Any tips on how to make MAME emulator look better? is there a better all in one for arcade games?

[lovemehate]

So I upgraded to the premum for big box and I noticed that mame games look horrible, and when opening mame? there is almost nothing to change the games graphics, filters nothing.

when using google or youtube, I find tons of info on making games look better, however using other emulators, I have the normal MAME set up to run 1000s of roms so I don't know if its a good idea to switch emulators....Last time I was configuring a front end? I had to go through so many options and settings, and cores to get the ones I like running, I don't want to do that again. In fact I cant....

so as am using normal MAME, there seems to be next to nothing in graphics settings , or am i missing something?

any tips or suggestions?

I have no problem switching emulators, I just didn't think there was an all in one emulator for it.

thanks if you can help.

 

[Lordmonkus]

51 minutes ago, lovemehate said:

So I upgraded to the premum for big box and I noticed that mame games look horrible

As it was explained to you in your previous thread, LB / BB has nothing to do with your emulators settings including visuals.

Now having said that, Mame does have shaders. In fact the 2 shader types it supports are right there in your screenshot, GLSL and HLSL.

HLSL is the shader type I would recommend using because they are extremely tweakable to your personal preference. I have uploaded the raster.ini and vector.ini files that I use here on the forums.

 

[lovemehate]

Thanks for your reply again , I saw that too I just did not quit understand how to set it up, I did watch a video on it, that only works in some emulators right?

[Lordmonkus]

It's only for Mame and instructions on how to use it are on the download page.

[lovemehate]

Ah ok, thank you . Ill check it out, so when you launch a game I notice sometimes it says MAME , and sometimes Retroarch/mameliibretro, are they the same thing?

[Lordmonkus]

Retroarch Mame core is based off the official Mame but it does not use Mames HLSL or GLSL shaders. Retroarch has its own shader system and incompatible.

[lovemehate]

ok, thank you for the help/info

I did have one more question about big box mode for selecting games (arcade) So when you hold A you get the options, I should have mame and Retroarch both set up in my emulators, however when I pick "launch with" there is just one option , is that normal? is there a way to list all emulators related to arcade?

[Lordmonkus]

Add any platforms you want to the emulators Associated Platforms list and it should show in the Launch with... menu.

So for example if your games are launching with Mame by default and you want RA to be in the Launch with list, add Arcade to the associated platforms for RA but don't check the "default emulator" box.

[neil9000]

8 hours ago, lovemehate said:

So I upgraded to the premum for big box and I noticed that mame games look horrible, and when opening mame? there is almost nothing to change the games graphics, filters nothing.

Mame is designed to be as accurate to the original hardware as possible, so it uses the exact resolution and aspect ratio as the original games. Also it should be noted that no 2D based system can have it's graphics improved, only 3D systems can "Upscale" to higher resolutions. This is because 2D games use pixel art and this is a fixed resolution image, 3D is different as that is just math, and something that is supposed to be say 10x10 in size can be doubled in size/resolution simply by making that object 20x20 instead (but this also needs more power from the PC as you have quadrupled the amount of polygons needed to render the object now, needing 4x the graphics power as the original resolution game), its very simple math. A 2D sprite or a actual image has been drawn to the resolution of the original hardware and cannot be improved other than overlaying a shader as @Lordmonkus already stated, so don't expect any huge improvements, the games are old, made in low resolution, and designed to run on CRT monitors, not the flatscreens we have today.

What you are sort of asking here is "how do i make my movie i recorded from TV in 1985 on my 15 inch CRT onto VHS tape, look great and HD on my 55 inch flatscreen TV?" and the obvious answer to that is you cant, at least not on the fly without first converting the whole video using some sort of upscaling software that would take you weeks, and still not look very good. In order for a 2D game to look better every single sprite and image would need to be AI upscaled in real time, and that isnt possible, no PC is fast enough for that currently.

[lovemehate]

15 hours ago, neil9000 said:

Mame is designed to be as accurate to the original hardware as possible, so it uses the exact resolution and aspect ratio as the original games. Also it should be noted that no 2D based system can have it's graphics improved, only 3D systems can "Upscale" to higher resolutions. This is because 2D games use pixel art and this is a fixed resolution image, 3D is different as that is just math, and something that is supposed to be say 10x10 in size can be doubled in size/resolution simply by making that object 20x20 instead (but this also needs more power from the PC as you have quadrupled the amount of polygons needed to render the object now, needing 4x the graphics power as the original resolution game), its very simple math. A 2D sprite or a actual image has been drawn to the resolution of the original hardware and cannot be improved other than overlaying a shader as @Lordmonkus already stated, so don't expect any huge improvements, the games are old, made in low resolution, and designed to run on CRT monitors, not the flatscreens we have today.

