Raster Effects

Can anyone explain to me what raster effects are? I've read they are graphics effects that are created by the arcade monitor itself.
Does MAME display these properly and if so, do I need certain files?

in the short sense its an effecting using a raster image technique. A raster image is the same thing as a bit map. Each byte in the image file represents the visual out come. So no compression or transparency, just raw pixels stored in a file. Now a raster effect is an effect using the pixels not the video cards magic. So if you want to add a shadow to a circle in raster you do so by manipulating the pixels around one or two sides of the circle. Today, and for quite some time, most effects are layers on top or behind an image. Lots of fancy stuff out there to make really neat effects. Raster effects are doing it on the image, effecting the data that is already on the screen, no tricks.

now to put it to emulation, I think what you are reading is how mame can raster an image to make it look like a real monitor? An example of that is to skip ever other line ( scan lines ). I could be offer here but I think that is what your asking. Yes an arcade monitor produces what we call scan lines and to make it look like that on a computer we raster the image to produce that effect.

Thanks for the reply and explaining what raster images are! All i need to know now is if Mame displays these properly (meaning how they would look on an actual arcade monitor) by default, or are there settings i need to adjust?

Also, this website has Mame artwork files for "raster cleanup".
http://mrdo.mameworld.info/mame_artwork_ingame.php
Do i need to use these to get the effects to display properly?

hmm I think your still a bit confused here, let me help.

First if you follow the download link you will see its a png file. That wont fix any game or make it emulate better? All this is for, is a screen shot. They use "raster cleanup" to indicate if the raster image has been cleaned up. So that site is providing images for the mame screen shots section. An example would be if the screen shot had scan lines in it, they indicate "raster cleanup" to inform you the image is fixed.

"raster cleanup" means undoing the effect. So that is the opposite of what you want.

My guess is you want to see the game on the computer the same way it is on the arcade. To do this, mame would have a raster effect in the display drive for you to turn on or off. I'm not sure mame does that? Some mame builds may like advance mame. I just dont know the answer there.

ok looks like they did it in mame now. I found this

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if you do not know,MAME 142u4 has a new built in post effects shader engine that adds scanlines,and all sorts of other cool filters to apply to games to see them they way they were in the arcade,scanlines and all.really cool shit

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Another guy said this

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If you haven't done so already, you'll need to put scanline files in your artwork directory (if you're not sure where to get them, I'm pretty sure you can download a pack somewhere on mameworld). In the mame.ini look for "effect". I think the default setting is "none". Change none to nameofscanline.png.

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that leads me to believe you may need these downloadable images but its beyond my knowledge how they do that.


looks like most of what you need to do it is here they even show images before and after.

this is interesting

Thanks for all the info!

I understand what you're saying now!