Is there a frontend with support for multiple images at one time and image zoom?

[Tiger-Heli]

Running Win98 on a PC monitor at 1024x768.

I

[Tiger-Heli]

Here's the MAMEwah shot?

[2600]

Not exactly what you are looking for, but off the top of my head you could use an external application to view the image or use CPViewer to view it.

[Howard_Casto]

Every emulator (especially Dk) does everything you want EXCEPT the zooming.  Solution.... you don't zoom images, you use a fe with a info page that shows all the stuff fullscreen.  (Again, like Dk) 

Also and you'll excuse my blunt opinion, but showing the cpo layout during list scrolling for anything other than asthetics is kinda dumb.  As you said, unless it's fullscreen you can't read it anyway.  And when the new j5 is out there are two methods to see the panel in game (buddah's and mine). 

[Minwah]

Every emulator (especially Dk) does everything you want EXCEPT the zooming.

Tsk, I think you mean 'Every frontend'.

I actually like the idea of seeing the controls prior to launching the game, it makes sense to me.  As you say it can be impracticle tho, especially as I run 368x240 screen resolution...

[Tiger-Heli]

Every emulator (especially Dk) does everything you want EXCEPT the zooming.  Solution.... you don't zoom images, you use a fe with a info page that shows all the stuff fullscreen.  (Again, like Dk)

I'm not sure what you mean by an "Info Page"? 

Also and you'll excuse my blunt opinion, but showing the cpo layout during list scrolling for anything other than asthetics is kinda dumb.  As you said, unless it's fullscreen you can't read it anyway.

Well, yes, if it's a totally unfamiliar game.  But there are a lot of games that just seeing the image and seeing "Okay, three buttons have labels and I know what those do" is preferable to launching the viewer at startup or in-game.

  And when the new j5 is out there are two methods to see the panel in game (buddah's and mine). 

I saw the viewer was released.  I'll check it out soon.

BTW, here's something I quickly threw together in Irfanview and EL as kind-of a "proof of concept" of what I'm talking about:

[Tiger-Heli]

Minwah,

While I have your attention, the screenshot above is how MinWah should look for me.  Occasionally it changes to the one below.  Any idea why?  (I didn't post initially, b/c I had the main image ending at 36 pixels and a the top images starting at 36, but I moved the top images to 37 pixels down and it still does it.)

More details:

Most games work fine, but some of the (mainly vector??) games will mess up the top portion of the MAMEwah screen.  It happens on Armor Attack, Asteroids, Astdelux, Aztarac, Battlezone (Set 2), but not Battlezone (Set 1) or Battlezone cocktail.

As I scroll up or down the list, once I hit Battlezone (Set 2), all other games that I scroll to will be messed up.  If I quit MAMEwah on Battlezone (set 2) and restart, the display will still be messed up.  Also if I launch Battlezone (set 2) and exit, the display remains messed up.  If I scroll up past Battlezone (set 2) and go to Battlezone (set 1), the screen will be messed up, however, launching Battlezone (set 1) and exiting back to MAMEwah and/or exiting and re-starting MAMEwah with Battlezone (set 1) selected restores the correct screen.

Also, is there any way to not show the

[Minwah]

I have seen this problem only once before, but never completely got to the bottom of it.  I am almost certain it is a video card/driver issue tho.

This is a pretty wierd one, because I couldn't re-create the graphics effect going on there even if I purposely wanted to (using VB's GDI).

I'll have a look at home and see if I made a note of anything related to the previous encounter of this problem...

[Tiger-Heli]

Thanks, MinWah.

If it helps, it's an FIC Radeon 9200 vid card, I think 128M, but maybe only 64.  I'm running fairly recent Catalyst Drivers, but I'm not sure which ones.

And I know my 3D games work better in DirectX than OpenGL with it, if that helps.

Thanks again!

[Minwah]

If it helps, it's an FIC Radeon 9200 vid card, I think 128M, but maybe only 64.  I'm running fairly recent Catalyst Drivers, but I'm not sure which ones.

I'm sorry but I couldn't find anything more on this at home.

I've been using various Radeons on both my systems for a long while but never seen the issue.    However I'm quite sure it must be a driver issue, so I would just check to see if there are any new versions available.

