Game Launcher

[jets]

Have to say that this FE is exactly what I want. Only problem is I'm not too familliar with the command parameters to specify so that I can run mame32 with the configuration I want. I'd like set the defaults to have enforce aspect ratio, frame skipping, auto resolution, throttle, use 75% scanlines, use direct draw, switch res to fit, and switch color to fit. I'd like to know where and how to put this into the cfg file so that mame will run the way it does when I don't use Game Laucher to play games. Anyone wanna put together a template to use for this?

Thanks

[Howard_Casto]

Mame32 is not reccomended for any fe as it's not mame but a bad hack with a gui slapped on top.  (At least imho)  Gamelauncher is designed for mame, not mame32.  Although it may be doable, some of those features aren't even available in mame.  (75% scanlines, ect...)  

All of those other features are configurable in the mame.ini file so you don't have to pass the command line parameters.  Switch to mame, ditch mame32 and read the manual for mame and you'll understand what I mean.  

[jets]

Well the problem is that when everythings said and done Windows is preffered for my mame cabinet and I've never used DOS mame. Also, I wan't to be able to use PS2 contollers using the USB converter which is for Windows only. I'll be using the arcade vga / 25" RCA monitor. Going the DOS route makes things even harder since I'll have the whole cab setup to worry about and I've used DOS on a limited basis in the past. Only reason I asked about the scanlines was because I'm just testing it now on my main PC until the card gets here along with the new dedicated PC for the cabinet.

[Jakobud]

Now I think you are confused a bit.  You see Mame32 is NOT the Windows build of Mame.  

Mame dev's compiles a few different 'official' versions.  The most popular are Mame for Windows, and Mame for DOS.  Mame for DOS is obviously commandline based.  Mame for Windows is ALSO commandline based though.  

Yes Windows is the best OS for Mame, so you need to use the Windows version of Mame, NOT Mame32.  Mame32 just has that crappy gui slapped on the front, like HC said.  You will be in Windows and be using Game Launcher in Windows and using the Windows version of Mame under that.  Understand?

Now back to your original question, are you having trouble setting up your CFG files for Game Launcher so it launches Mame with the correct settings?

[jets]

Well I figured out that Game Launcher will run both mame32 and dmamepp just the same when it's all setup correctly. No performance difference I can see. The only thing I need to figure out now is how to properly setup the screen resolutions for each game in an efficient way in the rom specific settings of mame.cfg

[Howard_Casto]

This isn't sinking in is it?  Mame32 is NOT mame.  It's an unoffical hack of mame.  Mame is mame for WINDOWS.  Dmame is dos mame.  You want MAME, not mame32, not dmamepp, not bobsmame, but good ole' mame.    There are significant coding differences between the three.  You should always use mame or a custom build of mame (not dmame or mame32) in a windows environment when a fe is to be used.  

Mame is coded specifically for windows.  Just because an application is command line based does not mean it's a dos app.  Mame implements directx5 for example, which isn't even useable in any other environment.  

If you got mame32 to work then that's great, but quite honestly it's foolish to run a guied version of mame when the command line version is so much eaiser to work with.  Fes are not desigend to run with guied apps.

[rampy]

Well I figured out that Game Launcher will run both mame32 and dmamepp just the same when it's all setup correctly. No performance difference I can see. The only thing I need to figure out now is how to properly setup the screen resolutions for each game in an efficient way in the rom specific settings of mame.cfg

As you can see by howard's post you're confused/confusing us with terminology... dmame, mame, and mame32 are all different flavors.

check the mame.net faq for more on that...

With that said, may I recommend using advancemame (windows command line varient) ... once you get through the initial config process and identify your monitors characteristics.. it's pretty darn good at selecting the best resolution for a given game each time you load up a game... IMHO.

something to try at least...   it'll either make it easier or cause you new variations in pain/configing hell =P (ymmv)

good luck

rampy

PS   dmame == DOS mame
       mame  == command line windows mame
       mame32  == gui'd windows mame  (redundant to use this one with a frontend - as it has one built in)

does that help ??

