I've observed a strange phenomenon with the arcade board of "Street Fighter II": Sometimes, sprites disappear for one frame, only to reappear again.
Have a look:
The first image looks normal. In the second, a piece of the vase is missing and the elephant trunks are out of sync. (Even though the latter one might be because the camera might have caught the TV in mid-frame.) In the third image, a piece of Dhalsim's foot is missing.
In other instances, I had other issues. For example, I once saw the vase on the right side of the stage disappearing completely. (Again, just for one frame.)
Except for the elephant trunks, I noticed those things with my plain eyes. (Which is why I did the videos that these screenshots come from in the first place: To check if I was only imagining things.)
As I said, these are scenes from playing the game on the real board, that's not an emulation. Also, the screen is a typical NTSC CRT TV. (The game is connected with a supergun, it's not an actual arcade cabinet.)
My question is: Is this a graphical problem on the physical board (i.e. a hardware fault on my specific copy) or is this merely a glitch in the game?
Since the background is still visible when sprites disappear, it cannot be a screen error.
So, if this is just the way the game works, how can I recreate this in MAME?
By the way, the version that I used is "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior" (USA 910206) (= sf2ua in MAME). The CPS-1 board is the original 10 MHz version (i.e. not the 12 MHz Dash board) with the Motorola processor.
thought i would do a test in mame to see if i could get it to happen but no occurrences when i tried (USA 910206) i did see something i hadnt seen before; when the elephant at the back has his trunk in the middle position you get a black pixel appear just below his ear (left red arrow).. also you get two grey pixels appear on the background at the base of the pillar to the right (right red arrow) tried 'World 910522' and got the same thing, so assume all is normal
Strider is another funny one, there is a hole in the graphics at the start of the game so you can see the stars in the background (red arrow pic below) it happens in mame and on the real pcb, you can see it on youtube videos of the arcade pcb itself, eg. look closely at 12 seconds into this video linked below:
There's also really dirty screen fade outs in cps1 hardware where squares like this show and don't show incorrectly. It did not perform its intended duties perfectly but as for some certain glitches like this SF2 occurrence I don't have hard evidence one way or another and I doubt anyone else does either. But if I had to guess I'd say it's a natural hardware/software glitch like the others. This type of thing isn't limited to cps1 either.
I don't know the cause of pcb vs. mame differences but most of what has been mentioned like the dirty fading happens on the real hardware. Wait states only affects game speed as far as I know.
> I don't know the cause of pcb vs. mame differences but most of what has been > mentioned like the dirty fading happens on the real hardware. Wait states only > affects game speed as far as I know.
Maybe, maybe not. I think there are some issues related to sprite limitations and not synchronising the cpu and the video chip properly (what we'd refer to in the 90's as "raster effects"). The later would be affected by incorrect cpu speed.
While as a project we advocate accuracy, in a lot of cases we fall short.
> I've observed a strange phenomenon with the arcade board of "Street Fighter II": > Sometimes, sprites disappear for one frame, only to reappear again. > > Have a look: > > > The first image looks normal. > In the second, a piece of the vase is missing and the elephant trunks are out of > sync. (Even though the latter one might be because the camera might have caught the > TV in mid-frame.) > In the third image, a piece of Dhalsim's foot is missing. > > In other instances, I had other issues. For example, I once saw the vase on the right > side of the stage disappearing completely. (Again, just for one frame.) > > Except for the elephant trunks, I noticed those things with my plain eyes. (Which is > why I did the videos that these screenshots come from in the first place: To check if > I was only imagining things.) > > As I said, these are scenes from playing the game on the real board, that's not an > emulation. Also, the screen is a typical NTSC CRT TV. (The game is connected with a > supergun, it's not an actual arcade cabinet.) > > My question is: Is this a graphical problem on the physical board (i.e. a hardware > fault on my specific copy) or is this merely a glitch in the game? > > Since the background is still visible when sprites disappear, it cannot be a screen > error. > > So, if this is just the way the game works, how can I recreate this in MAME? > > By the way, the version that I used is "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior" (USA > 910206) (= sf2ua in MAME). The CPS-1 board is the original 10 MHz version (i.e. not > the 12 MHz Dash board) with the Motorola processor.
