GameEx & ArcadeVGA, JPAC & New Astro City

[midiman]

Finally got this all hooked up with my cabinet! So it boots right up, no problems. I can see WinXP at 800x600, 640x480, etc...so I suppose I have one of the "better" monitors.

What I don't understand is how to make mame play games at their default resolutions. I've tried a number of settings, but they all only seem to change GameEx's interface - loading a game in mame from the interface always looks the same.

What do I need to do? I can't even find the mame.ini that they talk about editing on Ultimarc's site. I'm using the standard Windows command-line i686 mame straight off mamedev. No mame32 or mamewah or arcadeos, etc...

[bkenobi]

I don't know where you adjust the setting, but I know there is a way to get MAME to load in the game's original resolution by using the -resolution switch. I just saw a post a couple days ago where they had that working and they even stated what they were using to make it pop up (automatically). However, since I don't run an arcade monitor, it's not too important to me, so I didn't pay attention close enough. I want to say it's part of the ArcadeVGA drivers though.

[shaunopp]

Finally got this all hooked up with my cabinet! So it boots right up, no problems. I can see WinXP at 800x600, 640x480, etc...so I suppose I have one of the "better" monitors.

What I don't understand is how to make mame play games at their default resolutions. I've tried a number of settings, but they all only seem to change GameEx's interface - loading a game in mame from the interface always looks the same.

What do I need to do? I can't even find the mame.ini that they talk about editing on Ultimarc's site. I'm using the standard Windows command-line i686 mame straight off mamedev. No mame32 or mamewah or arcadeos, etc...

The mame .ini file is in your mame folder, you open it with a text editor. If it's not in there, you can create one by running create config from a command line. There are instructions for doing this in the docs folder inside the mame folder. I think it's just mame.exe -cc but double check the docs.

Once you've done this you then need to create custom .ini files for every mame game. Doing this manually is impractical so you need to use a utility like Gavin Bensons AvRes which is also on the Ultimarc page above. When you run the utility it will look at each mame game, determine the most appropriate res for the game and create a custom .ini file for it in your mame folder. Then, whenever you launch a mame game it uses this custom .ini file with a res that is as close to the native res as possible.

[midiman]

Interesting - definitely realized that gameex.ini didnt seem to help me much and figured out how to create mame.ini. I then made sure switches was 1 and hardware stretch was off and it was immediately evident that things were looking great. I also made all bezel/artwork stuff set to off.

The problem now is that certain games simply won't display at all or stretch differently etc. Does hwstretch need to be 1?

And since the above worked, do I really need to run the file that manually creates the ini files for all of the games? I mean, its obviously changing the resolution per game already. If I do create the individual inis what happens when I want to upgrade mame later on?

Finally - another problem is vertical games appear in a small resolution in the top-leftish area of the screen. What can I do to make sure these appear OK, without rotating the screen?

[shaunopp]

Interesting - definitely realized that gameex.ini didnt seem to help me much and figured out how to create mame.ini. I then made sure switches was 1 and hardware stretch was off and it was immediately evident that things were looking great. I also made all bezel/artwork stuff set to off.

You should turn off the GameEx ArcadeVGA option entirely. Set 'Use ArcadeVGA settings' to 'No' and use custom ini files.

The problem now is that certain games simply won't display at all or stretch differently etc. Does hwstretch need to be 1?

hwstretch should definitely be turned off, set to '0'. hwstretch will stretch the game to take up all of the screen which blurs it, this defeats the purpose of the ArcadeVGA and an arcade monitor which is to run the game at it's native resolution and refresh rate. The fact that games stretch differently is because mame isn't selecting the correct resolution for the game.

And since the above worked, do I really need to run the file that manually creates the ini files for all of the games? I mean, its obviously changing the resolution per game already. If I do create the individual inis what happens when I want to upgrade mame later on?

Yes, you definitely need to use custom .ini files if you're using an ArcadeVGA and an arcade monitor and want all of your mame games to run at the correct resolutions.

