The default options and game properties tabs of Mame32 are used to set the vast majority of game play parameters. The Game Properties dialogue box, accessible from the File • Properties menu item, shares all the tabs of the Default Options dialogue box, accessible from the Options • Default Options menu item. The Game Properties dialogue contains two additional tabs which give information on the game selected, and its current audited state.
General Tab : [only available in Game Properties dialogue]
This tab provides information on the game selected, this information includes
manufacturer name and date, driver status, original CPU, original sound
hardware, original screen resolution and orientation, and number of colors.
Audit Tab : [only available in the Game Properties
dialogue] This tab performs a ‘mini-audit’ on the game selected, determining its
status compared to what Mame32 expects. Status will be reported and missing
files with CRC information will appear in the details view.
Display Tab : This tab allows the setting of numerous video
options.
Run in a window : Mame32 will launch the game selected in a window on the desktop, the window can be resized by pausing the emulation and dragging the borders. The resolution of the window can also be set in the Advanced tab.
Start out maximized : Toggling this option on ensures that when windowed mode is used, the maximum amount of space is used. Toggle this option off to play the smallest version of the windowed game.
Enforce aspect ratio : This option is used in conjunction with windowed mode, it forces the aspect ratio to be maintained when the game is paused and the window is dragged and resized. Turn this off to create long, thin game windows, or short fat, etc.
Throttle : This option prevents Mame32 from running games as fast as the host CPU can go. Unless this is toggled on, a modern x86 processor will run Donkey Kong at a thousand times its original speed.
Clean Stretch : These options will stretch the game upwards keeping its original aspect ratio and not convert to 4:3 or 3:4, optionally using the vertical or horizontal axis, resulting in different sizes w/ auto resolutions.
Zoom : Default is usually fine at 2 this slider is used in conjunction with the 'auto' resolution selection and is not used if a set resolution is used. It attempts to find the smallest video mode for a sized game and sizes the effects applied to the image accordingly.
Rotation : This drop down box allows Mame32 to rotate the video output by 90 degrees in either direction. This setting is useful if used in conjunction with a pivoting monitor [the auto options], or playing games with a monitor on its side. Doing so allows vertical orientated games to be played full screen. The additional 'auto clockwise' and 'auto anti-clockwise' settings are particularly useful for rotating LCD monitors, these settings will force vertical games to one 90 degree angle or the other depending on which way the LCD pivots.
Flip screen upside down : This option mirrors the image vertically.
Flip screen left right : This option mirrors the image horizontally.
Effects : This option allows Mame32 to attempt to simulate more closely the look of the original hardware’s monitors, which were much lower resolution devices than modern computer monitors. The scanlines check box can be toggled on only when hardware stretching is disabled. Horizontal scanlines can impose an additional speed penalty in games played, and RGB effects impose an even greater speed hit, upwards of 40%.
Gamma correction : This option controls the global gamma correction in a game and can result in much brighter video output if moved to the higher setting. A high gamma setting is particularly helpful when playing vector based games. Same setting available using the tilde menu [~] in-game.
Brightness correction : This option controls the global brightness in a game at the palette level in Mame32 and works with 99% of the games, [does not for those that go directly to RGB]. Same setting available using the tilde menu [~] in-game.
Pause Brightness : This option controls the screen brightness when a game is paused.
Advanced Tab : This tab allows the setting of numerous
video options.
Use DirectDraw : This option controls whether or not Mame32 utilizes the DirectDraw component of DirectX with the video card. Toggling this option off precludes the use of all other check boxes in the area.
Triple buffering : This option controls how Mame32 draws to the screen, if toggled on, it will draw to three buffers and cycle between them. This setting when toggled on can also help alleviate tearing that sometimes occurs in some scrolling games.
Match game refresh rate : This option tells Mame32 to attempt to force the output monitor to match the refresh rate of the selected game’s original video hardware. The majority of games in Mame32 are 60Hz, using this option and triple buffering will produce smooth scrolling in those games.
Sync to monitor refresh : This option tells Mame32 to ignore the original game’s refresh rate and sync it to the output monitor’s current rate. This can cause the game to run too fast if the output monitor is using 85Hz for example..
Wait for vertical sync : This option tells Mame32 to wait for the refresh period on the output monitor to finish before starting to draw video to the screen.