It could always be a board error, having a quick check of the PCB to see if there's any scratches on the traces would be an idea.
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On a quest for Digital 573 and Dancing Stage EuroMix 2
I remember a number of glitches in the original street fighter 2. I seem to remember something about Ryu's Hadoken's being red instead of blue sometimes, as an example. That may have been on the Snes version though.
If you have to record a video to make sure that you didn't imagine it, then it isn't anything to worry about.
On a different note, I really appreciated seeing the screenshot of the real board running on a CRT screen. The graphics look so different to an emulated version on an lcd monitor.
Along with all of the other issues associated with high def HD lcd screens, the colors look noticeably wrong. I have been messing around with the HLSL settings, trying to calibrate street fighter 2 to have correct colors on my lcd. The only way I can get Ryu's clothes to look as white as in your CRT screen shot was to reduce the green and red output while increasing the blue. Ryu's clothes on the emulated screen shot look almost yellow in comparison.
I also noticed that there don't seem to be noticable black spaces in between scanlines like there are on many people HLSL settings. Are they visible when you see SF2 running on your CRT tv in person?
> I also noticed that there don't seem to be noticable black spaces in between > scanlines like there are on many people HLSL settings. Are they visible when you see > SF2 running on your CRT tv in person?
Any CRT with a picture height adjustment pot (vertical size) can get you "noticable black spaces in between scanlines" on any signal you can possibly feed it. Just turn the pot.
> I also noticed that there don't seem to be noticable black spaces in between > scanlines like there are on many people HLSL settings. Are they visible when you see > SF2 running on your CRT tv in person?
personally speaking i have found scanlines 'appearance' varies a lot depending on monitor/tv/brand/condition/age/generation/screen setup/tube type/focus..etc eg. i have owned some crt's with black scanlines, some with grey, and some with scanlines so faint they are almost not there (i throw those crt's out). also, if u set your vertical size of your tv to high (stretched), you can see the scanlines much more than if you pull in (reduce) the vertical size (my brother purposefully has his vertical size on his ct tv stretched so that he loses some of the top and bottom of the picture, but he loves the more visible scanlines you end up with by doing that).
Since my last post on this thread I acquired a Sony Trinitron crt tv, an Ikegami TM90 20" broadcast monitor (with rgb) and a Billabs 25" autosync arcade monitor. The Arcade monitor is what I use as my main mame screen as it does CGA, EGA and VGA. It also has the right dot pitch for old games while the broadcast monitor is too fine.
In my opinion, street fighter 2 doesn't look as good on any of my monitors when I use mame, when compared to the game running off a real jamma pcb.
I am not sure of exactly what causes the differences but it looks like the emulated version has an innacurate color pallete. The other difference is that the arcade board puts out a 5 volt rgb signal while my arcade vga card puts out a 1 volt RGB signal. The image from the real arcade board is brighter as a result so the black spaces between scanlines are less visible with the greater bloom.
I can adjust the rgb color balance on the monitor and I can increase the contrast and gamma in Mame but it is still not exactly the same. I have ordered a vga signal booster from ultimarc to raise the signal to 4volts so I am hoping this will help.
My arcade vga has a minimum vertical resolution of 240p. Street Fighter 2 and most other capcom games are 384 x 224. I have to use 392 x 240. The pcb has 16 more blank lines so the image ineeds to be stretched more vertically to make it fill the screen. The image in mame looks squashed if it fits the screen perfectly so I also cut off the top and bottom of the image to make it look right.
