Embarrassing schoolboy Mame question... 🫢

[stigzler]

I first started tinkering with Mame 20 years ago. Can't believe I'm stuck on this. Also, either google's punishing me for adblocking youtube, or my google-fu is presently offline. Even AI seems to have taken its ball home. 

How on earth do I force all vertical games into 7:8 rather than 3:4 resolution without changing each and ever game individually?

For bonus points, how do I do similar for horizontal games (using 12:7 instead of 4:3)?

My addled aged brain thinks it involves creating horizontal and vertical.ini in the ini folder, but as stated, goggle's causing more confusion than clarity. Wish they hadn't removed "Don't be evil" from their wall....

[launchretrogirl2562]

Edit your mame.ini file and set:

keepaspect 1

unevenstretch 1

aspect 7:8

 

Or if you want this only for vertical games, create a vertical.ini file in your MAME ini folder with those settings. MAME will automatically apply it to all vertical games.

 

For horizontal games in MAME, you can create a horizont.ini file (note: MAME uses "horizont" not "horizontal") in your MAME ini folder with these settings:

keepaspect 1

unevenstretch 1

aspect 12:7

 

Or test it with this command

mame gamename -aspect 12:7 -unevenstretch

[stigzler]

Thanks for the reply - I really need to figure out how to turn on auto-notify for my posts!

Did that, but I'm getting weird rendering. On vertical:

Not working at all for horizontal. Has the Mame system changed? Despite being the OG, it's not aging gracefully. 

[launchretrogirl2562]

not to my knowledge, but to be fair. I don't use those settings so best to hope someone who does chimes in.

I can look into it later but no guarantees.

[stigzler]

1 hour ago, launchretrogirl2562 said:

not to my knowledge, but to be fair. I don't use those settings so best to hope someone who does chimes in.

I can look into it later but no guarantees.

No worries - likely something deeply esoteric. 😟

[JoeViking245]

8 hours ago, stigzler said:

Did that, but I'm getting weird rendering. On vertical:

In vertical.ini, try -aspect 8:5 (don't ask, 'cause I don't know)

8 hours ago, stigzler said:

Has the Mame system changed?

Nope.

Including order of precedence.  If you have writeconfig in mame.ini set to 1, it will create a game-specific ini files (e.g. 1942.ini).  Those will supersede what's in vertical.ini.  Making any settings in vertical.ini essentially null and void.  So be sure to remove any game-specific ini files and check the writeconfig setting in mame.ini.

[stigzler]

On 9/8/2025 at 6:04 PM, JoeViking245 said:

In vertical.ini, try -aspect 8:5 (don't ask, 'cause I don't know)

Nope.

Including order of precedence.  If you have writeconfig in mame.ini set to 1, it will create a game-specific ini files (e.g. 1942.ini).  Those will supersede what's in vertical.ini.  Making any settings in vertical.ini essentially null and void.  So be sure to remove any game-specific ini files and check the writeconfig setting in mame.ini.

Yeah - had trod that path already. writeconfig is set to 0, although weirdly, cfg files for individual games are still being created. I am using bgfx, so wondering whether if it's something to do with that. 

I did get vertical.ini working via:

aspect                    4:3
keepaspect                1

🤷Dunno what the Musk is going on there. 

Given this small victory, I tried applying the same logic to horizontal.ini setting aspect to 3:4 and then once that made no difference to 16:9 (which also made no difference). 

wtf, mame? Totally unintuitive, inconsistent and infuriating. Still, we're not allowed to criticise the big M!

Have attached relevant config files in case there's any Mame wizards out there.

mame.ini horizontal.ini vertical.ini default.cfg