Running Advance MAME with Pi2SCART

A Former User

Thanks, appreciate the reply, now I know a bit better how to approach this, starting with retracing some basic steps.

I didn't mean the CRT itself, but the board I'm using (Pi2SCART) to connect to it requires specific changes in the config to make it work. So I thought maybe it affects the Advance MAME, which in turn is supposed to have bit more complex options regarding CRTs.

Out o curiosity, how do vertical shooters look on your CRT, regarding scaling etc? I assume you're playing in horizontal mode, without rotation?

sirhenrythe5th

https://picload.org/image/rpacdpgr/dsc_1248.jpg
https://picload.org/image/rpacdpga/dsc_1249.jpg

I am very satisfied with the display of vertical games using AdvanceMame on a CRT.
This is pretty important for me, because SHMUPs are one of my favourite gamegenre 😊.
As you can see on the pictures above (game running is "Dodonpachi") AdvanceMame stretches the picture a bit.
But not too much so everything becomes weird or something like that.
Imho its perfect, best you can do when playing vertical games on 4:3

A Former User

@sirhenrythe5th Fabulous! That's exactly what I'm looking for...a vertical arcade game centered on a 4:3 TV set. The minor stretches I can live with but atm on my setup vertical games are "fit to screen" ie stretched horizontally, or lose big chunks on top/bottom which is unacceptable. This is why I' trying to get Advance MAME working - heard it scales stuff properly.

Nice TV, I recommend you get some RGB solution instead of composite - quality difference is huge :)

It seems my problem for now has something to do with the rom set - I looked at the runcommand.log and it says "files are missing", which is bizarre - they're all in the zip. ><...hate this rebuilding stuff...

sirhenrythe5th

@arkive which game / romset is it that makes you problems?
Maybe i also run it and i managed to get the roms without using rom-managers by trying to find the right romset from several sources.

Actually i have 565 Romsets running well, without double entrys and NEOGEO (using FBA for those great games 😉).

So as far as your problem-romset is also in my setup i can gurantee that i can be found without merging Romsets with a seperate tool ☺

A Former User

Ah, so you're trying to mix & match - I used this method back in the day, but to be honest it's too much of a hit'n miss. For example there are supposed to be 6166 "active sets" for MAME 1.06...so I need to use a rebuilder. it's not so bad anyway, I did it for mame2003 and others no problem, just bit stumped on this one.

I think I'll leave it for today and go actually play some games ;) Thanks for your help all the same.

sirhenrythe5th

@arkive to be honest: i allready had a complete romsets for Mame as i am addicted to it since i found it back in the 90s (34beta7).
But for a long time i used a WindowsPC for it.

And most of them worked / were compatible to 0.106.
But for those that didn't i searched for the right romset as i dont have a Computer anymore to use CtrlMAME or RomCenter.

Last but not least i dont want to have 6000+ romsets. I just put those in the ROM-Folder that i really like and enjoy to play; there are a lot of great Arcade games out there....but also a lot of crap imho. And i dont know how to play Mahjongg, so at least that makes -500 Romsets for me ☺

A Former User

Heh ,I know what you mean, filtering all the mahjong/adult/etc games can be a pain...but also kind of fun ;)

It's true that even that early MAME sets - which blew my mind back then - were quite cool. But since then lots and lots of awesome games were added and others have vastly improved performance, so if you ever get a good PC again I suggest getting the latest one. It demands a strong PC though...

A Former User

So I managed to get the Advance Mame running. It's nearly great...nearly. The vertical games are now scaled just-about properly - but not quite. They just do not look "pixel perfect". There are also slight artifacts - for example 1941 looks kinda "interlaced", 1942 has some horizontal lines making the scene "float", and they still don't fit the screen 100% proper vertically.

I was reading the docs and it is said I should run advcfg utility. I did, and adjusted some options there, with no visible changes when running the games later. I checked the advmame.rc config and they don't seem to register there. This should appear in advmame.rc after running advcfg

display_mode auto
display_adjust generate_yclock
device_video_clock ?
device_video_format ?

I don't know much about Linux and I'm stumbling in the dark here. I tried doing this using that File Manager from retropie menu, but it's been tough - it only lets me run programs from the windows, I can't do it from command line...I got some old DOS habits, which are probably wrong here.

Any ideas?

CrossCheck

@A-Former-User said in Running Advance MAME with Pi2SCART:

I was reading the docs and it is said I should run advcfg utility. I did, and adjusted some options there"

Sorry to necro this, but I've been searching everywhere - how does one actual run the "advcfg" utility?

Like, what is the sudo command from a terminal window?

How to "run" advancemame, advancemenu or advance config appears exactly nowhere in any of the documentation or in any faq.

Thanks a million.

mitu

@CrossCheck The advXYZ set of utilities (including the emulator) are installed in /opt/retropie/emulators/advmame/bin - see Advmame. You'll have to run them from a command line, outside of EmulationStation.