As a test, create a text file named paperboy.ini by copy/pasting the below and put it in your mame-->ini folder

## paperboy ##

screen0 \\.\DISPLAY1

switchres 1

hwstretch 0

bezel 0

backdrop 0

resolution 512x384

resolution0 512x384

Then run paperboy with and without that file in the mame-->ini folder. You should notice a big difference. Take out the resolutions and change hwstretch to '1' and it should look blurrier. If you look on the MAWS site you'll see that the original paperboy ran at 512x384 @ 60hz thus the setting in the .ini above. The resolutions don't always match exactly but they're really close across the board. The goal is to have an .ini file for each game that tells mame to use the resolution on your ArcadeVGA that is closest to the original game.

Finally - another problem is vertical games appear in a small resolution in the top-leftish area of the screen. What can I do to make sure these appear OK, without rotating the screen?

Turning off the GameEx ArcadeVGA setting may fix this or it could be a monitor calibration issue. What type of arcade monitor do you have and have you calibrated it? You need to use a utility like the Nokia Monitor Test utility and flip through each ArcadeVGA res and adjust accordingly. Make sure you have the Ultimarc Quickres (galaga icon) in your Start menu, then flip through each resolution and use your monitor controls to adjust the picture size, leave about 5mm of black space around the outside. It'll take you an hour or so but then you should be set.

[midiman]

You should turn off the GameEx ArcadeVGA option entirely. Set 'Use ArcadeVGA settings' to 'No' and use custom ini files.

Awesome - thanks. I ran the res utility randomly found on ultimarcs site, and all is great. Thank you!!

...then flip through each resolution and use your monitor controls to adjust the picture size, leave about 5mm of black space around the outside. It'll take you an hour or so but then you should be set.

So, if I do the above, the settings will each be separately remembered for the next time they're shown? Quite doubtful, but I'll give it a shot...

Last question - might just make a new thread in a day or so...

I'm successfully using jnes, zsnes, and magic engine, but i'm having some problems with SSF (Saturn), and somewhat with jnes. I'm trying to 'remap' keyboard keys so that, for instance, L-Shift (button 1, player 1 on the j-pac) is remapped only in SSF to a different key, because SSF won't allow me to use Shift as a controllable key. I saw the bottom-most section in the map file, but trying even the simplest change didn't work and I know I have a registered version. Is there some reason those settings wouldn't work?

[Mark32]

What type of arcade monitor do you have and have you calibrated it? You need to use a utility like the Nokia Monitor Test utility and flip through each ArcadeVGA res and adjust accordingly. Make sure you have the Ultimarc Quickres (galaga icon) in your Start menu, then flip through each resolution and use your monitor controls to adjust the picture size, leave about 5mm of black space around the outside. It'll take you an hour or so but then you should be set.

Thanks for the Nokia-Monitor-Tool this made calibrating much easier. I spent some time lastnight going through the diffrent resolutions adjusting the geometry. Suprising how far off some of them were. Everything looks good now.

[shaunopp]

Awesome - thanks. I ran the res utility randomly found on ultimarcs site, and all is great. Thank you!!

So, if I do the above, the settings will each be separately remembered for the next time they're shown? Quite doubtful, but I'll give it a shot...

Yes, it will save the different geometry settings.

Last question - might just make a new thread in a day or so...

I'm successfully using jnes, zsnes, and magic engine, but i'm having some problems with SSF (Saturn), and somewhat with jnes. I'm trying to 'remap' keyboard keys so that, for instance, L-Shift (button 1, player 1 on the j-pac) is remapped only in SSF to a different key, because SSF won't allow me to use Shift as a controllable key. I saw the bottom-most section in the map file, but trying even the simplest change didn't work and I know I have a registered version. Is there some reason those settings wouldn't work?

I haven't had any luck using GameEx to remap keys. The advanced emu config is supposed to let you do this but I haven't been able to get it to work either. The easiest solution would be to change the L-Shift to another compatible key on your j-pac. You'd have to make sure to go into mame and change the P1 button to the new key you assign but that's pretty simple.

Thanks for the Nokia-Monitor-Tool this made calibrating much easier. I spent some time lastnight going through the diffrent resolutions adjusting the geometry. Suprising how far off some of them were. Everything looks good now.

Glad it helped! It's amazing how jacked the default settings can be on an arcade monitor.