MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - How to strect the game only at integer ratios?

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# WINDOWS VIDEO OPTIONS
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video d3d
numscreens 1
window 0
maximize 1
keepaspect 1
prescale 1
waitvsync 0
syncrefresh 0
menu 0

Quote:

> So, in your setting, the screen really shows an image where the top and the bottom
> has black bars?

No of course not (*)...I don't understand why you would want that.

Then, why do you say: "For me, setting prescale to 3 takes care of it"? Your setting does not solve what I was describing, so why do you wonder "why it doesn't work for the OP"? It doesn't work because it isn't what I described in the first place.

Why I want black borders on all four sides? Because a height of 240 pixels doesn't completely fit into a screen with 768 pixels. So, I want to stretch the image to three times 240 (= 720) pixels and display them like that. Which of course means that 48 pixels will be unused. Stretching an image of 720 pixels to a screen of 768 pixels does one of two things: If you have the bilinear filter set, it still makes the image a bit blurry. Or, if you have the bilinear filter off, then some pixels will be stretched four times while most to the pixels will be stretched three times. On the other hand, if there are black bars on top and bottom, then every pixel will be stretched three times.

Quote:

I like the image to take up as much screen space as possible while keeping the correct aspect ratio - like on a real 4:3 arcade monitor.

This would be an understandable argument if MAME actually attempted to simulate the look of an actual arcade monitor. But it doesn't.

Let me show you a practical example:
This is a raw image of "Super Mario Bros.":

This is the same image stretched:

And this is the image with a filter that tries to simulate a TV screen:

However, this is not what MAME would do. MAME would do something like this:

Or, if you use the prescale option:

Which looks a bit less blurry, but still has nothing to do with a TV screen.

Or, if you disable the bilinear filter altogether, it would look like this:

None of the versions in MAME is satisfactory. That's why I want to have this:

And I don't want MAME to stretch at floating point values without me explicitly saying so.

Quote:

Moon Patrol for example uses a resolution that produces a square image, 240x252. You must stretch the image horizontally into a 4:3 aspect ratio for the wheels on the moon buggy to be round.

That's all fine and well, but the stretching in MAME neither looks like an arcade monitor, nor like the raw data of the 240x252 image. And if I have the choice between a custom stretch made by the graphic card of the computer, or showing the raw data, then I choose the raw data. Because the graphic card stretching looks totally different from the real deal while the raw data is at least what the game would look like on a handheld system like a Game Boy. And thus, I want integer scaling, which means, yes, some of the pixels are unused.

Quote:

MAME "adjusts the monitor" for you automatically

And that's the problem. Adjusting the monitor should be an option, right along with integer scaling. We shouldn't be stuck with one of them. I mean, Nestopia has all: Integer scaling, 4:3 scaling, 4:3 scaling with artificial TV-look filter, stretching with and without bilinear filter. Or no stretching at all (i.e. displaying a tiny little 256x224 image unaltered on a 1360x768 monitor). Why does MAME omit the integer scaling, especiall since it is implemented in the DirectDraw version?