Cannot Rotate MAME To Portrait Orientation

RetroArch General
#1

Sorry in advance for the newbie question/problem.

I have installed retropie 3.7 on a RP3. I have loaded a few ROMS that play using the lr-mame2003 core. All good so far.

I have a custom bartop cab with a rotatable monitor. I cannot get mame to rotate the image to portrait mode. I have changed the video_allow_rotate to “true” in the main Retroarch.cfg file. I have also added the “ror” command to the custom retroarch.cfg file for the ROMs I want to rotate. None of the changes have made any difference. The emulation always plays in landscape mode.

I was able to get another core (advmame) to rotate the image by manually editing its advmame.rc config file and invoking emulation directly from the command line. But, when I try to start advmame from Emulation Station, the image does not rotate (even though the advmame.rc file instructs it to do so).

I suspect I am missing something simple. How can I get the screen to rotate??? Thanks!

#2

video_rotation = “90”

#3

Thanks for the help. The “video_rotation” command in the .cfg file for the ROM worked great.

After a little more research, I found some additional commands that I needed as well. Once the image is rotated, I needed to adjust the aspect ratio so it would be correct in the new format.

video_allow_rotate = “true” video_rotation = “3” aspect_ratio_index = “19” video_aspect_ratio_auto = “false” video_aspect_ratio = “1.33”

I found that the video_rotation command seemed to work in multiples of 90° for me.

The aspect ratio of 1.33 is a bit stretched, but it fills my rotated LCD monitor and looks great for my setup.

Cheers

#4

“video_aspect_ratio” isn’t used unless Aspect Ratio Index is set to “Config” in the menu (not sure which number that is in the config file), so what you’re seeing may not be 1.33 (aka 4:3).

#5

Here are the aspect ratio indices I have found:

19 = Config 20 = 1:1 PAR 21 = Core Provided 22 = Custom Viewport

1.33 is a good compromise between available screen coverage and distortion when I rotate to portrait mode. I tried 1.5, but it looks too stretched on the 16:9 monitor for me. With landscape games, they each seem to have a different ratio that I prefer. In general, minimizing empty screen space makes it better. I’m hoping to add filters next.

Thanks for the help!