wolf159

[mahlemiut]

Just a quick note about WolfMAME 0.159:

It is built using the USE_OPENGL directive recently added, which adds the ability to use the OpenGL renderer from SDLMAME. This may help those that get a black screen using the D3D renderer on older or integrated Intel video chipsets, and is much, much better than having to use DirectDraw or even GDI (which will likely disappear soon, too). To use it, add the -video opengl switch.

Let me know if there are any issues with using this version normally.

[MJS]

Thanks Barry.

About the old ddraw renderer, I hope they don't drop support because it's still the only way (please correct me if I'm wrong) to have MAME crop the image instead of stretching it.

This is quite useful when you use an arcade monitor because you can't go over 242 (or something like that) lines at 60 Hz, and many vertical games when rotated require more than that.
For those games (Terra Cresta comes to mind) I remember using ddraw and a fixed resolution with 240 lines to have pixel perfect image and correct refresh rate, because otherwise you would either have to stretch the image (bye bye pixel perfect image) or use a different refresh rate (bye bye correct game speed).

[mahlemiut]

You can't rotate the arcade monitor itself? That's usually how arcade machines do it...

[MJS]

I could do that, but then I won't be able to play horizontal games.

I just wanted to mention one of the benefits of ddraw over d3d.

[mahlemiut]

I figure DirectDraw support will be gone once BGFX gets setup (probably still a while off yet), which supports DirectX 9 at a minimum, also DirectX 11 (and 12 eventually), and OpenGL 2.1, 3.x and GLES 2 and 3. Anyone with very old video hardware may have difficulties. DirectDraw died out after DirectX 7 (was to some extent merged into Direct3D 8 ).

Edit: I notice that the Horizontal/Vertical stretch and position options allow for cropping of edges, is that close to what you want?

[MJS]

If you mean the options available from the OSD then no, they won't help because I remember cropping having no effect and image always get shrinked in 320x240.

The d3d renderer is better than ddraw in every aspect except for "resizing". If there is a video mode with the exact resolution and refresh rate the game requires, then all is perfect. But when there isn't I prefer to use a different resolution rather than different refresh rate. And when I use a different resolution with d3d I have no control over the resizing options. The image always get stretched no matter the resolution. It gets shrinked on lower resolution and enlarged on higher resolutions.

With ddraw on the other hand, you can disable hwstretch which is like disabling resizing. On higher resolutions the game takes up a smaller area instead of the whole screen, and on lower resolutions the game takes up the whole screen (and you can adjust the view area with pgup and pgdn keys if my memory doesn't fail) this last option is the one I use.

I will not argue when MAME moves on it's always for the better, and while this problem I described is not fully attributable to MAME, right now it allows you to do something by using ddraw that afaik, is not possible with d3d.

There is a d3d option that helps getting a sharper image, the prescale option. I use it for games with more than 256 lines because cropping is not a wise choice in those cases (the view area would be too small). But while it also helps getting a sharper image for the games I prefer to crop, it is still far from the image quality of a pixel perfect resolution.

Sorry for the long explanation, I tried to give a detailed explanation of why I still use ddraw sometimes