So I made a Coin Manager...

[Vigo]

That is a sentiment I can fully understand. If conditions are too easy, and a blind eye is turned to programs that create abuse, then bad things do happen. That simple.

Sorry to take it a step backward again, but I really want to put a solid factual definition as to the issue. I'm not trying to debate the ethics, complain about the situation, or argue at all. It's just that when you tread into placing judgement on other peoples works can be allowed and what is deemed unfit to sharing, there really needs to be a solid litmus test. If ArcadeRenegade's program not a danger, I would really love to see it released, not blanket judged out of context because it involves coins. Just the facts, ma'am. 

Going from what Howard posted, the litmus test that it is not fit for distribution is that it must both A: be of no real benefit outside of commercial use. and B: Make it easier to run Mame for commercial benefit.

For A, I still see real benefit. I guess I still need more clarification on what a real benefit is. (see my previous post)

For B, I could easily see how a more powerful version of coin management would benefit commercial use (e.g. locking out game booting until coin is entered), but simple programs like these doesn't seem to offer much commercially, IMHO. I could simply be missing something here though, especially since I never have used a coin mgmt program before.


Sorry, I know I am sounding like a broken record.... 

[Haze]

I guess I don't see how that is a dealbreaker that allows commercial use on machine B and not A. Am I missing something about the functionality of this SW? 

People don't read.

Drunk people, especially don't read.  Alcohol and Arcades go together quite well ;-)

People will put coins in at the frontend, maybe wonder why they got eaten, complain / cause trouble.
People will select a game, put coins in, exit the game, wonder where their coins went, complain / cause trouble.

Arcades need systems which work seamlessly and are idiot proof.  That's why providing such a solution becomes a dealbreaker.

[Vigo]

People don't read.

Drunk people, especially don't read.  Alcohol and Arcades go together quite well ;-)

Well, there is a lot of merit in that point. I'd probably fall in the "don't read" category as well.

Now I think part of my weekend will have to be devoted to seeing what kind of Robotron score I can get drunk. 

[abispac]

Hey heres mi  input.c , i opied all the text in the original file and paste that into a regular text file so you xcar read it here. thanks

[Howard_Casto]

Vigo, you say you "just don't understand" or "are waiting for a clear explaination" but you obviously do, you just don't care for the answers you are getting.

Properly done coin managment is about the only thing keeping operators from just throwing a fe and mame in an arcade cabinet and making a profit.  That is the only reason it is frowned upon while other features are not.  Surely that is crystal clear?

[ArcadeRenegade]

Hey heres mi  input.c , i opied all the text in the original file and paste that into a regular text file so you xcar read it here. thanks

*sigh* here's the edited input.c for 0.143u3 abispac. there's not much else I can do to help you out I've done what I could.

[abispac]

Properly done coin management is about the only thing keeping operators from just throwing a fe and Mame in an arcade cabinet and making a profit.  That is the only reason it is frowned upon while other features are not.  Surely that is crystal clear?

In most Hispanic countries, like Brazil,Chile,Mexico and so , they are filled with tons and tons of Mame cabinets, some still with arcadeos, some with a variation of advancemame that they call BKST master, some with Mala, some with marcianitos.org FE, and now they are upgrading to hyperspin and with the help of good videocards they are adding newer games, hell this guys offers fifa 11

Code: [Select]

http://articulo.mercadolibre.com.mx/MLM-67370470-nuevo-master-multijuegos-5-en-1-version-2011-fifa11-plus-dni-_JM
Ive seen so many of this pirate cabs outhere in  some other countries,they wont stop because they don't have a coin management ,in fact some of the newer cabs are using some usb timed device that you can easy buy from sites like thisone

Code: [Select]

http://www.coin-arcade.com/catalog/i23.html in this way they do not have to worry about coin management, they add all sort of Roms, either Mame,snes,sega,naomi,pc games, they don't care, as its all timed by now, they make more money in that way.

So i think having a coin management proggy its not going to hurt the emu scene more than what it is now, I say its time to see the reality and think a bit different.
On my side i have only one personal cocktail Mame cabinet , and i don't think I'm going to hurt the emu scene , by installing a simple coin management in my cab.

[Haze]

yes, some operators will do it anyway, that's a given.

It doesn't mean making it easier for them, more profitable for them by providing something like this is a good idea.

Remember, most of these operators will be destroying / replacing genuine arcade machines if they think they can get away with running multi-games.  Bastardising existing cabs because they can run more games on them.  Is that what people here REALLY want to see?

