Finally a TV monitor for MAME with some issues.

[kewlkat007]

what's going on everyone,? This forum has been great helping me setup my MAME with GameEX so far. Little by little I'm getting all the pieces I need to complete my MAME Cabinet. I appreciate all the the help by some of the Experts on here.

I got a "Sony KV-27V22 TV" to go with my PC and MaMe, now I'm in the Tweaking stage. I'm using resolution 640X480 in GameEX which seems to look ok on the TV. I have an "ATI X1600 AIW/Dvi/Vga outputs" attached through S-video.

Question 1 - I'm not sure what the maximum resolution or refresh rate is for this TV. I had to use PowerStrip to allow my Video Card to use lower resolutions like 640X480. In the "Windows Display Control Panel", I could only see "Min 800X600" and "max 1024X768"

So what should be the best resolution I should set GameEX, to get the best results? Does it depend on the TV?

Question 2 - This was nagging me, I got to try out some games and when the Arcade games booted up, Some had the BEZEL around them; Some were in a super small window;, I was able to hit "TAB" and go to the "Video Configs" of the game and change them.

-Is this something that is predefined in GameEX or MAme32? Or do I have to change the settings for each individual game? A game like "Jungle Hunt" is a perfect Example. But some other games came out correct. All I want is my games to fit the Screen like the Arcades.

Question 3 - Most of my CPS games were not working. I tried playing Marvel Vs Capcom and it loads up the Arcade then keeps changing colors. There was something about contacting Mame net..

-Are my ROMS bad? I cannot play the old Street Fighters? I have third Strike and the Image roms but the game will not work? I have a 2.2 Athlon 64/1GB of ram with XP. Also should I be using MAME32 or something different?

Anyhow I'm l earning a lot as I go, as well as with this program, which is great. If anyone can answer some of the the questions or things to try, that would be sweet. Currently At work and can't try anything until 5:30 PM US Eastern Time. I'll check the Post though.

[bkenobi]

1) Your TV can only run at ~500 lines of resolution so 640x480 is essentially the native resolution (This is sometimes called 540i, but that's neither here nor there). If you set your resolution to higher than that, the output to the svideo will be converted such that 1024x768 maps to the TV resolution. As a result, you will see things sized smaller, but you won't gain any detail. I have my cab set to 800x600 because windows doesn't display things correctly at 640x480 (config boxes get sized outside of the screen, text is the wrong size, etc.), but it wouldn't matter if you attach a monitor or log in remotely to configure things.

2) I'm not sure what you mean, but I'm guessing you are referring to the fact that if you turn on bezels, some games have a very small screen to play in (e.g., 1942). Well, that's pretty much going to happen depending on your settings in MAME. There are some options you have though: you could turn off bezels for all games; you could turn off bezels for each game you don't want to use it on (tab->video options->hide bezel); you could crop artwork for all games; you could crop artwork for specific games; other options exist too... I think you would be best suited to crop or disable the artwork for those games that cut off most of the screen. I personally don't like the NeoGeo artwork displaying because it looks boring and it shrinks the screen by ~40%.

3) Make sure you have the same roms as you do version of MAME (e.g., 0.122 for both). If not, MAME could be seeing a bad checksum. You can technically use any version of MAME you want, but the one most people use is the vanilla release, so you would have a better chance of getting help (here anyway).

[Brian Hoffman]

what's going on everyone,? This forum has been great helping me setup my MAME with GameEX so far. Little by little I'm getting all the pieces I need to complete my MAME Cabinet. I appreciate all the the help by some of the Experts on here.

I got a "Sony KV-27V22 TV" to go with my PC and MaMe, now I'm in the Tweaking stage. I'm using resolution 640X480 in GameEX which seems to look ok on the TV. I have an "ATI X1600 AIW/Dvi/Vga outputs" attached through S-video.

Question 1 - I'm not sure what the maximum resolution or refresh rate is for this TV. I had to use PowerStrip to allow my Video Card to use lower resolutions like 640X480. In the "Windows Display Control Panel", I could only see "Min 800X600" and "max 1024X768"

So what should be the best resolution I should set GameEX, to get the best results? Does it depend on the TV?

Question 2 - This was nagging me, I got to try out some games and when the Arcade games booted up, Some had the BEZEL around them; Some were in a super small window;, I was able to hit "TAB" and go to the "Video Configs" of the game and change them.

-Is this something that is predefined in GameEX or MAme32? Or do I have to change the settings for each individual game? A game like "Jungle Hunt" is a perfect Example. But some other games came out correct. All I want is my games to fit the Screen like the Arcades.

Question 3 - Most of my CPS games were not working. I tried playing Marvel Vs Capcom and it loads up the Arcade then keeps changing colors. There was something about contacting Mame net..

