Backdrops in mame2003-plus

Riverstorm

I have disabled EDID via a line hdmi_ignore_edid=0xa5000080 in my /boot/config.txt because I had issues with the HDMI splitter that I use to mirror my cabinet's picture on my video projector. So as I understand it, my Pi shouldn't even know what monitor it is connected to

@Clyde - The line above is why I was asking. I always thought the "handshake" between the Pi and display is how the Pi determines the display resolution and then calculates the Core Provided resolution for the display used. The thought being if the Pi has no idea what type of monitor is connected, whether be 1920 x 1080 or 1600 x 1200 how is the Pi calculating your Core Provided resolutions. Hopefully that makes better sense.

Ah, yes I know many folks that use strictly streaming for TV now but I do know a few that don't use any TV at al!. I guess they count on reading for current and world events. It's not totally a lost art I read every night. :)

@grant2258 - Your resolution is a perfect 1440 x 1080? I always seem to lose some pixels at different resolutions if a BD is loaded so I was curious what your actual Core Provided values are showing. Different BD's change the values also, like stars vs cockpit. I have some interesting values for each one and to help with troubleshooting I was hoping to get your actual values? If they actually show a perfect 1440 x 1080 my setup is really hosed.

UDb23

@grant2258 Just checked and actually I got the same resolution issues as @Riverstorm.
I never changed any of the default settings in my current config; 1080p tv, screen res is at 1080p (1440x1080 for omega race). Latest mame2003plus: omega race w white lines.
Used your settings but still no good image. As you can see from pictures below the issue is related to diagonals drawing. It seems lines are calculated at low res and then pixels are upscaled.

See letter R or M

This is advancemame's output (star castle):
letters

game

Same PI3b+ on same TV (game mode).

Tested also w BD disabled and has no impact on vector games quality (at least for me)

I'm quite clueless at this point.

UDb23

Also tested higher resolution multiplier, even with 6 still these ugly diagonals.

grant2258

have you put bi-linear filtering on pretty sure advance mame will be doing this. also make sure the artwork scaling is 1x mark put it to two for some reason wont matter for vector games right enough its will set it back to one for them

Riverstorm

@Udb23 - Thank you for testing. Those issues in your screenshots are exactly what I am seeing too. With or without a BD. I've tried everything I could think and then verified and reverified the settings. When Grant posted perfect screenshots on a HD monitor I figured I must be the only one seeing issues. Now if Grant can share how he did we would be set, waves small banner, in Grant we trust! ;)

grant2258

settings->video->bi-linear filtering is the only other option i have on I always have this on by default.

and on the pi i set my default monitor res on raspi-config

UDb23

@grant2258 said in Backdrops in mame2003-plus:

settings->video->bi-linear filtering is the only other option i have on I always have this on by default.

That DID IT !!
Thanks a lot. I was not aware of this setting.

In general should this be always on ? Does it affect performance? Is it good also for raster based games ?

grant2258

@UDb23 it does help games yes smooths them out its my personal preference. Its no very cpu intensive it been used in emulation for years

Clyde

@Riverstorm said in Backdrops in mame2003-plus:

@Clyde - The line above is why I was asking. I always thought the "handshake" between the Pi and display is how the Pi determines the display resolution and then calculates the Core Provided resolution for the display used. The thought being if the Pi has no idea what type of monitor is connected, whether be 1920 x 1080 or 1600 x 1200 how is the Pi calculating your Core Provided resolutions. Hopefully that makes better sense.

I think you may have an error in reasoning there. Maybe @grant2258 and @markwkidd can say more about it, but I think that without manual set resolution, RA will just use the resolution of the system's framebuffer. Next to disabling the EDID on my Retropie, I also set a screen resolution of 1600x1200 in my /boot/config.txt:

hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=51

See https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/config-txt/video.md about these options, as well as https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Video-Issues/#show-and-set-the-current-video-mode on how to test them in a running Retropie.