What you are sort of asking here is "how do i make my movie i recorded from TV in 1985 on my 15 inch CRT onto VHS tape, look great and HD on my 55 inch flatscreen TV?" and the obvious answer to that is you cant, at least not on the fly without first converting the whole video using some sort of upscaling software that would take you weeks, and still not look very good. In order for a 2D game to look better every single sprite and image would need to be AI upscaled in real time, and that isnt possible, no PC is fast enough for that currently.

Not exactly, I was using retrobat before, and they have a pretty easy setup to where you just hold A, and you can cycle through a whole list of filters and more. and some of them totally make the games amazing. I don't see these options in retrobat, I get that you have to setup the emulators separately, but I just don't see these options, I may have to try some other emulators.

Edited December 9, 2021 by lovemehate

[Lordmonkus]

From what I read Retrobat is a fork of EmulationStation which from what I recall is using Retroarch / Libretro. If that is the case then if you use Retroarch in LB you will have access to all of its shaders.

[lovemehate]

2 hours ago, Lordmonkus said:

From what I read Retrobat is a fork of EmulationStation which from what I recall is using Retroarch / Libretro. If that is the case then if you use Retroarch in LB you will have access to all of its shaders.

I got your settings to work, and it looks so much better thank you,

I kind of like the scan-line look a little better, If I may ask, how did you edit the settings with silders for the whole system? I can only seem to find it per game.

either way thanks for the help

[Lordmonkus]

The sliders in game do not save on exit, you need to edit the raster.ini or vector.ini (depending on type of game) manually. That is why I uploaded my files.

You can play around with the settings in game but take note of what you got when you get it a way you like and then transfer them to the ini file.

[neil9000]

8 hours ago, lovemehate said:

Not exactly, I was using retrobat before, and they have a pretty easy setup to where you just hold A, and you can cycle through a whole list of filters and more. and some of them totally make the games amazing. I don't see these options in retrobat, I get that you have to setup the emulators separately, but I just don't see these options, I may have to try some other emulators.

Yeah, but as i said those are shaders, they are not touching the actual game at all, they are essentially laying a filter over the top of the game window. Underneath the games still look exactly as "bad" as you think they do, nothing has been changed or upgraded from what you saw previously to the actual games. Which is what i was trying to explain, the games are what they are in that regard, filters are are different thing entirely. And as stated before you keep saying that retrobat does this or retrobat does that, you need to come to terms with the fact that Launchbox and retrobat are different programs, with different features, and ways of doing things. Everything you did in retrobat can be done with Launchbox and Retroarch, we just don't surface emulator options in the UI as there is really no point in doing so. Retrobat is using Retroarch and EmulationStation, with Launchbox you are now using Retroarch and Launchbox, so the structure hasn't changed Retroarch is still the emulator so all the options you had are still there, just in the Retroarch UI now, the only difference is how the frontend looks.

[lovemehate]

On 12/9/2021 at 1:07 AM, Lordmonkus said:

The sliders in game do not save on exit, you need to edit the raster.ini or vector.ini (depending on type of game) manually. That is why I uploaded my files.

You can play around with the settings in game but take note of what you got when you get it a way you like and then transfer them to the ini file.

ah ok, thank you for clearing that up.

I did have one question which one of the settings controls/effects screen tearing? Its mostly noticeable in Side scrollers

[neil9000]

10 hours ago, lovemehate said:

ah ok, thank you for clearing that up.

I did have one question which one of the settings controls/effects screen tearing? Its mostly noticeable in Side scrollers

Vsync, but you actually want that off and to deal with screen tearing. A large number of old arcade games are not designed to run at 60Hz, again these where made for CRT screens where the framerate isn't as important as it is today with modern displays. You will find games at all sorts of strange framerates 59, 58, 57,56,55 etc, the first Mortal Kombat game for example runs at 54Hz, if you lock those to 60 with vsync then those games will run faster than they are supposed to, it could also break audio as well as other things. Therefore it is advised to not use vsync at all with MAME, the ideal way to handle this is with a Gsync/Freesync display. So you have two options, leave as is and deal with the tearing, or apply vsync and apply 60Hz to all games probably breaking a whole ton in the process.

[lovemehate]

On 12/9/2021 at 1:07 AM, Lordmonkus said:

The sliders in game do not save on exit, you need to edit the raster.ini or vector.ini (depending on type of game) manually. That is why I uploaded my files.

You can play around with the settings in game but take note of what you got when you get it a way you like and then transfer them to the ini file.

ok, thank you for clearing that up for me.

[BrainyCabde]

Kind of a shame that Mame can't at least have the option to upscale 3D arcade games like MK4 or Tekken Tag Tournament. Maybe someday...