Roms working in Horizontal but not vertical orientation

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Fireball2
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Roms working in Horizontal but not vertical orientation

Post by Fireball2 » Fri Dec 02, 2022 6:46 am

I have a Pi4 that needs the Arpicade 4.4 prerelease to run. I was testing the roms in in vertical orientation and a large percentange were not working. Changed the orientation to horizontal and a lot of then did load correctly. I used a rom set from a PI3 Arpicade setup that was working. This happened with roms from advmame, mame 172 and FBA, the 194x series and Batsugun did this for me.

Anyone seen this at all? Not sure if this is an issue with my setup.

@dee2er I appreciate releasing 4.4 early mate to get the Pi4 running.

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Re: Roms working in Horizontal but not vertical orientation

Post by dee2eR » Sun Dec 04, 2022 6:45 am

It's probably down to being forced to use 240p for rotated roms rather than 480i on earlier Pi4 revisions, unless I'm misunderstanding entirely... 240p doesn't really work well for running games rotated.

Let me know if that's not it.

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Re: Roms working in Horizontal but not vertical orientation

Post by Fireball2 » Sun Dec 04, 2022 7:46 am

The setup is for a vertical CRT cocktail cab. The issue is with vertical roms not loading in vertical orientation setting. Does this still class as a rotated rom?

Sorry this is the first time using MAME so on a learning curve.

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Re: Roms working in Horizontal but not vertical orientation

Post by dee2eR » Sun Dec 04, 2022 9:41 am

In that case it's possibly a 4.4 issue but I'm not certain offhand. That is not what I consider a rotated rom as it matches the screen orientation but the working sure gets confusing with all the various ways something could be rotated...

I've figured out how to (hackily) make 4.3 work on newer Pi4s, although still without 480i working... possibly that would be a better starting place than the 4.4 pre-release. I'll upload the few files required and update the 4.3 thread a bit later tonight.

EDIT:
I've uploaded the extra files for 4.3 on new Pi4s in the 4.3 release thread. It's probably worth trying 4.3 rather continuing with 4.4. I've just checked it with a vertical monitor and it seems fine using the vertical option from the service menu.

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Re: Roms working in Horizontal but not vertical orientation

Post by Fireball2 » Tue Dec 06, 2022 6:39 am

I have put the 4.3 image on another SD card. Copied the new 17 files you uploaded yesterday, by overwiting the existing ones on the 4.3 release.

Getting similar results as with 4.4. This is what is happening when screen orientation is set to vertical:
-Boots to ARPICADE logo
-Black screen with this text in the top left "ioctl FBIOUT_VSCREENINFO _ Invalid Argument"
-Game menu screen loads
-Select a vertical game that loaded in 4.4 and it boots and can play and exit back to menu.
-Select a vertical game that didn't load in 4.4. Video output stops and Rpi red light stays solid, need to reboot. (testing this on a LCD)

If the orientation is set to horizontal
-Boots to ARPICADE logo
-Game menu screen loads
-Select a vertical game that loaded in 4.4. Games boots and can play and exit back to menu.
-Select a vertical game that didn't load in 4.4. Blank screen then goes back to game menu.

Haven't tested many roms in the 4.3. If you need I can get a list comparing a few roms roms in the 2 setups.

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Re: Roms working in Horizontal but not vertical orientation

Post by dee2eR » Tue Dec 06, 2022 12:00 pm

how are you setting vertical mode? You shouldn't be getting : -Black screen with this text in the top left "ioctl FBIOUT_VSCREENINFO _ Invalid Argument"

all the games I tried worked... Best thing for me to keep testing would be trying specific games and MAME versions I guess. Possibly rotation direction too, although I don't think that will be related.

I tried 19xx in 172 and it was OK, couldn't see Batsugun in the build I tried, definately have the rom for it somewhere though... Any other games I can try?

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Re: Roms working in Horizontal but not vertical orientation

Post by Fireball2 » Tue Dec 06, 2022 9:23 pm

I am changing the orientation from the f4 menu.

I will setup 4.3 again tonight and then give a list of roms and the what they are doing for me.

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Re: Roms working in Horizontal but not vertical orientation

Post by Fireball2 » Fri Dec 09, 2022 1:53 pm

I redownloaded and installed the 4.3 image then did the 4.3.1 update. I didn't update the last image of 4.3 I tested, once done the "ioctl FBIOUT_VSCREENINFO _ Invalid Argument" did not appear.
Tested the roms in each mame version,every time I moved them I did a rom scan and rebooted the pi.
The roms i tested are a mix of 106 172 and FBA, mainly vertical with a couple of horizontal games. The "Horizontal Baseline" in the spreadsheet below are roms I copied from a RPi 3 setup. I tested the roms in a vertical oriention without much change in the following version 078 106 139 172 174 203 230 FBA

No - To menu = Nothing loaded and went back into game menu
No - reboot = Nothing loaded and RPi shut down (solid red light on RPi)

Image

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Re: Roms working in Horizontal but not vertical orientation

Post by dee2eR » Sat Dec 10, 2022 7:18 am

Interesting. Thanks for the gamelist, trying them now in whatever MAME I had them in and writing feedback as I go.

1941 - works in 172
1942 - doesn't work vertical or horizontal in 172 (not sure why but in 172 this game segfaults on Pi4, works on Pi3)
- works in 203
1943kai - works in 172
Bomb Jack - works in 172
commando - works in 230
gunlock - works in 172
legendary wings - works 172
raiden - works 172
batsugun - haven't tried yet but given the variance in our results I think we need to figure out why the different results.

I tested with rotation 'ror', switched to 'rol' in case it makes a difference (it shouldn't unless I've messed up some logic somewhere) and tried Raiden again and it was OK so that's not it...

If it wasn't for the games working for you in horizontal mode I'd be assuming it was a rom/MAME version issue but I don't see how that could be the case if they work on hori in the same MAME versions. It's extra confusing that you're having some games work fine in the same emulators in vert (thankyou for the detailed testing by the way).

The 4.3.1 update had launcher tweaks for 172, 203 and 230 but you mentioned you updated so they should be the same as I had... I'm completely drawing a blank as to what the cause of this could be. Sorry, I like to be more helpfull than this.

Has anyone else who may read this experienced similar behaviour with 4.3.1 and vert monitor?

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Re: Roms working in Horizontal but not vertical orientation

Post by Fireball2 » Sat Dec 10, 2022 7:56 am

I thought it strange that the roms work the same in all emulators as shown in my testing in vertical orientation.

Found some local stock of Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+. Does Arpicade work on this model?

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