bkenobi

If you find a MAMEwah them you like, you can convert it to GameEx with the theme editor. I think I've seen a KI theme for MAMEwah around. One location to check is localarcade. They have a bunch of MAMEwah skins. I looked quickly and there's one called Ultra 64 that has a KI look. If you don't like that one, try searching google for something like 'MAMEwah theme download' or some variant.

That might work, but it depends on how the game was programmed. If someone was interested in this and willing to put the work in, that wouldn't be a waste of time.

With MAME, there is a switch to send the output to a second monitor. I think it's something like '-DISPLAY=2', but look in the MAME docs for the correct switch. I know it's there somewhere!

I don't know if it's something you've done necessarily. I had mine set up that way too and it also used to work, but now it doesn't. My guess is that applying the hiscore patch broke it, or the MAMEDEV team decided to stop supporting it.

Just curious but is there an advantage to using the ArcadeVGA card if you are going to use anything other than an arcade monitor (TV, PC monitor, LCD, etc)? If not, then I would worry about finding the display first and the card second. Those arcade monitors are nice, but if you want a big one, it will cost you big time! Seems to me that you should work your budget on the display and let that dictate the card. Now, if you already chose to go with an arcade monitor, then I don't think you have much of a choice at this point. You either go with an ArcadeVGA card, or you have to hack an input from a VGA cable using one of the online guides.

Actually, remapping escape to exit is probably the most elegant way you could do it. Since you probably have escape set to quit the emu in GameEx already, it will simply also exit the script for you with the same key press!

Wow, this is great! I have only played with the search for a couple minutes but I have a request and a comment. First the request: would it be possible to allow the back key to cancel a search midstream? It seems like the search is relatively fast for games, but I could imagine with a larger romset or a huge media library that you might realize that you misspelled something, for example, and want to correct it before getting the results back. Second, a comment: I noticed that the search also includes the contents of the catver.ini file in the search field. In my case though, this causes a problem in some instances. The reason is that I created a custom catver file so that guests would have an easier time finding games. As such, I added a short list of game examples after the category for each item. So for platformer, I have "Platformer (Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers)". The problem is that if I do a search for 'MARIO', I get back EVERY game from the platformer category in addition to anything with 'MARIO' in the title. Unless someone really wanted to have a list of every game from a category across all systems, could the category field be excluded from the search?

I've found that on some machines, USB devices can stop working for basically no reason at all. I have my steering wheel pedals setup on a joystick hack and for some reason every once in a while, they don't exist. I have no clue why, but that's the way it is. The solution is to unplug them from the pc and then plug them back in. If you aren't sure if the joysticks work at all (they should if they did before), then try them in another machine.

Not that it matters at this point since the problems appear to be solved. However, when I suggested running the "runlastgame.bat", I meant running it from windows. It sounds as though you were running it from within GameEx. The purpose for this is that the dos command prompt window that launches with the batch file will remain on the screen. The GameEx log file in that case won't display the error though since GameEx successfully launched the command and it successfully returned after finishing.

I did more research after that post (your second quote) and found that the U360 and GP-Wiz 49 are essentially the same setup. Like I said in my last post, the value choice of the two is the U360, but really either will work great. I've heard some great reviews for the GGG board and HAPPS stick. On the other hand, everyone here raves over the U360. My guess would be you would be more than happy with either purchase. As far as using different sticks for P1 and P2, as long as the sticks physically look the same (or similar) externally, I don't think it would be a problem. There are a lot of posts on that subject at BYOAC, so you might try reading some of the threads over there. I've asked a few questions and have generally gotten great responses. In fact, when asking about the GGG products, I was answered by RandyT directly more than once!

I've seen GameEx based cabinets using a scrolling LED display like you are talking about. I assume it's using the LED/LCD plugin, but since I don't have a fancy display like that, I don't know for sure. Btw, anyone ever consider using a regular marquee with a strip cut out so that a relatively small LED panel could be mounted in the center bottom? I'm thinking of something like the matrix display pinball machines. Something like this:

Edit the RunLastGame.bat file and add 'PAUSE' to the end of it. Then, rerun the batch file. This will leave it on the screen so you can see the error.

