Does anyone else notice???

[LASmith132]

Hey guys,

I'm an off and on MAME Arcade builder who has been on the quest to have my own MAME system and cabinet set up for about 2 years now. I go in spurts of having time to work on the project, then I will go about 2 months without being able to touch it. 

It seems like I have to re-learn everything about MAME, Hyperspin, Roms, filtering, etc,  everytime I start up being able to have time to work on it. Expecially when it comes to Hyperspin and getting my roms filtered correctly and making sure I remember what folders I have put certain parts of the project in, to work on hyperspin backgrounds, etc.

does anyone else feel like a complete newbie if they arent able to stay up on their own project??? :dunno3

Or am I wierder than I thought.... 

[mytymaus007]

I know what your saying but there is a learning curve it seems you havent reached it. Its different for each person I assume. It took me 6 months of working on hyperspin to configure 50 emulators and over 3 years to build something that I was happy with. How i prioritize is most of the winter I will work on  software and front end stuff then around april or may i start bringin out the tool box and wood. So i would think for you this would be a good time to work on a cab for the next few months at nite instead of TV work on your plans then pick a day on the weekend to start working on it. Dont even worry about roms and hyperspin.! By sept oct you should have a decent cab ready to go if not pick up in april or may of next yeat spend and the rest of the winter configureing hyperspin. In the end you have a awsome home built system. Or of course i can give you an education seminar on Hyerspin for a small FEE

[drventure]

Or of course i can give you an education seminar on Hyerspin for a small FEE

Hyperspin training seminars! Awesome!

1) Learn the hell out of Hyperspin
2) ?
3) Profit!

 

But I also know what you mean about relearning everything. Some of this stuff sticks. But some of it fades pretty fast when life gets in the way.

[Jack Burton]

I say forget hyperspin.  Forget all the fancy front-ends and thousands of games.  Forget the countless hours of configuring and tinkering. 

Download a couple of roms at a time.  PLAY THEM.  For a week or more, no exceptions.  No getting bored with it and downloading another.  You will enjoy your cab much more. 

[mytymaus007]

I say forget hyperspin.  Forget all the fancy front-ends and thousands of games.  Forget the countless hours of configuring and tinkering. 

Download a couple of roms at a time.  PLAY THEM.  For a week or more, no exceptions.  No getting bored with it and downloading another.  You will enjoy your cab much more. 

Thats what I did for a year or 2 then I needed more and more of my friends and family wanted to play. So in the end you will end up building a cab with the ultimate game collection even if you dont play it its nice to say i have that game when some out of the blue wants to play a game and you have it. My step son came home from school and said his history teacher showed them a game i guess dealing with history "kid icarus" on NES system. Low and behold i had it my collection and now its in my favorites. I love hyperspin and having the most games i can find

[leapinlew]

I say forget hyperspin.  Forget all the fancy front-ends and thousands of games.  Forget the countless hours of configuring and tinkering. 

Download a couple of roms at a time.  PLAY THEM.  For a week or more, no exceptions.  No getting bored with it and downloading another.  You will enjoy your cab much more. 

Thats what I did for a year or 2 then I needed more and more of my friends and family wanted to play. So in the end you will end up building a cab with the ultimate game collection even if you dont play it its nice to say i have that game when some out of the blue wants to play a game and you have it. My step son came home from school and said his history teacher showed them a game i guess dealing with history "kid icarus" on NES system. Low and behold i had it my collection and now its in my favorites. I love hyperspin and having the most games i can find

Not me, I have a small list of popular games that I want to play from my youth. I went through a discovery phase of checking out new games, but now my cabs now play just a few game. I'm currently building a defender bartop that will only play defender.

[Le Chuck]

I'm with lew, only on a much smaller scale, and not defender... yet.

[PL1]

I say forget hyperspin.  Forget all the fancy front-ends and thousands of games.  Forget the countless hours of configuring and tinkering. 

Download a couple of roms at a time.  PLAY THEM.  For a week or more, no exceptions.  No getting bored with it and downloading another.  You will enjoy your cab much more. 

I agree--up to a point.  Thousands of games is way too much for your regular play list, but when you read about some obscure title, its great to have it ready to go in less than a minute.