I've seen genuine Star Wars vector cabinets converted to run multi-games.....

[abispac]

O Haze, you dont wanna see what ive seen, original pacmans,mr.do's,trons,space invaders,tons of Mk's,rare cabs i cant even remember their names,its horrible.Yesterday i was talking with an operator from Mexico that came here, and i asked him, why wont he buy some original systems with te latest games in it, his response was "Its beacuse they became unprofitable""you see those kind of systems give me a little or non money because kids wont go to the arcades anymore, and in mexico, having a cab or two with an timed multi game xbox or a regular mame multigame in every corner mini store gives me more money than the original newer games, and plus kids this days all they play its kof 2001 and gta san andreas". I did not wanted to continue the conversation as i thought thats was ---fouled up beyond all recognition---'up.

[Vigo]

Vigo, you say you "just don't understand" or "are waiting for a clear explaination" but you obviously do, you just don't care for the answers you are getting.

Properly done coin managment is about the only thing keeping operators from just throwing a fe and mame in an arcade cabinet and making a profit.  That is the only reason it is frowned upon while other features are not.  Surely that is crystal clear?

Actually, I really I don't get it. To my understanding, this software won't make it magically possible for someone to make a commercial machine. It already is equally as possible without it. Haze's point of drunk people who can't read is something I really get, but that is because it is a feature that makes operation easier for users in general. If someone is going to drop coins into an illegal commercial machine, I would think they would be able to do so just the same whether or not there was a program like on it. Like I said before, I can see how a more powerful coin management program could be a issue, but this program seems to be far too straightforward to offer any problematic features.

Is this utility frowned upon as a blanket view on all coin utilities because more powerful coin programs could be made? If that is the case, that that is an answer I can accept. I did not get into this to debate, I am genuinely trying to figure out what the real problem with it is. So far, the best answer I have  is "This is a feature that helps idiots out, and people who would play these illegal commercial games are idiots." an answer that is not quite complete, but I can appreciate it.

I'm not trying to make a ruckus, Sorry. 

[DaveMMR]

Is this utility frowned upon as a blanket view on all coin utilities because more powerful coin programs could be made?

I'd say so. Heck, I'd say presently it'd be powerful enough. Strictly speculation here, but I think the MAME Devs don't endorse the use of actual coins, even for home use. So a program designed for nothing but coin management to work alongside MAME being readily available may make it look, to outside observers, that MAME was designed for bootlegging classic games instead of preserving them.

Yes, there are ways to misuse MAME without the software (low-tech and hi-tech). People can and do use MAME for nefarious purposes. But the devs don't want to be the ones to have given the gun to the criminals. And though I'm sure many will argue that the program itself is enough of a tool to aid the bad guys - keep in mind that MAME, as is, is not designed to be practical in a commercial setting. The warning screens ("This Game Does Not Work Correctly") is one part of that. I'm guessing they don't fight to have the tools for disabling it removed since it's not really there for anti-commercial use, just so people don't bombard them with emails (and if you're familiar enough with MAME to recompile it, you would hopefully know not to email them). The other part is lack of coin management. Defeating that may open up a whole new can of worms.

Truthfully, the fact that 99% of the emulated games would not make enough money in an arcade in this day and age is what probably keeps the heat off of the MAME team. Plus the bar of technical knowledge is just high enough to be discouraging to those who are looking to play Pac-Man for free instead of buying one of the millions of modestly priced versions. But if there was some bizarre resurgence in the popularity of classic coin-ops and millions were being made off of them by unauthorized operators, you'd better believe Sega/Nintendo/Namco/etc. will have the MAME team in their cross-hairs. And they first thing they'd say is "look, they even have a coin manager available to make bootlegging classic games a no-brainer for anyone who wants to make a quick buck!" with little concern about who actually made it.

And to be honest, I would be the one who would like a coin manager if only to add to look and feel of authenticity to my cab. But playing it out in my mind, I have tried and failed to come up with a legitimate defense. Limit plays for your kids? Teach them coins only work in the game. Prevent guests from wasting coins? You should be providing guests with a way of coining up and therefor, is a non-issue. And about that authenticity level? It doesn't add enough to justify it, unfortunately and nobody but me would notice.

