CPMaker Resolution

[turboc]

I'm just starting to play around with CPMaker and have compiled it into mame.  When the control planel layout is displayed from pause, the resolution is so bad that the text is unreadable.  Anyway to improve this?  Thanks.

[Buddabing]

I'm just starting to play around with CPMaker and have compiled it into mame.  When the control planel layout is displayed from pause, the resolution is so bad that the text is unreadable.  Anyway to improve this?  Thanks.

Try putting -artres 2 in your mame.ini.

[papaschtroumpf]

-artres 2 is for the command line I believe
there is a setting in the ini file called artwork_resolution (from memory I can check later if you can't find it) which does the same thing. Set  it to 2 (or more?)
My understanding of how it works is that it tells MAME to run the game at twice the original resolution, it just makes each pixel of the game twice as large, so it looks the same, but may be slower if you have old hardware. However since the screen is now running at a higher resolution the CPMaker display code can display a finer resolution image.

I only have tried it with 2 at this time, but I was thinking about increasing it even more to see if it made things even better. 2 is acceptable though.

[turboc]

Thanks.  That did the trick.  

[papaschtroumpf]

OK after all that I have a problem: a number of games don't run with artwork_resolution = 2 set on my cabinet whereas they did on my development machine.
For example p47 or pbobble2 gives me a totally blank (black) screen even though I hear the game running in the background.

MAME tries to run the game at 1280x960 (twice the original resolution of 640x480), which in theory is supported by the monitor in my cabinet (the manual says up to 1280x1024), in fact I can set my desktop to resolution but somehow when running MAME the screen is just black.

Of course the CPMaker display looks terrible at 640x480  

Replacing the monitor is not a solution at this time, so what can I do?

[turboc]

I wish CPMaker could change the screen resolution temporarily and display the controls picture at a preconfigured res.

[Buddabing]

OK after all that I have a problem: a number of games don't run with artwork_resolution = 2 set on my cabinet whereas they did on my development machine.
For example p47 or pbobble2 gives me a totally blank (black) screen even though I hear the game running in the background.

MAME tries to run the game at 1280x960 (twice the original resolution of 640x480), which in theory is supported by the monitor in my cabinet (the manual says up to 1280x1024), in fact I can set my desktop to resolution but somehow when running MAME the screen is just black.

Of course the CPMaker display looks terrible at 640x480  

Replacing the monitor is not a solution at this time, so what can I do?

You might try creating an ini for those games with the following line:

resolution 1024x768

Or you could set artres to 0 in those games.

[Buddabing]

I wish CPMaker could change the screen resolution temporarily and display the controls picture at a preconfigured res.

That's an interesting idea and worth looking into. It would solve all the aspect ratio problems, for one thing.

There might be an annoying flicker when the screen changes resolution, though.

I'll take a look.

[papaschtroumpf]

OK after all that I have a problem: a number of games don't run with artwork_resolution = 2 set on my cabinet whereas they did on my development machine.
For example p47 or pbobble2 gives me a totally blank (black) screen even though I hear the game running in the background.

MAME tries to run the game at 1280x960 (twice the original resolution of 640x480), which in theory is supported by the monitor in my cabinet (the manual says up to 1280x1024), in fact I can set my desktop to resolution but somehow when running MAME the screen is just black.

Of course the CPMaker display looks terrible at 640x480  

Replacing the monitor is not a solution at this time, so what can I do?

You might try creating an ini for those games with the following line:

resolution 1024x768

Or you could set artres to 0 in those games.

what will arters 0 do exactly?
I can play p47 from the command line by doing mamepp p47 -resolution 1280x1024 -artres 2

So it looks like it's the vertical resolution of 1024 is OK whereas 960 caused problem???

Is there a disadvantage to *always* specifying -resolution 1280x1024? (by changing it in the ini file)
-hwstrech is supported by my hardware and there is no performance issuethat I'm aware of (XP2400+ and  GeForce4 Ti-4800, whcih is overkill for just about every game). I can't seem to see anything wrong with the few games I tried and it seems easier than changing the resolution on a per-game basis.


I also thought about changing the resolution when pressing the pause key to display the panel, but I thought there might have been a technical reson for not doing it (other than the monitor flickering on res change).

[Buddabing]

OK after all that I have a problem: a number of games don't run with artwork_resolution = 2 set on my cabinet whereas they did on my development machine.
For example p47 or pbobble2 gives me a totally blank (black) screen even though I hear the game running in the background.

MAME tries to run the game at 1280x960 (twice the original resolution of 640x480), which in theory is supported by the monitor in my cabinet (the manual says up to 1280x1024), in fact I can set my desktop to resolution but somehow when running MAME the screen is just black.

Of course the CPMaker display looks terrible at 640x480  

Replacing the monitor is not a solution at this time, so what can I do?

You might try creating an ini for those games with the following line:

resolution 1024x768

Or you could set artres to 0 in those games.

what will arters 0 do exactly?
I can play p47 from the command line by doing mamepp p47 -resolution 1280x1024 -artres 2

So it looks like it's the vertical resolution of 1024 is OK whereas 960 caused problem??

Is there a disadvantage to *always* specifying -resolution 1280x1024? (by changing it in the ini file)
-hwstrech is supported by my hardware and there is no performance issuethat I'm aware of (XP2400+ and  GeForce4 Ti-48000, whcih is overkill for just about every game). I can't seem to see anything worng with the few games I tried.

Specifying the resolution on a per-game basis would be a bit tedious. On a global label, specifying the resolution is bad if you have an arcade monitor. In your case I don't see why specifying the resolution globally could be bad.

There are really only two possible values for the artres field: 1 and 2. Artres 0 is the same as artres 1. If the game is a vector game, artres 1 is forced.

The size of the artwork is multiplied by the artres before adjusting to fit the size of the screen. With your machine I would set artres to 2 in the mame.ini, and maybe if you have slow framerates for a particularly CPU-intensive game set artres to 0 and/or lower the resolution.

All this stuff is in the artwork.c file, the artwork resolution is carried in the variable "gamescale".

[turboc]

Specifying atres 2 will cause the graphics to look more jagged.  I would prefer to have cpmaker change the screen resolution with a onetime screen flicker than lose the smoothing effect in game.

[papaschtroumpf]

I haven't noticed that it's more jagged, maybe it depends on how your hardware stretches the picture between artres1 and artres2?

Anyway it seems that waht works best for me at the moment is -resolution 1280x1024 -artres 2: the games look fine and I can read the CPMaker graphic.

[turboc]

This is weird.  I just checked an original mame.exe (.88) and found that artres 2 doesn't effect the display, but in my cpmaker compiled version of mame it does.  I'll try to compile again and see if I get the same result.

[Buddabing]

This is weird.  I just checked an original mame.exe (.88) and found that artres 2 doesn't effect the display, but in my cpmaker compiled version of mame it does.  I'll try to compile again and see if I get the same result.

Artres x only affects artwork. If you play a game for which no artwork exists, normal mame won't show any difference. However, CPMaker-integrated MAME will always care about artres.