Can't see my bullets in Star Castle & Solar Quest! :[

[jasonbar]

Howdy-

I think I need to tweak my vector settings for 2 of my games, but I'm not sure how to do this.

All my vector games look fine running on command line MAME .115, except for Solar Quest & Star Castle.

In both of these games, the ship's bullets don't show up.  I also tried in MAME32 .115u2 on the same machine & they also don't show up on this version.

I tried to use the -nouse_bezels parameter, bringing the image to full-screen, and then the bullets showed up fine.  I'd like to keep using the bezels for these 2 games--is there a vector option I can tweak for just these 2 games?  I'm using MaLa & am unsure how to specialize the mame settings for just certain games.  I suppose I could make a batch file the way I'm running my Daphne games (oh shoot, I thought I had those incorporated into my main games list, but they're not there--I guess I've got some work to do...).


Oddly, Star Castle & Solar Quest also seemed hell-bent on using the -autosave feature, even though I wasn't passing that to mame in my command line launch, while other games weren't using autosave--very strange.  I updated MaLa's command line launch to be %rom% -noautosave & now that's cleared up, but I still need to tweak my vector settings.

Thanks!
-Jason

[SGT]

One thing you can do is increase the value of your beam parameter in the mame.ini file.  I think the default is 1.0.  If you only want to change the beam width for this game, then create an ini file with the same name as the rom and put it in your ini subfolder.  You need only the beam parameter in this ini file.  That is you can put only the parameters that you want to be different from the normal mame.ini file.

[jasonbar]

Thanks *yet again* for your patience in answering basic & obvious questions, SGT!  Now that I've finished my filtering of my games & working on tweaking my interface & such, I've got a long 2-do list w/ all the helpful links from this forum--almost all my helpful stuff comes from you, urebelscum, & loadman!


Aaaah, I'll check my machine--perhaps these 2 games already have an ini file that's telling MAME to use autosave...Hey, what happens if the command line says to do one thing & an ini file says the opposite?  So, if I type mame starcas -noautosave but there's a -autosave entry in the ini file, which command "wins"?


One more bonehead question.  Is there a comprehensive list & description of all the configuration options & their allowed ranges of values?  I  know I can type mame -showconfig at the command prompt to get a list of configuration options.  Is this comprensive?  Is there a document showing the values that can be used for each item?  (like beam width, for example).

Thanks!
-Jason

[SGT]

Hey, what happens if the command line says to do one thing & an ini file says the opposite?  So, if I type mame starcas -noautosave but there's a -autosave entry in the ini file, which command "wins"?

The command line takes precedence over the ini files.  The ini file with the same name as the rom name takes precedence over mame.ini.

One more bonehead question.  Is there a comprehensive list & description of all the configuration options & their allowed ranges of values?  I  know I can type mame -showconfig at the command prompt to get a list of configuration options.  Is this comprensive?  Is there a document showing the values that can be used for each item?  (like beam width, for example).

Haven't seen any bonehead questions from you.  There is a file named config.txt that is distributed with the source files that has most of what you are looking for.  It may also be included with the binaries, but I'm not sure as I always compile my own Mame.  If you download the Mame source files, there is a docs folder included that has config.txt and some other txt files.

http://mamedev.org/release.html

[jasonbar]

Hey SGT-

Very good stuff here--thanks for the info.  You're help is soooo handy!   

This post has evolved in to me mumbling out loud & plodding my way through these settings, often finding my own answers...


I found a mame32.ini, starcas.ini & vector.ini in my mam\ini directory.  No mame.ini file.  (I'm using MAME32 115u2 for troubleshooting/etc, while MaLa is launching command line mamepp.)

1 - I know that I didn't make that starcas.ini.  Does mame automatically generate one if you launch mame w/ a certain ROM & then adjust some of the configurations in your command line launch?

2 - Is the vector.ini used whenever mame launches a vector game?  I found a line that says autosave 1 in there, whereas my mame32.ini says autosave 0 in there, so I guess that's why my vector games (well, at least Star Castle & Solar Quest...) were so insistent upon using the autosave feature.

3 - Woohoo!  We have bullets!  I found the beam line in vector.ini & changed it from beam 1. to beam 2.  Now I have bullets in Star Castle & Solar Quest!  Beam 2 made Tempest look a little clunky, so I tried beam 1.5 & that looks a little better.  I removed my vector.ini file altogether (don't seem to need it) & created solarq.ini & starcas.ini w/ just beam 1.5 in the file on 1 line.  I'm running my current PC at 800x600, but I'm not sure what resolution MAME is using when I launch a game--the resolution looks pretty fine (as in small pixels, not as in "you so fiiine!").  But when I put it into my MAME cab, I'll be using my Betson 27", which I think runs @ 640x400 (I bought it a looong time ago--this is taking a looong time to put together!), so I'll likely have to fuss w/ vector settings again if bullets go away again w/ that monitor...I run MAME @ full screen & see a switchres 0 under # FULL SCREEN OPTIONS, so I'm guessing that, if windows XP is @ 800x600, so is MAME?  I think I found my monitor in the Betson parts catalog 2004, p. 83, 27" VGA monitor.  That makes sense, as my MaLa layout is fixed at 800x600, so I guess I'll be running everything in 800x600.  To try to see the differences of forcing different resolutions for now, I added -resolution 320x200@60 to starcas.ini.  I saw no difference, even trying a few different settings.  It almost seems worth making a mam.ini & putting a line in there to force all games to run at 800x600 @ 60Hz.  Does that make sense?

4 - For some reason, all my vector games would show a little info window when launching (not the left/right OK window).  I found skip_gameinfo was set to 0 in vector.ini & set it to 1 & now that doens't show anymore.  I guess that line controls that window, and that answers my question about vector.ini being the ini file used when launching vector games!

5 - The binaries MAME packages have a Docs folder that has windows.txt, the lengthy document detailing all these settings & options.  A little different from the way you found your config.txt


OK, those msyteries are fixed, if not completely understood.

Now on to my multiple versions of MAME that I'm going to ned to play all that I want to play...I'll put that back into my MaLa for dummies thread of mine.


Thanks agian, SGT.

-Jason