Ah, yes I know many folks that use strictly streaming for TV now but I do know a few that don't use any TV at al!. I guess they count on reading for current and world events. It's not totally a lost art I read every night. :)

The main difference to a normal TV is that you choose what you watch on a per-broadcast basis, and you don't tend to leave it on as background noise (the latter brought me to the idea of remove my TV in the first place). You are also spared from commercial breaks, at least if you use an ad blocker in your web browser. 😇 Since I mostly watch documentaries, Mediathekview is a wonderful source for them, as public stations tend to make very good ones without the excessive drama that private stations tend to put into them.

Thumbs up for reading regularly. I love books, but I only manage to read them on the train to work, which I only use in winter and during bad weather. The greater part of the year I go to work by bycicle, and that makes reading a little bit difficult. 😉 But I still manage to finish a couple of them over the year.

Oh, and for YouTube I can strongly recommend Kodi with its YT addon. It will let you control your streaming in a convenient way (I'm using one of my Wii U Pro gamepads with it) and you'll get rid of YT advertisements along the way.

@grant2258 @UDb23 My bi-linear filtering is disabled, by the way. Just FYI with regard to my screenshots.

grant2258

I dont know much how retropie deals with video resolution in all honestly i just use raspi-config. You would need to ask @dankcushions or @mitu about that. I usually use retro-arch in its default env and just pick the resolution i want from a drop down list.

If you have a shader on you have video filtering on and wont need bi-linear filtering on. I use this instead of shaders.

edit: I just noticed on your post about brightness. Someone complained mame was too dull so mark put in the brighteness and gamma options and brightened it up a little.

speaking of which ill put a pull req in original values are 1.0 for gamma and you cant set at the moment. looks like a little typo

markwkidd

@UDb23 have you come across a list of all the games with backdrop art in your travels?

I have another MAME novice question. Does, or should, artwork from parent romsets automatically get shown for clone romsets as well?

Ideally I think the logic would be :

use any artwork file found with the exact name as the current romset, then hen if none is foun
use any artwork file found with the exact name as the current romset's parent romset

If that's not the current behavior, am I right that it would be a good logic to have in place? If a clone has different art than the parent then that scenario is covered, and otherwise we're saved from having a bunch of duplicate files for parents and clones.

grant2258

yea omegarace has a clone deltarace the artwork works for it mark

mitu

@grant2258 RetroPie doesn't do anything fancy with the resolution - i.e. auto-detections or such things. You can change the resolution in 2 ways in RetroPie:

Through raspi-config - which is available in the RetroPie system in Emulationstation
Through the Runcommand launch menu, where you can choose the emulator resolution. This runs tvservice before starting the emulator to set the new resolution.

Normally everything is run at the framebuffer resolution (as @Clyde said).

grant2258

I was using rsapi-config anyway preferred monitor resolution works fine for me too

Clyde

@markwkidd said in Backdrops in mame2003-plus:

Ideally I think the logic would be :

use any artwork file found with the exact name as the current romset, then hen if none is foun

use any artwork file found with the exact name as the current romset's parent romset

Sounds reasonable and convenient. 👍

Riverstorm

@Clyde - Ah ok, I think I see what you're doing. You're "ignoring" the monitors EDID information on the HDMI cable "handshake" with that command and then manually setting it with group and mode in the /boot/config.txt which would effectively tell the Pi the resolution and I suppose determine the frame buffer size.

Basically I just see the frame buffer as a chunk of memory allocated to display one game frame (or more) at the resolution the Pi is given. I know it gets more complicated than that with multi-buffering or say on the launch menu when you may change the render res on the fly but I found it does degrades the video on upscale when lowering render res. Anyway you're answers are great and I don't want you have to spend time explaining it so I am really ok and I think I have a general gist of what you're doing.

Yeah, I tend to leave it on as background noise and as a conscious choice. I find the History or Discovery channel interesting to listen to in the background even though I am at at the mercy of the stations daily broadcast lineup. I still find it educational at times and interesting to boot. I try to make good choices on my "white noise", most days, but do indulge in my share of trash TV. It may be a cultural thing as I do know many folks that use a TV for background noise. Anyway no judgement here on whether folks care to have that background noise make no never mind but I did read a study several years ago that you're more at risk of dementia with a complete lack of sound. I spent a good 10 or 15 years living alone, which I surprisingly didn't mind at all but there's a lot less sound when living solitary.

