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Front End for Public Coin-op
CoryBee:
route-worthy rig?
One that can stand the test of children and adults alike beating the controls to all hell?
CheffoJeffo:
--- Quote from: CoryDee on December 09, 2012, 10:05:19 am ---route-worthy rig?
One that can stand the test of children and adults alike beating the controls to all hell?
--- End quote ---
Yep ... and well-secured and reliable internals.
rCadeGaming:
I think if you actually own a PCB, it would be pseudo-legal to use a MAME ROM of it in a cab.
For example, buy several popular PCB's and store them on the premises, then build a MAME cab only running these games.
For me it would be excruciating to play MAME when the real PCB is sitting right there, but for the end-user in this case, selecting games through a front-end would be more feasible than switching PCB's; and the multicab would take up less space than several dedicated cabs.
Of course then you have to worry about how to handle things like the customer putting in a coin before loading a game, or if the game is quit while there are unused coins inserted.
This probably isn't technically legal, but neither were a lot of things in real arcades, like unlicensed multicarts and bootlegs. Who is actually going to come to your location and regulate this?
MTPPC:
The question entirely neglects the challenge of passing the credit from the front end to the game. While a 60-in-1 might not have the best emulation, the front-end is very functional with regard to coin up. I think the biggest problem is exiting a specific game. Would that be done automatically or only if credits fell to zero? There are a lot of functional questions that go unnoticed until you try an actual implementation. The 60-in-1 is the way it is because the designers made the unit functional for location. Certainly it could be prettied up and re-engineered to look like something from the 2000's, but the basic functions of game selection and exit would certainly remain the same.
CheffoJeffo:
Using MAME in a commercial setting violates the MAME license. Nothing pseudo about it (and since the xx- ,xxx- and xxxx-in-one boards are MAME, they violate the MAME license as well).
If you own all the PCBs, then it is probably a better idea to grab a JAMMA switcher anyway and avoid the front-end.
There was a lemony fresh piece of code written some years back to support coin drops in the front end, but I would be wary about searching it out ... it was, as I said, lemony, but some versions were not so fresh.
Having said all that, if I wanted to have a front-end on an emulation-based machine on route, I would choose the easy way and use a coin door with lockout coils and simple lock out the mechs until a game has been selected. Easy peasy, no lemon squeezy.