GameEx for a 3-sided Cocktail Cab?

[GoTheBunnies]

Hi all,

Have spent the last week or so configuring GameEx, setting up emulators etc. Being new to this it's been a pretty painful experience, but I'm slowly getting there, and learning a lot along the way.

For the config I've obviously just been using a PC and viewing everything on a normal vertical screen. But as it's my intention to use GameEx in a 3-sided Cocktail Cab, I suddenly came to the realisation that GameEx may not support this!! I can see in the Config whether to set it to Vertical or Horizontal - but not both. Obviously in a 3-sided cocktail some games will play vertically on the '3rd side' which has a 2-player, 6 button layout, whilst others will play horizontally where the 2 players face each other with a 3 button layout.

Can I set this up in GameEx??

[Draco1962]

Hi all,

Have spent the last week or so configuring GameEx, setting up emulators etc. Being new to this it's been a pretty painful experience, but I'm slowly getting there, and learning a lot along the way.

For the config I've obviously just been using a PC and viewing everything on a normal vertical screen. But as it's my intention to use GameEx in a 3-sided Cocktail Cab, I suddenly came to the realisation that GameEx may not support this!! I can see in the Config whether to set it to Vertical or Horizontal - but not both. Obviously in a 3-sided cocktail some games will play vertically on the '3rd side' which has a 2-player, 6 button layout, whilst others will play horizontally where the 2 players face each other with a 3 button layout.

Can I set this up in GameEx??

I don't know that it can be setup in GameEx, however, since screen rotation is possbile in XP and Vista/7 my guess is that there is likely a utility that can be leveraged to performe the same task of rotating/flipping screen orientation.

[GoTheBunnies]

Ok, have been doing some reading on this (all day actually) in an effort to answer my own question!

From what I've read, it seems that CFG Magician may be the answer to my problems? If I run CFG Magician to automatically flip all of the Vertical (Cocktail) games, am I right in saying that when I start the game it will flip to Vertical, and then when it's Player 2's turn, it will flip 180 degrees?

So, to clarify what I'm looking for - players will sit at the 3rd side of the cab, select a game, and if it's a 2-player vertical game the screen will automatically flip and players move to the controls at the end of the cab?? (please be correct - it's doing my head in!).

[Draco1962]

Ok, have been doing some reading on this (all day actually) in an effort to answer my own question!

From what I've read, it seems that CFG Magician may be the answer to my problems? If I run CFG Magician to automatically flip all of the Vertical (Cocktail) games, am I right in saying that when I start the game it will flip to Vertical, and then when it's Player 2's turn, it will flip 180 degrees?

So, to clarify what I'm looking for - players will sit at the 3rd side of the cab, select a game, and if it's a 2-player vertical game the screen will automatically flip and players move to the controls at the end of the cab?? (please be correct - it's doing my head in!).

I am not sure about using CFG Magician to flip the display. I believe it may be useful so far as mapping your custom controls. Tempest is the creator so he would be a good one to tap so far as what it can and can't do.

There is a program called iRotate that you could install and then possibly map buttons to the keyboard commands (Ctrl-Alt-Up to flip 180 deg, Ctrl-Alt-Left to flip 90 deg to the left, Ctrl-Alt-Right to flip 90 deg to the right) - I have seen in several emu forums where users have used this in their cabs.

[bkenobi]

Tempest did add some capabilities to do certain things beyond just controls, but I don't know if it deals with resolutions.

What I would suggest is looking into a different mame.ini for vertical games. I haven't read up on it in a while, but I believe if you simply copy your mame.ini to vertical.ini it will override all games that are listed as vertical in MAME. At that point, you just need to change the settings in that file to rotate the screen as needed.

[Tempest]

(please be correct - it's doing my head in!).

You are really limiting the possibility of solutions, don't you think?

-Rotate

-Autoror

-Autorol

Of course, I'm just guessing, but one of those might be worth investigating.

[bkenobi]

Exactly. Those options can be set on the command line, so they can be added to a vertical.ini (alternately named mame.ini) and MAME will take care of the orientation itself.

[DJ Infinity]

hmmm I have just built a killer 3 sided cocktail table. I find all this interesting. I would think you would keep Game Ex on the horizontal side and use mame to rotate the vertical games. Just my 2 cents

[Tempest]

Makes cents to me.

[GoTheBunnies]

Tempest did add some capabilities to do certain things beyond just controls, but I don't know if it deals with resolutions.