[jets]

Holy smokes.  I didn't know mame32 wasn't really mame for windows. It's so confusing when you go to dowload it. I'll try mame.

In the meantime, I have been setting up category lists for Game Launcher and I think I may have a (better than every single game) way of setting up the resolutions to use when running each game. There's a resolution.ini file that lists all roms under each res setting so I think I'll test a few and find out what the best resolution to use is but I need help. The roms listed below originally ran at 400x254. Using Ultimarcs card, the res should be set at 400x256.

jdredd
mk
mk2
mk2chal
mk2r14

I need to find a quick way to add " = -resolution 400 256 to every line of the text file. Anyone have a util for this type of thing? Doing every line manually will take way too long. This way those lines above will read like the following:

jdredd = -resolution 400 256
mk = -resolution 400 256
mk2 = -resolution 400 256
mk2chal = -resolution 400 256
mk2r14 = -resolution 400 256

[JLR2000]

I'm sure this is not the *best* way, but what you could do is use a program like UltraEdit, which is an editor that uses macros.  A macro can just be a set of keystrokes....so you start to RECORD the macro, type in your changes or additions, then STOP RECORDING.  You can set this macro to a hotkey, then just hold that key and it should repeat what you typed for each line.  You'll have to play with this feature to get the hang of it, but it is really simple.

UltraEdit is not freeware, but I'm sure most editors have a macro function.  This is really a sloppy way to do it, but if you don't know how to script it out, it will work for certain applications.

Good luck.

[1Spoon]

I need to find a quick way to add " = -resolution 400 256 to every line of the text file. Anyone have a util for this type of thing? Doing every line manually will take way too long. This way those lines above will read like the following:

An easy way to do this would be in Excel.
1) Put your mk2 in column A
2) Put =CONCATENATE(A1;" = -resolution 400 256") in column B
3) Copy all of it and paste it on the same place but with "Paste Special"-"Values"
4) Save it as TEXT (MSDOS)
5) Be happy. :-)

[Dave Dribin]

I need to find a quick way to add " = -resolution 400 256 to every line of the text file. Anyone have a util for this type of thing? Doing every line manually will take way too long.

Perl is your friend:

Code: [Select]

% perl -ane 's/(.*)/$1 = -resolution 400 256/; print;' in.txt > out.txt
-Dave

[Jakobud]

Yes I would either recomment either perl or ultraedit macros.  Both work well.

[str1der]

Or you could just do a find and replace = with "= -resolution 400 256"

[jets]

Or you could just do a find and replace = with "= -resolution 400 256"

Um, you can't search for something that is not there to begin with. Anyways, macros worked out best for me. Took a bit long but I guess it's worth it. Thanks for the help guys.

[Justin]

Am I missing something here?  Why are you adding this to each line?  For gamelauncher, you simply put this in the mame.cfg file.  Of course, this will affect ALL your roms  (not sure this is what you'd really want, but since it is what you stated...)

# Global options passed to emulator, i.e. -sound 1
global_options = -resolution 400 256

[jets]

Am I missing something here?  Why are you adding this to each line?  For gamelauncher, you simply put this in the mame.cfg file.  Of course, this will affect ALL your roms  (not sure this is what you'd really want, but since it is what you stated...)

# Global options passed to emulator, i.e. -sound 1
global_options = -resolution 400 256

I was a little vauge in my post - my bad. If I did that everygame will play at 400x256 - which does not make sense of course. It's known that mame does not always pick the best possible resolution for any given game.
I used resolution.ini & orientation.ini from mame32 to create two new files. One file has all the horizontal games under each of they're respective screen resolutions and another for verticals. Then I killed a few hours testing each screen resolution (for both vertical & horizontal games) with arcade vga to find the best resulting display in my cabinet. Note that I use a horizontal monitor to play verticals. All that info then got pasted into the .cfg files and I used "use_rom_file = yes" for this to work but now all my different .cfg files have every single game and what res to play it at. Looks something like this under the Per ROM options:

