How to Use MAME's recently added marquee support on a dual monitor.

[Howard_Casto]

Mame's artwork system recently added the ability to add a view that lacks a screen definition (no monitor) and added a marquee element.  Those two combined allow you to display a marquee on your second monitor pretty much automatically. 

You'll need a artwork file that contains a marquee element obviously... Mr. Do has some neogeo lays that contain marquees.  It's simple enough to make a generic one though (I'll get to that in a bit.)

Open up your mame.ini and scroll down to the seldom used  "PER-WINDOW VIDEO OPTIONS" section and change it to look like so:
------------------------------------------
screen                    auto
aspect                    auto
resolution                auto
view                      auto
screen0                   auto
aspect0                   auto
resolution0               auto
view0                     Standard
screen1                   auto
aspect1                   auto
resolution1               auto
view1                     Marquee
----------------------------------------------

All we are doing is telling MAME to put any views with "Standard" in the name on the primary monitor and any with "Marquee" on the secondary one.  Now assuming you have both screens turned on in windows, marquees are enabled in the artwork section of the mame.ini and the number of screens is set to 2 you'll automatically get a marquee displayed in the sceondary monitor and the Standard (4:3) view displayed on the primary one!

I think I'll make a quick utility to auto-generate lay files for marquees as well.  Here's a sample that stretches marquees to fit a 16:9 monitor (no aspect correction)

-----------------------------------------

<!-- marquee.lay -->

<mamelayout version="2">
   <element name="marq">
      <image file="marquee.png" />
   </element>
   
    
   <view name="Marquee_Only">
      <marquee element="marq">
         <bounds x="0" y="0" width="16" height="9" />
      </marquee>
   </view>
   
   
</mamelayout>
----------------------------------------------------


One thing I've noticed is that dual screens are having issues with the hlsl settings.  Hopefully it will be fixed soon. 


I was playing around with this stuff tonight and I found this stuff interesting, so I thought I would share.  It's a whole heck of a lot better than having to set things in the video options for every single game.

[drventure]

Nice. I bet that support would work quite nicely with one of those small USB monitors (they're likely too slow to handle any real animation, but they'd likely be  great for displaying static images like this).

Of course, to play with it, I'd have to update roms, etc (urg...)

[Howard_Casto]

I was thinking the same thing. 

Actually, there is a android/ipad app that allows you to use a tablet as a secondary monitor.  I was thinking that might be good.... have it display the marquee normally, but you could take it down and read the game's manual/ect....

[Yenome]

this is awesome now if only i could have a display the same size as the marquee. just for showing it. or even a lil projector that projects the marquee png in place. this is like awesome sauce in a can.

*edit* this worked for me for like 3 trys now when i try killer instinct it just crashes. i had it working with it.

[Howard_Casto]

If hlsl effects are turned on it'll crash, period.  Also using switchres seems to foul things up as well.  I don't get that actually... when dual monitor support to mame was first added it was rock solid.  I guess somebody mucked it up?

You can do the exact same thing with mamehooker fyi, I'm just excited that mame is starting to add these features so that mh usage for dual displays can be phased out.

[Yenome]

yea i just made a new cfg and turned on autoframeskip. and 2 monitors. i did find if i edit the lay file to the actual img size it behaved better. tho at first if i just copy and pasted your lay file it would work the first time. and i would have to remake the lay file again to get it to work again. i think it just hates me. tho if i remember right there is a place with a round bar that is touch sensitive. im thinking the means they used to do the bar could be applied to a marquee and control panel and then those could change based on the game you loaded. If im remembering the story right they did it on the cheap at first as a DIY touch screen system. using rear projection.

[Howard_Casto]

Well the reason I metioned switchres specifically is because technically the lay file I included is only 16x9 pixels.  If switchres is off it'll scale this up to your monitor's resolution, but if it's on it'll use as small a screen as possible, making the marquee look like junk or potentially crashing mame.

[Yenome]

yea i didnt have it changing the res. thats what weird the first time i set it. it did as would be expected. but after the first time or two it starting to crash. i think it hates me

[Ionos]

I'm using CPWizard at the moment to cycle between a control panel layout display (which is generated on the fly from controls.ini) and game specific artwork on an 8" display - so it cycles every 10 seconds between the 2. CPWizard seems to be a bit buggy still though and at times it seems to just stop working for reasons I can't fathom.

If I export a bunch of PNG's for the control panel for each game, does Mame allow me to cycle between various artworks to achieve the same as the above on a second display?

[Ipolyfun]

Here is my attempt at using a marquee display with mame. You can seem more photos here http://www.xevious.site50.net/The%20Bartop%20Arcade%20Machine.html.

[Drnick]

Here is my attempt at using a marquee display with mame. You can seem more photos here http://www.xevious.site50.net/The%20Bartop%20Arcade%20Machine.html.

You sure packed a fair bit into such a small package.  Nice work.