| Display
|
- Run in a window: check this box to make MESS run in a window, rather than fullscreen. By default, the fullscreen mode simply fills the entire screen without the taskbar or any menus showing, rather than changing your screen resolution to something else.
- Start out maximised: this option only matters if you check Run in a window. If both are checked, games will start in a window stretched to the very reaches of your desktop. If unchecked, the game will run in a small window at its original resolution.
- Enforce aspect ratio: by default, games run in the 4:3 aspect ratio. If you want the games to run with a perspective true to the original pixel resolution, disable this.
- Throttle: enabling throttling makes the emulated system run at its real speed, rather than the speed of your computer. If you have a very fast computer, disabling this may have unwanted effects.
- Bitmap prescaling: enable this to use software scaling to increase the image resolution before sending it to the video card. This results in a pixellated image unaffected by hardware scaling filters, but because the graphics card is not used to render it this setting is much slower.
- Gamma Correction: determine the gamma correction of the image. The default should work fine.
- Brightness Correction: determine the brightness of the emulated image. The default should work fine. Note that you may find turning up your monitor's brightness brings better results than using this setting.
- Contrast Correction: determine the contrast of dark and light colors in the emulated image. The default should work fine. Note that both the Brightness Correction and brightness/contrast settings of your monitor will affect how much of a difference you can see when using this.
- Pause Brightness: By default, the screen is slightly darkened when you hit Pause.
- Videomode: this is the rendering engine used for displaying graphics. Try Direct3D first.
- Rotation: if you want the emulated image to be displayed a different way up, define that here.
- Flip screen upside-down: self-explanatory.
- Flip screen left-right: self-explanatory.
- Use Bilinear filtering: Bilinear interpolation results in a very smooth image. If you want your video card to stretch the image itself, disable this.
- Direct3D Version: select which version of Direct3D the image should be rendered with. If you have a special type of card, or you don't like Version 9 rendering, you can change the setting here. This option is only available if Videomode is set to Direct3D.
- Stretch using hardware: choose whether you want the image stretched using your video card or whether it should be stretched by DirectDraw itself (which is slower, but results in a different image). This option is only available if Videomode is set to DirectDraw.
|
| Advanced
|
- Triple buffering: triple buffering results in a smoother image, but will require more processing power. It may also cause problems on some older video cards.
- Synch to monitor refresh: this setting makes frames only update when the monitor refreshes. This can reduce jerky visuals, but also requires more processing power. On slower systems this will actually increase jerkiness.
- Wait for vertical synch: this is another setting for reducing jerkiness, but it also requires more processing power.
- Frame skipping: here you can set how many frames should be skipped. This speeds up emulation, but makes animations less smooth. Selecting Automatic will let the emulator drop frames on the fly as needed.
- Select Effect: effect files go in the
artwork folder. This setting can be left alone unless you have files you want to use with this.
- Full screen gamma: determine the gamma correction of the image. The default should work fine.
- Full screen brightness: determine the brightness of the emulated image. The default should work fine. Note that you may find turning up your monitor's brightness brings better results than using this setting.
- Full screen contrast: determine the contrast of dark and light colors in the emulated image. The default should work fine. Note that both the Brightness Correction and brightness/contrast settings of your monitor will affect how much of a difference you can see when using this.
|
| Screen
|
- Number of screens: if you have more than one monitor, you can choose how many MESS spreads its image across.
- Screen: : if you have more than one monitor, you can choose the primary screen.
- Autoselect aspect: here you can define the aspect ratio of your monitor if MESS has not detected it correctly. If you calculate the aspect incorrectly the visuals will be skewed.
- View: you can choose the way the visuals are depicted. For most games, Auto should work fine. If you want the image to be displayed at its pixel resolution (rather than the real screen resolution) choose Pixel Aspect.
- Screennumber: (to do)
- Resolution Size: cannot be changed here.
- Resolution Refresh: cannot be changed here.