# Native Horizontal Resolution [384x224]
3wonders = -resolution 392x240
3wonderu = -resolution 392x240
area88 = -resolution 392x240
armwar = -resolution 392x240
armwara = -resolution 392x240
armwaru = -resolution 392x240

# Native Horizontal Resolution [256x224]
280zzzap = -resolution 256x240
40love = -resolution 256x240
4dwarrio = -resolution 256x240
4enraya = -resolution 256x240
64streej = -resolution 256x240
64street = -resolution 256x240
airbustj = -resolution 256x240

# Native Vertical Resolution [224x256]
005 = -resolution 352x256
1942 = -resolution 352x256
1942a = -resolution 352x256
1942b = -resolution 352x256
1943 = -resolution 352x256
1943j = -resolution 352x256

Makes life easier later on. A few here 'n there look better with -hws enabled so I added that accordingly. I noticed that -hws looks really good when used with games that originally had a higher resolution. If I end up finding a better screen res for AGVA to use for say - the 224x256 heading; I look in one place and change them with a simple search & replace. Sounds like alot of work but I'd rather get it out of the way once and forget it.

The only global options I use is "-ctrlr custom" and the rest of the options are in mame.ini

ps: I finally figured out which is the right MAME to use and the real slim shady has to have the "400x256" run while the evil mame32 wants "400 256" for example.

[Jakobud]

It kind of sucks to try and categorize every game by resolution, but if you use something like SortInfo, it will be easy.  You can sort of everything out in that program, import it into a spreadsheet, then add in all your resolution flags, then copy paste into your cfg file and there you go

[Howard_Casto]

I hate to be a party pooper here, but unless you are using a arcade monitor that only supports those resolutions you specified then this is a completely pointless exercise.  You don't get any speed increase, the games don't look any better and most importantly, doing this makes your monitor change resolutions a LOT which in the long run is very bad for it.  (Unless your using a tv, and in that case I say wtf are you doing this?)

Steps to a proper mame setup on non-arcade monitors:  

#1 in the Resolution section of the mame.ini set it to 1024x768x32 or 800x600x16, or whatever the maximum your video card and display setup will support.....

#2 Set the refresh rate to 85 mhz or whatever the maximum that resolution will support for you....  

#3 Turn on syncrefresh and hwstreatch  And enforce aspect and all that jazz.

What this will do is make the image render at the orignal resolution and display at the original refresh rate, except the actual bitmap image generated will be blown up to fill your monitor in the proper aspect ratio.  This may seem obvious, but if you have a good video card you will have a 0% performance hit and by doing so and you'll get a near perfect image with no configuration.  

This trick will also work for ultimarc's card as it's just a standard ati card with some tweaks.....  just find the maximum resolution it will allow and adjust accordingly....  

If you are having to use hardware stretch in native resolutions then you don't have the monitor setup properly (the monitor has to be adjusted for each res, and thus this is why we don't bother with setting a different resolution for each game.) so you would be better off doing my method anyway.  

You should be able to turn off all options but enforce aspect ratio and the changeres options and the game will automatically display in it's optimal resolution.  If not then see above.  

[Justin]

This may seem obvious, but if you have a good video card you will have a 0% performance hit and by doing so and you'll get a near perfect image with no configuration.  

Can you name a few ATI card models that are proven to take a 0% performance hit at higher resolutions?  I am currently in the hunt for an ATI card with TV Out, but I'm kinda clueless.  I've even been considering buying the ArcadeVGA to connect to a TV using the S-Video connector (might be a year or two till I buy a W.G. monitor) but it seems that this configuration will bring me all sorts of headaches.

Thanks for any advice!

-J

[jets]

I hate to be a party pooper here, but unless you are using a arcade monitor that only supports those resolutions you specified then this is a completely pointless exercise.  You don't get any speed increase, the games don't look any better and most importantly, doing this makes your monitor change resolutions a LOT which in the long run is very bad for it.  (Unless your using a tv, and in that case I say wtf are you doing this?)

Steps to a proper mame setup on non-arcade monitors:  

#1 in the Resolution section of the mame.ini set it to 1024x768x32 or 800x600x16, or whatever the maximum your video card and display setup will support.....

