Mame Game Startup

[WBHarrison88]

Hello, This is my first post though I have been reading this forum for several months doing research for my mame cabinet. I've started my project but have question not specifically related to it, just curiosity.

If i wanted to build a cabinet for just one, specific game, would i be able to get Mame to start up and load a specific game after booting?

[severdhed]

sure you can do that.  will this cabinet be dedicated to only that one game? or will there be many games and you just want that one to load at boot?

[WBHarrison88]

Dedicated to only that one game

[severdhed]

do you have a pc ready to go already?  if there is only 1 game, then you dont need a front end or anything like that.  depending on the controls and pc hardware, you could probably set it up with dos, put mame in the autoexec.bat and it would boot ureally quickly...assuming you could get the sound drivers working.  if you go with windows, it is still easy to do....i am curious now though...which game?

[WBHarrison88]

Yeah PC is setup and ready to go, no FE in installed. Its for Pac Man

[severdhed]

cool.  well if the pc is set up already...what version of windows is on it?  is it already configured to run mame?   there is a great article in the wiki for hiding windows.  you can set MAME.exe as the windows shell.

however, have you considered adding other games as well?  there are several other games that could be played using only the 4way joystick. (like ms pacman). 

thats what i did with my Donkey Kong cabinet.  i wanted to keep the cabinet as original as possible, but there are 30 or so games that can be played with a 4way stick and 1 button, so i added all of those as well, which then requires a front end.

[Turnarcades]

+1 for this suggestion. If it's gonna be PC-based, you may as well keep the choice there purely for a bit of variety - you may not want to play that game one day and your interest may fade. If you're only going to be using arcade games and no other platforms, most front-ends come pre-cconfigured so there's not much effort into creating a nice menu and adding a few more games....

[WBHarrison88]

I'm running winXP. I have already changed splash screen and hid most of windows. I was just wondering how to get it to where when mame starts up to go ahead and start the game, without having to select anything. I think i might put more classic 4-way games on there just incase, nice suggestion.

[JODY]

Basically you can run Mame with command line options.  Setup a script to execute the command to run the Mame executable passing in the command line options to load the particular game you want.  Add the script to the Windows Startup folder and it will execute at machine boot time. Get a version of Mame without a front end and look at the command line options for details.  Sorry, don't have time right now to get the details.

[WBHarrison88]

Basically you can run Mame with command line options.  Setup a script to execute the command to run the Mame executable passing in the command line options to load the particular game you want.  Add the script to the Windows Startup folder and it will execute at machine boot time. Get a version of Mame without a front end and look at the command line options for details.  Sorry, don't have time right now to get the details.

Great idea i didn't even think of that. I Can just write a simple batch file and get mame to start up that certain game. Cheers

Thanks guys for all the help

[wweumina]

In this case I'd add a frontend (eg Mala) that boots Pac-Man automatically. You wouldn't see the front end unless you exit at which time you could choose another game.

You could also make a Pac-Man themed layout and have all the speed hacks etc available.

[javeryh]

In this case I'd add a frontend (eg Mala) that boots Pac-Man automatically. You wouldn't see the front end unless you exit at which time you could choose another game.

You could also make a Pac-Man themed layout and have all the speed hacks etc available.

+1 to this.  My DK boots straight to DK (you don't see the front end at all) but when I hit a hidden button DK exits to a nice looking menu with about 30 games to choose from that work with DK controls.  No one can tell it isn't a "real" DK unless I tell them (I have pretty much the exact same setup as severdhed).

[WBHarrison88]

Awesome guys, I appreciate the help I'll look into the booting into the front end and just have it preload a certain game at startup. Thanks!

[severdhed]

i highly recommend MALA, it is easy to get up and running and works very well.  you edit the registry to set mala as the shell. that way the desktop never loads...  mala has options to load a specific game at launch, so it would always boot up to pacman, but you would have the option to exit out to a menu to launch the other games