- Switch resolutions to fit: if the emulated image can't fit on your current screen resolution, MESS will choose one that will.
|
| Sound
|
- Enable sound and sound CPUs: if you want to disable sound emulation for some reason, this option will do it.
- Use samples: determines whether MESS uses sampling. Sampling can smooth sound output, although a higher Sample rate puts more drain on your system.
- Sample rate: 48000 will provide the best sound output but it also requires a much faster system. The difference between 48000 and 44100 is much less noticeable than between 48000 and 22050, so if 48000 causes lag try 44100 next.
- Volume attenuation: this is a volume booster. For best results, ensure your sound hardware's volume is at its maximum before raising the volume here.
- Audio latency: Increase this if you get pops or crackles in the sound output. Note that increasing the latency requires more system resources.
|
| Controllers
|
- Enable mouse input: if the system uses a mouse and/or light gun, enable this option.
- Enable steadykey support: if MESS doesn't detect multiple keys being held simultaneously, enabling this will raise the number of keys detected.
- Enable joystick input: use this to enable your joystick (or gamepad) if you have one.
- Joystick deadzone: Sets the "dead zone" (how long a direction must be held before the movement is recognised) of an analog controller when used on a digital-only system. Leave it at the default unless you have problems. If your controller is digital (lacking "analog sticks" or the like) you won't need to alter this option at all.
- Joystick saturation: (to do)
- Default input layout: Determines which controller .ini MESS uses. If you only have one, this option has no use.
- Enable lightgun input: if the game you are emulating supports a light gun, enable it here. It will be emulated using the mouse.
- Offscreen shots reload: self-explanatory.
- Dual lightguns: if you have two mice, you can emulate two lightguns. If you don't, this option will be greyed out.
- Multiple keyboards: if you want MESS to recognise more than one keyboard, enable this.
- Multiple mice: if you want MESS to recognise more than one mouse, enable this.
|
| Controller Mapping
|
- Paddle device: what physical input device controls the simulated paddle.
- ADStick device: what physical input device controls the simulated AD stick.
- Pedal device: what physical input device controls the simulated pedals.
- Dial device: what physical input device controls the simulated dial.
- Trackball device: what physical input device controls the simulated trackball. Using the mouse for this is recommended, unless you have a real trackball attached.
- Lightgun device: what physical input device controls the simulated light gun. Using the mouse for this is recommended, unless you have a real light gun attached.
|
| Miscellaneous
|
- Enable system cheats: whether the Cheats menu can be used.
- Error log (for developers): self-explanatory.
- Sleep when possible: (to do)
- Skip system info: this disables the metadata panel displayed every time you boot a game. If you just want to get straight to the games, disabling it is recommended.
- Save game state on exit: define whether a savestate is automatically created when you return to the main MESS window. This is useful if you are worried about accidentally closing the game and losing your progress.
- Multi-threaded rendering: (to do)
- Thread priority: (to do)
- Skip warnings: this disables the copyright warning notices, but also disables the special notices that are shown when running some partially-functional drivers.
- Use New UI: when this is enabled options are selected using a Windows menu bar at the top of the screen. If you disable this option you'll instead get the style of menu boxes used by MAME.
- Artwork options: if the system you are running supports artwork, you can define it here. Enable Crop artwork to make the art fit your screen better.
- BIOS: if there are multiple BIOS revisions available for this system you can manually select them here. Since MESS divides systems by their BIOSes anyway, using this option is unnecessary unless you know what you are doing.
|
| Vector
|
- Draw antialiased vectors: with this option enabled, vectors will be antialiased to reduce jagged edges. If it is disabled, vectors will be drawn with pure pixels. Note that regardless of what is selected here the hardware filtering defined on the Display tab will still affect it unless disabled.
- Beam width: how thick the vector lines should be. 1.00 is the default. Higher settings are less faithful, but may be easier to see.
- Flicker: whether the beams should flicker or be static. Note that flicker can still be present due to problems drawing the frames in time and/or using a CRT monitor with a low refresh rate.
|
