Vertical games squashed on libretro 2003

caver01

I re-read your post and now I wonder if you are trying to do the opposite--play vertical games on a vertically oriented screen! If that's the case, take what you need from my example. I still think you will need to play with the aspect_ratio_index before you can successfully specify the AR ratio.

nitrogen_widget

@caver01 said in Vertical games squashed on libretro 2003:

I re-read your post and now I wonder if you are trying to do the opposite--play vertical games on a vertically oriented screen! If that's the case, take what you need from my example. I still think you will need to play with the aspect_ratio_index before you can successfully specify the AR ratio.

@caver01 said in Vertical games squashed on libretro 2003:

I re-read your post and now I wonder if you are trying to do the opposite--play vertical games on a vertically oriented screen! If that's the case, take what you need from my example. I still think you will need to play with the aspect_ratio_index before you can successfully specify the AR ratio.

@caver01 said in Vertical games squashed on libretro 2003:

I re-read your post and now I wonder if you are trying to do the opposite--play vertical games on a vertically oriented screen! If that's the case, take what you need from my example. I still think you will need to play with the aspect_ratio_index before you can successfully specify the AR ratio.

That's exactly what i'm doing. Vertical games on a screen vertically oriented.
Ill play with it this weekend.
Thanks!

nitrogen_widget

no go.
This is what i'm getting.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/9kI7Z1K.jpg?2[/img]
i've run the retropie setup and changed the aspect ratio but it doesn't seem to make a difference.

I got it, but probably not the best way.
Since i'm using attract mode front end and this will be a dedicated vertical setup using a VGA CRT I just rotated the rpi's display and that did the trick.

dankcushions

yeah this isn't an aspect ratio problem, yet.

just for the record, the config setting you want is:
video_rotation = "0"
i've not played with this, i guess it's set in degrees, so to rotate 90 degrees, you'd want to set it to 90.

ideally you should use https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Configuration-Editor to set this, although i'm not sure if it exposes this option.

once you've got it working, you might find the aspect ratio needs tweaking also. probably to the PAR setting

senkun

@dankcushions said:

video_rotation = "0"
i've not played with this, i guess it's set in degrees, so to rotate 90 degrees, you'd want to set it to 90.

yeah that's the one. I assumed it was degrees as well and I've played with it, flipping the orientation around from 0, 90, 180, to 270 as I was trying to work out the best layout for my portable. I don't know why it never occurred to me to try something like 123 just for the heck of it. lol wonder if that would work.

darthpaul

@caver01 said in Vertical games squashed on libretro 2003:

I know the feeling, but I think we can get you sorted. There are a bunch of cool options to make this work as needed per ROM. What game are you trying? For purposes of discussion, Let's say it's 1941, a game that has vertical orientation. To play it with the right aspect ratio and rotation, create a text file named 1941.zip.cfg and put it right next to your 1941.zip. Inside the text file, add these lines:
video_allow_rotate = true
video_rotation = 4
aspect_ratio_index = "19"
video_aspect_ratio_auto = false
video_aspect_ratio = .75
Once you unlock the "aspect_ratio_index" mystery (19 = Config, 20 = 1:1 PAR, 21 = Core Provided, 22 = Custom Viewport) cool things can happen!

What I have here in this example is rotation (first two lines) and then we play with the AR. With the index set to 19, we are telling RetroArch that we want to config the aspect ratio, and the next line turns off auto. Finally, by setting video_aspect_ratio=.75, we are setting it to 3:4 which is the rotated 4:3 you are probably seeing now.

You can play with the AR value to stretch or compress as you desire, but .75 is probably the best option, and you are done. HOWEVER, some folks like to get really specific about scaling. Depending on the original resolution of the game, some people want to scale only by full integers. The rationale for this usually has to do with shaders/overlays to get good scanlines. Fractional scaling can lead to inconsistent pixel dimensions. It may not be a problem for you, but if it is, you can monkey with aspect_ratio_index=22 and go crazy with custom_viewport_width, height, x and y and construct your exact video dimensions and where it gets drawn on the screen. Sure, this can leave black borders on all four sides, but it is the best way to display perfectly scaled video if you even care about that.

I use a pretty high resolution LCD and a CRT shader that adds barrel curvature and scanlines. Some games produce a slight moire pattern, but I love the vintage look of a CRT so this doesn't really bother me. Good luck!

Would something like this work if I wanted to rotate the monitor depending on if a game has a vertical or horizontal orientation? Would I need that text file for every Rom?

caver01

@darthpaul What you want might be exactly what I do on my cabinet, only my display doesn't physically turn--I have controls on the vertical ends.
I am away from my arcade system at the moment but when I get home I can post some examples for games like PacMan, Donkey Kong, Frogger, DigDug--these all fill my display rotated 90 degrees, and they each have their own config (frogger.zip.cfg) in the roms folder. However, the config is NOT what we have quoted above. The example cited was for 1941, which, despite being a vertical game, needs side-by-side controls for player 1 and 2. On my cabinet, that puts the players on the horizontal side of my display, so I need a config that will keep the proper aspect ratio. Your setup might allow ALL vertical games to have the same config.

caver01

@darthpaul Ok, so I checked my per-rom retroarch configs. Assuming your horizontal arcade games are already setup and working fine, to play vertical games such that you physically rotate the display, this what you need:

video_allow_rotate = true
video_rotation = 3

That's what I use for almost all of the vertical classics. So, games like Galaga, DigDig, PacMan, Frogger, and so on all have per-rom configs with these lines. That puts the bottom of the screen on the left side. If you rotate the other way, you can play with the video_rotation value and try another value. Also, I am primarily using lr-mame2003, with a little lr-fba-next. Since my cabinet has controls on the vertical ends, I also enable cocktail mode whenever I can using in-game MAME menu (TAB) and set the dip switch appropriately. This usually makes the video rotate 180 for player 2. If you are rotating your display, you probably don't want to set cocktail mode. Also, because I am using a different set of controls, I need to remap my joystick accordingly either with additional lines in the config or using the MAME gui.

darthpaul

@caver01 Thank you, that really helps, could be a lot of work identifying the vertical games, then creating all those text files.

caver01

@darthpaul I used to just drop an entire romset into place, but I changed my tune a while back and decided it was better in the long run to make a list of the games I know and load only those. It's more like a favorites list in that regard. I mean, who needs 100 versions of MahJong? Lists do exist (or can be generated) with certain metadata. I haven't done it, but I expect someone has the list of vertical roms or knows how to extract it from a gameslist.xml that has that attribute. You could build a script, even in Excel, that could create the config files for you by copying a template or even using echo commands to write the lines into each file.

In any case, I like to play-test everything. I do all of the editing from a networked computer over SAMBA share, so it's not too bad. Besides, with my cabinet design I needed to go into each one anyway and set the cocktail dip switch where appropriate, or un-rotate the games that are two player side-by-side, or throw in the towel on games that have analog controls (centipede for example, is un-rotated but needs a trackball so I use AdvanceMAME).

darthpaul

@caver01 You are correct about choosing the games you know and enjoy then just having all of them(like I currently do). It just occurred to me I can use Romlister to determine vertical games.