It is a little annoying as I bought the arcade vga to get native resolutions and I am stuck with ones that are just wrong enough to bother me. The Ultimarc website claims that 240p and 224p look the same but he's wrong. I would have used soft 15khz instead if it worked in windows 7. The latest arcade vga also limits most resolutions to run at 60hz so you get screen tearing without tripple buffering.
ok it sounds like you are very fussy regarding how the games run and appear (as am i and many other mame fans, often to the point of driving the mame team nuts) so what i recommend for you (as i am doing) is switching to groovymame and crt emudriver (dont bother with soft15khz). you can use your arcadevga card with groovymame (or a number of other ATI video cards). if this is a road you are interested in going down, start here by reading up on this lot: http://geedorah.com/eiusdemmodi/forum/viewforum.php?id=1 then head over to the groovymame forums over at BYOAC and start a new thread with any questions/help/advice you need.
Thanks for the tip. I thought that groovy mame just selected the best resolution available. I didn't realise that it allowed you to create custom resolutions using an arcade vga and windows 7.
Would it let me play street fighter 2 at 384 x 224 without any further software?
> Thanks for the tip. I thought that groovy mame just selected the best resolution > available. I didn't realise that it allowed you to create custom resolutions using an > arcade vga and windows 7. > > Would it let me play street fighter 2 at 384 x 224 without any further software?
groovymame has come a long way with windows 7, i cant give specific advice on that os as i use xp for my mame pc, but any 'windows 7+your setup' questions you may have can be answered at the groovymame subforum over at byoac forums.
generally speaking though, yes, groovymame can either choose the resolutions automatically for you (which it does very well), or if you prefer, you can have it choose your own custom resolutions (or, you can use a mix of both of these methods).
for streetfighter 2 at 384x224, i would argue that you can just use a 384x240 mode, which would then just add padding (8 black lines at the top of the screen and 8 black lines at the bottom), but if you are really against that, then yes you can set up a 384x224 resolution instead of 384x240 (but still, see 'the 244p case' here:) https://code.google.com/p/groovyarcade/wiki/Explanations_modelines
you asked if you could play without further software? you would need crt_emudriver set up, and would need to run vmmaker (part of the groovymame package) in order to set up your modelines (screen modes), which are added to your windows registry. you would need groovymame executable (32bit and 64bit available), and you would need to generate a groovymame ini file as it uses many additional settings as opposed to the regular mame.ini
groovymame can seem a little tricky at first but its very rewarding once you get set up and exploring the options etc
EDIT: actually, if you do switch to groovymame im wondering if you are going to end up limited in your modelines/resolutions by using an arcadevga card. perhaps consider getting an ati HD4xxx* series video card in order to get the most out of the system (you could sell the arcadevga to fund the ati HD4xxx card). dont worry about losing the ability to see the pc bios and windows booting screens if using a regular ati hd4xxx card, as there is a new tool (called atom-15) to flash the bios of these video cards so that they boot in 15khz like the arcadevga. here: http://geedorah.com/eiusdemmodi/forum/viewtopic.php?id=64
*must be ati HD4xxx series if you want to use windows 7
> Thanks for the tip. I thought that groovy mame just selected the best resolution > available. I didn't realise that it allowed you to create custom resolutions using an > arcade vga and windows 7.
GroovyMAME's support for the ArcadeVGA is somewhat limited unless you're using one of the older ATI Radeon 7000/9200/9250 based models. With newer versions of the ArcadeVGA, GroovyMAME can be used in conjunction with PowerStrip to create custom resolutions, but I believe that it requires a lot of work.
The best GroovyMAME results are achieved with a standard Radeon HD 4xxx based card and CRT_EmuDriver (modified ATI video drivers).
> > Would it let me play street fighter 2 at 384 x 224 without any further software?
I just fired up Street Fighter 2 in GroovyMAME and it runs at 384x240, not 384x224. However, it looks pixel perfect (I assume that there's padding aded to the top and bottom) and there's no tearing (it's running at slightly less than 60Hz).
