Why was the option to adjust screen refresh rate removed from the slider controls menu? Using it, you were able to get rid of transparent shadow flickering on games that ran at odd refresh rates by setting it at or slightly above 60hz. It worked especially well to remove transparent shadow flickering on Neo Geo games…
Will this be reimplemented in another way?
Any other solutions to adjust refresh rate for just specific games in MAME?
I don’t think anything has been removed from the libretro implementation. Shadow flickering is how it is on the real things as far as I know…I might be wrong
I guess you could add writeconfig 1 to your mame.ini and then change the parameter in your neogeo.xml or gamename.xml.
I believe the change happened in the beginning of June; the 5-31-14 test build I checked still had the slider controls implemented.
In MAME, if you call up the MAME menu (L2 on my controller) you’ll “Slider Controls” where you can adjust brightness,gamma, volume etc… There used to be a setting there to adjust “Screen Refresh Rate” (which defaulted to the games original refresh rate). If a game ran at 58hz, you could adjust it to 60hz to match your monitor/tv and any sprite or shadow flickering was removed.
Games that simulate transparency effects (Neo Geo) by syncing to a monitors refresh rate look a little weird unless it’s running at the same refresh rate at the monitor (sorry for the poor description/explanation, but it looks like screen tearing/vsync off on specific sprites)
It’s easy to see this happening; In MAME, using Samurai Shodown as a test, watch during the intro and look at the stone lanterns and how the light flickering effect isn’t right (like vsync is off)
You can also see it in Samurai Shodown 1 and 2 with the shadows under the fighters feet.
Basically, any games that don’t run at 60hz and use alternating sprites to simulate transparency will have this problem.
The slider control was an easy way to fix this from happening
In stand-alone MAME, you could turn off ‘throttle’ and let the games run at your monitors refresh rate (60hz) and avoid all this, but I can’t seem to get this to work in the RetroArch version of MAME. (I’m probably doing something wrong)
Are the sliders available in current build of standalone MAME? if they are not, not much can be done I built yesterday, haven’t tested https://files.andressm.org/d/cabd215c15/
Can you tell me what’s the command line option that makes them run unthrottled?
I’m not 100%, but I don’t remember those screen refresh rate sliders in any version of MAME (I’m not a MAME expert,by any means though). That’s why I liked it being in RetroArch so much… Again, I’m not a MAME expert at all; just going off of memory.
As far as the command line for turning off throttle, I’ve just always set ‘throttle’ to “0” in the mame.ini
I think we briefly ‘chatted’ about this a few months ago
You have to put: cheat 1 in your \system\mame\ini\mame.ini
Enabling cheats in retroarch core options doesn’t seem to be working.
Have you been able to remove/fix these flickering transparency shadows that I’m talking about by doing this?
Thanks for the help, guys!
Have you been able to remove/fix these flickering transparency shadows that I’m talking about by doing this?
Thanks for the help, guys![/quote]
You need to have cheat enable to make the refresh option appears. So yes, I have it enable and I can bump the refresh rate up to 60Hz to make the shadows sync with my screen.
Have you been able to remove/fix these flickering transparency shadows that I’m talking about by doing this?
Thanks for the help, guys![/quote]
You need to have cheat enable to make the refresh option appears. So yes, I have it enable and I can bump the refresh rate up to 60Hz to make the shadows sync with my screen.[/quote]
Nice!!! I’ll try this later when I have a chance to mess around… Thanks!
I’ll take a look into that today. Any other options not working?
Edit: it’s working here, tried both for games WITH and WITHOUT cheat files present
Here is my latest build: https://files.andressm.org/d/cabd215c15/ If it still fails to work, can you post the full verbose log so I can check if the parameters are being set correctly?
Tried with your build (retroarch.exe and mame_libretro.dll): I removed my mame.ini to test without it, core option cheat enable, no refresh rate option in the slider menu. Putting the mame.ini with “cheat 1” back bring the refresh back.
Here is the log (I chose debug in general option and copy/pasted stuff from the command window, hope that’s the way to do that?).
Ok I was able to reproduce it. Will take a look
Fixed https://github.com/libretro/libretro-ma … 6221a695c3 I disabled reading of mame.ini by default, but it’s a core option you can always change it. The idea is to make all the important parameters optional so you don’t have to rely on a mame.ini. Let me know on github if any options are important.
Also added MAME auto save/load, it’s quite handy to keep highscores, etc.
You can find an updated build in my folder https://files.andressm.org/d/cabd215c15/
Thanks for this!!!
Is it possible to save the screen refresh rate per game so you don’t have to enter the slider menu and adjust every time?
writeconfig is always on on mame as far as I know, doesn’t it save that already in the save/cfg folder? it saved my overclocked neogeo frequency for metal slug 2
hmm no you’re right, it saved using… well the save state information. I’ll check if there is some option that can make those options persistent
Cheat sliders can’t be saved… http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/sh … =5&o=&vc=1
If you can find info on where is that done I guess I can override it at compile time like the nagscreen
Seems non trivial, so nope, if you enable autosave it will save those too, otherwise, no dice
Nice that’s working now, great work. 
I’m not sure why you disable read configuration by default though, I think that will just confuse people. I tried “read configuration enable” with a mame.ini with “cheat 1” and disabled cheat in core options: cheats are disabled.
So, as retroarch has the priority over the mame.ini I don’t think that’s a problem to have read config ON. This behaviour would be similar to Mame stand-alone where it’s enabled by default.
About an option I always use in my mame.ini, it’s pause_brightness 1.0 to be able to take screenshots or real time shader testing after pressing P (pressing twice actually because retroarch recognizes the key before Mame, is something doable about that?).