Vertical games - switchres - could not find a video mode that meets your specs.

[msingleton1977]

Hello! I’m using the latest Groovymame (v.152) and everything looks great. However, the vertical games are slightly shifted to the right so I was going to adjust the porch settings. However, on vertical games only, I get “switchres: could not find a video mode that meets your specs.” so it’s not changing the resolution. How should I go about centering the vertical games? I already have the physical pots adjusted for the horizontal games so they are centered correctly.

I have a horizontal tri-sync (arcade_15_25_31) configured in mame.ini and I moved the settings to vmmaker.ini (with the VMMaker formatting) and generated 43 modes. All look fine in Arcade_OSD.  So, I’m not sure why it’s not picking one of these modes.

Thanks,

Monty

[Calamity]

Hi msingleton1977,

When you get this error: “switchres: could not find a video mode that meets your specs.” it means there's something very basic in your setup that is wrong. Please attach a log here of one of your vertical games:

groovymame.exe romname -v >romname.txt

Also, attach your mame.ini file.

[msingleton1977]

Thanks for your help!

After you posted this, I found my problem, I had a vertical.ini file that was causing the problem.

However, two questions:

Pacman, which is perfectly centered but too big vertically is running at 224x288 @ 60.1 ->  400x288 @52.43. If I change the pots to shrink the vertical size the the horizontal games aren't right. Changing the porch settings will probably do the same thing right? Change the top and bottom margins for all games? I was thinking that just coming up with a vertical.ini that's the closest would be best. What do you suggest?

Qbert, which is prefectly sized at 240x256@61.42 -> 1280x768@60 is two inches too far to the right to be centered. So, perfect size just not centered. Is the vertical.ini solution best for this too?

Are porch settings basically to fix a problem like: 15khz looks perfect but 24khz needs different top/bottom margins? Porch settings are universal right? Similar to the pots on the monitor board.

Thanks for your help,

Monty

[Calamity]

Porch settings operate on each range independently, i.e. you can center each 15/25/31 kHz range separately. Porch settings also control the picture width, but only on the horizontal. Regarding the 1280x768@60 mode, that's a 25 kHz mode. So try adjusting the relative horizontal porch sizes for that range until you get it centered.

Regarding vertical size, there's no way you can control it by modifying the vertical borders (so no point in doing a vertical.ini for that). Check this thread:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=134915.0

[msingleton1977]

Thanks! OK, I think I’m getting this now and understand the porch settings.

As for vertical size,

"Due to the variety of vertical resolutions used by arcade games, which usually range from 224 to 288 lines, it's impossible to create an unique vertical size adjustment that matches all games. Having an external V-SIZE potentiometer is the only perfect solution for this old dilemma."

What's the second best solution to an external potentiometer? Change the resolution to something with less vertical lines? The reason why I ask is when PacMan was running using my native desktop resolution (thanks to the vertical.ini which was causing the resolution error), at least I could see everything on the screen even though it's not the perfect proportions. Can I create an .ini file per game, like Pacman.ini with a resolution I pick so the tops and bottoms don't get cut off? The error from the vertical.ini gave this result, and PacMan looked decent. However, for other games I would like GroovyMame to pick the best resolution.

[Calamity]

What's the second best solution to an external potentiometer?

You can tell GroovyMAME to stretch things starting at a certain vertical resolution, for instance 256 lines. This way, a 288 lines resolution will be calculated using the upper range (25 kHz in this case) and stretched as 768i, which should fit within your vertical adjustment and still allow better definition than what you'd get by stretching it over a lower resolution (e.g. 256p).

This is easily achieved by doing this:

monitor custom
crt_range0  15625-16200, 49.50-65.00, 2.000, 4.700, 8.000, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 256, 448, 576
crt_range1  24960-24960, 49.50-65.00, 0.800, 4.000, 3.200, 0.080, 0.200, 1.000, 0, 0, 384, 400, 768, 800
crt_range2  31400-31500, 49.50-65.00, 0.940, 3.770, 1.890, 0.349, 0.064, 1.017, 0, 0, 400, 512, 0, 0

Notice the remarked 256 value, this sets the upper limit for progressive resolutions in the 15-16 kHz range. It's usually set as 288.

[msingleton1977]

Thanks! Tough choice to run PacMan at High Res where I can see all the points and items or run it at Standard Res and only see the maze. But, I'm glad I have the option now.

[msingleton1977]

One last question:

Q*Bert is running at Medium Res at 1280x768@60hz. Is there any way to get it to run at my monitors maximum, 70hz? I edited the VfreqMax in my mame.ini for what is now a custom monitor configuration to 70 but it still picks 60. It only slightly flickers but I figured I might as well run it at the max.

[Calamity]

Hi msingleton1977,

There's no point in forcing the game to run at 70 Hz, the flicker you're seeing is due to interlace, not to a low refresh rate. If that flicker bothers you it's always possible to force the game to use a progressive mode from the 31 kHz range. Just see what resolutions you have available for that range, pick one of them and create an ini file for that specific game, adding the resolution you want inside it, e.g.:

resolution 640x480@60

Another option is to disable the "interlace" option inside mame.ini, this will make GM use the 31 kHz range automatically (in this case).

[msingleton1977]

Thank you for putting up with my ignorance.

Disabling interlace was the perfect solution for me as I'm playing older games. Thank you for your help! Everything works perfectly now.

Monty