Incidentally, if you're concerned about the brightness issue, you might want to pick up a video amp from Ultimarc. Though, if your monitor has a VGA connection, it might require some custom wiring... http://www.ultimarc.com/vidamp.html
> I just fired up Street Fighter 2 in GroovyMAME and it runs at 384x240, not 384x224. > However, it looks pixel perfect (I assume that there's padding aded to the top and > bottom) and there's no tearing (it's running at slightly less than 60Hz).
me 2, if i run it it runs in 384x240 and just puts black lines at the top and bottom. there's no scaling going on. obviously if someone wants it to fill the screen perfectly, then you would adjust the vertical size pot of your monitor so it fills the screen perfect. of course then, afterwards if you tried to run a game like mortal kombat (around 250 lines height), you will have gfx missing off the top and bottom of the screen as you set your vsize pot to display 224 perfectly. welcome to the world of trying to run every arcade game on one monitor here's a nice solution:
> obviously if someone wants it to fill the screen perfectly, then you would adjust the > vertical size pot of your monitor so it fills the screen perfect. of course then, > afterwards if you tried to run a game like mortal kombat (around 250 lines height), > you will have gfx missing off the top and bottom of the screen as you set your vsize > pot to display 224 perfectly. > welcome to the world of trying to run every arcade game on one monitor
My plan is to install a remote vsize pot at some point in the future. But for now, I just run a vertical game (like pacman) and adjust the monitor so that it just barely fits and live with the "letterboxing" on horizontal games. It's really not that bad. I don't even notice it anymore.
From memory, the arcade pcb has a slight border at the top and bottom of the screen if the vertical size pot isn't adjusted to make it fill the screen. If you don't adjust it then the game looks squashed.
The problem with the available resolution options on the arcade vga is that the game fills the screen before you adjust the v size pot so you have to cut off the top and bottom of the screen to make the game look right. If you leave it as just filling the screen then Ryu is as fat as Honda.
I don't really understand exactly how mame adds blank lines compared to the real pcb but if it looks right at 384 x 240 (after v size adjustment) then I'd be happy with that.
I can't believe that arcade vga cards don't have an accurate setting for SF2 of all games. I tried doing some custom resolutions with powerstrip but it doesn't seem to work well with the arcade vga card. There is only one resolution for EGA games with arcade vga cards too. EGA games with a vertical resolution of more than 384 lines (like Narc at 400) have the bottom of the image clipped.
I do have a few spare PCs and Radeon cards so I guess I should ditch the arcade VGA.
I use a multi-sync arcade monitor which auto switches, so I am not worried about going above 15khz while windows boots up. If my other Radeon cards don't put out 5v on pin 9 then it might be a bit more annoying to power my video amp but I'm sure I can figure that out. The v size and H size pots are on a remote board on my monitor which I keep upfront so making image size adjustments for each game is no issue. I need to do it when switching to EGA, VGA or 254 line CGA modes anyway.
Shame that ex capcom employee never came through with the wait state info years ago. If I'm not mistaken, there was also a cps2 emulator that had proper wait states, but the emulator was closed source and the details weren't shared.
> While as a project we advocate accuracy, in a lot of cases we fall short.
Who is this "we", Kemosabe? CPS-2 makes heavy use of raster effects, CPS-1 does not. The only impact the wait states have on CPS-1 is the gameplay speed (it doesn't sync to vsync).
> > While as a project we advocate accuracy, in a lot of cases we fall short. > > Who is this "we", Kemosabe? CPS-2 makes heavy use of raster effects, CPS-1 does not. > The only impact the wait states have on CPS-1 is the gameplay speed (it doesn't sync > to vsync).
You're responding to an old post, BTW, that at the time would have been "we"... (and I'd like to think that still is "we", for some reason.)
I just switched over to a windows XP machine with CRT EMU,soft 15khz and powerstrip so I can use my radeon hd4890.
Being able to create accurate resolutions makes Capcom games looks noticeably better than they did with my old windows 7 pc with my arcade vga card.
I tried street fighter 2 at 384 x 224 and it looks less pixelated than the closest res on the arcade vga which was 392 x 240.