Stretch using hardware : This option allows Mame32 to utilize the stretching abilities of the video card. Most modern video cards allow this, some do not. If this option is grayed out, the video card does not support it, or it is necessary to switch to 16bpp or 32bpp. Mame32 will stretch the original game’s resolution to the nearest 4:3 ratio and output that to the screen. Most video cards perform this stretch and provide a filtering effect which can make the output appear muddy, or blurry. Use one of the graphic effects on the Display tab to counteract this blurriness, particularly the RGB sharp effect. This stretching option uses DirectDraw; for potentially faster display, modern video cards may utilise the Direct3D stretching on the Dircect3D tab.
Switch resolutions to fit : This option when used in conjunction with the resolution settings allows Mame32 to resize the game output to the dimensions specified. If not toggled on, Mame32 will draw the game to the current desktop size and settings.
Switch color depths to fit : This option when used in conjunction with the resolution settings allows Mame32 to switch to the game’s requested color depth. If not toggled on, Mame32 will draw the game to the current desktop color depth.
Full screen brightness : This option allows Mame32 to change its full screen brightness. Some cards alter the brightness/gamma when they go into full screen mode, this allows the counteracting it.
Aspect ratio : This option allows Mame32 to change its stretched to aspect ratio, default value is 4:3.
Resolution : These settings allow Mame32 to use resolutions defined by the systems DirectX video modes, color depths, and refresh rates.
Frame skipping : These settings allow Mame32 to skip frames of animation when playing games, if the host CPU is not fast enough to run the game.
D3D Tab : This tab allows the setting of Direct3D hardware
supported
video options.
Use Direct3D : This option controls whether or not Mame32 utilizes the Direct3D functions of DirectX. It will override the DirectDraw setting on the Advanced tab, and assumes the use of hardware stretch. Results will vary on individual hardware configurations, but the D3D effects may be faster than their DirectDraw counterparts on modern video cards.
Texture Management : This option allows the video cards' hardware / driver combo to deal with the display more directly and potentially more intelligently than the Mame code. The default setting is on and is appropriate for most modern video cards. If seeing slowdown in games with the D3D effects and filters on, toggle this option to see if speed increases.
Pre-scale Image : This setting should be used in conjunction with filtering = bilinear or any setting except point filtering. It acts the same way its DirectDraw counterpart 'effect sharp' does, its sharpness level is between pure bilinear filtering and point [no] filtering and can sharpen, slightly, effects used above with non-Point filter selections. The drop down choices allow the selection of the level of sharpness, from the lower blurrier to higher sharpness. The closer to 8 the closer to point filtering.
Rotate Effects : Normally the effects are rotated based on game orientation, toggling this option off will allow horizontal scan lines in vertical games for example.
Filtering : This option allows selecting the filtering method used on the stretched D3D image. Selecting Point filtering will stretch the image and not filter/blur it at all. Bilinear filtering is the default and usually the fastest on most video cards. The other options will affect speed of emulation based on the video card / driver combo used and the maturity of the cards' feature set.
Effect : This drop down
contains various 'mask effects' to be used with the Direct3D setting. They
each attempt to simulate the display of the game running on an arcade monitor to
varying degrees.
These settings may be used in conjunction with the filtering options above.
If filtering = Point, the screen will be brighter as no blurring will take
place. Some suggested effect combos:
1. filtering = None + effect =
Aperture grille
2. filtering = Bilinear + effect
= Aperture grille + Pre-scale
3. filtering = Bilinear + effect
= Dot medium mask
4. filtering = Bilinear + effect
= RGB 4 pixel triad
Note that some of these effects
will do integer stretches on the aspect ratio corrected image as far as possible
for the set resolution, this means effects like 'auto', 'aperture grille', 'scan
lines' will not stretch to the entire screen. The various RGB/Dot/Mask/None
effects will however stretch to the full screen.
Effect Overrides : Scan lines allows manually setting the scan lines intensity and overrides the scan 25/50/75 presets in the effects pull down. Feedback simulates the ghosting effect in games showing a variable phosphor trail. Saturate increases the color 'bleed over' factor.
Sound Tab : This tab allows for setting the sound options.
Enable sound and sound CPUs : This setting toggles sound on or off in games.
Use samples : This setting allows Mame32 to utilize samples for games which do not have their sound hardware emulated, or were using analogue circuitry.
