MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Another attempt to get that authentic arcade-look using scanlines

What settings are you using? It looks like your shadow mask dots might not be dense enough.

Your 'vertical3' is an aperture grille mask. I don't know of any arcade games that used aperture grille masks, though they are retrofitted. The reason for this rarity is due to Sony having a patent on the technology. TVs and monitors with aperture grilles were sold under the Trinitron brand.

Your 'vertical1' mask is the same as MAME's slot mask downsampled by 2 with linear interpolation. I actually use this mask instead of MAME's stock slot mask image because right now downsampling shadow mask artwork in-MAME aliases (and I'm not sure why because it should do linear interpolation as well). Slot mask is the most common mask for arcade monitors and televisions.

Monochrome games don't have masks at all.

The mask is just one out of many effects that contribute to why CRTs look the way you do, but the effect of the mask is actually not very critical compared to other effects. This is because the dots are so small while the screen is so bright. Getting an accurate effect requires maximum shadow mask alpha (1.0) with a very bright monitor (minimum 240 cd/m^2).

The black lines that you are speaking of are scanlines, a totally different phenomenon which are caused by a CRT drawing ~240 visible lines instead of ~480 for broadcast television. I honestly don't know why the lower resolution is so ubiquitous. So half of the lines are drawn, but the beam of the CRT remains the same size. Thus, there are black lines visible between each line in the raster. Arcade monitors were often adjusted so that the beam would be a bit blurrier. This made the beam bigger and the scanlines less visible. If you compare an arcade monitor with a CRT television hooked up to an old console like an NES you will find the TV to have much more visible scanlines.

Interlaced sources have 'scanlines' visible as well, but they only flash for a brief moment. This creates a flickering effect which has become associated with interlacing.

So in brief, your current artwork doesn't have any scanlines at all.