Playing VERTICAL games on HORIZONTAL displays

[hansolo77]

Hey Tom and others...

If I could get somebody to verify this I'd be happier knowing I'm not crazy, or have some crazy configuration...

I am running MAME32Plus as my emulator. It is configured the way I like, and all of the games play fine through it's frontend GUI. With the latest few versions of GameEx (6.18 now) I've been having more and more issues playing vertical games. I've finally tracked down the cause but need to be verified.

I was previously able to play 1941 (a classic vertical shooter) fine. I had the custom designed bezel artwork provided with GameEX running along both sides of the screen. Inside MAME ofcourse I had the bezel turned off. Recently, this configuration no longer works. Most times the game would load the warning screen, then crash. Other times it would just flicker the screen, the mouse would jump around, then crash. I thought it might have been related to the resolution or vertical sync. I tried changing all kinds of things. It was a real bother because I couldn't figure out why the 1941 series games wouldn't work but others did fine. Then I realized it was because it was a vertical game, and GameEx has been going under a lot of reconstruction for vertical support.

So I looked into the vertical options in the configuration of GameEx and tried disabling the bezel artwork for vertical screens. BAM!! That did it. Now all my vertical games work just like they do from within MAME itself.

So my request to all is... can this be confirmed? Is anybody able to duplicate this? I have my mame settings at pretty much their defaults, with bezels turned off. GameEx is the same way, only with the bezels turned off. Try and play a vertical game with them on and see if it works or not.

Thanks for your time in reading this. I wanted to go into as much detail as I could to try and show my troubleshooting and solution so Tom could fix it.

Thanks!

[Tom Speirs]

Hey Tom and others...

If I could get somebody to verify this I'd be happier knowing I'm not crazy, or have some crazy configuration...

I am running MAME32Plus as my emulator. It is configured the way I like, and all of the games play fine through it's frontend GUI. With the latest few versions of GameEx (6.18 now) I've been having more and more issues playing vertical games. I've finally tracked down the cause but need to be verified.

I was previously able to play 1941 (a classic vertical shooter) fine. I had the custom designed bezel artwork provided with GameEX running along both sides of the screen. Inside MAME ofcourse I had the bezel turned off. Recently, this configuration no longer works. Most times the game would load the warning screen, then crash. Other times it would just flicker the screen, the mouse would jump around, then crash. I thought it might have been related to the resolution or vertical sync. I tried changing all kinds of things. It was a real bother because I couldn't figure out why the 1941 series games wouldn't work but others did fine. Then I realized it was because it was a vertical game, and GameEx has been going under a lot of reconstruction for vertical support.

So I looked into the vertical options in the configuration of GameEx and tried disabling the bezel artwork for vertical screens. BAM!! That did it. Now all my vertical games work just like they do from within MAME itself.

So my request to all is... can this be confirmed? Is anybody able to duplicate this? I have my mame settings at pretty much their defaults, with bezels turned off. GameEx is the same way, only with the bezels turned off. Try and play a vertical game with them on and see if it works or not.

Thanks for your time in reading this. I wanted to go into as much detail as I could to try and show my troubleshooting and solution so Tom could fix it.

Thanks!

Its either a MAMEPlus issue or your bezel got corrupted. If its the later delete the directory c:\program files\GameEx\Bezel and reinstall GameEx.

[emphatic]

I had some oddities happen to me with Spy Hunter, the left side of the GameEx bezel covers about 80% of the screen, so you can hardly see what game is loaded. And Super Punch Out is displayed without the bezels.

Emph

[Smiff]

i don't think i've ever seen bezels working. but now i'm motivated to have a go. does anyone have some instructions on setting up bezels anywhere please?

[emphatic]

smiff: if you are a registered user, just go into "Basic MAME settings" and enable them in the last option.

Launch a vertical MAME game and voilá!

Emph

[Smiff]

ah it always was turned on in gameex config - i get nothing

turned off artwork in mameplus - still nothing

i should have said sorry, i don't want a banner that says "gameex", (that seems to be what comes with gameex?) i want those custom artworks made for each game

its not really important but i do remember this working once.

do i turn off the bezel in gameex and on in MAME?