-Are my ROMS bad? I cannot play the old Street Fighters? I have third Strike and the Image roms but the game will not work? I have a 2.2 Athlon 64/1GB of ram with XP. Also should I be using MAME32 or something different?

Anyhow I'm l earning a lot as I go, as well as with this program, which is great. If anyone can answer some of the the questions or things to try, that would be sweet. Currently At work and can't try anything until 5:30 PM US Eastern Time. I'll check the Post though.

1. Some times the higher resolution the more blurry text looks... Make sure to enable large fonts in gameex

I use 800x600 on my TV.

2. When in gameex you have it set to show bezel it add the string in the mame command line. Goto advanced config and disable the bezel feature. Then your games will be fullscreen.

3. This is a very strange problem. Most cps2 games havent been redumped so should work with most any version of mame out there. The only thing I can think of is you have an incomplete/ incompatable (like benkenobi said) romset.

Please post a screencapure. As far as streetfighter3 goes you will not only need the ROM but the CHD as well. Which also leads me to think you have an incomplete romset.

Before you go to mamedev be sure your using the latest version and its a official build.

[kewlkat007]

/bkenobi\

Response #2: Well how do I set it up so I do not see Bezels and Artwork, when I launch my games? Of course I wan tmy games to look normal using the screen.

Response #3: Well I let GameEX download the Mame32 for me, and I just looked at it, it says File Version 0.109.0.0. Which version is a Vanilla Release? Can I get the version and install it in the same path my Mame32 currently resides?

/Brian Hoffman\

Response #3: Well, I'm not sure if I have the wrong version of Mame but I do have all the CHD's and Rooms up till .122 Now about my version of Mame I feel like that's the culprit.

Also what's the Screen Capture button on MAME? Looking at it right now, on NEO-GEO's "3 Count Bout", I have the Marqee at the top and the game has black crops on each side? I don't wanna have to adjust this for every game by hitting the TAB button while in the game.

[iano]

Hi. I'm afraid i can't be of much help but i can tell you that your rom set and version of mame should match. So if you have the .122 rom set then you should use (version) mame32 .122 or mame .122 (windows command line / vanilla mame version).

[bkenobi]

Yup, that's part of the problem. You have an older version of MAME32 (v0.109) and new rom and chd sets (v0.122). When I say vanilla, I just mean the official build of MAME that the MAMEdevs release. You should be running MAME 0.122 or MAMEgui (formerly MAME32) 0.122.

As for the artwork, it depends on what you want to do how you set it up. If you never want to have bezels displayed, you can either delete the artwork directory (or the path in MAME.ini) or you can set either each game to not use artwork, or disable them in MAME.ini. I personally would disable them rather than deleting them, but that's just me.

[kewlkat007]

Hi. I'm afraid i can't be of much help but i can tell you that your rom set and version of mame should match. So if you have the .122 rom set then you should use (version) mame32 .122 or mame .122 (windows command line / vanilla mame version).

Thanks Bud well problem #3 fixed. I picked up MAMEGUI and now I can play all the Capcom games, I have all .122 Roms and CHD's. Is there a preference amongst people which one is better to use and offers more flexibility and features?

Question - Why do I get the Atari list or which ever list is at the bottom of the GameEX pre-default Genres groupings,

Example NeoGeo =.001, .002, .003, .004- .122, then Basebal, Basketball..etc?

Are these the Mame32 Defaults?

[kewlkat007]

Yup, that's part of the problem. You have an older version of MAME32 (v0.109) and new rom and chd sets (v0.122). When I say vanilla, I just mean the official build of MAME that the MAMEdevs release. You should be running MAME 0.122 or MAMEgui (formerly MAME32) 0.122.

As for the artwork, it depends on what you want to do how you set it up. If you never want to have bezels displayed, you can either delete the artwork directory (or the path in MAME.ini) or you can set either each game to not use artwork, or disable them in MAME.ini. I personally would disable them rather than deleting them, but that's just me.

For the artwork I went into Mame Direct and went into the options and disabled artwork, bezel and some other things. My impression was you could disable things under GameEX.

[bkenobi]

You can disable things in GameEx only in that the command line can be edited. But, I personally edit my MAME settings in the MAME.ini file and keep my command line for MAME in GameEx pretty bare. That way I know where things need to be changed rather than having to go between 2 or 3 places.

If you are asking which is better to use ROMS or CHDS, the answer is that you don't have a choice. In the case of games that have disk images (originally compressed hard disks but now compressed hunks of data), you need both the rom (the stuff stored on the chips on the game board(s) and the CHD file. In order to play a game with a CHD, you simply put the file in a directory of the same name inside your MAME roms directory.

