Specify Resolution for EmulationStation

tendonut

I'm using a RPi A+/RetroPie 3.8 on a 480x320 resolution TFT display using an analog connection. I have to enable overscan and adjust the values of each direction to get the screen to be fully utilized. Everything looks great in the console screen and when the RetroPie splash screen is display.

Issues start when EmulationStation starts up. The system was originally configured for 640x480, but it was cranked down in the config.txt file and in the RetroArch system config to match the display (and cut down on the workload of the poor RPi).

I have a feeling EmulationStation is still pushing out 640x480. The interface goes beyond the edge of the screen and no overscan adjustments change this. Same thing goes for the emulators it launches.

I've been digging around trying to find how to tell EmulationStation to use a specific resolution, but most googling sends me to either dead threads, threads with a "FIXED KTHXBI" response, or is no longer valid.

Can someone give me a hand here?

BuZz

Do you have overscan_scale=1 set in /boot/config.txt?

BuZz

You can force resolution also afaik, check the es command line arguments (on phone so can't give more detail)

tendonut

@BuZz I do not have it enabled because it doesn't scale correctly. I've got it commented out, then adjust each of the directions manually. Up and down are set to - 16, left and right are - 8. I'm pretty sure it's not overscan related though, because the overscan edge stops before the emulationstation window.

Floob

Some Emulation Station resolution info here:

--resolution [width] [height] - try and force a particular resolution

https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation
https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation/issues/55

Although I'd be tempted to try this info that refers to the /boot/config.txt
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=130564

Here are the settings they use:

hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_cvt=480 320 60
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87

tendonut

@Floob I'm rolling all analog with this. No hdmi. Digital would be so much easier...

I've seen the option to pass the resolution options as mentioned above, and attempted to append it to the starting script, but I've struggled to figure out how it works. I'll take a look again tomorrow.

BuZz

@tendonut said in Specify Resolution for EmulationStation:

@BuZz I do not have it enabled because it doesn't scale correctly. I've got it commented out, then adjust each of the directions manually. Up and down are set to - 16, left and right are - 8. I'm pretty sure it's not overscan related though, because the overscan edge stops before the emulationstation window.

overscan_scale just makes the dispmanx layers scale to the set overscan - otherwise emulationstation will not use the configured overscan settings. Are you sure you are referring to the same config?

BTW do you mean you have overscan set to 16 or 8 or minus 16 and minus 8 (wasn't sure from your post but see this for example https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/issues/591#issuecomment-230018884)

tendonut

@BuZz Oooooh, yeah, I was thinking overscan_scale was a proportional scale, which didn't work for me. I'll uncomment the line tomorrow when I get back to it.

Yes, all my values are negative. I was originally having an issue where with overscan on, there was still a black border around the whole image. Negative values let me adjust the overscan so it was appropriate. The comment left in the configuration file by the dev told me to do it. If it was indeed an exploited bug, then maybe it's just ignoring the negative and treating it as positive. Lol. Aspect ratio is 3:2 on everything as well.