Some games are giant, some are perfect, some are small. MAME,Soft15,Jpac,

[blkdog7]

Ok, I am really getting somewhere with this MAME setup.

I have a J-Pac, running MALA, MAME, into a Ms. Pac cab with JAMMA adapter. WG D7700 monitor.

I need help with the video settings. I am very close to having this perfect. Except, some games are big, some are small, some are perfect.

I am running DirectDraw. I basically set up MAME to match the ARCADEVGA settings. I ran VGARes. I had to select horizontal monitor to get everything to work. It would always be wrong (sideways, upsidedown, etc.) if I selected vertical with VGARes.

The image quality is fantastic. I am very happy. It's just that some games are too big on the monitor or too small.

What am I missing?

[NOP]

>I had to select horizontal monitor to get everything to work. It would always be wrong (sideways, upsidedown, etc.) if I selected vertical with VGARes.

Is your monitor actually in a vertical orientation?  That may be the problem if vgaRes has tweaked all the settings to be horizontal, it may have altered the resolution to get it to fit.

Sideways and upside isn't a problem: press the TAB key in the game, select video options, and rotate.  Then you can rotate it into the correct position.  That's a 1 time job for each game.
I seem to think you can do some other video settings via that TAB menu-may that will help.

[blkdog7]

>I had to select horizontal monitor to get everything to work. It would always be wrong (sideways, upsidedown, etc.) if I selected vertical with VGARes.

Is your monitor actually in a vertical orientation?  That may be the problem if vgaRes has tweaked all the settings to be horizontal, it may have altered the resolution to get it to fit.

Sideways and upside isn't a problem: press the TAB key in the game, select video options, and rotate.  Then you can rotate it into the correct position.  That's a 1 time job for each game.
I seem to think you can do some other video settings via that TAB menu-may that will help.

Yes, it's a Ms. Pac-Man cabinet. The monitor is vertical. But, I think it technically is a rotated horizontal monitor. Right?

Anyways, I have no problem with the rotation thing. All games are rotated correctly.

The only problem I have is that some games are just too big or too small on the monitor. I will adjust my monitor for one game and then it screws up some of the other ones.

I only have two buttons on my cabinet. I can't figure out how to select the menu options in MAME. I guess I need to map those keys. If I can adjust H and V scaling within MAME for each game then that might be my answer. Can I?

[NOP]

I think (keyword there) that you should do the vgares tool again, but set it to vertical and have it generate new ini files.  then launch each game and using the TAB menu, rotate each game until it's in the right position.  IIRC, that's what I did on my machine (cocktail galaga, so it should be identical to yours monitor wise.)

Just plug in a keyboard while you're doing this-as I said, it's a one time job, so don't bother mapping a button to it.

There are a few other video options available through that menu, but you shouldn't have to mess with any custom resolutions.  It was at least 9 months since I last messed with my video options, so my memory is fuzzy.  I have an arcadeVGA running into a standard res WG 19" monitor too, and after rotating everything into place, I don't recall having many video problems.

[blkdog7]

I think (keyword there) that you should do the vgares tool again, but set it to vertical and have it generate new ini files.  then launch each game and using the TAB menu, rotate each game until it's in the right position.  IIRC, that's what I did on my machine (cocktail galaga, so it should be identical to yours monitor wise.)

Just plug in a keyboard while you're doing this-as I said, it's a one time job, so don't bother mapping a button to it.

There are a few other video options available through that menu, but you shouldn't have to mess with any custom resolutions.  It was at least 9 months since I last messed with my video options, so my memory is fuzzy.  I have an arcadeVGA running into a standard res WG 19" monitor too, and after rotating everything into place, I don't recall having many video problems.

Ok, cool. I'll give that a shot. I followed all the steps and settings for my MAME.INI file using the suggestions for the ArcadeVGA card. Did you do this stuff too?

This is how I have everything setup in addition to ArcadeRes:

HARDWARE STRETCH MUST BE OFF
YOU MUST USE DIRECT-DRAW NOT DIRECT3D
SWITCH RESOLUTIONS MUST BE ENABLED

#
# VIDEO OPTIONS
#
video ddraw
numscreens 1
window 0
maximize 1
keepaspect 1
prescale 1
effect none
pause_brightness 0.65
waitvsync 0
syncrefresh 0

#
# DIRECTDRAW-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
#
hwstretch 0

#
# FULL SCREEN OPTIONS
#
triplebuffer 0
switchres 1

[NOP]

yep, i followed that same info on the ultimarc site.  it's all working for me.

[blkdog7]

Ok, cool. Really, the only problem I have is getting all games to fit on the monitor the same way. I have no orientation problems. Some are just too big for the monitor and some are too small. I can fix them individually with the monitor controls but that's not gonna work long term. But, the images look FANTASTIC. The games look really good. Great looking arcade pixels with scan lines. No blur. Looks just like my real PCBs.

[NOP]

I should reiterate that I'm using the arcadeVGA card, so there may be other things at play here with soft15khz.

otherwise, perhaps you can narrow things down some by listing the games that work, and the ones that don't, and you might find a common theme WRT the resolution that it's trying to set.  Your card might not be able to do a particular res and is bumping it up or down to the next setting, which would make things look weird.

(I'm by no means a video guru, I just know it just worked when I used vgaRes and followed the instructions provided)

[blkdog7]

Well, for instance, I will set Ms. Pac-Man up PERFECTLY using the cross-hatch and adjusting my monitor. It looks beautiful, just like my original PCB. Then I launch Satan's Hollow and it's HUGE. The sides and tops are all cut-off. I can fix this, by adjusting my monitor then it also looks perfect and beautiful. But, then I go back to Ms. Pac and now it's too small!

I think I will try adjusting the H and V scaling with the MAME onscreen settings and see if that does it. I think the images are all good. If it was a dedicated Satan's Hollow only and I adjusted the monitor once and forever it would be fantastic and perfect. But, since Satan's Hollow has a higher-res than Ms. Pac the monitor adjustments doesn't make them both happy. So maybe I just need to tweak MAME a little.

[NOP]

ok, ms pac man:
display type="raster" rotate="90" width="288" height="224" refresh="60.606061"

satan's hollow:
display type="raster" rotate="90" width="512" height="480" refresh="30.000000"

so they are totally different sizes and refresh rates.  This is perhaps confirming my suspicion that perhaps your video setup might not be able to get into some of those modes. 

There may be some conditional switches you can throw for certain games to fix certain games.
Yeah, you've got to be able to do this without using the physical controls on your monitor-you must do it through software on the fly.  Even if it requires running 2 different versions of MAME to pull it off. 

[blkdog7]

Actually, I adjusting the Vertical and Horizontal scaling via the MAME in-game menu using the sliders and everything seems to be totally perfect now. I haven't played a ton of games yet, or fully tested it, but it appears it just might be a function of adjusting the sliders on the games that need it. Thanks for the help!