Resolution problems with some emulators

[strelok]

Hi,

I recently came across an issue with only a few of the emulators used in Retropie – specifically all three ports and Game Boy/Color. I have two TVs that I have used it with, one generic that I use as a computer monitor and an HDTV that I am attempting to use it with. I am using HDMI input with both. On the smaller generic one everything displays perfectly, but when I go to use the larger HDTV the emulators in question appear much smaller than normal – the actual game is tiny enough that it is hard to read anything, and surrounded by empty black space on all sides. It only happens with these emulators, and only when I use it with the HDTV.

I have tried changing the aspect ratio with retroarch.cfg and the fullscreen x and y values, and I have tried to go through manually for each one and add in the x and y, and neither has worked.

Does anyone know what the problem is and how I can fix it? Thanks!

[Floob]

It could be worth trying editing the /boot/config.txt file and try a different video mode?

http://elinux.org/RPiconfig#Video_mode_options

Maybe this one to start with?
hdmi_safe=1

[strelok]

Huh. That had exactly the opposite effect – now everything appears that small.

Emulationstation and everything else worked fine so maybe it just has to do with the specific affected cores?

It may be worth mentioning that everything still looked fine on the other TV.

[Floob]

I think you may need to tweak the config.txt file for that other TV.
Try a specific video mode for it.

I can only presume its technically different in how it interprets the signal from the Pi than your other TV.
Perhaps some one with more hardware knowledge can help out on that one.

It could be worth trying outputting from the composite socket on the Pi and see how both TVs interpret that.

[gizmo98]

RetroPie lowers the resolution if you start a game. The main reason is performance. Most games are slow in Full HD. Some emus use VGA, some use 720p. Retropie uses the script runcommand.sh (/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh) to do this.

Take a look into /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg to see what video mode is used.

[strelok]

Sorry for the long response time but this was actually perfect – the SNES emulator, which worked perfectly used runcommand.sh 4, while the Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulators used 1. I changed them to match the SNES and everything was perfect!

The only issue is that when I go into es_systems.cfg, under the Ports header I don’t see the runcommand.sh line. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like when I do this.

Is there somewhere else that it’s stored for certain emulators?

[Floob]

I’ve deleted my ports so I cant check at the moment, but looking at the config, the ‘roms’ there are shell scripts themselves – so take a look in that directory and edit the file itself with nano.

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports

[strelok]

Duke 3D now works fine but Cave Story and Doom just present the command line for ~10 seconds as if they’re trying to boot and then return me to the ROM selection screen. Huh.

[strelok]

Anyone have any ideas? Is there a separate file I should change to get those two to work? The others all work fine, but Doom and Cave Story don’t open.

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