xmame provides smaller size in fullscreen now

mark_alfred · 04-02-2011, 01:13 PM

Hello. I use xmame-sdl to play old arcade games sometimes. I use Debian. Previously, when I had Debian Lenny, the version of xmame-sdl from nonfree worked to open the game in fullscreen mode. Now, however, after upgrading to Stretch, I find that while it still opens the game in fullscreen mode, the game itself is smaller (it's centred and small, rather than occupying the entire screen). The command I use to open it is:

Code:

xmame.SDL --fullscreen game

mark_alfred · 04-09-2011, 11:42 AM

I was mistaken when I speculated that the reason for the smaller screen size was the upgrade from Debian 5 to 6. I also had changed the video card for a very old ati Mach64 card to a still old (but not quite as old) Radeon card. I read some stuff from the documentation*, but it wasn't helpful. Anyway, I've switched back to the old card, and it now works.

[off topic] The new card provided great 3d rendering when I tried it with an old Freespire Live CD (500 or so fps), but it only gave 50 fps when using it with Debian (since Squeeze, glxinfo says direct rendering is enabled, but it's made no difference).
[/off topic]

___
* stuff from the documentation:

Quote:

If the game runs in fullscreen but occupies only a small area in the center of the screen, then your xserver does not have access to low resolutions (320x240, 400x300, and 512x384, for instance). In the case of SDL, the window will be in the resolution of closest matching resolution that SDL can switch to for full-screen display.

In this case, you have to add "Modelines" for these resolutions in your XF86config file and add these resolutions to the resolutions list of your display somewhere in your XF86config file (you know, the list of resolutions you can switch to using ctrl-+).

You should find modelines that works with most graphic cards in the xmame contrib subdirectory.

If you don't want to alter your XF86config file, another solution is to run xmame.x11 with the "-scale 2" argument. In this case, the emulator will use 640x480 instead of 320x240, 800x600 instead of 400x300, etc. But I don't recommend it. The scaling uses cpu and the games will run more slowly.

However, if your cpu is fast enough, a better option is to use the effects, e.g., ”-ef 1”. This introduces advanced render methods to create a nicer looking effect than the simple scaling. On the website you can see screenshots of the different effects.

Given that I don't have an XF86config file, these pointers are useless. *sigh* --this is some of the fun of using free software, I suppose.