Setting up MAME properly on a non-4:3 display for Dodonpachi

[PROMETHEUS]

Hello,
My room mate is playing Dodonpachi on his laptop (I passed him the virus hahaha), but his laptop has a "wide screen" kind of display and MAME doesn't display a correct ratio for the game. It's a little wider than it should be, even though we checked "enforce aspect ratio", with "Aspect Ratio" set to 4:3 in the "Advanced" tab.

Anyone knows how to set it up so it displays properly ?

(we're using wolfmameplus 99)

Secondary question :
Under Windows Vista, this emulator doesn't display the game properly : it looks a lot more pixelized. Would you know how to set it up so as to get a good render in Windows Vista ? Or know another version of MAME that renders the game better in Windows Vista ?

[bkk]

Add this line to mame.ini:
resolution 1680x1050
(or whichever the native res is for the monitor.)

Not sure why you would use such an outdated version of MAME for Dodonpachi, though? The input lag issue was fixed around version .123 IIRC.

[Enhasa]

Uhhh, if he has a widescreen, the aspect ratio isn't 4:3. Fix that and you should be good.

Second question: You're going to get a lot of different answers for this one, based on personal opinions. Some people like it raw and pixellated. Some people use crazy filters like hq2x and whatnot. I prefer using DirectDraw and stretch using hardware (video card), all filters and everything off. Maybe that's what you had before and now you're set up for Direct3D. Try it and see if that's what you're used to. Looks great to me.

[Aru-san]

More likely than not, widescreen displays for computers are 16:10. Set the ratio to 8:5 (half of 16:10) if the monitor is dedicated for computer use and you're all set.

If your monitor doubles as a TV monitor, set the ratio to 16:9. The ratio you put in the settings reflects the ratio of the monitor, and if you input 8:5 on a 16:10 monitor, games should display correctly (i.e. not slightly wide). You'll know if you did this right if you see pillarboxes on a YOKO game.

[elvis]

I second the motion to stop using ancient builds of MAME.

Grab the most recent version of the mainline build. At some point in the early 0.1XX builds they added a lot of smarts to deal with multi monitor setups and non-4:3 resolutions.

Using pre-0,100 builds, the software simply makes assumptions that everyone has a single 4:3 monitor.

Running 0.134 on my Linux laptop with default config and the -ror flag on a 1366x768 (16:9) screen resizes the picture to 4:3 pillarbox as expected.

[PROMETHEUS]

It worked by changing the field that said "4:3" to "16:10". Thx guys !
Besides, the rendering problem on Windows Vista can be solved by using Direct 3D instead. It looks much better. I think you still need to use a filter like 2xSal to make it look good though, it looked trashy and wrong without a filter. Don't know why.

I would use a newer version of MAME if I knew one that perfectly handled save states and recordings for Dodonpachi. Wolfmameplus99 does, and whatever problems I may have had with it I could always deal with, like the render problem on Vista I mentioned, so I really have zero reason to change. (and there is no input lag)

[Mortificator]

Now that you have the right aspect ratio, you could also try setting MAME to rotate the image and putting the laptop on its side.

Some LCDs have a lot of shimmer when rotated, though.