Alternatively it might be worth first playing around with some different colour depths/resolutions/refresh rates.  It's a long shot but you never know...let me know how it goes.

[Tiger-Heli]

Alternatively it might be worth first playing around with some different colour depths/resolutions/refresh rates.  It's a long shot but you never know...let me know how it goes.

Just for clarification - I can change refresh rate in the layout editor.  Can I set color depth there as well, or should I change it on the desktop using MultiRes and then MAMEwah will pick it up?

[Minwah]

Just for clarification - I can change refresh rate in the layout editor.  Can I set color depth there as well, or should I change it on the desktop using MultiRes and then MAMEwah will pick it up?

You can change all of it in the layout designer and it'll be set accordingly when you start MW.

[Tiger-Heli]

Thanks.  I'll let you know how it goes. . .

[Tiger-Heli]

Okay, just posting to update, but I got some weird results:

MAMEwah does not seem to be able to vary the refresh rate - For example, I had my desktop at 1024@85.  Opened Layout Designer and set refresh to 60.  Mamewah ran at 1024@85.  Changed desktop to 1024@75, MW ran at 1024@75.  I thought this might be due to Multires locking the refresh rates, so I exited multires, ran desktop at 1152@75, Mamewah ran at 1024@85.

Same graphics problems at any setting.  Really weird.

[Silver]

Are you running the latest version of DirectX? Sorry if thats basic, but I had desktop problems for a while till I upgraded that...

[Tiger-Heli]

Are you running the latest version of DirectX? Sorry if thats basic, but I had desktop problems for a while till I upgraded that...

Yep, 9.0c, unless there's a newer one   

[Minwah]

Yep, 9.0c, unless there's a newer one   

No that's fine.  I'll have a look into the refresh rate problem but I don't think that will really help here anyway.

Since the vector graphics game screenshots seem to be the cause of the problem, perhaps try opening and re-saving (perhaps in another colour mode) one of the vector screenshots.  I have no idea why it should make any difference, but it could be a workaround.

[Tiger-Heli]

I tested some more things in MAMEwah, I went back to the default layout at 640x480 and I see the same problems there.  The problems seem to occur at 16-bit color depth.  (Which is odd b/c that

[Minwah]

Weird.

Given MAMEwahs earlier suggestion, perhaps the 720 marquee is at 16-bit color depth and the vector games were at 32, but that seems unlikely.

Indeed...

Sorry but I really don't know what else to suggest, I just can replicate the problem...

Just for my info, what OS are you running?

[Tiger-Heli]

Sorry but I really don't know what else to suggest, I just can replicate the problem...

You can or cannot replicate the problem?

Just for my info, what OS are you running?

98SE.  (Technically 98SE using the Aston shell replacement, but I doubt that's involved.)

Thanks for the help.

[Minwah]

You can or cannot replicate the problem?

Oops, sorry I meant can't 

98SE.  (Technically 98SE using the Aston shell replacement, but I doubt that's involved.)

Ok, thanks for the info...

[Minwah]

OK I found the thread relating to the other user (actually 2 users) having the same problem:

http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=16794&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1

Unfortunately the thread was left before anything was resolved (similar to this one atm)...however the user was using Win98 and a Radeon 9200 128mb also - seems like the video card or video card/os combination could be the problem.

I know the latest ArcadeVGA is based on the Radeon 9200, so I might get to test with that at some point - who knows if that will exibit the same problem.

BTW did you check you have latest drivers?

[Tiger-Heli]

OK I found the thread relating to the other user (actually 2 users) having the same problem:
http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=16794&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1
Unfortunately the thread was left before anything was resolved (similar to this one atm)...however the user was using Win98 and a Radeon 9200 128mb also - seems like the video card or video card/os combination could be the problem.

That was useful - He's having the same problem with the same vid card and same OS with a different layout, and the same games even (although I got those games to work and different games to mess up by changing color depth).

I think you're probably on the right track about different color depths in the displayed images, but I'm too lazy to sort through 1700 images and make them the same, even if IrfanView could do it in a batch file, which it can't.

I know the latest ArcadeVGA is based on the Radeon 9200, so I might get to test with that at some point - who knows if that will exibit the same problem.
BTW did you check you have latest drivers?

