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| kuehnau:
So, I've announced a project I was working on and right now it's pretty much dead in the water due to numerous reason(s). 1. For the last month I have been in the process of moving and simply don't have time to work on the cabinet. 2. I have been having weird issues with the joysticks I bought (E-Stiks) and I don't think I like them. 3. MAME has been frustrating me beyond comprehension. 4. I am trying to decide if I want to totally dissemble the cabinet and totally strip it or just the outsides. 5. I am unhappy with how the control panel went. While arcade gaming is amazing and it'll always hold a place in my heart, I am quickly realizing that arcade gaming has many more issues when it comes to emulation then other forms of emulation. I am starting to get really annoying trying to get certain elements to work with MAME and the frontend I am working on. I understand that for a majority of the MAME community, it's all about preservation for them, but for a lot of the more casual people, it's highly annoying that they just don't offer backwards compatibility with roms. It's at the point where I simply don't want to deal with it. I am also unhappy with the joysticks I bought and the layout of the control panel. In hindsight I should have thought out the layout a little bit better and gave it some more serious thought, but at the time, I was really excited to finally get going on the project and I just wanted it to move along, even if that meant pushing it along. Unfortunately I rushed some elements and I regret that now, but I guess it's better to learn from my mistakes. When I had originally planned on working on an arcade cabinet I toyed with the idea of just making like a Nintendo Entertainment System cabinet, because the roms are small, easily found and I have never really had any compatibility issues with emulators. And I think that is what I am going to do here, is just give up on MAME (unless I plan on doing like a single game cabinet in the future) and go with something that's easier, that I am familiar with and strikes a more solid string when it comes to nostalgia, because that is why I am doing this project to even begin with. I am now going to have to rework the control panel. I'd actually like to save the control panel I have since it's so thin and light weight (it's a Taito control panel, metal plate), but there is now a wide selection of holes that have been drilled into the panel. Any suggestions on how I might be able to patch this up? considering how thin it is, I have the feeling I might just have to fabricate a new one out of wood; which I am not looking forward to. I don't like the E-Stiks I bought, they feel way too tight for me,I initially bought them because I hated having to route out the bottom of my wood control panel to get it to fit properly. Taking into consideration the planned project will be for a NES (possibly SNES) cabinet, can anyone suggest any joysticks that handle better that might have a better feel for these types of games? I don't know if anyone has any extra joysticks laying around they know for sure are in good condition, but if there is any interest in trading me some other joysticks for the E-Stiks, let me know, I got a Tetris PCB no one seems to want I'll toss in for free. Finally, I am looking around for artwork, a Nintendo Marquee is easy to find and I'll have one printed off eventually, but I am having more of a harder time finding a nice control panel graphic overlay that isn't too busy or gaudy. I have been thinking I might just go with a single solid color, but at the same time, I am wondering if I should go with something a little more detailed, any insight on this would be appreciated. And in case anyone is wondering, I am moving next week, so the project is still on hold, I won't start up again until I am settled in my new house. |
| eds1275:
As far as compatibility, I have never had issues with mame - just get the same romset as the version you have and that is really all there is to it. But, if it isn't working I totally egt that. Computer troubles are a pita. I have not tried the E-Stik, but can take a guess that it doesn't feel right because you are trying to play a console game with an arcade control. Perhaps try to track down one of the old NES arcade style sticks and see if you like that any better (after finding a way to interface it to your computer - numerous products on the market for that). I would personally just find out what they used in the old Nintendo cabs and pick that. A trip to the hardware store to get a new piece of metal for the control panel, assuming it is just a rectangle. If not, either have one fabricated or make one out of wood. If you plan it right, you just have to do it once. As for art, if you can't find something, maybe it is because you don't know what you want? Once you know what you are after it is often as easy as scribbling on a napkin and turning to one of your artsy friends or even here on the forum. If you are going with a nintendo theme, why not try to design something that looks like it belongs? For example a plain old black or grey background with a couple of red stripes and the nintendo logo? Think about an SNES game box and the identifying features those all had back in the day. |