With powerstrip, I can create a resolution within a resolution which would allow me to create 224p within 240p. That should make it 100% accurate but I haven't tried it yet.
People say that when using 240p for 224 line games, mame automatically adds black borders to keep things accurate. I am going to test it at both 384 x 224 and 384 x 240 to see if they come out the same.
> I just switched over to a windows XP machine with CRT EMU,soft 15khz and powerstrip > so I can use my radeon hd4890.
if you decide to switch to groovymame/switchres along with crt emudriver you will no longer need to use soft15khz and powerstrip anymore. with groovymame you can tell which resolution you want to use when you launch the game, and also determine if you want scaling or not... if choosing no scaling, groovymame will fill the additional spaces with black lines if the game you are running has a smaller height than the height of the resolution being used, eg. running a 224 height game in a 240 height resolution. it's a very good and quick/convenient way of doing testing etc
eg. when running streetfighterII with the 224 height, you could tell groovymame to use a 224 height resolution, or instead use a 240 height resolution, but with no scaling, in which case the black lines above/below are used (padding lines). of course the visual results for these 2 tests would be exactly the same. if you wanted further changes regarding how the image looks, then you would adjust the vertical size pot on your monitor.
I actually do use crt emu drivers. I installed them first but, for some reason, it didn't generate any 15khz or 24khz modes so I installed soft 15khz as well. Now my custom soft 15khz modes show up on arcade osd as well.
I don't use powerstrip anymore.
Other than groovy mame automatically selecting the closest res, are there any other advantages?
On choosing a resolution for street fighter 2, I have tested 392 x 240, 384 x 240 and 384 x 224. I think the assumption that, you get the same results by selecting a higher resolution and using the monitors v-size and h-size controls to make it fill the screen, is not accurate.
I started using 392 x 240 with my arcade vga because it was the closest res but I was never happy with the results. Street fighter 2 looked "squashed" and there was missing detail. I play on an arcade monitor with a .8mm dot pitch so it should look no different to the original, but it did.
I tested 384 x 240 when I first got soft 15 khz up and running. It looks a little bit better but still not 100%.
I eventually found a working 384 x 224 modeline. I noticed 2 things straight away: the sprites didn't look short anymore and I noticed extra detail. everything looks smoother too.
I am going to take some pics to show the difference. It probably isn't enough to matter to some people but for people who care about detail, the difference is important.
Now that I have the resolution right, I want to figure out the frame rate. The 384 x 224 modeline that I copied is exactly 60hz and I don't understand how to calculate my own modelines yet. With soft 15khz and / crt emu, I should be able to use the exact vertical refresh rate so no need to make everything 60hz.
I am very curious to see if using the exact refresh rate will fix all screen tearing. I have read different opinions in this.
Does anyone know if there is something I can read online about how to calculate custom modelines so I don't have to just copy other people's?
> Other than groovy mame automatically selecting the closest res, are there any other > advantages?
GroovyMAME not only selects the best resolution (something not as trivial as one might think), but it dynamically recalculates the modelines to match the target refresh rate of the game. This means it can transform your default 60 Hz modeline into whatever refresh that MAME needs, on demand. As a consequence you only need a bunch of "dummy" modelines in your system to successfully cover all video modes required for proper emulation.
Regarding 224p vs 240p, this topic has been covered hundreds of times. What you really need to get is that at 60Hz/15.7kHz, both 224p & 240p are 262 lines tall including blanking. This means they're actually the *same* mode from the monitor's point of view. In other words: 224p = 240p + borders. It doesn't matter if it's MAME who adds the borders by software or you who calculate the modeline with borders (extra blank lines added to vertical front and back porch).
The tricky part is to actually get MAME to add the borders (= integer scaling). Usually this is only possible when using -video ddraw. That's why ddraw is compulsory when using an ArcadeVGA, as explained in Ultimarc's site. However some derivative builds like CabMAME and GroovyMAME make integer scaling available to direct3d too (-cleanstretch).