What I would suggest is looking into a different mame.ini for vertical games. I haven't read up on it in a while, but I believe if you simply copy your mame.ini to vertical.ini it will override all games that are listed as vertical in MAME. At that point, you just need to change the settings in that file to rotate the screen as needed.

Thanks for all the replies guys, but I'm still totally confused.

Ok, I get the bit about leaving GameEx set to horizontal, and letting MAME deal with flipping the vertical games. What I don't get is how exactly I do that. Bkenobi - would you mind being a little more specific in what you mean above? And if the above works, do I still need to change each individual (vertical) game file?

Thanks (and apologies for the newbie questions!)

[DJ Infinity]

This is what I did for my DeskMame. I used Mame32 and setup my favorite vertical games one by one. Time consuming I know but once mame make a individual config file you are good to go. Maybe not the best way but it got the job done. Also Tempest was slacking on me so I had to use someone else to build the table I would put it on the sticky thread for cabs but I need to buy a computer for it. I'm a lil tapped atm (I've got $800.00) in it right now. For the moment I have the Wii hooked to it. I did buy the Ultimarc Wii and PS3 adapters. All I have left like I said is the computer and the joysticks.

[GoTheBunnies]

This is what I did for my DeskMame. I used Mame32 and setup my favorite vertical games one by one. Time consuming I know but once mame make a individual config file you are good to go. Maybe not the best way but it got the job done. Also Tempest was slacking on me so I had to use someone else to build the table I would put it on the sticky thread for cabs but I need to buy a computer for it. I'm a lil tapped atm (I've got $800.00) in it right now. For the moment I have the Wii hooked to it. I did buy the Ultimarc Wii and PS3 adapters. All I have left like I said is the computer and the joysticks.

Ok, so that answers my question about changing each game individually (how did you identify all the Vertical games by the way - Romlister?). But that takes me back to my original question - will CFG Magician take away the need to change them individually (ie will it change them all at once?).

[Draco1962]

My question for all is this - if it is possible to use an external program to rotate the display, why would you need to even mess with configuring each game or multiple mame.ini files, etc.? Seems like things are getting more complex than they may need to be. So long as you are able to map a few extra buttons to the keyboard comands of the program to rotate the display as needed - problem solved!

[GoTheBunnies]

My question for all is this - if it is possible to use an external program to rotate the display, why would you need to even mess with configuring each game or multiple mame.ini files, etc.? Seems like things are getting more complex than they may need to be. So long as you are able to map a few extra buttons to the keyboard comands of the program to rotate the display as needed - problem solved!

You're right, but I'd argue that having the requirement to use buttons to rotate the display each time actually makes life harder for the player than it needs to be. Might be easy enough for the person who built the cab, but try telling a 10yo that some games have to manually rotated whilst others dont.

I'd rather spend the extra time at set up to make things more seamless for the player.

[Tempest]

First thing first.

Some games in the arcade such as Tempest had two styles of cabinets, Upright and Cocktail. The circuit board for Tempest has a dipswitch to change between upright, and cocktail modes, so that the same circuit boards could be used in either type of cabinet. With an upright cabinet, each player would take turns at the machine, and the video would remain in the same orientation for both players. For a cocktail cabinet, each player would sit on opposite side of a table, and the video would flip (Rotate?) to be upright for current player.

In this case, CFG Magician would be able to set all games that have a cocktail dipswitch to cocktail mode. (Screen Flipping)

Secondly:

If you are going to run GameEx Horizontally from the 3rd side, the you will still need to set vertical games to display vertically on your monitor. There may be some games that are vertical that were never release in a cocktail cabinet, and therefore will not have a cocktail dipswitch. Games like these could be displayed vertically, and played by two players from the same side of your cocktail table, and the games that have a cocktail mode would be played vertically from both sides of your cocktail table.

To set all vertical games to use a vertical monitor, all you need to do is create an ini file named vertical.ini with the settings that you want for vertical games, and place it in your mame\Ini folder. No need to use RomLister, or individual cfg files. On the other hand, if you only want cocktail games on your cocktail tables, then RomLister can help. Click on my signature for a tutorial on RomLister.

Last:

Sorry if that was TMI, but there seems to be some confusion between cocktail games, and vertical games.

Edit:

This isn't obvious to me:

Obviously in a 3-sided cocktail some games will play vertically on the '3rd side' which has a 2-player, 6 button layout, whilst others will play horizontally where the 2 players face each other with a 3 button layout.

Did you say that backwards, or is that what you meant?

