I recently compiled XMAME for ( and on! ) my old 233 MHz laptop. At the moment it will only display games in small windows, which will mean recompiling at some point with fullscreen support added. (D'oh!)

However...

Given that this is a fairly old machine which struggles to cope with newer game roms anyway, is it worth specifying some method other than X for the display? I believe XMAME also supports svgalib - would using this instead of X free up some memory and CPU cycles? Is modifying the makefile to target svgalib and fullscreen fairly straightforward?

NB: when I get around to recompiling, I'll do it on my main PC, which is an Athlon XP2400. Might be a
little bit quicker...

You should be able to get a fullscreen by adding an option to the xmame command when executing it or if using a graphical front end, check the appropriate box. You shouldn't need to recompile it.

I'm not at my linuxbox at the moment so I can't check for the exact command for fullscreen.

I've compiled it for SDL as well as GL and X11. I've found X11 to be the best as some games, notably vector types, won't run on GL compiled Xmame. SDL also looked a little chunky for my own personal taste.

Cheers

azraelder

The command line option mentioned in the documentation is -fullscreen, which I've tried and doesn't work. The fullscreen option has to be specifically requested in the makefile when compiling, I think.

I really need to get the fullscreen option working somehow. Playing R-Type in a two-inch wide window might very well be cool, but it doesn't half give me a headache afterwards...

Just out of curiosity, are you using a graphical frontend such as Gxmame or are you using the command line?

azraelder

The options for fullscreen depend on your target. -fullscreen is I believe used for the SDL version. For the x11 version you can use -X11 1 (DGA) or -x11 3 (xv). DGA needs to be compiled in (it's a compile option in the Makefile). xv might in newer versions of xmame be accessible through -xv i.s.o. -x11 3.

Of these two, DGA is usually the faster one, but requires you to add the proper modelines in your X configuration. xv works fine, though I've noticed the image becomes a lot less blurry when you set the scaling to 2 or use one of the graphic enhancing effects (-ef 1, -ef 6, or -ef 7). Those graphic enhancing effects however take up quite a bit of CPU power.

I personally use my own front-end MAMEd now. Before I wrote it I used either commandline or gxmame, depending on my mood.

Azraelder - I tend to launch my favourite games directly from the root menu in Fluxbox. Otherwise, from the command line.

Phulshof - I will try the xv option and see what happens. I seem to recall xv support was built into the standard makefile, so that should be okay. Will let you know what happens later... I'm at work right now. (Naughty!)

Hmm. Having tried the XV option, I get this message:

Error: couldn't initialise XV port- either all the ports are in use, or the video card doesn't provide a suitable format.

I'm running xmame on a Panasonic CF-27 toughbook, 233MHz pentium, 160Mb RAM, no idea what video hardware it runs!

Looks like I'll have to compile with support for a different display method, no?

I noticed that xv is indeed part of the makefile these days. You may want to have a look at the makefile, and see which options are enabled. If you need any help with the makefile, just email me at phulshof@xs4all.nl, and I'll try to help you out. There are some other options in the makefile that really influence the speed of xmame's emulation.

Use svgalib for this...you'll need every spec of free ram and processor cycles that you can get for a system of that level.So yes you will have to compile.Would be a good idea if you could find out what video card is in there...could be hard to setup properly without that knowledge.'lspci' might be all you need to do however.

Oh and last time I checked you have to compile each target one at a time,and the binary is all self-contained so you will be getting a 40mb binary for each target,which is annoying.

You could also try AdvanceMame which is designed for real arcade cabinets but also works well for low-end systems.

phulshof - thanks, I may just do that! I don't mind flipping through the makefiles, but a lot of it's over my head.

Darklegion - some of my fave games do work pretty much ok in X, but if I can squeeze a bit more speed out of SVGAlib, I think that's the way to go.

Looks like I'll be doing a bit of tinkering tonight...

Thanks all.

Hey did you have any luck with xmame.svgalib? I was searching through this forum and this looks very interesting to me. I created a box solely for running mame. CPU is 1GHz and I've had some performance issues running some newer games on X. Anyway, whenever I try to run xmame.svgalib, I get this error:

svgalib: Cannot open /dev/svga
Is svgalib_helper module loaded?

Something about the module. Where do I get this module? I'm still relatively new at this linux stuff so please be descriptive as possible for me.

Thanks,
Rich

I don't think svga will help you much with your performance issues. Unfortunately I cannot test this, for my graphics card simply doesn't work with svgalib.

i like mame much
and is there any one to tell me how to add a driver to a special game ?
i need it much ,since my mame is old and ,i wanna load some games that ware modified
MUCH THANKS

I've been having a similar problem. For about three months Xmame played through GXmame was working fine. I did tamper with my xorg file to get TwinView working for the nvidia 5700 card. It seemed like after I had Twinview working, that all of my Xmame games would only open in a very small window, about 3 inches by 2 inches. When I open GXMame before choosing a game, the window is full screen. As soon as I choose a game, it's very small. I have a high end system, so that should not be an issue. 1gb of RAM, 5700 nvidia card, 2 Ghz CPU, etc. I was using the RPMs provided through PLF, and out of the blue xmame games started this behavior. Any ideas?

Was twinview the only change you made between xmame working properly, and xmame working in a small window or did you update xmame/gxmame as well? There have been some commandline option changes in the latest versions, so it's important to know if you updated xmame and/or gxmame or if the twinview change was the only change you made.

Which version of xmame do you use? SDL/XV/X11/SVGA?
What two monitors/tvs do you have connected, and on which one are you trying to display xmame?
On which monitor did you display it before the twinview change?