Anyway just remind this: there's absolutely zero loose of accuracy in doing this, it is exactly the same as the real hardware did. If you're noticing quality loss at 240p it's because fractional instead of integer scaling is being applied. Definitely switch to GroovyMAME.
> I am very curious to see if using the exact refresh rate will fix all screen tearing. > I have read different opinions in this.
> Does anyone know if there is something I can read online about how to calculate > custom modelines so I don't have to just copy other people's?
I wouldn't go down that road, that's moving backwards. that's something people did in the past before groovymame and its automatic, safe, and highly accurate modeline calculating made everyone's lives a lot easier. I used to dabble in testing and messing around with custom modelines in the past, and all it got me was a few dead crt tv's from sending all sorts of wild out of range signals to it. even Calamity (groovymame author) himself had to get his arcade monitor repaired during groovymame development; he said it was his 'test' monitor which had all sorts of experimentation thrown at it. powerstrip, soft15khz, arcadevga can be left in the past now, there's no need for that stuff. all that is needed is crt emudriver, a compatible ati card, and groovymame. let groovymame do the work for you automatically, that's what it's for. there's no need to be doing stuff manually anymore. if you get the odd game using groovymame which doesn't look right, then report it at the groovymame subforum at byoac forums, and Calamity/others will help sort out the problem. I suppose in your defense, doing it your way is a good way of learning the ins and outs of modelines and how stuff works etc. personally when I was doing all that though, I found I was never playing games but instead, just always setting stuff up all the time and making sure everything was 'ok'. not to say that doing all that stuff wasn't fun and interesting, but personally for me those days were more about messing around with software and hardware, as opposed to actually playing any games.
You have inspired me to give groovy mame another try. If it changes the modlines to make the refresh rate perfect for each game, I am curious to see if it fixes all screen tearing. Is what groovy mame does with refresh rates, different to the "match game refresh rate" option on other mame versions?
I had no intention of using soft 15khz initially. I installed crt emu drivers first but it didn't work. No 15khz modes were available after I ran VMMaker (or before). I found another thread where Calamity helped someone else with a similar sounding problem. There was a link to an updated VMMaker but it didn't fix my issue.
I am using a Sapphire radeon HD 4890 and the 4890 is listed as a compatible model. It works with soft 15khz so I am not sure what I am doing wrong with crt emu. I am using windows xp 32 bit professional. The only thing I could think of that might be unusual in my set-up is my Xeon E3 processor which has no built in graphics capability so it can't be used without a seperate gpu. Other than that, everything should be perfect. It was a brand new xp install too.
I found a fairly comprehensive list of modelines which were easy to cut and paste. There are a few which I can't find though so it would still be good to be able to create them. For example, I really want a 512 x 400 57hz EGA mode for narc. Soft 15lhz and arcade vga only has a 384 line EGA mode at default settings. Am I right in assuming that I would need something close to 512 x 400 for groovy mame to output perfect native res and refresh?
On 224 vs 240 vs 288 all being the same, they aren't on the other versions of mame that I use. I only use direct draw with no hardware stretching and with switch res turned on. Selecting different resolutions makes the game screen fill different portions of the raster. For example, if I select 620 x 240 for a 320 x 240 game, only 50% of the width is filled. I wasn't aware than groovy mame handles that differently to other versions of mame. That being said, I have noticed that games look a little different in some versions of mame than others.
The main reason why I haven't adopted groovy mame is that it was difficult to get all of my roms working on the versions I tested. I was downloading them from the most up to date source I know but still, only a handful would work. Mame plus seems to load most roms, even if they fail the audit and don't appear in the "available" list. I couldn't find a working neo geo bios for any other recent mame release. Mame plus 153, 154 and 158 all load every neo geo bios I have tried, even though it lists missing files.
I was using an arcade vga until recently so there was no point in figuring it out. Now there is. I just need to figure out what I'm doing wrong with crt emu drivers..... Before I put in the time, is there any reason why my sapphire 4890 would be the problem?