Resample if samplerate doesn’t match : This setting is utilized if the samplerate of the original hardware does not match the samplerate actually used by an integer factor. This is more faithful to the original sound, however, the sound may not be as crisp.
Samplerate : This setting tells Mame32 at what rate to output sound, the higher, the better. Lowering this setting can also result in faster performance on lower end machines.
Volume attenuation : This setting allows Mame32 to set the initial volume level, the default is 0dB.
Audio latency : This slider allows the adjustment of the amount of latency built into the audio streaming. Increasing the slider to the right on faster machines can help alleviate some desync and scratchiness in the sound on some configurations.
Controllers Tab : This tab allows for setting the game
controller options.
Enable joystick input : This setting tells Mame32 to utilize any currently connected joysticks. Mame32 will interrogate the game controllers control panel and use ID#1 and up.
Analog joystick deadzone : This setting controls how Mame32 translates analog input to games that require digital input.
Enable mouse input : This setting tells Mame32 to utilize the mouse in games that require analogue control methods.
Enable lightgun input : This setting tells Mame32 to utilize a lightgun for target/shooting games that require analogue control, like Crossbow, Police Trainer, Rev X, etc.
Enable steadykey support : This option tells Mame32 to use a different keyboard handling that makes it easier to register simultaneous key presses for games that require it for special moves [Street Fighter II, etc.]. However it can produce more sluggish results in other games.
Default input layout : This drop down menu allows Mame32 to choose between multiple key mappings, including keyboard mapping for various third-party control panels. It will also display user defined controller mappings, if created in the \ctrlr directory. See \docs\ctrlr.txt for more information.
Miscellaneous Tab : This tab allows for setting additional
options.
Use additional game artwork : This setting if toggled on allows Mame32 to utilize the external artwork packages available at Mame.net for display in games like Armor Attack, Discs of Tron, Lunar Lander, Warrior, etc. The artwork packages are placed in the \artwork directory. Each element of the artwork package can be toggled: bezel, overlay, and background.
Crop Artwork : Selecting the crop artwork toggle will shrink the scene down to the games original dimensions, cropping any available art pieces.
Artwork resolution : This setting allows selecting normal and higher resolution versions of the artwork, the high setting scales the game graphics to match the higher art resolution, best seen in Night Driver and Space Invaders.
BIOS : This drop down allows the use of a variety of different supported NeoGeo or Sega BIOS files. The option will only be available when altering the driver family via the source folder view on the left pane, or individual games in the driver family.
Use LEDs as game indicators : This setting if toggled allows Mame32 to utilize the LEDs on the keyboard to match some of the in-game light flashing, seen during braking in Outrun for example, and coin/credit indicators, the drop down allows the choice of PS/2 or USB keyboard.
Enable game cheats : This setting if toggled on allows Mame32 to use some cheats that are present in games like Defender and Battlezone to make control easier. It also allows for the use of an external cheat.dat file which can be used to cheat illegally in games in a variety of ways, including infinite lives, level jumping, etc.
Use less CPU time if possible : This setting if toggled on allows Mame32 to be more multitasking friendly in that it does not use as much processor time. If this setting is toggled off Mame32 will utilize 100% of the CPU for playing games. Some machines slow down dramatically if this setting is toggled on, particularly laptops.
Use RDTSC timing system : This setting if
toggled on uses RDTSC over QueryPerformanceCounter for
timing. Check this desktop systems, and toggle it off for laptops or
possibly older K6/7 level machines.
Error log (for developers) : This setting if toggled on produces an error log of illegal memory accesses.
Vector Tab : This tab allows for setting additional
options for games that originally utilized a vector monitor instead of a raster
monitor. [Asteroids, Battlezone, Armor Attack, etc.]
Draw antialiased vectors : This setting if toggled on tells Mame32 to draw vector lines with an additional pleasing antialiased look.
Draw translucent vectors : This setting if toggled on tells Mame32 to draw vector lines with a slight translucency and bright points at intersections.
Beam width : This slider allows Mame32 to set the beam width on the vector lines drawn, increasing it creates wider vectors.
Flicker : This slider tells Mame32 to artificially create a flicker effect on the vector lines.
Intensity : This slider tells Mame32 to increase the brightness/intensity of the vector lines. Higher values attempt to approximate on a raster monitor the distinct bright glow of the original vector hardware.
2004-07-12 08:42 AM -0700 / john iv