some of that stretching.

Was it common for operators to alter the aspect ratio of games?

[Haze]

Thanks, Haze.  I'm glad to see you active in this forum.

Sounds like the game was meant to be seen in a 4:3 aspect ratio, then.  Perhaps the units I saw did have some of that stretching.

Was it common for operators to alter the aspect ratio of games?

I would assume so given what we know about the NeoGeo and how it outputs 320 resolution but the sides usually contain garbage you'd definitely want to hide.  Either that or most monitors really did end up cutting a lot of the image off by default ;-)

You can almost see from the MK games that they suffer from the same laziness (eg. the parental warning background not filling the screen) so yeah they were probably designed to be stretched a bit too.  That is of course up to the user :-)

[Howard_Casto]

Well it's odd though, you can really get into arguments over this stuff. 

The mid 90's street fighter games... in every arcade I saw them in, they were in the original "wide screen" aspect ratio that the sprites are in.  Some of the monster showcase cabs I used to see SSFII in used big 16:9 projection tvs and on these the image filled the screen.  But other people will argue "Oh no... it's supposed to be in 4:3"  It's hard to tell exactly what the manufacturers intended you to see considering flyers and manuals rarely pictures of the game running in the cab. 

But the MK games just had a tad bit of slop... I think the overscan of a crt would typically take care of it. 

[Raiden13]

If you play ultimate mk3 in the default 4:3 aspect ratio, the circle in the mk3 logo is very much a vertical oval and all the fighters look too skinny. That is definitely not right. The image is compressed horizontally.

[Haze]

If you play ultimate mk3 in the default 4:3 aspect ratio, the circle in the mk3 logo is very much a vertical oval and all the fighters look too skinny. That is definitely not right. The image is compressed horizontally.

Well nobody is arguing there is some bad design going on, and that it can be compensated for by adjusting the image.

[TheManuel]

I settled for an aspect ratio specification of 15:12 to produce a round MK logo on my 4:3 display.  I looks better now.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah that's the kind of stuff I was getting at. 

[TheManuel]

I wonder what you folks think of the Street Fighter games. 

Using sf2t (US) as an example, when the "don't use drugs" screen shows up, the government logo seems laterally compressed, suggesting perhaps this game suffers from the same issue.

When I started using MAME (oh, 1999 or so), I would just play at whatever aspect ratio MAME would select without hardware stretching and did not notice or cared that the characters looked a little wide.  When I realized I should stretch the image to cover the 4:3 CRT PC monitor's screen, then I thought the characters looked narrow but assumed it was supposed to look like that.  Now after this post started me in this direction, I'm not sure how they should look anymore.

[Haze]

I wonder what you folks think of the Street Fighter games. 

Using sf2t (US) as an example, when the "don't use drugs" screen shows up, the government logo seems laterally compressed, suggesting perhaps this game suffers from the same issue.

When I started using MAME (oh, 1999 or so), I would just play at whatever aspect ratio MAME would select without hardware stretching and did not notice or cared that the characters looked a little wide.  When I realized I should stretch the image to cover the 4:3 CRT PC monitor's screen, then I thought the characters looked narrow but assumed it was supposed to look like that.  Now after this post started me in this direction, I'm not sure how they should look anymore.

the SF games are meant to be 4:3 too, I've never seen them as anything else in an official cabinet (sure some ops hooked them up to various widescreen projection units, but they were never meant to be)

Typically the Winners Don't Use Drugs screens were a last minute addition to the games, to comply with whatever US release policy / requirement so I wouldn't use them as a guide to anything.

anything other than 4:3 was very uncommon back then, there are a few that weren't (Super Chase by Taito was designed for widescreen for example and SF3 2nd Impact offers a widescreen *option* likewise Virtua Racing) but basically 99.999% of games prior to widescreen displays becoming popular were designed for 4:3 / 3:4 displays with a few minor adjustments to the screen controls by the operator

[Howard_Casto]

Well like I said though, I rarely saw one in 4:3, even on crt monitors.  Sure now I do, but back when they were new in the arcade... I never saw one of the cps2 fighters stretched to 4:3. 

[TheManuel]

Well, that's where I'm leading to.  I know monitors of the day were 4:3 but I wonder which games were really meant to be a bit stretched.  It sounds like this is an exercise in memory, more than anything.  It's probably a dead end street.

[Haze]

Well like I said though, I rarely saw one in 4:3, even on crt monitors.  Sure now I do, but back when they were new in the arcade... I never saw one of the cps2 fighters stretched to 4:3.

what kind of crazy bootleg establishments were you going to then ?!

the very fact that SF3 II has a widescreen *option* should prove that the regular displays of CPS titles (1,2,3) are meant for 4:3 displays.

the further fact that they didn't even bother to keep the option around for SF3 III tells you how popular non 4:3 displays were, and how much they considered it worth the extra development work / asset creation.

[Howard_Casto]

Power Play, which was a large arcade chain  (the last one that I'm aware of actually).  Their games were always new and in perfect working order. 

How did sf3 get into the argument?  I said mid-90's fighters and specifically mentioned cps2 games. 


*edit*
Just to be clear, we aren't talking about widescreen monitors... we are talking about the adjustments, they were almost always 4:3 monitors... the image is just rarely stretched to screen. 

[Haze]

Power Play, which was a large arcade chain  (the last one that I'm aware of actually).  Their games were always new and in perfect working order. 

How did sf3 get into the argument?  I said mid-90's fighters and specifically mentioned cps2 games. 


*edit*
Just to be clear, we aren't talking about widescreen monitors... we are talking about the adjustments, they were almost always 4:3 monitors... the image is just rarely stretched to screen.

I'm guessing you just had some tech guys there who liked setting things up in completely the wrong way then if they were making all the CPS games only take up part of a 4:3 then ;-)

SF3 was mentioned because the number of times people insist that the 1:1 pixel aspect is always correct and therefore cps1/2/3 (all of which are 384x224 res) must be widescreen is absurd.

A lot of people remember them like that because many early emulators didn't support proper stretching so they ended up running letterboxed on the PC if you didn't have a compatible resolution.

[Howard_Casto]

We are going to have to agree to disagree then.... I had posted a long response explaining why that just isn't so, but you won't believe me anyway, so it's pointless to post it. 

I played these games regularly in the arcades, when they were brand new games.  Unless you did the same you are only speculating. 

[Haze]

We are going to have to agree to disagree then.... I had posted a long response explaining why that just isn't so, but you won't believe me anyway, so it's pointless to post it. 

I played these games regularly in the arcades, when they were brand new games.  Unless you did the same you are only speculating.

there is plenty of video evidence from the period, flyers and a few hundred other people who will tell you otherwise.  CPS1/2 games are NOT meant to be widescreen.

Honestly your argument makes as much sense as the people saying they remember Pacman being a HD game running in some super-impossible crystal clear resolution.

[Howard_Casto]

Like I said, no point in arguing.... I rest my case.

[Arbee]

Yeah, pristine original CPS 1/2 cabs were always 4:3.  There were a dozen SF2 cabs at California Extreme last weekend for the tournament, and all of them were 4:3 with original factory bezels and so on.

As I like to say to make this clear to people like Howard, Chun Li is not intended to have thunder thighs.