You can actually block advertisement videos while watching a Youtube video? Like skip right over them? I would love the ability to do that!

Where I live my drive to work is about 7 minutes and that's actually into the downtown area. I go home for lunch each day and still have a good 40 minutes at home. I love riding bike in the summer months also but actually exercise 7 days a week, mainly indoors as we see a good 8 or 9 months of cooler weather and 3 or 4 of semi-decent. I was at my brothers place last night and my nephew had some friends over going into the marines in a few weeks. We had some pushup, planking and other "contests". I held my own for being the old guy. These young guys are so energetic and ambitious as they prepare for life in the military, good stuff. Life is going to get a lot more complex over the simple life of high school. It's been well over 30 years now, getting closer to the easy life of retirement. Wait! No that will never happen with health care what am I thinking! ;)

@grant2258 - Setting in the raspi-config doesn't change anything (it's effectively the same) and with a shader on it still looks terrible (basically you still need bi-linear with shaders or filtering) but with your suggestion on bi-linear filtering has been really helpful.

The settings I found best overall as a compromise so far are bi-linear on, a multiplier of 4 and beam width of 1.2. Plus all the other defaults discussed. A multiplier of 5 gets thin, it's thin at 4 also (with bi-linear filtering) but a bit better off. At 6 my screen is completely black. I'm not sure what happens here. So thin it's vaporware. You have to restart the core between multiplier changes or you won't see the change.

If vector settings were on a per-game vs a core basis I would prefer a beam width of 1 on say Tempest. A BW of 2 on HD displays is just to wide.

I don't know what the framerate should be but on Omega Race it was around 40 and seemed to play ok with those settings.

mitu

@Riverstorm said in Backdrops in mame2003-plus:

You can actually block advertisement videos while watching a Youtube video? Like skip right over them? I would love the ability to do that!

You can, just install uBlock origin - I think it's available as an extension for all major browsers.

Riverstorm

@mitu said in Backdrops in mame2003-plus:

You can, just install uBlock origin - I think it's available as an extension for all major browsers.

Thanks, I will definitely give it a try. Anymore it seems Youtube has gotten just as bad as regular TV with advertisements! The more popular videos have more advertisements as they know they got you as a viewer! :)

Clyde

@Riverstorm said in Backdrops in mame2003-plus:

@Clyde - Ah ok, I think I see what you're doing. You're "ignoring" the monitors EDID information on the HDMI cable "handshake" with that command and then manually setting it with group and mode in the /boot/config.txt which would effectively tell the Pi the resolution and I suppose determine the frame buffer size.

Exactly that. 😊

I did read a study several years ago that you're more at risk of dementia with a complete lack of sound. I spent a good 10 or 15 years living alone, which I surprisingly didn't mind at all but there's a lot less sound when living solitary.

Although living alone, I seldom have silence in my home, unless I want to relax or sleep. While doing housekeeping or other braindead activities, I often hear podcasts (haha, I first wrote "podcats"), lectures or debates. In summer, the sounds of the people in my neighborhood through my open windows are quite enough to prevent dementia. 😄

You can actually block advertisement videos while watching a Youtube video? Like skip right over them? I would love the ability to do that!

Like @mitu, I use uBlock Origin for that.

We had some pushup, planking and other "contests". I held my own for being the old guy.

Respect! 👍

I don't know what the framerate should be but on Omega Race it was around 40 and seemed to play ok with those settings.

Yeah, that's my framerate in Omega Race with VM 3 and BW 2, too.

markwkidd

@Riverstorm said in Backdrops in mame2003-plus:

If vector settings were on a per-game vs a core basis I would prefer a beam width of 1 on say Tempest. A BW of 2 on HD displays is just to wide.

I'm posting to make sure you know that you can set the core options on a per-game basis in RetroArch.