[abispac]

Enough with the right or wrong debate, this its somenthing like politics or religion you guys will never get  anywhere.
Now on the other hand, i would like to openly ask for help here to some of the persons whoo might got this coinage proggy (thanks arcaderenegade). Well Arcaderenegade tells me  this proggy its working on his setup, i have tried several diferent ways and i can not get it to work. Hres what ive done:
1.-Compiled MAME with the instructions given on the readme file. I compiled MAME for several purposes and i always get'it right, so im sure this is no eception, you can look here that i have atached the imput.c file i modified, to make sure im doing it right.
2.-so i have tested with hyperspin and outside hyperspin as well, with no luck,tested with windows xp 32 and 64 bit no luck, windows 7 32 and 64 bit no luck, i tried to instal autohotkey,no luck,i tried netframe 12 and 4 no luck.
i placed the coinage.exe on hyperspin autostar feature, that way hyperspin starts and fires coinage.Hyperspin its in window mode, coinage regular windows state,mame regular windows state.Hyperspin starts, i see coinage coin counters, i press 5 and coinage registers the coin, i chose a game, mame opens up,coinage streches the game to full screen, game boots, i press1 and the coinage counter gets back to  0 but mame does not registers the coin, and the same happens if i do outside hyperspin.Mame options are setup to run the game in windowed mode and no mazimise.so i think everything sould work.

So if got the program and are willing to help, dont hide and speak up...thanks for any help .

[ArcadeRenegade]

Woah. I didn't mean to start heated arguements when I made this topic.

Oh the other hand, dance puppets dance  

[ArcadeRenegade]

Enough with the right or wrong debate, this its somenthing like politics or religion you guys will never get  anywhere.
Now on the other hand, i would like to openly ask for help here to some of the persons whoo might got this coinage proggy (thanks arcaderenegade). Well Arcaderenegade tells me  this proggy its working on his setup, i have tried several diferent ways and i can not get it to work. Hres what ive done:
1.-Compiled MAME with the instructions given on the readme file. I compiled MAME for several purposes and i always get'it right, so im sure this is no eception, you can look here that i have atached the imput.c file i modified, to make sure im doing it right.
2.-so i have tested with hyperspin and outside hyperspin as well, with no luck,tested with windows xp 32 and 64 bit no luck, windows 7 32 and 64 bit no luck, i tried to instal autohotkey,no luck,i tried netframe 12 and 4 no luck.
i placed the coinage.exe on hyperspin autostar feature, that way hyperspin starts and fires coinage.Hyperspin its in window mode, coinage regular windows state,mame regular windows state.Hyperspin starts, i see coinage coin counters, i press 5 and coinage registers the coin, i chose a game, mame opens up,coinage streches the game to full screen, game boots, i press1 and the coinage counter gets back to  0 but mame does not registers the coin, and the same happens if i do outside hyperspin.Mame options are setup to run the game in windowed mode and no mazimise.so i think everything sould work.

So if got the program and are willing to help, dont hide and speak up...thanks for any help .

I think I realized your problem. Did you change MAME's P1 and P2 Coin In keybinds to the keys you chose for Coinage's "MAME P1 Coin In" and MAME P2 Coin In" keybinds? These have to be bound separate from the actual coin slot keybinds.

For example, my coin slot keys are P1 = N and P2 = M.  I set Coinage's "Coin Slot 1" to N and "Coin Slot 2" to M. And then set Coinage's "MAME P1 Coin In" to 3 and "MAME P2 Coin In" to 4.  Then I opened MAME, hit tab, and changed the player coin in keybinds under "General Input -> Other -> Coin 1" & "Coin 2" to 3 and 4 respectfully.

If MAME is opening from your frontend, is getting shifted to fullscreen, and coin slot in's are registering then the Coinage.exe is working; it's just not sending the coins to MAME right.

Does MAME close correctly when you hit your "start game" button (granted you binded MAME's UI cancel to the same key)? If it doesn't then that's a good indicator that MAME isn't registering the script's hotkeys.

Also, make sure MAME's exe file is named "MAME.exe" not something else.

[abispac]

that was exactly my problem arcaderenegade,now its running smooth,thanks for your patience.now in the other hand, why did you decided to create this program and how did you started? did you had any previus progaming skills or knoleged? o you started this from scratch?

[shateredsoul1979]

So, how much money will arcade companies lose by this being released? I mean really, do they make profit from arcades anymore?

Anywho, I'd love to have something like that in place on my system, things is I have non-mame games, it would have to be something that kept track of how many times I pressed 5, and how many times I lost (across various emulators and mame). So, that's probably why they went to the timed things, but that's really lame.. it's no longer about skill and lasting longer, it's about speed.

