4.4 Mame2003 Asteroids resolution

Fruitybit

Heya, currently migrating my system from 4.3 to 4.4, and testing out a few roms. With Asteroids, I find the resolution vastly superior on my 4.3 system. I’ve checked, same roms, both lr-mame2003, both have video resolution set the same as well as frame rate and the same overclock (following N64 advice from the wiki)
And importantly perhaps, I’m using the same pi for both. The only difference I can see is that my new 4.4 is running the roms from a hard drive attached via retropie-mount.
Both versions are using the same original raspberry power, and they’re images I’ve built from here.
All other games I’ve tested have beautiful resolution, it’s only Asteroids which looks dreadful!
Any help/advice much appreciated:)

mitu

@fruitybit Check your 4.3 system, maybe you have a config override for the Asteroids ROM or running with a different emulator (advmame ?).

Fruitybit

@mitu Definitely the same emulator, I’ve never changed configs that I know of- I’ll have a look as soon as I can. Thanks for the quick reply!

dankcushions

can you get a screenshot with the retroarch menu (hotkey + retropad X) showing in both? failing that, type out the string at the bottom left (something like 'mame2003 849fd9f'

Fruitybit

@dankcushions Will do, just waiting for it to finish scraping- (and hoping i can make it stick with usb roms!) If I’m very lucky it may be done tonight- 36 hour’s and counting:)

Fruitybit

@dankcushions Finally, after 50 hours of scraping!

Here's how it's always been;
4.3 image
And how it looks now;
4.4

I hope that shows it enough, on the screen it's very noticable.

dankcushions

thanks! and the version string i asked for before, please?

i guess this is something to do with the default beam width settings @markwkidd ? there should be an option in the core options to change this to your preference, but we may want to update the defaults so it matches previous behaviour.

Fruitybit

@dankcushions Apologies, 4.3 has mame 2003 0.78 982f317 but 4.4 has mame 2003 0.78 0be59fe.

markwkidd

@Riverstorm has just made a thorough investigation of the vector core options in mame2003. @Riverstorm can you put your head together with @Fruitybit and let me know what the right defaults should be for these vector settings?

moffett_s

Did you ever figure this out? I ran into the same issue and determined that it had to do with the resolution. I was originally playing with advmame... but because it wouldn't let me configure the START button on my Xbox 360 controller (weird) I found I had to use AdvancedMaME 1.4 or .94 .... In switching to these I noticed the resolution looked as you show above. after a few hours of trying to adjust .rc settings I decided to change the resolution to 720x960 (others worked too) and that made the difference. I think advmame sets resolution automatically or something - not sure.

But now I get ghosting as rocks move across the screen.... can't figure that out.

akafox

@moffett_s said in 4.4 Mame2003 Asteroids resolution:

In switching to these I noticed the resolution looked as you show above. after a few hours of trying to adjust .rc settings I decided to change the resolution to 720x960 (others worked too) and that made the difference. I think advmame sets resolution automatically or something - not sure.

Umm not so much resolution as changing the screens size..I have and old CRT TV it's NOT going to change resolution size wise or I would kill it..

That being said though it does change resolution in a sense..in this case it just makes it look better as it crams the pixels together tighter. (sorry i can't give a scientific explanation).

In advance mame it is called "magnify" found in the video options on the configuration menu (TAB button). Advance mame will as you stated above find the best for you. This differs on the machine being used. For best results set it to one (1) on a raspberry pi.

Under this section of the advance mame documentation reads as follows:

8.4.6 display_magnify
Suggests the use of a double or bigger resolution video mode. It is mainly used to enable the scalex', scalek', lq', hq' and `xbr' effects. This option doesn't have any effect for vector games.

display_magnify auto | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Options:
auto Double, triplicate or quadruplicate the size until targetting the defined display_magnifysize horizontal size (default).
1 Normal size.
2 Double size.
3 Triple size.
4 Quadruple size.

Thus if you set this to one (1) in the advance.rc file (located at /opt/retropie/configs/mame-advmame/) then you will always get size one and it will run it's best on the pi. there is documentation about on this local on your pi at /usr/local/share/doc/advance .html format and raw .txt format (Advanced mame still works on DOS 6.2 you know. ;) ) and for a linux machine (i.e. rasp pi3) there is a manual page. SSH in or do it local at the prompt (press F4 to exit emulation station) type "man advmame" (without quotes).

hsamuels

@Fruitybit

Has this ever been resolved? I'm experiencing the same effect.

Good: 4.3, 1.6.7 - MAME 2003 0.78 cb4826a
Bad: 4.4 1.7.1 - MAME 2003 0.78 0be59fe

mitu

@hsamuels You should open a new topic with the problem.
There have been a lot of changes regarding vector graphics in Mame2003 (and Mame2003-plus), so you should try and update first your RetroPie installation, then check if the problem still exists on the current version.

hsamuels

@mitu
Thank you I will give it a try.

hsamuels

@hsamuels
Same problem after update 1.7.5 - MAME 2003 (0.78) 95bb558

I'll open a new topic.