mame scanlines

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chubsta
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mame scanlines

Post by chubsta »

I used to love the look of the old mame scanlines , but tbh i think the new .png ones are awful - they certainly look crap on my naomi 31khz monitor. I want everything to look as nice as it does on my 15khz system so does anyone have any tips on how i can do it? Part of the problem may be that the monitor is in tate i reckon, but the results using 'effect scanlines' is nothing like it should...
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by CPS2 »

Drop Ralph (alien_mame) a PM. I've seen his mame setup on 31Kz and you be hard pushed to tell the difference. He da man.
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by cools »

Use invzim's tips on the JVS-PAC page. http://jvspac.kirurg.org/?page=mame

The scanlines are perfect like this, it's bang on.

It'll also be fine in tate.
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by chubsta »

cools wrote:Use invzim's tips on the JVS-PAC page. http://jvspac.kirurg.org/?page=mame

The scanlines are perfect like this, it's bang on.

It'll also be fine in tate.
tried that one and it didnt go too well - 1942 didnt fill the screen, galaxians had 2 copies of it running on the screen, one above the other, and the scanlines were no better :shock:
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by cools »

You absolutely will NOT be able to get everything full screen if you want scanlines to work. This is not a fault, it's an effect of the different monitor timings. You will get borders.

With galaxians - you haven't pressed a key and told MAME to run it "cocktail" style, or set that in the in game UI? That does exactly what you've described.

There are certain games I've not had success with the InvZim method (Xexex for example) but that appears to be either MAME picking the wrong mode or a hardware limitation preventing it choosing one.
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by chubsta »

cools wrote:You absolutely will NOT be able to get everything full screen if you want scanlines to work. This is not a fault, it's an effect of the different monitor timings. You will get borders.

With galaxians - you haven't pressed a key and told MAME to run it "cocktail" style, or set that in the in game UI? That does exactly what you've described.

There are certain games I've not had success with the InvZim method (Xexex for example) but that appears to be either MAME picking the wrong mode or a hardware limitation preventing it choosing one.
i thought that about galaxians but both versions of the game were running in the same orientation..

ive msgd alien_mame to see his .ini to see what hes doing there...

whatever i do i think it will be a temporary fix as im looking to either get a 15khz monitor as replacement or get this one tri-rezed, which should hopefully solve all the issues...
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by cools »

Good call. Mine would be no good to you - it's for SDLMAME.

If I've got time tonight I'll give Galaxians a try and see what result I get.
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by invzim »

chubsta wrote:
cools wrote:Use invzim's tips on the JVS-PAC page. http://jvspac.kirurg.org/?page=mame

The scanlines are perfect like this, it's bang on.

It'll also be fine in tate.
tried that one and it didnt go too well - 1942 didnt fill the screen, galaxians had 2 copies of it running on the screen, one above the other, and the scanlines were no better :shock:
You need , 100%, to have a mode that is exactly twice the games resolution for this to work.
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by cools »

Given them both a go. 1942 is 265x224-60, so nothing special there. The modeline for this with InvZim's setup is:
modeline "512x480-60" 20.412 512 528 608 648 480 490 492 525 -hsync -vsync

Galaxian is a little weird - 768x224-60.606061. Correct modeline:
modeline "768x480-61" 29.988 768 784 896 952 480 481 483 516 -hsync -vsync

I use the following:
modeline "768x480-60" 29.988 768 784 896 952 480 490 492 525 -hsync -vsync

Barely any difference, but I've noticed that either MAME or X or something isn't particularly intelligent about choosing refresh rates so I stick to 60hz.

Simple maths - width: 256 x 2 = 512, height: 224 x 2 = 448

As InvZim's page says, you can do everything about the horizontal and nothing about the vertical. With his calculator, 512 fills the same width as 640. But since we're using 480 lines, that's larger than the 448 the game requires so you get black borders.

This also applies at 15k - you will not be able to get all games filling the screen without doing funky scaling.

I actually prefer MAME setup with fake scanlines to getting it going on a 15k monitor. It's a lot simpler :)
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by chubsta »

cools wrote:
I actually prefer MAME setup with fake scanlines to getting it going on a 15k monitor. It's a lot simpler :)
Ive found that when i try to use any 'effects' i get huge lag in the controls - ie in galaxian i press the joystick right, the ship moves, but keeps moving long after i release the joystick. With no effects this does not happen. This is on a C2D3ghz, the game itself shows no sign of slowing down, just the response to the controls.

Sometimes i hate mame ;)

Im getting a 15khz monitor for my next machine so i dont have these silly problems.
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by cools »

Don't get that problem here :)

Quite keen to get SDLMAME 129 on the cab to have a play - it looks like they've fixed the issues I battled with previously (it should now work perfectly on framebuffer, whereas I've had to put X on the cab to get it going)
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by chubsta »

cools wrote:Don't get that problem here :)

Quite keen to get SDLMAME 129 on the cab to have a play - it looks like they've fixed the issues I battled with previously (it should now work perfectly on framebuffer, whereas I've had to put X on the cab to get it going)
im getting a new cab opefully in the next couple o weeks so may ask for advice on linux etc if you dont mind - fancy trying something different for mame next time. the next machine is going to be a 'spinner' only job with a custom cp so should be easy enough to setup...
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by pubjoe »

cools wrote:I actually prefer MAME setup with fake scanlines to getting it going on a 15k monitor. It's a lot simpler :)
I'm using soft15khz right now and it just sorts everything out. Everything looks perfect and it's simple enough for me.
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by cools »

Might have a Linux howto for you in a few weeks on it :)

The major caveat is there are no nice cab frontends except for AdvanceMENU... which is very out of date.
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by fagin »

Chubsta,
Email me (shaun@scoobynet.com) your email address and I will send you a scanline png I use tonight. It looks as close as you could get to me.
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by AeroCityMayor »

Hi there fagin,

I'd like to give that a go as I've currently settled for scanlines.jpg

Cheer's mate,

a_m
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by fagin »

Drop me an email mate! :)
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by AeroCityMayor »

Thanks for the email fagin.

I've tried the scanline effect and it is a minor improvement on the "Scanlines" effect that is included with most of the more popular emulators.

I've attached it here so others can have a go.

Cheers,

a_m.
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by cools »

I might be missing something here...

No disrespect to fagin, but this is the standard scanlines.png from Windows MAME (which I think is included), also known originally as scanlines_ag.png - Aaron Giles scanlines effect. It's the one I've been using, and it's awesome :)
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Re: mame scanlines

Post by fagin »

I have no idea where I got it from (I have had it for quite some time), but it seemed to give me the best effect.
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