As for the game list problem (listing version numbers as well as categories), this is an artifact of the catver.ini file. I'm guessing the problem is 1 of 2 possibilities.

1) You have your catver.ini file in the same location as your custom MAME32 lists so it's reading that file as well as your other lists.

2) Your catver.ini file is malformed and so GameEx is having a problem reading it correctly. For example, maybe your catver.ini is in MAME32 format. I think GameEx requires it to be in the old MAME format.

Let us know how things work out.

[shaunopp]

what's going on everyone,? This forum has been great helping me setup my MAME with GameEX so far. Little by little I'm getting all the pieces I need to complete my MAME Cabinet. I appreciate all the the help by some of the Experts on here.

I got a "Sony KV-27V22 TV" to go with my PC and MaMe, now I'm in the Tweaking stage. I'm using resolution 640X480 in GameEX which seems to look ok on the TV. I have an "ATI X1600 AIW/Dvi/Vga outputs" attached through S-video.

Question 1 - I'm not sure what the maximum resolution or refresh rate is for this TV. I had to use PowerStrip to allow my Video Card to use lower resolutions like 640X480. In the "Windows Display Control Panel", I could only see "Min 800X600" and "max 1024X768"

So what should be the best resolution I should set GameEX, to get the best results? Does it depend on the TV?

Be sure that hwstretch is set to 1 in your mame ini file (your mame ini file is in your mame folder). This basically uses up all of the screen real estate and fills the available area with the image from the game. With a tv setup this is the way to do it. If you had an arcade monitor where you can display the actual resolutions of the original games this wouldn't be the case but is preferred with a tv.

Question 2 - This was nagging me, I got to try out some games and when the Arcade games booted up, Some had the BEZEL around them; Some were in a super small window;, I was able to hit "TAB" and go to the "Video Configs" of the game and change them.

-Is this something that is predefined in GameEX or MAme32? Or do I have to change the settings for each individual game? A game like "Jungle Hunt" is a perfect Example. But some other games came out correct. All I want is my games to fit the Screen like the Arcades.

Sounds like you got this resolved and in my opinion I'd turn all artwork off. For 99% of the games the sacrifice of screen size isn't worth the art surrounding it. The exception would be the background art for games like asteroids deluxe or omega race which is kinda cool with no loss of play area. There are also color overlays for some of the vector games. In Omega Race for example this will change the color of the vector lines.

Question 3 - Most of my CPS games were not working. I tried playing Marvel Vs Capcom and it loads up the Arcade then keeps changing colors. There was something about contacting Mame net..

-Are my ROMS bad? I cannot play the old Street Fighters? I have third Strike and the Image roms but the game will not work? I have a 2.2 Athlon 64/1GB of ram with XP. Also should I be using MAME32 or something different?

Have you downloaded a rom checking tool yet? Good to double-check the roms you have to see if they're in good shape, you may be surprised, I found many of mine incomplete or damaged. Google clrmame. There's a good quick tutorial on using it at: http://www.mameworld.net/easyemu

Anyhow I'm l earning a lot as I go, as well as with this program, which is great. If anyone can answer some of the the questions or things to try, that would be sweet. Currently At work and can't try anything until 5:30 PM US Eastern Time. I'll check the Post though.

As a closing pointer, look in your mame folder for a 'docs' folder and look inside. There are some very helpful text files there about running mame, print them out and refer to them as you go along. There is a specific video txt file which tells you explicitly the developers suggestion for your video settings and hardware.

[kewlkat007]

You can disable things in GameEx only in that the command line can be edited. But, I personally edit my MAME settings in the MAME.ini file and keep my command line for MAME in GameEx pretty bare. That way I know where things need to be changed rather than having to go between 2 or 3 places.

If you are asking which is better to use ROMS or CHDS, the answer is that you don't have a choice. In the case of games that have disk images (originally compressed hard disks but now compressed hunks of data), you need both the rom (the stuff stored on the chips on the game board(s) and the CHD file. In order to play a game with a CHD, you simply put the file in a directory of the same name inside your MAME roms directory.

As for the game list problem (listing version numbers as well as categories), this is an artifact of the catver.ini file. I'm guessing the problem is 1 of 2 possibilities.

1) You have your catver.ini file in the same location as your custom MAME32 lists so it's reading that file as well as your other lists.

2) Your catver.ini file is malformed and so GameEx is having a problem reading it correctly. For example, maybe your catver.ini is in MAME32 format. I think GameEx requires it to be in the old MAME format.

Let us know how things work out.

Hey you might be right but I'm looking for a Catver.ini file an dI can't find it anywhere in any folder...