Looking at the U360, I would definitely pick that over the HAPPS 49-way + GP-Wiz49. They both have essentially the same features, but it looks like the U360 is cheaper and also has a built in "mouse mode" that I don't think the GGG product does. If I were building today, I would very seriously look at spending the money on at least one of these. Two might be unnecessary since there aren't that many 2 player games that require odd inputs. So, I would probably go with 1 U360, 1 HAPPS 8 way, a GP-Wiz or IPAC, and as many buttons as you want in your interface. That's probably ~$100 USD shipped.

Unless you actually play the hacked and alternate region versions of games, I also recommend switching to the No-Intro sets. They give you every game you have in the GoodMerge set but only one copy. If there is no US release of a game, it will include the JAP, UK, WORLD, etc. version instead depending on which one is a better match.

Brian's solution is well documented around the web. If you are interested, try BYOAC forums. If you don't want to kill a perfectly good joystick, you could alternately buy one of the ECO solutions from GroovyGameGear.com. Check out the KeyWiz Eco and the GP-Wiz Eco. Both come in at ~$20 and are very elegant and come with all of the same functional features of the bigger brother KeyWiz MAX and GP-Wiz 32. The only thing you lose is the screw down terminals (you get solder pads instead). I'm sure there is something comperable at Ultimarc too, I just went with GGG instead... Oh, and if you go with the GP-Wiz, you get 32 buttons (plus 1 joystick) rather than the 6-10 from a standard PC joystick...

NP

I think HK was listing all the steps so that you can go from nothing to patched MAME. If you don't have the binary, you really can't use MAME since you will be missing all the folders etc...

I agree with Brian, but if you are adamant about deleting them from your HDD permanently, there is a workaround. 1) Delete the games from GameEx as Brian stated 2) Exit GameEx and launch either Configuration Wizard or Advanced Configurator 3) Navigate to the MAME filters page 4) Copy the list of games from the filtered list (there will be a list of rom names without ".zip" separated by ; 5) Delete each of the games in the list you just found (you might want to create a script of some kind to do is if your list is long) Again, I don't recommend this approach. If you are short on space, delete the CHD files for the rhythm games you know you don't play

If you were going to put a laptop monitor on the cabinet as a second monitor, you could use a laptop in the first place and use the arcade display as the secondary monitor. That would save a LOT of space, but probably be cost prohibitive...

A lot of people just go with one of the HAPPS sticks and live with it. If you want a more analog solution, you could go with a 49 way stick, but you will want to get a 49 way encoder to go with it (GP-Wiz49 for example). That can also get pretty spendy, but they are supposed to be VERY nice! The biggest thing with those is that each stick needs it's own GP-Wiz49, so you would be looking at ~$80/stick last I looked. I think there's some buttons on those encoders, so you wouldn't need a 3rd one. On the other hand, there aren't that many games that require special controls, so one option you could go with if you wanted the 49-way for P1 is to use a standard 8-way for P2. But, you would still need a second encoder.

If there were some hardware hooks already built into the game, it seems like it may be possible. For instance, there are already hooks in some games to flash the player start buttons when you need to add more money. Those kinds of actions are already captured by HK's plugin AFAIK. If you want to have it work the way you stated and with the current system that HK implemented, that would require hacking the rom to add those hardware hooks. That is NOT an easy task!!! If anything, I would also agree that a sound based scheme could be developed to do this, but it probably wouldn't work the way you want. To me, this seems like something that would have to be developed into the game when it was initially programmed...

Just a thought, but try turning off the background music if you have it on (arcadeambiance.mp3 usually). Also, turned off AVI snap audio.

I saw what he was intending on doing with it, I was just commenting on the idea in general. It's definitely a "cool, look what I can do" thing. I just don't know if it's worth the "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING AND WHERE IS MY BIKE?" from my wife.

Interesting idea. I have concerns about the design though. 1) The circuit board is attached to the spokes, so it is exposed to the elements (no riding your bike in the rain) 2) The batteries don't look well attached so you might end up with a set of projectiles if you hit a bump 3) As far as GameEx, since it uses batteries, you may have to mess with it quite often to keep it running. However, it does look cool albeit VERY large!

Nologic was banned a few weeks back...