Mame settings

[Scoobie]

I just need to say that everyone on the boards are so incredibly helpful...you guys are the best!

Anyway, on to my question (which will probably seem very dumb to a lot of people).

I'm getting away from using Mame32 and have been trying the front end Emulaxian.  So far I love it!  I am able to run games, however there are settings I'd like to change within Mame (settings which are easily accessible in Mame32).

Some (not all) games have the bottom and/or top cut off on the monitor.  Some

[Tiger-Heli]

I just need to say that everyone on the boards are so incredibly helpful...you guys are the best!

Yeah, except no one else replied yet.

Anyway, on to my question (which will probably seem very dumb to a lot of people).

Not at all, we've all been new once.

I'm getting away from using Mame32 and have been trying the front end Emulaxian.  So far I love it!  I am able to run games, however there are settings I'd like to change within Mame (settings which are easily accessible in Mame32).

Not real familiar with Emulaxian.  I know the author and he's very helpful and it's a good frontend.  I use Emuloader, but most of what you want can be done almost as easily manually inside of mame.

Some (not all) games have the bottom and/or top cut off on the monitor.  Some ?bleed? over the left and right sides on the monitor.

I assume you are using a PC monitor, not arcade monitor or TV-out, correct?

Ok, this isn't written down anywhere, as far as I know (it should be) -

Step one - Download Multires (from http://www.entechtaiwan.com/index.shtm) it is freeware.  Using mutires, set your Windows desktop for 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768 at a certain refresh rate (60Hz to match games), (75 or 85 Hz for flicker-free viewing comfort).  Hopefully your monitor displays resolutions and refresh rate settings, but it doesn't absolutely have to.  After you set the screen to each size, use the monitor controls so the screen (in Windows) fills the monitor without extending past it.

This does two things - It sets default refresh rates so any game that uses these resolutions will use these refresh rates, and it sizes the screen properly so the games will be full screen.

NOTE:  If you have an ATI video card, you may not be able to set the refresh rate above 60Hz without manually changing some registry settings.  Let me know if this applies.

NOTE2:  You can also do this manually by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting properties and settings, or by using the ATI or Nvidia Systray apps that come with their latest drivers.

NOTE3:  Multires also takes command-line options, so if you have older games for kids that need to run at 640x480, you can write a batch file to change the screen to 640x480, load the game, and then swithch the screen back when the game ends, but that's not what you asked.

Open C:\MAME\mame.ini in WordPad and you will find all your mame settings, but we are only (for now) concerned with the following ones:

### Windows video options ###
window                 0
hwstretch             1
cleanstretch            auto
resolution              auto
refresh                 0
switchres             1
keepaspect          1
matchrefresh            0
screen_aspect           4:3

### Mame CORE misc options ###
artwork                   0
use_backdrops       1
use_overlays          1
use_bezels             1
artwork_crop          0
artwork_resolution 0

For now, leave the artwork settings as above and change the following:

### Windows video options ###
window                 0  (leave at 0, runs MAME full screen)
hwstretch             1  (Leave at 1, MAME will stretch the image to fit the screen)
cleanstretch          auto (Default setting.)
resolution             800x600 (Can also be "640x480", "1024x768", etc.  "I" think 640x480 is a bit "blocky" and 1024x768 slows a lot of games down, but it's personal preference and also depends on your hardware).
refresh                 0 (If you don't specify a refresh rate, MAME will use windows defaults for each resolution).
switchres             1  (This tells MAME whether to change the games resolution.  I "think" you want it set to 1, but if the games aren't scaling correctly, try setting it to 0).
keepaspect          1 (If this is set to "1" MAME will scale vertical games to full screen vertically, with a black border on each side, horizontal games to full screen horizontally, with a black border top and bottom.  Set to "0", MAME will scale all games to use the full screen, but (especially vertical) games will be distorted (i.e. circles will look like ellipses).
matchrefresh            0  ("1" tells MAME to synch to the games refresh rate, which we don't want to do).
screen_aspect           4:3 (Use 3:4 for a horizontal monitor turned sideways for vertical games).

This configures all of your games in MAME to run at a set resolution (and MAME autosizes just like any other CD program you have bought in the last 5 years).

Now the exception to this is Vector games which look much better at 1024x768 resolution.  This can be specified through command line files but a better way is through .ini files as follows:

Verify you have or create a C:\MAME\INI\ folder (i.e., in Windows Explorer, click your mame folder and create new folder named INI.)

Edit your C:\MAME\mame.ini file to have the following options:

### Windows path and directory options ###
inipath                 ini (or "C:\MAME\INI" , either should work)

Now in a blank file in WordPAD type the following line:
resolution              1024x768

Save this file as C:\MAME\INI\bzone.ini or C:\MAME\INI\asteroid.ini or whatever the particular game is.  Once you're done, just copy and rename the file for other games.

Now MAME will always use this setting for these games.  You can add any other setting to those files to change MAME's behavior on a per-game basis.

Can someone explain this to me (a newbie)?  The official Mame website and EasyEmu don't describe how exactly to do this or where to find them.

Post back if you didn't understand what I wrote!

[MrBond]

Now the exception to this is Vector games which look much better at 1024x768 resolution.  This can be specified through command line files but a better way is through .ini files as follows:

Verify you have or create a C:\MAME\INI\ folder (i.e., in Windows Explorer, click your mame folder and create new folder named INI.)

Edit your C:\MAME\mame.ini file to have the following options:

### Windows path and directory options ###
inipath                 ini (or "C:\MAME\INI" , either should work)

Now in a blank file in WordPAD type the following line:
resolution              1024x768

Save this file as C:\MAME\INI\bzone.ini or C:\MAME\INI\asteroid.ini or whatever the particular game is.  Once you're done, just copy and rename the file for other games.

Now MAME will always use this setting for these games.  You can add any other setting to those files to change MAME's behavior on a per-game basis.

Just to add, you can also create a "vector.ini" file, by simply making a copy of mame.ini and changing it's name to vector.ini.  Then open it in wordpad and change the resolution line or whatever else you want specific for vector games.  This will effect all vector games, unless you have an ini for a specific game.

(PS. On my monitor the vector games weren't displaying properly using hwstretch.
I'll have to try the resolution 1024x768)

[MrBond]

Oh, and I'm using emulaxian/3d-arcade as well!  It's the best fe I've found for my use...

Anyway, in your \fe\cfg\emulators folder, you can modify command line options for specific games OR groups of games very easily using
femamecloptions.txt

Here is my current femamecloptions.txt:
14|Vector|-nohws|
15|vertical|-nohws|
16|384x224|-hws|
5|dotron|-resolution 1024x768x32|

The first field is the field # in your gamelist (ie 14 is vector/raster, 15 is vertical/horizontal).
The second field is what attribute you want to change
The third field is what command line option to send mame (you can see all of them in your windows.txt in you mame/docs folder)
Here's the template file for a mame gamelist (located in fe/utilities)

|Description|Name|Year|Manufacturer|Clone|Romof|Category|VersionAdded|Available|Emulator|Type|Model|Favorites|Video|Orientation|Resolution|Aspect|Frequency|Depth|Stereo|Controltype|Buttons|Players|Coins|Driver|DriverStatus|SoundStatus|ColorStatus|HtmlLinks|TimesPlayed|DurationPlayed||||||


For example, if you wanted all vector games to be displayed in 1024X768 resolution, you would type the following in femamecloptions.txt:

14|Vector|-resolution 1024x768|


If you have any questions, feel free to ask here/pm me/post on 3d-arcade forum

Good luck!