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The Steam versions of Arcade Game Series Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Man, and Dig Dug--I didn't get the other one, Galaxian--by default run a 7:9 game screen doubled to 448 x 576 in a window; you can toggle it down to what looks like probably half-that, which would be their native arcade resolution of 224 x 288, or, on my 1080p desktop, up to maximum window size; the 1x and 2x window sizes are super sharp, looking like pixel-perfect scaling--something the always-slightly-blurry PS4 versions DON'T do--while the maxed 1080p window size and full-screen options ARE slightly blurry, since they're not quite able to reach full 4x scale.
The just-under-HD-sizes native game window scale would require huge borders to match standard HD resolutions without pixel-imperfect scaling, so I settled for recording at borderless 4x 1792 x 2304 resolution, which comes out pretty sharp. And having them on PC allows me to employ some gamma adjustment, which is not picked up in the recording, but which seems to aid the visibility of these CRT-designed games on my monitor, especially where those dark blue Pac-Man maze walls are concerned.
BUT it turns out this won't go quite go according to that pixel-perfect plan: my eyeballs did not like squinting at the half-screen pixel-perfect version of Dig Dug--even when I kept snuggling the screen closer and closer to my face. ; ) Dang. And the Arcade Archives version of Pac-Man doesn't have the problematic super-dark-blue maze walls; it doesn't have pixel-perfect scaling, but it like all the Arcade Archives versions has non-blurry chunky scaling, which may be a little pixelated but doesn't make my eyes think they're not in focus, and goes up to full screen size. So I'll be playing the Arcade Archives versions of Dig Dug and Pac-Man, on PS4.
Wish there was an Archives version of Ms. P but we all know that's not gonna happen, so I'm stuck with Arcade Game Series there--the PC one is slightly less blurry than the PS4 version for me, when zoomed in--my PC output has slightly richer color, too--so I'll first be trying the pixel-perfect half-screen size on PC for Ms. P, which in BRIEF testing hadn't yet flipped my eyes out, but if they do then I'll just zoom it up as big as I can fit it and that'll be the best I can get; slightly better than I'd had it with the PS4 version, at least. |
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| | | The arcade rom can be extracted from this version and run in and old version of MAME. The extraction requires installing Windows Subsystem for Linux:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/basic-commands#install
What I did:
1) Click Windows' Start button
2) type "cmd"
3) Under the "Command Prompt: App" entry in the Windows Start panel that appears, click "Run as administrator"
4) In the "Administrator: Command Prompt" window that appears, enter "wsl --install Debian"
Then I followed the instructions here
https://github.com/farmerbb/RED-Project/wiki/Arcade-Game-Series
which I'm reproducing below, with a note from me in the middle about an update command that was omitted. Once WSL Debian is installed, you can browse to the install folder by entering "\\wsl$\Debian" in Windows Explorer's address bar.
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ROM Extraction Instructions
These instructions are for a Debian-based Linux distro. For Windows, follow these instructions using WSL.
Install any prerequisites required to run the extraction scripts:
sudo apt update
[Note: to get the updates actually installed, you then have to enter
sudo apt upgrade
The farmerbb/RED-Project instructions continue:]
sudo apt install wget zip
Download the Arcade Game Series extraction script:
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/farmerbb/RED-Project/master/ROM%20Extraction/namco-ags-extract.sh
chmod +x ./namco-ags-extract.sh
Run the extraction script:
./namco-ags-extract.sh <path-to-dll-file>
(where <path-to-dll-file> is the path to either Release_0.dll, Release_1.dll, or Release_3.dll, which can be found in the "Plugins" folder inside each Arcade Game Series data folder in your Steam installation.
The extracted ROMs will be available in the same directory that you ran the script in.
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The extracted Dig Dug rom didn't run in current MAME (0.253). The most recent MAME that can run it is 0.119, which identifies it as "Dig Dug (Revision 2)." It doesn't pass MAME 0.119's CRC check, but you can run it from the command line; I'm running it something like this:
mame digdug -video gdi -waitvsync -volume -10
Can't seem to map movement to my HRAP5 v2017 arcade stick in that version, so I'm going to have to use the Joy2Key utility to handle the stick's input. |
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| | | | Probably not gonna do -waitvsync actually, since these arcade games may not be quite 60 fps anyway (have to use OBS's ~59.94 fps setting). |
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| | | Ah, to get the joystick (DirectInput) working in MAME 0.119, I needed to add the "-joystick" command line parameter.
And in the MAME menu (TAB key), the correct COIN and START controls to set are under "Other Controls," not "Player 1 Controls." |
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Game Capture and Window Capture don't work, at least not with MAME 0.119, so this is Display Capture. |
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