New Video Options in MAME

[pacman]

This is taken from the newvideo.txt file in the latest build of mame. Is this going to affect gameex?

This article originally appeared in a slightly different form at

http://aarongiles.com. You should read this if you are used to how

MAME's video system worked prior to 0.107 and you want to understand

how you should configure MAME with the new rendering system in place.

The New Video Landscape

Since its inception 9 years ago, MAMEâ??s video system has defaulted to

a mode where it tries to change resolutions on you. And since the

first port of the core to Windows 5 years ago, it has defaulted to

using your graphics card to stretch the video to that resolution.

Iâ??m sure a lot of you out there have taken a lot of time to tweak the

current set of video options to make them work the way you like. But

every once in a while, you need to take a step back and re-evaluate

the situation. The current video system has been in place for 5 years

now without much substantial change. And with the recent rewrite,

youâ??re almost certainly going to want to rethink the way you have

things configured.

At the highest level, there are really three different ways you can

configure the new system. Placing yourself into one of these three

categories will help you get the initial settings right. From there,

you can tweak with the settings to figure out what works best.

Category 1: Bells and whistles. People who fall into this category

would include anyone with a modern system and a decent video card

(decent in this context means at least 16MB of VRAM and built in the

last 5 years or so â?? weâ??re not talking cutting edge here). Any decent

video card will be able to render the simple MAME graphics at pretty

much any resolution without breaking a sweat. Configure your desktop

to the video mode you want (preferably something high like 1024Ã?768

or greater with a high refresh rate, unless you are running on a

fixed-mode LCD, in which case just match what your LCD panel is),

and tell MAME to leave the resolution alone. In this day and age,

there is little reason to switch resolutions at all, unless you

fall into Category 3, below. In this mode, you will have full access

to artwork options, and youâ??ll get your artwork scaled to full

resolution and with full alpha blending effects. Vector games will

look crisp, you can use decent fonts, and you can see a whole lot

more of the world when using the graphics/tilemap viewer. This mode

uses Direct3D, so you should configure yourself like this:

-video d3d -noswitchres [-triplebuffer] [-nofilter]

The -noswitchres option tells MAME to just run at the current

resolution. Although you can let MAME pick a resolution for you, it

doesnâ??t really make much sense in D3D mode, and in fact I may even

remove that feature altogether. To avoid tearing artifacts, I

recommend using the -triplebuffer option as well. Just make sure your

monitorâ??s refresh rate is higher than the game you are running. If

you dislike the blurry look of the graphics, you can specify the

-nofilter option to disable bilinear filtering, though that will

produce blocky artifacts. Alternatively, you can use the -prescale

option which is described at the end of this article.

Category 2: Like the old days. I really didnâ??t even want to support

this mode at all, but certain vocal MAMEdevs would have skinned me

alive otherwise. People who fall into this category include those who

have weak systems that worked fine with previous versions of MAME,

but who donâ??t run well with Direct3D rendering. (Note that just

because Space Invaders runs unthrottled at 2000fps with DirectDraw

and 1000fps with Direct3D doesnâ??t mean that Direct3D is going to be

a serious issue when playing at a regular 60fps, so if youâ??re unsure,

give the Direct3D route a try for a while.) In this mode, MAME will

draw the game screen and artwork at the gameâ??s resolution, just like

it did in MAME 0.106 and earlier; however, some artwork options,

such as -artcrop, wonâ??t work as you might expect, and some alpha

blending artwork modes (specifically overlays) will operate with a

performance penality. MAME will then use your video card to stretch

the video to the proper aspect ratio.

-video ddraw -hwstretch [-switchres] [-triplebuffer]

The -switchres is optional here. If your video card is really ancient

and struggles expanding the screen to fit your desktop resolution,

you might want to turn it on. Again, to avoid tearing artifacts, I

recommend using the -triplebuffer option as well, but make sure your

monitorâ??s refresh rate is higher than the game you are running

(-switchres will do that for you if you use it). If your video card

produces blurry pixels which you donâ??t like, try the -prescale option

described at the end of this article.

Category 3: Anal video mode types. These are the guys who have

generally built their own cabinets and set them up with a CRT display

where they have several dozen carefully hand-tweaked video modes that

approximate the original video modes the games ran at. They want MAME

to pick that hand-tweaked mode and use it, drawing one pixel on the

screen for each pixel in the original game. They donâ??t give a whit

about artwork or anything other than the raw pixels going to the

right place. Fortunately, you can still configure MAME for this case

as well:

-video ddraw -nohwstretch -switchres [-triplebuffer]

Obviously in this case, the -switchres is required. You also want to

disable hardware stretching, otherwise you wonâ??t get that â??perfectâ?