[abispac]

Yeap, like i stated before, operators with altered mame,xbox,ps2 cabs, have gone the timed mode with some kind of chinese pcb, forcing kids to add coins if they want to cotinue playing, and because most hyspanic country's are not like the USA, the mayority of kids lack a ps2,xbox 1 or a computer ,and thats why they still enjoy those games on every corner store.
So in short words, i dont think many operators will be interested in this kind of program.

Im happy to state that this program works like a charm, but i have tested in windows 7 64 and it appears that windows 7 wont allow mame to accept either direct or raw input, whatever  makes this thing work. As this compiled mame wont respond to the keyboard , its like if there where no keyboard hook'ed to the computer. Can anyone ealse confirm this?

[shateredsoul1979]

Yeah, you have to change the input settings to raw when compiling, or something like that.

[abispac]

Hey Arcaderenegade, i have one petition or a fix to ask for if i may. When using this coinage with hyperspin, coinage not always picks mame,therefor i only hear mame wroking in the background and im unable to play, however if i edit the mame.ini to run mame in fullscreen instead and with maximise on, mame always open in hyperspin but the coin dysplay and the loading mesage stays in the background , but coinage works.So i wonder if you can make coinage not to maximisemame but to always stay in front of any program,that way it will always be visible.Thanks again for you work.

[ArcadeRenegade]

Hey Arcaderenegade, i have one petition or a fix to ask for if i may. When using this coinage with hyperspin, coinage not always picks mame,therefor i only hear mame wroking in the background and im unable to play, however if i edit the mame.ini to run mame in fullscreen instead and with maximise on, mame always open in hyperspin but the coin dysplay and the loading mesage stays in the background , but coinage works.So i wonder if you can make coinage not to maximisemame but to always stay in front of any program,that way it will always be visible.Thanks again for you work.

From what I understand, programs that run fullscreen always get priority over windowed programs like coinage. I'm unsure how to script it so it shows up over fullscreen mame like an overlay. Any programmers have any ideas?

For the time being I'll add a short break between when it detects MAME and when it maximizes it. That way there shouldn't be any inconsistancies.

[abispac]

That might be the problem, as the computer im using, mame sometimes take a bit more time to fireup up, especialy at the first time i do'it.ill wait for your next release.... 

[ArcadeRenegade]

That might be the problem, as the computer im using, mame sometimes take a bit more time to fireup up, especialy at the first time i do'it.ill wait for your next release.... 

My computer is busted at the moment but as soon as I get it fixed ill release a new version

[headkaze]

From what I understand, programs that run fullscreen always get priority over windowed programs like coinage. I'm unsure how to script it so it shows up over fullscreen mame like an overlay. Any programmers have any ideas?

Pretty much impossible to do easily. There was a way once called Direct Draw overlays but there are issues with it depending on the video card. It's not a reliable way anyway. The only other way is to API Hijack the DirectX dll's and overlay the graphics. That is the method used by software like Fraps to display the FPS over a game.

The best thing to do is add fullscreen support to \\.\DISPLAY2 (secondary screen).

[ArcadeRenegade]

From what I understand, programs that run fullscreen always get priority over windowed programs like coinage. I'm unsure how to script it so it shows up over fullscreen mame like an overlay. Any programmers have any ideas?

Pretty much impossible to do easily. There was a way once called Direct Draw overlays but there are issues with it depending on the video card. It's not a reliable way anyway. The only other way is to API Hijack the DirectX dll's and overlay the graphics. That is the method used by software like Fraps to display the FPS over a game.

The best thing to do is add fullscreen support to \\.\DISPLAY2 (secondary screen).

Hijacking DirectX dlls sounds like a whole lot of trouble. The windowed method isn't too cumbersome since Coinage resizes MAME outside the screens bounds to hide the title bar and stuff.

Anyways, I fixed my computer and revised the program. If you guys want to try v1.11 then let me know.

[headkaze]

Hijacking DirectX dlls sounds like a whole lot of trouble. The windowed method isn't too cumbersome since Coinage resizes MAME outside the screens bounds to hide the title bar and stuff.

Anyways, I fixed my computer and revised the program. If you guys want to try v1.11 then let me know.

You can remove the titlebar and frames from a window using the SetWindowLong() Win32 API function. You can do the same thing in AutoHotKey using "WinSet, Style" (http://superuser.com/questions/38687/windows-program-to-remove-titlebar-frame-etc-from-a-window).

[SquallLex]

I just want a coin limit, Knowing that I can't have more coins than what I set will make games more challenging and your app is fantastic for that. I'll post some pics of my custom arcade stick if needed, I only play at home. Will you share coindrop with me ?