Shaders Help

Ballardian

Hi There
I've been struggling for a while to get shaders to work on mame (advmame and mame4all) with no success.
I followed all the bits of info I could find online but something has just occurred to me - in most of those cases people were using SNES or Megadrive as examples.
So are shaders usable on the versions of mame I'm running or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Thanks

batman

@Ballardian Are you using Mame4all-Pi or lr-imame4all?

I had some issues with shaders and overlays recently as well as I couldn't add a scanline I wanted to mame4all. I couldn't get my head around it either until somebody explained it me but any shaders or overlay settings you change from the retropie menu will only effect emulators based on "libretro". Any that have the "lr" prefix. For mame, that only includes lr-imame4all, lr-mame2003, lr-mame2010.

Ballardian

It's mame4all-pi that I've been using because it seems to play nicer with screen ratios, eg, the -lr version is narrow and squashed while the -pi version appears in the correct ratio.

Do you know if it's impossible to use overlays with adv-mame?

Thanks for the reply!

dankcushions

@Ballardian what sort of shaders do you want to use?

adv-mame apparently has a built-in scanlines thing, but you're on your own regarding configuration: http://www.advancemame.it/doc-advmame#8.3.8

mame4all-pi has a scanline option. see https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/383/overlays-shaders-not-working-in-mame-fba-and-reicast-working-everywhere-else-though/4

Ballardian

I just want crt-like scanlines that will look good on a small lcd screen.
Only mame games will be running.
I had also looked at trying the 'barrel' effect where the screen is curved but am I right in thinking that this is beyond advmame and mame4all-pi?

edit:
so I just tried the mame4all-pi scanline option and I'm afraid it doesn't look right. The lines are really thick, I suppose because the screen itself is so small (800x600).

Can't figure out the advmame options at all!

Is there some kind of global option so that a single overlay will be used on every emulator in Retropie?

dankcushions

@Ballardian said in Shaders Help:

Is there some kind of global option so that a single overlay will be used on every emulator in Retropie?

yes, as has been mentioned, but it's only for libretro emulators. for whatever reason, you've chosen to use non-libretro emulators.

I had also looked at trying the 'barrel' effect where the screen is curved but am I right in thinking that this is beyond advmame and mame4all-pi?

yes. that's a shader, not an overlay. for shaders, you need to use the libretro emulators. lr-imame4all, lr-mame2003, etc.

Ballardian

Thanks for the reply.

The reason I'm using mame4all-pi over the libretro version is that it displays the games in their proper aspect on the small LCD I'm using, whereas lr-mame4all usually displays them distorted and stretched. Do you know if there's something I can do to fix this?

dankcushions

change the aspect ratio to 'square' in the configuration editor.

or use lr--mame2003 which doesn't have this issue, but you will need a different romset.

batman

@dankcushions said in Shaders Help:

yes, as has been mentioned, but it's only for libretro emulators. for whatever reason, you've chosen to use non-libretro emulators.

On a side note and based on dankcushion's recommendation, I moved (and sorted - again) my arcade games to lr-mame2003 a few days and overall finding it much better then using mame4all. Thank you dankcushion.

"Gunbird" - which is a vertical shooter is a good example to test in both emulators (mame4all and lr-mame2003) to see the difference in performance and aspect ratio. This game alone almost drove me insane when it came to these issues!

Ballardian

Nice one - I'll make the switch too then!
Thanks chaps