1:1 pixel mapping. Triple buffering may or may not help.

So, I recommend starting with these initial options and then tweaking

from there. One additional option you might want to try in

combination with the above is the -prescale option. -prescale takes

an integer parameter from 1 to 8, and specifies a magnification

amount by which the screen pixels are expanded before they are drawn

to the screen. Why is this useful? And how much of a performance

impact does it have? Well, that depends on the mode you are running

in.

If you are running in Category 1 (-video d3d), then -prescale will

use your video card to scale the game graphics up before rendering

them to the screen. Depending on the video card, this is usually a

small performance hit, but not too significant. The benefit is that

each prescale factor reduces the blurriness of the pixels.

-prescale 1 is the default, which does no scaling. -prescale 2 will

double each pixel, -prescale 3 will triple each pixel, etc. For my

money, -prescale 2 is sufficient, but people with super high

resolution displays claim that larger -prescale factors work even

better.

If you are running in Category 2 (-video ddraw -hwstretch), then

-prescale will cause MAME to compose the screen graphics at the

specified scale factor. This is unfortunately done in software, but

carries the benefit that artwork, fonts, and the graphics viewer can

take advantage of the additional resolution to produce nicer results.

The end effect is that you will get less blurry pixels, just like the

Category 1 case, plus higher quality artwork, fonts, and more visible

area in the graphics viewer.

If you are running in Category 3 (-video ddraw -nohwstretch), then

-prescale will cause MAME to pick a video mode that is the prescale

factor times the raw screen resolution, and then MAME will, in

software, compose the screen graphics at the specified scale factor.

This has all the advantages of the Category 2 case, except that since

there wasnâ??t any pixel blurring to begin with, there is no additional

crispness that comes about as a result.

Finally, you may be wondering about effects (and yes, scanlines are

an â??effectâ?). Effects are no longer hard-coded into the system.

Rather, you can provide a PNG file in the artwork directory that will

be loaded and overlaid on top of screen bitmaps. See the description

of -effect in windows.txt for more details.

[NIVO]

looks like its time to dive in and start screwin around

[Adultery]

Gotta love compatability upgrades!

I gotta respect the MAME team for all the millions of lines of code they must have stared at for years! It just keeps going... and going... and going...

[night]

i wonder if people will use the d3d or direct draw mode

[emphatic]

So, has anyone tried it with GameEx yet? Does the bezels work for vertical games?

Emph

[ziggy73701]

Yeah am using option 1

Just added -video d3d -noswitchres -triplebuffer

To my command line in GameEx.... looks lovely.... may just be me but looks sooo much crisper... and seems to boot faster too!!

[Smiff]

Radeon9550, i think i'll be giving d3d a go.

just gotta update all those files.. argh

rom update 106>107 seems to be only about 58MB..

so does this really look better than old video system?

any issues with MAMEplus! GCC + GameEx ?

edit: current catver seems to be here http://www.progettoemma.net/?catlist

thanks

update: quick observations:

- like the new rom loading information

- (mameplus 107) UI is very unstable for me. just right clicking the ui crashes it every time

- d3d video: it seems you must have bilinear filtering enabled or you'll get stretching artifacts. and all the effects (Scale2x,HQxx etc etc.) look bad, probably because of the order things are applied in. so for now ill run with just bilinear filtering. could go back to ddraw of course but arent there some advantages of d3d?

[Ricci]

hmmm...are we thinking there is still work needed here??

[Smiff]

well the instability of MAMEPlus UI should not matter to GameEx users - though it may well be unstable in games aswell, i don't know yet haven't used it enough.

the video issues are more worrying if you like the enhancments, not sure if they're solvable, but you can always drop back to ddraw - assuming that works the same as before, im not sure yet.

[Smiff]

edit: no its not to do with prescale sorry

it seems you *have* to keep bilinear filtering enabled if you want to use scaling effects (without them looking horrible)

i like the new scale effects menu in the mame in-game ui.

[Smiff]

ok, there is a new mamegui.exe on mameplus site which fixes the instability i saw

does anyone else find all the scaling effects very slow in this version?

to the point where even the fastest ones likes Scale2x cause <100% speed on an Athlon 3000+.

this is not normal is it?

with Metal Slug 5:

Scale2x - ~95% speed

LQ2x ~ 90%

HQ3x ~ 60%

using DDRAW gives horrible video quality

so i'm on D3D9 with the None scaling.

any ideas anyone please?

Radeon 9550, Cat v6.1