> On 224 vs 240 vs 288 all being the same, they aren't on the other versions of mame > that I use.
Well I said 224p and 240p at 15.7kHz/60Hz are the same thing. But 288p is totally different, you can't do 288p at 15.7kHz/60Hz.
Maybe CRT Emudriver didn't work for you when you first tried for whatever reason, but if you set it up properly it just works, specially on XP. Just take some time to read the docs and grab the most recent downloads:
You can to create any resolution like 512x400@57 or whatever by adding it to ReslList.txt. Of course it is nice to know how to calculate modelines by hand and it's quite easy indeed, but you need information about the blanking times for each standard (CGA, EGA, VGA use different blanking times).
I have groovy mame running. It seems to work with a crt emu driver + soft 15 khz combo. i.e. I can see that the h and v refresh rates that it outputs are different to any of my modelines and, in most cases, they are closer to what they should be than my modlines.
I still haven't managed to generate resolutions with just vmmaker though. I really don't know what I'm doing wrong there.
The latest mame plus also changes the vertical refresh rate btw. It also allows you to change it yourself in-game but it defaults to the games native rate. Check out this image:
When I play it on groovy mame, it selects 384 x 240 and the vertical refresh displays as 59.5... on my rgb interface. The image looks different to me. Check out this pic:
Please ignore the over-saturatred colors (I hadn't finished adjusting the gamma settings yet). At the res and refresh created by groovy mame, the image looks a little short and the screen is shifted to the right a little. Do you get the same results with your set-up or is this a problem created by my 384 x 240 modeline?
As an fyi, this is a pic of SF2 running through my arcade vga at 392 x 240. I had to stretch the image enough to cut off the high scores to stop it looking squashed:
The pic above was taken on a different monitor so the image is obviously different for that reason. The image is stretched vertically but still looks squashed. That problem was the same on my arcade monitor too, which is why I ditched the arcade vga.
Would you mind posting a pic of SF2 to show me how it looks on your monitor so I can see if the issue is with my modeline?
I run everything in direct draw, switch res on, no hardware stretch etc, so it isn't a settings issue.
Notice there are a bunch of options that are GroovyMAME specific so you can't just use the generic mame.ini. However I'd recommend you just leave the default options. Maybe just replace "monitor generic_15" by "monitor arcade_15", and enable "multithreading" if you experience sound issues with vertical games.
Synchronization options (-syncrefresh, -triplebuffer) are managed internally by GroovyMAME, so just leave the default values and they will be turned on/off automatically when required.
For a decent experience, you really need to get the modelines created and installed by VMMaker. It's actually quite straightforward if you read the documentation. The modes installed by Soft-15kHz are just not enough.
What MAME plus allows is to modify the internal emulation speed (software). GroovyMAME actually modifies the refresh of your *video card* (hardware), and then adjusts the emulation speed to match this refresh. Completely different things.
GroovyMAME can't get exact refresh rates, just good approximations.
Expect to have borders up and down when running a 224p game (I understand that's what you mean by a little short picture). You need to use the v-size pot if you want the raster to cover the screen, just like with actual PCBs.
Regarding horizontal centering, it's fixable by software. You need to configure GroovyMAME with a custom timings line (crt_range option) that provides the proper horizontal porch sizes (i.e. borders) to produce good horizontal centering for your current monitor adjustment. Having an arcade monitor it's actually easier to just adjust the pots.
Your 384x240 modeline has no effect because GroovyMAME overrides it with its own calculated modeline at run-time.
Sorry, I can't draw conclusions from your picture because it's blurry, it's easier to judge with a close-up. Anyway when seeing these things directly it's quite obvious to say when the picture is stretched or not.
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so what i recommend for you (as i am doing) is switching to groovymame and crt emudriver (dont bother with soft15khz). you can use your arcadevga card with groovymame (or a number of other ATI video cards).