| kuehnau:
--- Quote from: eds1275 on August 23, 2013, 01:26:18 am ---As far as compatibility, I have never had issues with mame - just get the same romset as the version you have and that is really all there is to it. But, if it isn't working I totally egt that. Computer troubles are a pita. I have not tried the E-Stik, but can take a guess that it doesn't feel right because you are trying to play a console game with an arcade control. Perhaps try to track down one of the old NES arcade style sticks and see if you like that any better (after finding a way to interface it to your computer - numerous products on the market for that). I would personally just find out what they used in the old Nintendo cabs and pick that. A trip to the hardware store to get a new piece of metal for the control panel, assuming it is just a rectangle. If not, either have one fabricated or make one out of wood. If you plan it right, you just have to do it once. As for art, if you can't find something, maybe it is because you don't know what you want? Once you know what you are after it is often as easy as scribbling on a napkin and turning to one of your artsy friends or even here on the forum. If you are going with a nintendo theme, why not try to design something that looks like it belongs? For example a plain old black or grey background with a couple of red stripes and the nintendo logo? Think about an SNES game box and the identifying features those all had back in the day. --- End quote --- That's the thing, not all sites offer the same version of roms, not all of them are compatible, some of them are missing internal files. It'd be really nice if the MAME community could like, get together and agree on a standard set that doesn't break each time a new version is out. Some games I wanted to play, don't work well with other versions, some games I can find only very specific versions of their romsets, ect, ect. As far as the E-Stick goes, it's just really tight. I had a Zippy stick and it felt good and it responded really well and smooth. With the E-Stick, tilting a direction isn't good enough, you have to be tilting it like all the way to it's limit to get it to work correctly. While setting it up, it was also a massive pain in the ass to get it to hit diagonals accurately. I also didn't enjoy how the bottom twisted on, I actually had it happen where, while playing, the bottom part got weird or loose and suddenly I couldn't use the left direction, so I'd have to stop and like, fiddle with it. On a side note - I didn't attempt to play any console games with the E-Stiks, these were all arcade games. As far as art goes? I decided I am going to go with a SNES build for the cabinet. I already got a marquee going As far as the rest of the set up goes, I don't know, I was thinking of doing the cabinet like the housing of the game console and doing it white, with grey t-molding and then having a bit of blue in there somewhere, but it's still up in the air. |
| WindDrake:
MAME is a documentation/preservation project first and foremost. ROM sets will change as they find overdumps, bad dumps, change out black-box implementations for actual PAL/GAL/etc PLD dumps, and the like. Names will change as filenames are updated to reflect where that particular IC was on the board, etc etc. I don't think it's supposed to be convenient. They don't care if finding X Rom working in the latest version is hard and Y Rom broke compatibility with a set from several versions ago. They are trying to document and preserve, the fact that we get to run cabinets off of the software is a bonus, not the goal. For everything else, I'll just parrot the other posters. |
| BadMouth:
--- Quote from: kuehnau on August 23, 2013, 01:47:34 am ---It'd be really nice if the MAME community could like, get together and agree on a standard set that doesn't break each time a new version is out. Some games I wanted to play, don't work well with other versions, some games I can find only very specific versions of their romsets, ect, ect. --- End quote --- The only way that would happen is if work on MAME ceased. If you don't want the hassle of figuring out all this stuff and keeping your roms up to date, just find a version and stick with it. All the roms on a given site should be the same version. The best way to do it is to install torrent software and download an entire set at once. Someone posted a noob tutorial once upon a time and included a website for roms (very against the rules). That site had stopped updating around v.127 and had MAMEUI v.127 for download. Most people don't bother updating MAME on their cabs until something they consider worth updating for is added. Why update when everything you want to play works? |
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