#2 Set the refresh rate to 85 mhz or whatever the maximum that resolution will support for you....  

#3 Turn on syncrefresh and hwstreatch  And enforce aspect and all that jazz.

What this will do is make the image render at the orignal resolution and display at the original refresh rate, except the actual bitmap image generated will be blown up to fill your monitor in the proper aspect ratio.  This may seem obvious, but if you have a good video card you will have a 0% performance hit and by doing so and you'll get a near perfect image with no configuration.  

This trick will also work for ultimarc's card as it's just a standard ati card with some tweaks.....  just find the maximum resolution it will allow and adjust accordingly....  

If you are having to use hardware stretch in native resolutions then you don't have the monitor setup properly (the monitor has to be adjusted for each res, and thus this is why we don't bother with setting a different resolution for each game.) so you would be better off doing my method anyway.  

You should be able to turn off all options but enforce aspect ratio and the changeres options and the game will automatically display in it's optimal resolution.  If not then see above.  

I am running the setup I described on an arcade monitor. All I am trying to do is get the best possible display for each game. Any tips specifically for that? You seem to know much about this. I find some games end up having to have a black border around the picture. I don't like to -hws because it'll ruin the picture in most cases.

[Howard_Casto]

if you use a fixed resolution like i said, and turn on hardware stretch then you won't get a black border....  that is unless the game didn't have a usual aspect ratio, in which case it's supposed to have a black "letterboxed" look....  hwstretch doesn't ruin the picture unless you are using a hybrid monitor.  If that is the case then you shouldn't be using andy's card anyway as it's intended to be used on true arcade monitors.  (So regarding the other poster's question, do NOT get a arcadevga card unless you are going to use a true arcade monitor.  it will have 0 benefit on a tv or a hybrid)  

So guys if you have a wells garner vga "arcade" monitor then don't bother getting the arcadevga card.  The things already support vga resolutions and using usch a card is actually counter productive.  

For the record, although I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, the hybrid monitors are completely unauthentic.  Instead of being a hi-res arcade monitor they are a low res computer monitor.  What this means is the wrong pixel "shape" and thus the display is too sharp.  You would actually be better off with a tv imho, as at least the pixels on it are round.  But I'm getting off topic.... anyway....

as to the other question, any radeon series card can do hardware stretch with little to no performance hit, assuming you have a decent pc that is.

[Dave Dribin]

For the record, although I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, the hybrid monitors are completely unauthentic.  Instead of being a hi-res arcade monitor they are a low res computer monitor.  What this means is the wrong pixel "shape" and thus the display is too sharp.  You would actually be better off with a tv imho, as at least the pixels on it are round.  But I'm getting off topic.... anyway....

*sigh* not again....  Come over and check out my WG U3100 sometime.  I will bet money that you couldn't tell the diff between this and a real arcade monitor.

-Dave

[Howard_Casto]

I've seen em Dave and I'm not impressed.  

[jets]

Well the monitor I use is in an original MKII cabinet. Does that qualitfy as a real (whatever that means these days) monitor or an imitation. Either way it looks hella good to me. I'd like to see anyone hws double dragon and have it still look nice 'n crisp.

[Dave Dribin]

I've seen em Dave and I'm not impressed.  

You must have hawk eyes because the Wells-Gardner K7200 (a suitable replacement for many games, including Pac-Man) uses the same exact CRT part as the U3100.  The only difference between the monitors is the interface: K7200 is analog where the U3100 is VGA.

-Dave

[rosebudcassidy]

has anyone had problems running Game Launcher on machines with formatted with NTFS. If so how did you fix it, don't say put in on FAT (I already did that).

[Jakobud]

NTFS (as in WinNT NTFS) or NTFS5 (Win2k, XP)?  I have not tried either.  My Win2k cabinet is all Fat32.  But if you are referring to old NTFS then that 'might' cause problems....just because it's a WinNT thing...

[rosebudcassidy]

W2k and XP NTFS.