No but with ATI, latest isn't always best, and since I am only having a problem with MAMEwah, I don't think I want to upgrade and maybe mess up other programs that were working previously.

[Silver]

I have a feeling the corruption is due to the radeon's 98/ME drivers.

The most recent available drivers in 98 are Catylist 5.2, where as more recent OS's have progressed to 5.6. They are also not WHQL'd, as MS stopped doing this for 98 back in Jan 2004 when they ceased support for Win98. It's also interesting to note the 5.2 release talk about fixes for corruption in 2D situations, so it could be one they missed.

Seeing as all the drivers and software used in this situation are no longer being updated (Win98/98 ati drivers/VB6 - Mamewah maybe being the exception  ) I doubt its going to change.

If it all works in 32bit, use that as I doubt there is a noticeable performance hit with a 9200?

If not, I suggest trying the last WHQL release driver for 98 from ATI's website - this is less likely to have the corruption (but it might) , and should not have any impact at all on 2D performance (ie Mame). This may be no good to you if you are playing lots of 3D PC games.

EDIT: From your recent post about images - it may help to identify what colour depth the images that mess up in different depths are saved as. Could be a dithering problem as an image is dithered 16bit->32bit or opposite.

[Tiger-Heli]

I'm pretty sure I'm running in the Catalyst 4's series, might be time to upgrade the drivers after all.

Are they still doing Omega drivers or anything unofficial that gets you closer to what Win2K is running?

It doesn't all work in 32-bit - Armor Attack is okay now, but 720 is messed up.

Agreed on image depth, but I'm displaying 5 images per game.  I'm assuming it's the marquees that are messing up.  I suppose I could test for that, but I'm not sure I want to bother.

[Minwah]

Thank for the info Silver.

Tiger-Heli: Please don't update your drivers on Mamewah's account...I know what a pain it is when you 'upgrade' and it messes something up.

I know years ago I converted all my snaps from 16 bit to 8 bit depth for ArcadeOS to display them.  From memory I used a batch process in Photoshop or similar - this might be the easiest thing to do (assuming you have time to wait for it).  Just make sure you have a backup before you start.

[Tiger-Heli]

Thank for the info Silver.
Tiger-Heli: Please don't update your drivers on Mamewah's account...I know what a pain it is when you 'upgrade' and it messes something up.

Thanks, Minwah - I may upgrade anyway.  I'll let you know if I do.  My general rule of thumb is that I don't upgrade say from Catalyst 4.1 to 4.2, but from something like 4.3 (which is probably about where I am to 5.2 (or maybe a bootleg 5.6) might be worthwhile.  Mamewah is the only program giving me obvious problems, but some other programs only work in Direct X and not Open GL, might be fixed by a driver upgrade as well.

I'll let you know if it changes anything.

I know years ago I converted all my snaps from 16 bit to 8 bit depth for ArcadeOS to display them.  From memory I used a batch process in Photoshop or similar - this might be the easiest thing to do (assuming you have time to wait for it).  Just make sure you have a backup before you start.

Thanks!  I would do that if I were definitely sticking with MAMEwah.  Right now, I'm caught between two frontends.

I really like being able to see five images at a time in MAMEwah, but I really like the large image display in EmuLoader.  I also have used EL longer so am more familiar with it.  What I would like is a tile mode for EL or a zoom feature for MAMEwah (but since MAMEwah is not really mouse-based (it hides the cursor by default, after all), I don't see the zoom feature likely, and really don't want Minwah to add it if I'm the only user who wants it.

Also and you'll excuse my blunt opinion, but showing the cpo layout during list scrolling for anything other than asthetics is kinda dumb.  As you said, unless it's fullscreen you can't read it anyway.

I don't know about that, I had to delete my arcade machine CP image, but I think this looks pretty good to me (especially viewed at 1024x768, not scaled to 640x480 by the msg board):

[Minwah]

I don't know about that, I had to delete my arcade machine CP image, but I think this looks pretty good to me (especially viewed at 1024x768, not scaled to 640x480 by the msg board):

Yeah it looks pretty good, you have enough space with 1024x768 to get a decent sized space for the CP image.

If you decide to stick with Mamewah, let me know if you manage to get around the graphics corruption problem...