[emphatic]

I "upgraded" to MAME32+ 0.106 and now I get major slowdowns in all vertical games if I use the bezel option. I'm not sure wether it's MAME or all the GameEX upgrading that is doing this. I believe I've read somewhere that the bezel files can get corrupted. As I used my own custom bezels, this might be the case.... Hmmm.... I'm gonna delete my files and reinstall and see if this helpes.

Emph

[Smiff]

sorry if this is OT:

MAME+ 106 doesnt work at all for me (exception on load). MAME+ 106u1 seems to work (not sure about artwork yet)

should i be using the gui or the command line version? both seem to work, i just think maybe it makes a different to artwork support?

[hansolo77]

sorry if this is OT:

MAME+ 106 doesnt work at all for me (exception on load). MAME+ 106u1 seems to work (not sure about artwork yet)

should i be using the gui or the command line version? both seem to work, i just think maybe it makes a different to artwork support?

I'm using 106u1. I use just mamep.exe for the gameex command, and mamepgui when not using gameex.

Also, I'm much happier now, knowing that the problem is flaky with other people as well. Its strange that the bezel would get corrupted. I'll try this out though. I did noticed something else that was strange. I had GameEX and mame setup a certain way, and the bezel loaded horiztonally, and the vertical game was horizontal as well. Basiclly, the game was running horiztonally, with MAME and GAMEEX logos on the top and bottom. Isn't that wierd? I don't know how I did that. Another thing I've noticed that kinda confirms emphatic's previous message is the resolution of the bezel. I had it being displayed at super high res. The image of the bezel was so large, it took probably 120% of the screen, cropping off the bottom half. The rom was playing on the right half of the screen, and the other half of the bezel wasn't even visible.

Perhaps this is a key factor Tom? Is the bezel artwork not scalable to match the rom? Some (or most for that matter) roms are in different resolutions. If the artwork is strictly limited to say an 800x600 resolution, then anything with a lower resolution would make the artwork huge, and vice versa for a higher resolution rom.

Hmmmmm... I wish I knew more about programming to test the theory. I'm only good at troubleshooting/diagnostics and trial and error methods of repair.

[Smiff]

does MAME+ (MAMEplus!) even support bezels? theyre missing from the gui

(and does that matter to gameex anyway)

yah i dont get how bezels work at all.. also, i want just to fill the space, not make the tiny screen even tinier. i'm giving up on this for now, got bigger fish to fry

[hansolo77]

If MAME+ does support bezels, I don't use them. I'm just trying to get the default bezel that comes with GameEx to work.

[hansolo77]

I just finished removing the specified bezel folder and reinstalled GameEX. It still doesn't work when I have bezels enabled in the configuration.

[peterson65]

my bezels stopped working also, and i tried and deleted the bezel folder and reinstalled and still doesnt work

anyone else had the same problem?

[Tom Speirs]

I think all this might be down to the new graphics engine in MAME. What versions are you using?

[hansolo77]

I'm currently running MAME32 Plus! 0.106u2

[hansolo77]

As seen in this picture, I don't get the GameEx and MAME logos on the left/right of the screen...

When I play vertical games, they show up as the screenshot on the right, not the left.

[hansolo77]

TOM!!! I'VE FOUND THE SOLUTION!!

Or rather, I've found the problem, we need your help for the solution!

Ok, it turns out that since build 106u2 of ALL MAME VERSIONS, they've got a new render that displays the image. This render doesn't display bezel artwork they way we're familiar with. They have to be converted to a new format. Since your "generic" bezel artwork is in the old style format, it'll only display correctly with machines running version 106u1 or earlier. Seeing as how I like to stay on top of things and keep everything up to date, I've already upgraded to the latest (106u3 isn't a necessary upgrade yet).

So what we need done is a conversion of at least the generic bezel artwork. It'd be wicked cool if you could find a way to have it load the artwork specifically for the game. I've got TONS of them from a torrent file. Problem is, they're all in the old style.

Here is a link on MAME's official forum where a guy shows the problem, and points at 2 links where more information can be found on building the new format.

http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showt...w=&sb=5&o=&vc=1

Good luck and keep us updated!