[GoTheBunnies]

First thing first.

Some games in the arcade such as Tempest had two styles of cabinets, Upright and Cocktail. The circuit board for Tempest has a dipswitch to change between upright, and cocktail modes, so that the same circuit boards could be used in either type of cabinet. With an upright cabinet, each player would take turns at the machine, and the video would remain in the same orientation for both players. For a cocktail cabinet, each player would sit on opposite side of a table, and the video would flip (Rotate?) to be upright for current player.

In this case, CFG Magician would be able to set all games that have a cocktail dipswitch to cocktail mode. (Screen Flipping)

Secondly:

If you are going to run GameEx Horizontally from the 3rd side, the you will still need to set vertical games to display vertically on your monitor. There may be some games that are vertical that were never release in a cocktail cabinet, and therefore will not have a cocktail dipswitch. Games like these could be displayed vertically, and played by two players from the same side of your cocktail table, and the games that have a cocktail mode would be played vertically from both sides of your cocktail table.

To set all vertical games to use a vertical monitor, all you need to do is create an ini file named vertical.ini with the settings that you want for vertical games, and place it in your mame\Ini folder. No need to use RomLister, or individual cfg files. On the other hand, if you only want cocktail games on your cocktail tables, then RomLister can help. Click on my signature for a tutorial on RomLister.

Last:

Sorry if that was TMI, but there seems to be some confusion between cocktail games, and vertical games.

Ahhhh, now this is making some sense to me (thanks!).

Ok, all I want is for the cocktail games to flip - so that the 2 players can sit opposite each other. All other games can be played from the 3rd side, horizontally.

Now that we're talking about the same thing - from what you're saying I can do the following a) use Romlister to identify the cocktail games? and use CFG Magician to change the dipswitch setting on those games to play vertically and to flip for the 2nd player?

[Draco1962]

You're right, but I'd argue that having the requirement to use buttons to rotate the display each time actually makes life harder for the player than it needs to be. Might be easy enough for the person who built the cab, but try telling a 10yo that some games have to manually rotated whilst others dont.

I'd rather spend the extra time at set up to make things more seamless for the player.

You are probably right in that case.

[GoTheBunnies]

Edit:

This isn't obvious to me:

Did you say that backwards, or is that what you meant?

Yes, I said it backwards - good pick up!

[Tom Speirs]

Just wanted to add to this. I think yourll find if you use the rotation plugin GameEx pretty much already supports it. Even though your not actually physicaly rotating the display it should rotate games accordingly and also automatically rotate the front end. So yeah I think GameEx does already support it. You may just need to tweak the games that actually have a cocktail mode.

Edit: So turn on the software rotation with the plugin, then add the auto rotate command line option to the MAME command line (-autorol or -autoror). Simple as that.

[GoTheBunnies]

Just wanted to add to this. I think yourll find if you use the rotation plugin GameEx pretty much already supports it. Even though your not actually physicaly rotating the display it should rotate games accordingly and also automatically rotate the front end. So yeah I think GameEx does already support it. You may just need to tweak the games that actually have a cocktail mode.

Edit: So turn on the software rotation with the plugin, then add the auto rotate command line option to the MAME command line (-autorol or -autoror). Simple as that.

Thanks Tom - that sounds pretty easy! One more potentially silly question - where do I find the rotation plugin (checked the utils page - not there?).

Cheers

[fRequEnCy]

Thanks Tom - that sounds pretty easy! One more potentially silly question - where do I find the rotation plugin (checked the utils page - not there?).

Cheers

Rotate Plugin can be configured and turned on through the GameEx Plugin Manager. It should be included with a GameEx install.

Start >>> All Programs >>> GameEx >>> Configuration >>> Plugin Manager.

[Tom Speirs]

Its included with the GameEx install. Run the plug in manager in the GameEx start menu group (access via windows start button) under Configuration.

[Tom Speirs]

Too fast even for the fast reply

[fRequEnCy]

Too fast even for the fast reply

Only 27 minutes later.

[Tempest]

Just wanted to add to this. I think yourll find if you use the rotation plugin GameEx pretty much already supports it. Even though your not actually physicaly rotating the display it should rotate games accordingly and also automatically rotate the front end. So yeah I think GameEx does already support it. You may just need to tweak the games that actually have a cocktail mode.

Edit: So turn on the software rotation with the plugin, then add the auto rotate command line option to the MAME command line (-autorol or -autoror). Simple as that.

It's not that simple if he really wants it to work the way he says he does.