Vertical Games on Horiz. monitor and Arcade VGA

[reko19]

Used Mamewah  resolution tool to set proper resolution for all Horizontal games. For all vertical games it defaults to 600x800 with hardware stretch enabled. Curious what everyone else is doing. Could someone recommend best resolution at least for the most popular vertical games like frogger, millipede, pacman, Mr Do, etc? I am using 27" Billabs monitor.

Thanks.

[Ummon]

Read the monitor wiki......

[reko19]

That was very informative, anyone else cares to chime in?

[Zebidee]

If using an arcadeVGA on a horx mounted monitor, you can set all your old classic verticals to 352x288, and they will look great.  You can fiddle from there.

For anthing with more than 288 vertical lines, you pretty much need to go up to 640x480

If your monitor is mounted vertically, you have a lot more options.

[ahofle]

What version of MAME are you using?  And I assume that's a multisync monitor?  You should probably use cabmame as regular MAME now has some of the previously 256 line games like frogger and galaxian with 768 lines. 

Here's what I use:

Mr Do:
336x240

Galaxian/Frogger/Millipede/other 256 line vertical games:
352x256

Pacman/Galaga/288 line verticals:
352x288 or 384x288

[isucamper]

If using an arcadeVGA on a horx mounted monitor, you can set all your old classic verticals to 352x288, and they will look great.  You can fiddle from there.

For anthing with more than 288 vertical lines, you pretty much need to go up to 640x480

If your monitor is mounted vertically, you have a lot more options.

What refresh rate do you get with the 352x288 resolution on the arcadeVGA?  I use soft15Khz, and I added this resolution using the custom.txt file, but the only modelines I could find for this resolution had sub 60hz refresh rates (i think it was like 54hz) which means i've got to turn vsync off or games run quite slow (around 86% speed). 

[reko19]

ahofle,
thank you this is exactly what I was looking for.

i am using Billabs multisync monitor, command line mame. started experimenting with different res. and wanted to know what some other folks are using

[Zebidee]

If using an arcadeVGA on a horx mounted monitor, you can set all your old classic verticals to 352x288, and they will look great.  You can fiddle from there.

For anthing with more than 288 vertical lines, you pretty much need to go up to 640x480

If your monitor is mounted vertically, you have a lot more options.

What refresh rate do you get with the 352x288 resolution on the arcadeVGA?  I use soft15Khz, and I added this resolution using the custom.txt file, but the only modelines I could find for this resolution had sub 60hz refresh rates (i think it was like 54hz) which means i've got to turn vsync off or games run quite slow (around 86% speed). 

Most "classic" vertical games, if not all of them, are best run in ddraw, no stretch and all the sync options turned off anyway. I've never seen any tearing or slowdown when playing these games like this in 352x288 on many different monitors.

Some of the later-era fast-scrolling games (inc some of the later schmups like twin cobra, Flying Shark etc) need triple-buffering enabled.

Wonder Boy is the oldest game I can think of that will usually have screen-tearing issues caused by sync mismatching. Go for triple buffering.

[isucamper]

If using an arcadeVGA on a horx mounted monitor, you can set all your old classic verticals to 352x288, and they will look great.  You can fiddle from there.

For anthing with more than 288 vertical lines, you pretty much need to go up to 640x480

If your monitor is mounted vertically, you have a lot more options.

What refresh rate do you get with the 352x288 resolution on the arcadeVGA?  I use soft15Khz, and I added this resolution using the custom.txt file, but the only modelines I could find for this resolution had sub 60hz refresh rates (i think it was like 54hz) which means i've got to turn vsync off or games run quite slow (around 86% speed). 

Most "classic" vertical games, if not all of them, are best run in ddraw, no stretch and all the sync options turned off anyway. I've never seen any tearing or slowdown when playing these games like this in 352x288 on many different monitors.

Some of the later-era fast-scrolling games (inc some of the later schmups like twin cobra, Flying Shark etc) need triple-buffering enabled.

Wonder Boy is the oldest game I can think of that will usually have screen-tearing issues caused by sync mismatching. Go for triple buffering.

In particular, I guess I'm wondering about Contra and Ikari Warriors.  Both of these games are vertical games that have 288 lines of vertical resolution so I use 352x288.  However, the resolution I added to Soft15Khz has a refresh rate of something like 54 hz.  If I turn vsync or tb on, they run at about 85% speed because of the refresh mismatch.  If I turn it off, i don't get too much tearing, but I do get a herky jerkiness in the scrolling because of the mismatch.  I've looked for a modeline that is 60hz, but I can't find one.

[Zebidee]

What kinda PC are you using?

[isucamper]

What kinda PC are you using?

athlon dual core 4000+, integrated video

[Zebidee]

Your PC should be fast enough.

Modeline refresh speeds are determined by maths - more vertical lines means slower refresh speed, regardless of how you do it.

Therefore, 288 line modes have refresh speeds closer to 50hz, not 60hz.

Modes like 352x288 will be slower that 288x224 (close to the mode your game Contra would have originally run in, monitor turned vertically) as they have more lines to draw.

So, playing a game like contra is going to cause problems when run on a horz monitor in 352x288 because of screen rate mis-match. However, you can minimise these problems with approriate settings in your .ini files.