Full Screen on 32" LCD TV?? [RESOLVED]

[MNMax21]

Hi all,

I have had MAME and GameEx for about 6 months. I had the urge to build a cabinet and have completed the project, well except painting and t-molding.. I got a little busy enjoying the games! GameEx is awesome and big props to Tom! Thanks for making a more user friendly MAME experience. I had MAME a long long time ago on a PC and used my keyboard. This way rocks and so does having a cabinet!

Anyways, on to my question. I put in a inexpensive Dynex TV, however I have an onboard ATI graphics card. I really have no other option, due to no PCI slots.. I would have to get a new motherboard. It was a cheap purchase to get MAME going at Micro Center. It works great, but may complicate my question.. When I run GameEx it's fullscreen and awesome. I then run MAME and everything has the dreaded black sides. I have adjusted the generic video options in MAME through tab button a few times. (Mainly due to artwork preview making the playing screen even smaller, however... the bezel option for asteroids is SICK!!)

I am wondering if there is some miraculous way to make MAME play in the entire 32" screen. I would hope to not be stretched.. but if that's the only way, I would like to at least see what it looks like. Is that what AdvanceMAME does, if so that was over my head and I'm sorry... Also, I checked the FAQ and came across this:

Q: My MAME games are not in full screen, or I just get a black screen.

A: Add -nowindow -hwstretch -ddraw to the MAME Options under Advanced MAME settings.

In addition, make sure UsingArcadeVGA is set to False.

Would the above fix the issue.. ?

[u-man]

you can not play fullsized MAME games on a Full HD screen WITHOUT the games being stretched. MAME games are mostly in 4:3 aspect ratio proportions, but most modern tvs today are 16:9. so you will have black borders on left/right side, IF you play the games in their original aspect ratio.

Q: My MAME games are not in full screen, or I just get a black screen.

A: Add -nowindow -hwstretch -ddraw to the MAME Options under Advanced MAME settings.

In addition, make sure UsingArcadeVGA is set to False.

Would the above fix the issue.. ?

you WILL get fullscreen MAME-games, but they will be stretched, loosing the aspect ratio. i would not recommend this, but this is personal taste thing. the games will not look "original". in my opinion it is better to use the artwork BUT with "cropped" checkmark (important, if not checked you would play the games in original resolution, which is very small on a full-hd-tv), this way you play the games fullscreen (at least in height ) and the left/right sides are filled with bezel artwork. bad for games that have no artwork (+2800) .

if you use this option, you will also loose the benefits of direct x, as you will use directdraw, which has no tripple buffering and bilinear filtering, as far as i know.

[MNMax21]

Okay, I understand the TV ratios and what not. i kind of assumed that it was impossible, if I wanted it to actually look good still. This crop aspect sounds interesting.. I have downloaded lots of artwork from EmuMovies.com. It all seems to go on the top and bottom, which then reduces the viewing size even further. I have switched video options through tab button, but it then loses the artwork and just has the viewing screen. I have kept the artwork on some games.. for instance Asteroids looks cooler to me with the bezel artwork.

Are you saying there is a way to have the black sides of the screen be filled in by artwork, rather than just black? Or are you speaking of vertical games like pac-man and the generic GameEx bezel? I would love if there was a way to just have something there other than the black space... makes it look silly when my bezel is set at the end of the TV sides. I found the below information on the MAME website. Would this be all I have to do?

-[no]artwork_crop / -[no]artcrop

Enable cropping of artwork to the game screen area only. This works

best with -video gdi or -video d3d, and means that vertically oriented

games running full screen can display their artwork to the left and

right sides of the screen. This does not work with -video ddraw

because of the way the game screens are rendered and scaled after the

fact. This option can also be controlled via the Video Options menu in

the user interface. The default is OFF (-noartwork_crop).

Even if this would not fill the black voids, would it allow me to have pac-man artwork rather than the GameEx logo. I love GameEx[ ], but it would be cool to have the artwork on the vertical games. Would I jsut accomplish the above from the command prompt?

[u-man]

what kind of MAME do you use? the original or some MAME+user interface like MAME UI?

if you use original MAME then open your MAME.ini (its inside your MAME folder) in a text-editor and change this lines:

#

# CORE CONFIGURATION OPTIONS

#

readconfig 1

writeconfig 0

#

# CORE ARTWORK OPTIONS

#

artwork_crop 1

use_backdrops 1

use_overlays 1

use_bezels 1

use_cpanels 1

use_marquees 1

#

# WINDOWS VIDEO OPTIONS

#

video d3d

numscreens 1

window 0

maximize 1

keepaspect 1

prescale 1

waitvsync 0

syncrefresh 0

menu 0

#

# DIRECT3D-SPECIFIC OPTIONS

#

d3dversion 9

filter 1

#

# FULL SCREEN OPTIONS

#

triplebuffer 1

switchres 0

full_screen_brightness 1.00

full_screen_contrast 1.0

full_screen_gamma 1.0

save your MAME.ini.

in GameEx change your command-line to this:

-skip_gameinfo -readconfig

in the Use Bezel option, choose Dont use Bezel, if you want to use and see the artwork (your downloads from emu-movies for example). if you want to use the GameEx bezel then turn this option back to Use Bezel for vertical games, this has the advantage, that you have at least a bezel for EVERY vertical based game.

if you dont like the GameEx bezel, create your own bezel, as you can modify the images used by changing mame.png and mask.png in the GameEx\Media\Bezel folder.

here we go

[MNMax21]

This is awesome, thanks for the wealth of information! I know how to get to that file and it looks pretty simple. Thanks for the help. I'll post an update and let you know how it goes. I am in a string of overnights at work, so it might not be right away. But I might enjoy losing a bit of sleep over this!

[MNMax21]

This worked great!!! Thanks a ton. I like it much better than stretching. I saw your post in the other logo section too. I was looking into editing some of the logos on the game ex default animated theme that I use. I thought it would be in the specific theme folder, but I don't even see the logos in the media portion. Only the ones I've downloaded which were created by others have the logos. Can you direct me to where I would remap the config or directory to logos for a specific theme.. I like the layout of the default. I would just like to change a few logos. I saw the tutorial, but I'm not really looking to build a theme. More like enhance the one I already use.

Thanks for all of your help!

[MNMax21]

Oh, the here we go at the end made me laugh. I was expecting a rescue dog to bring me a Bud Light!