The way I do that is I made a subdirectory called archive in my ROMs directory. The directory contains all my ROMs. (BitTorrent is your friend.)  I copy them up to the main directory as needed.  If they suck, I delete the file from the main directory.  Friend stops by later and begs to play that game, copy it up again and delete it when he leaves.

Best of both worlds: Maximum title availability -- minimal time wasted on configuration.


Scott

[flashiv]

I say forget hyperspin.  Forget all the fancy front-ends and thousands of games.  Forget the countless hours of configuring and tinkering. 

Download a couple of roms at a time.  PLAY THEM.  For a week or more, no exceptions.  No getting bored with it and downloading another.  You will enjoy your cab much more. 

I agree--up to a point.  Thousands of games is way too much for your regular play list, but when you read about some obscure title, its great to have it ready to go in less than a minute.

The way I do that is I made a subdirectory called archive in my ROMs directory. The directory contains all my ROMs. (BitTorrent is your friend.)  I copy them up to the main directory as needed.  If they suck, I delete the file from the main directory.  Friend stops by later and begs to play that game, copy it up again and delete it when he leaves.

Best of both worlds: Maximum title availability -- minimal time wasted on configuration.


Scott

My cab is setup like Scott's, although my list of keeper games keeps growing (200+).   

[molton]

Mameplus is a great frontend.  You can use a program called glovepie to translate your arcade controls into the keyboard commands you want for the frontend, then when mame runs it disables glovepie leaving you with the arcade controls only (the versions of glovepie/mame I'm using anyway)

windows xp + glovepie + mameplus + windows startup folder in the start menu = arcade panel navigatable frontend with no keyboard required, although I do have a trackball I use as a mouse I need to use from time to time for various things, but for the most part you don't need anything else.

When glovepie is running it keeps windows from shutting down, so I made a shortcut to do the shutdown command (forget what it is exactly) with the -f switch to force shutdown and set the shortcut up as ctrl + alt + 1 which works out to be both player 1 and 2 buttons at the same time and a button on the side that has no other use

[Le Chuck]

I was going through my playlists yesterday realizing how many of these games I just don't give a ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- about, and my playlist is already paired down (high triple digits, but still).  I'm thinking that getting it under a hundred shouldn't be too tough...  on the other hand I do love cruising through the lists and exploring some unknown title.  I've already got everything broken down into genre by screen orientation so it is well organized.  Maybe I should lock all those and just go with a best of verts and a best of horz menu and cut down on the all the skipping around.   

[PL1]

My cab is setup like Scott's, although my list of keeper games keeps growing (200+).   

You and me both, brother.

I blame pinzach. Darn GOTD.   


Scott

[AGarv]

I agree it is a pain, and IMO most of it is MAME - all of the console emulators have one set of game "files" that have been used for 10-15 years and will continue to be used indefinitely.  MAME swizzles everything several times a year, and the result is just a huge mess.  I am happy that MAME development continues though.

[paigeoliver]

I generally only update the mame version on my desktop every 3 or 4 years when I get a new computer.

Once I get a cabinet set up I generally NEVER update any of the software on it ever again.

You really don't have to spend all that time on setup and the like. Setting up your frontend and software installation should be the last step you take before the computer goes into the cabinet for good.

[molton]

...on the other hand I do love cruising through the lists and exploring some unknown title...

it sounds like you need a separate copy of mame with a shortcut named rom archive  

after all, you are not going to be the only person ever playing your cabinet, right?  Maybe one of those obscure games you never heard of is your guests favorite game from back in the day, a rom archive is helpful in this scenario.

[TheSlim]

Hyperspin is great but im waiting on 2.0 before upgrading...  with that being said you can try an easier frontend like game ex or maximus...i know maximus wont change....

i have built 2 cabs 2 years apart and i esentially used the same file systems for both cabinets but most significant change for me is hardware.  My newest cab is quadcore with like 8 gigs of. And it can do so much more than a dual core w 4 gigs.  Also it is now easier to get awesome hardware like controller ports for any system.  Coming soon hardware wise is the monitor that is a marquee,,, which i know is out but not cheap.

Anyway i suggest you focus on getting your filesystem straight then you can focus on the finer things like upgrading the hardware and playing the games!  Dont waste time with new intro vids or the latest chd that will now work for five years