An AVGA/Powerstrip competitor?

[shorthair]

Ya all seen this?

http://community.arcadeinfo.de/showthread.php?p=59291#post59291

[Kremmit]

Looks easier than Powerstrip..

[Pac-Fan]

It's a replacement for ArcadeVGA or Powerstrip, not a replacement for AdvanceMame. There is a big difference in the abilities of each.

Basically, ArcadeVGA/PowerStrip and this windows registery hack are meant to provide some of the most 'common' resolutions, all fixed at one refresh rate each for quick and easy configurations.

ArcadeVGA has the additional advantage of turning all computer output to arcade mode (including boot up) not just once you're in windows like this or Powerstrip, and zero configuration of drivers.

Now AdvanceMame provides almost every resolution, and more importantly, every refresh rate+resolution combination for a more accurate reproduction of the original game output. The 2 main advantages of this are that if configured properly, it sends the screen out at 1 pixel game generated = 1 pixel sent to the video card, saving CPU cycles to create multiple 'softened/multiplied' ones that DirectX does. Plus there won't be any 'seam' updates when the screen is refreshing at a different rate than the game is outputting.

With other solutions, this can be seen as glitches every second or so in objects moving within the screen (e.g. the intro screen of Pacman/Ms. PacMan), or more so when playing side scrolling games like Moon Patrol/Super Mario Bros where you can see diagonal seams when the entire background is moving.

The disadvantage of AdvanceMame is a high amount of configuration (and learning) to configure it exactly to keep it from picking wrong modes that eat up a lot of computer power and not output 1:1 which is the fastest (e.g. Mr.Do on auto config mode)

Each one is good for certain things, and it is great to have another option to provide easy output. But I definitely would not call it a replacement for AdvanceMame (which is dead anyway since build 106).

[shorthair]

Ah. My lack of comprehension is profound. Though your explanation has decreased this, some. One thing about Advmame I don't get: if what you say is so, why even have the tab menu?...as it would appear writing your ini's is necessary.

[JoyMonkey]

The tab menu in AdvMame gives you a crazy amount of control over lots of useful stuff. In there you can select a  resolution that a specific game or group of games uses, tweak your custom resolutions, enable some of it's graphics rendering modes, adjust sound etc. etc.
There's a quick rundown of what the menu offers here: http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/snapshot.html

[shorthair]

Yeah, I've messed around with it quite a bit. The increments don't allow one to size correctly the screen area: it's either smaller or larger than. Plus it doesn't overlay the desktop - at least I couldn't find how to do it.

[SailorSat]

Hm...
The vertical sync difference is right, however you could counter that on windows side using tripple buffer, although this would most likely change the emulation speed a little so its not 100.0% anymore, for example pacman runs on ~98%, neogeo runs on ~101%, although only a REAL freak would notice the difference.

As for the resolutions itself, yeah, MAME on Windows would simply stretch the image (Direct3D) or leave out some pixel (DirectDraw), however as with the vertical sync, I don't belive anyone really notices that.

Also, running AdvMAME on Windows 2000 or Windows XP COULD be problematic, although most users will run it on Linux, DOS or Windows 98.
And if I remember correctly AdvMAME only works with AdvMAME and AdvMESS, no other Windows Software.

The problem with imperfect screen resolutions in AdvMAME you mentioned can be worked around if you tell AdvMAME to only do integer resize.

Maybe in time, I find a way to use the "svgawin" sources to build some minimalistic service so we can use that stuff without AdvMAME.
This would enable a much larger card base to be used, however you would either have to "add" stuff to all common software, or either need to change the resolution (lets say with a batch file) when running special software.

Like I got my windows desktop with 800x600 and say "mapresolution 640,480 512,448,modelinestuff" and once my SNES emulator switches to 640x480, my tool reprogramms the board to the mode I specified.

But thats quite a long road to walk on right now

[shorthair]

Ahh.  I'm using XP. Integer resize. I'll work that some more. Thanks.

(I mean, I'm pretty convinced I don't prefer native resolutions an all...but, to a degree, I like to tinker with this stuff - though without tutelage, messing around writing ini's is out - and I have a feeling I'm not getting the right thing....)