Rotate Screen based on selection Button

[RyanS]

Hello,

I recently finished a 3 sided cocktail cabinet and have a few questions on configuring GameEX to run on it.

Is there a way to rotate the monitor based on which input selects the game? If player 4 selects, the monitor will automatically oriented to the player 4 position, similarly if the game was launched with the player 1 it would orientate to that.

Is there a method to supply a keyboard mapping configuration file for Mame via GameEX? It would be needed for the screen rotation.

Example:

Player 1 is on one side of the cabinet, player 4 is on the other - ie the head-to-head players. The screen is currently set to display to players 2 and 3 (Horizontal, the default).

If Player one selects to play Galaga the screen rotates 90 degrees clockwise and the controls are set to use Player 1's inputs. After Player one quits the screen switches back to Horizontal (Player 2 and 3)

If Player four selects to play Galaga the screen rotates 90 degrees counter-clockwise and the controls are set to use Player 4's inputs. When he finishes the screen reverts back to normal orientation.

Thanks,

Ryan

[Draco1962]

I do not have experience with this but I believe that the other gurus and a few users (GoTheBunnies comes to mind as one making a multi-side cocktail cab) may be able to help.I would start with these two threads here and here.

[bkenobi]

I'm not sure how to trigger it at the moment, but I know that you can launch MAME with a different command line option to change the orientation of the screen. Alternately, you could make a couple extra config files if you want to avoid the command line.

[GoTheBunnies]

Hello,

I recently finished a 3 sided cocktail cabinet and have a few questions on configuring GameEX to run on it.

Is there a way to rotate the monitor based on which input selects the game? If player 4 selects, the monitor will automatically oriented to the player 4 position, similarly if the game was launched with the player 1 it would orientate to that.

Is there a method to supply a keyboard mapping configuration file for Mame via GameEX? It would be needed for the screen rotation.

Example:

Player 1 is on one side of the cabinet, player 4 is on the other - ie the head-to-head players. The screen is currently set to display to players 2 and 3 (Horizontal, the default).

If Player one selects to play Galaga the screen rotates 90 degrees clockwise and the controls are set to use Player 1's inputs. After Player one quits the screen switches back to Horizontal (Player 2 and 3)

If Player four selects to play Galaga the screen rotates 90 degrees counter-clockwise and the controls are set to use Player 4's inputs. When he finishes the screen reverts back to normal orientation.

Thanks,

Ryan

Hi Ryan,

Went through exactly the same issues a couple of months ago. I ended up with a reasonable result, but it's not perfect. In summary (and happy to expand on any points as you like) -

- I had to indentify all of the cocktail games (ie games that WOULD flip the screen for Player 2 - not all do). I used Romlister as my start point, but even then it comes up with plenty in the results that don't actually do as Romlister expects

- I then had to change the dipswitch in MAME for all the cocktail games, and test them all. Again, just because it has a Cocktail dispswitch doesn't mean it actually works.

- Then created a custom list of all the Cocktail Games (around 180 in total from memory), and added the 'Cocktail Games' list to me GameEx menu

- So now, is the user selects a Cocktail Game, they know it will flip over for Player Two.

A couple of shortcomings - the menu is always horizontal, so if you have players sitting at sides 1 and 4 (as you described them), then menu is still facing the wrong way. There are hundreds of MAME games (non-Cocktail) on my machine that play in the vertical mode anyway, so the menu being in horizontal is something you have to get used to - I don't know a way around it without GameEx knowing which games are Vertical and which are Horizontal, so it knows when to flip.

All in all, it was a pretty painful process to go through the games individually for what is a less than optimal solution, but it does the job.

Cheers

[GoTheBunnies]

Just re-reading your post, and I realised that you want to be able to play 4 players (not 2). My table is only designed to suit 2 players (whether they be playing vertically or horizontally) - I'm almost certain that Mame games will not do what you're trying to achieve