Aspect Ratio Preference

GreenHawk84

I wanted to get some opinions and preference for aspect ratios when gaming on your RetroPie.

When I first started using RetroPie and Mame2003, I noticed a lot of the CPS titles were defaulting in a wider aspect ratio. I enjoyed the way it filled the screen but it was stretched. Now that I am on Final Burn Alpha for CPS titles, I am playing in 4:3 which is native to the games.

For most 80s classics like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man I am letting them default to the 3:4 long screen even though they only take up a portion of my 22inch monitor. I don't think those games look good at all any other way.

Are there ANY games that scale well into 16:9? I have come across screenshots of titles in Mame, mostly CPS, that were in 16:9 and somehow looked scaled to be appropriate in proportion. I could be just seeing things.

dankcushions

@GreenHawk84

Are there ANY games that scale well into 16:9? I have come across screenshots of titles in Mame, mostly CPS, that were in 16:9 and somehow looked scaled to be appropriate in proportion. I could be just seeing things.

there are games that are built to be displayed on widescreen tvs. some PS1 games have anamorphic widescreen support:
Bust-A-Move '99
C3 Racing/Max Power Racing
Codename Tenka
Colin McRae Rally
Formula 1 (1996)
Ghost In The Shell
ISS Pro Evolution 2
J-League Winning Eleven 2000
J-League Winning Eleven 3
J-League Winning Eleven '98-'99
Madden NFL 2002
Ms. Pac Man Maze Madness
Pac-Man World
Rush Hour
Snow Racer '98
Spyro 2 (NTSC-U version)
This is football
TOCA Championship Racing
Trap Gunner
Triple Play Baseball
Wip3out
Wip3out: Special Edition
Worms Armageddon
Yarudora Series Vol. 1: Double Cast
http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/saturn-and-psone-games-that-support-widescreen-mode.13204/

with these games you typically have to turn on some sort of widescreen mode in the options, and then create a game-specific retroarch.cfg to run that game in 16:9.

there are also some arcade games that have widescreen support. street fighter III 2nd impact has a widescreen mode but ONLY the japanese versions. you need to load that in lr-fba-next and then set widescreen mode on in the F2 service menu. looks gorgeous:

GreenHawk84

Awesome, this is the exact kind of thing I was looking for.

GreenHawk84

By default, lr-FBA-next appears to play old games like Pac-Man, Galaga, Donkey Kong, etc in the most accurate aspect ratio compared to Mame2003 which tends to stretch everything a little more.

Even 4:3 titles like Final Fight, Alien Vs. Predator, Ninja Turtles, Street Fighter series, play in accurate 4:3 on lr-FBA-next by default vs. Mame2003's default aspect ratio setting.

In order to resolve this when using Mame2003, since some games are just best right now on this core (Mortal Kombat), I open up the RetroArch GUI and go to the Video settings. I set the appropriate aspect ratio per game.

caver01

@GreenHawk84 Why keep dropping into RAGUI? just add a text file next to the rom named mk.zip.cfg

aspect_ratio_index = "19"
video_aspect_ratio_auto = false
video_aspect_ratio = 1.33

dankcushions

@GreenHawk84 said in Aspect Ratio Preference:

By default, lr-FBA-next appears to play old games like Pac-Man, Galaga, Donkey Kong, etc in the most accurate aspect ratio compared to Mame2003 which tends to stretch everything a little more.

i've logged this issue - hopefully i can fix soon :) https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/issues/51

GreenHawk84

@caver01, I believe once I set this in the RGUI, it stays that way for the certain game. I'll confirm this when I get home later.

@dankcushions , awesome, you're the Mame Man.

caver01

@GreenHawk84 said in Aspect Ratio Preference:

@caver01, I believe once I set this in the RGUI, it stays that way for the certain game. I'll confirm this when I get home later.

That would definitely help. When I first read your post I wondered if it was something specified in the retroarch.cfg for mame2003 (or a default) to assume 1:1 PAR while the retroarch.cfg for FBA (or its core default) is to render everything 4:3.

I don't really see aspect ratio variations with libretro cores that I don't directly specify. My display is 1280x1024 which is actually 5:4, so I needed to setup how I wanted games to fill (or not fill) the available pixels from the get-go. It's "close enough" to 4:3 for me, and I want to leverage every pixel I have for shaders As a result, I have most stuff filling the screen via my own tweaks to the configs/all/retroarch.cfg, and configs/arcade/retroarch.cfg.

GreenHawk84

@caver01, Retroarch did not save my aspect ratio per game in Mame2003.