[RESOLVED] Run Redream games on Backglass

[Zeosstud]

Undertook a little project today, thought I would share in case anyone else might be interested..

The goal was to play the Dreamcast version of San Francisco Rush 2049 on my Pinball cabs backglass monitor..  

after getting Redream setup and working which was a piece of cake, the hardest part was finding a way to force it on Display2..  To accomplish this I downloaded and installed a program called DisplayFusion, it is a shareware program but gives you a full 30 days to try it out..  Inside of DisplayFusion I created a profile for Redream to launch exactly where I wanted it to, then created a trigger that looks for a window called Redream to launch and it opens that profile.. Worked great!!

Inside Pinballx I created an Other Systems setting for redream, pointed the .exe to where the redream.exe is, pointed the roms folder to where my roms were and that was really about it..

My dreamcast roms happen to be in .gdi format, which means it is in a sub folder named like the game with several files inside, one with .gdi extension and several other files, usually .bins and whatnot

the key is to set the parameter to 

"TABLEFILE\TABLEFOLDER\TABLEFOLDER.gdi"

One reason why DisplayFusion was such a great fit for this project is the ability to set EXACTLY where you want to program to launch and what size you want the window to be, when playing
Rush 2049 on any emulator I have found, it has gibberish at the top and bottom of the screen, I was able to stretch the window that redream launched in to a size where the gibberish did not show, 
game looks full screen and runs well.. 

My windows position profile setting in DisplayFusion are 
X = 1080
Y = -10
W = 1920
H = 1155

If anyone has tried something like this and has a better way to accomplish the mission, please feel free to share, if anyone has any questions, I will do my best to help, no promises though

 

 

 

 

 

[Draco1962]

Thanks for the share! That is an elegant solution that I am sure will help others desiring to play games on the backglass of their cabs.

Several things for people to keep in mind for this solution:

- First, MAME cannot be split between playfield for vertical and backglass for horizontal games using the same executible. You may be able to setup two similar softwares with different exe names (i.e., mame.exe for "vanilla" MAME and mameui64.exe for MAMEUI). Use one for vertical and the other for horizontal.

- Second, the windows position profile setting noted is an example that works for his setup and will require adjustments based upon monitor size and number of monitors present.

[Carny_Priest]

Display Changer II is a free (for personal use) CLI app for controlling resolution/placement/rotation of Windows displays. Free > temporary trial and it is easy to use in a bat or AutoHotkey script.

https://12noon.com/?page_id=641  

[Zeosstud]

Quick update.. decided to add 3 more Dreamcast games, but these did not have the issue with the gibberish at the top and bottom of the screen, so I made a copy of the redream.exe, called it redream2049.exe then set the video profile and triggers to work with the new name and San Francisco Rush 2049. Using the original redream.exe I setup Hydro Thunder, Re-Volt and Gauntlet Legends to all run in a "normal sized" screen, 1920x1080. Worked like a charm..