Had some luck with the Mala Setup, now just a few questions. Thanks guys!

[Jigenjuke]

Hi there guys, I am a little stressed.  I have a unit that I want to give a friend for Christmas.

I want to set up Mala like this...

When Mala starts up, I want to be able to chooses between
1) Arcade Systems
2) SNES System
3) NES system

I want to be able to scroll through these three choices with Pics of an arcade machine, a Super Famicon, and a Japanese Red an White NES.

I have all of these pics ready to go.

After hitting the enter button to go to one of the above choices I would like MALA to load the Layout for whatever system was chosen.  I then want my friend to be able to choose a game from the MAME, SNES, NES layouts I have made. 

I found a lot of good info on the MALA wiki but this is all setup from the Root of C drive.  I would like all of my Emulator/Rom files to be located on the PC desktop so that games can be added easily (my buddy is not the most computer savvy person). 

I have fiddeled with this and can't seem to get it to do what I want it to do.

Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks ahead of time and I hope that this finds you all in good health and spirits.  Hope you have a great holidy.

Jigenjuke

[Jigenjuke]

Also, a followup, I would like to be able to do this without a keyboard or mouse.

The Unit I have built has a single joystick, with player buttons, 1 and 2 player start buttons as well as a coin button that acts as player 1 and 2 coin and finally a button that escapes out of a game that is playing.  This button when pushed needs to go back to the Main MALA menu where the 3 systems can be selected not to the menu that the last game played was selected from.  I hope this is not too difficult to understand. 

BTW the system is Windows XP. Thanks guys.

Jigenjuke

[myle]

Right click mala and go to the option  in the other emu config add your emulators
Full inthe blanks

Make shour u have the rom path right and the  rom extersion right that the hard bit

Goto to the gui tab and click the layout tab tick them all and click edit tree
Now  this is where u add the emulators selecting the layout u want to use

[BadMouth]

Jigenjuke, I think what you want is the "Mala Tree" option.
I haven't ever used it, but I believe that it works the way you want.

http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Mala_Tree

Sorry I can't be of more help.

[Jigenjuke]

Thanks for the help guys,

I think the Mala Tree is where I am having problems.  I have set MALA up with just MAME before and then merrily went on my way, but....

I want a Logo screen

After the Logo screen is finished I would like three choices

Arcade
SNES
NES

After entering one of the above I would like to load my Layout for each emulator. 

I am having problems with the MALA tree, if anyone could lay it out for the mentally challenged Jigenjuke I would be greatly appreciative.

 

Jigenjuke

[Jigenjuke]

Bump, please.  Still having problems with this.

Jigenjuke

[camsauce]

You definitely need to use Mala Tree to do this.  Before you get to that point you need to make one layout for each of the systems using Mala Layout.  Once you have done this, open up Mala Tree and create three nodes (?) and assign each one to the layout you created for it.  Then you'll want to use Mala gamelist to create a gamelist for each emulator.   As one of the other posters mentned you'll need to setup the other emulators using they 'other emu config' menu before they will appear in Mala gamelist.

[drventure]

Have a read through Uncle T's Mala config notes. That should help you a lot if you haven't seen it yet.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,56010.msg1193926.html#msg1193926

[Jigenjuke]

Ok guys I am officially futzed.  I have created the layouts for MAME, NES and SNES.   I supply the paths for each emulator and then launch MALA.  I can choose the emulator and it loads my layout but it won't load my snaps, or game lists.  What the heck am I doing wrong?! 

I have many times successfully done this for just MAME but now MAME will not load snaps, marquees and game lists as well.  I am really stating to get frustrated. 

I really appreciate your help, bear with my just a little longer please

Jigenjuke

PS, I am using nester and SNES9x as well as MAME32ui 131.

Thanks again for the help ahead of time.

[Jigenjuke]

Hey there guys,

After a lot of trial and error I got ZSNES and Nester to show up in my basic MALA Layout with the SNES and NES Logos appearing in the MAME marquee area of my Layout.  The links you sent me were great! Thanks guys.   

My buddy is satisfied with this  (I am not so satisfied though.  I made a couple of really beautiful layouts for SNES and NES but he is happy so....)

My next question is this....

Is there a way to use a button on my cocktail unit to end emulation for ZSNES and Nester and jump back to my MAME Mala Layout?  I have looked all over the MALA option menu and can't for the life of me find it. 

My second question is this...

Do I have to right click on the mouse to switch between emulators or can I map buttons on my control panel to do the Previous emulator, Next emulator Jazz?  I don't want to mess with it if that's not what they are for.

There are two old sylye USB Super Nintendo replica game pads connected to allow players to play NES games and SNES games.  My third question is this...

Is there a way to push a key on a game pad to save a game automatically?

Anyway guys, thanks for all the help you have been very patient and extremely helpful.

Jigenjuke

[drventure]

Is there a way to use a button on my cocktail unit to end emulation for ZSNES and Nester and jump back to my MAME Mala Layout?  I have looked all over the MALA option menu and can't for the life of me find it.

Check out empardopo's AllInOne. It has some features to intercept keys like the ESC key during a game to shut down that game (or emulator as the case may be).

Do I have to right click on the mouse to switch between emulators or can I map buttons on my control panel to do the Previous emulator, Next emulator Jazz?  I don't want to mess with it if that's not what they are for.

Right Click on the mala screen and select settings, then check out the keyboard settings tab, there's key mappings for switching emulators, game lists, and moving up and down through the list, etc. You can map those functions to keys, sticks, etc.

Is there a way to push a key on a game pad to save a game automatically?

Depends on the emulator. Mame has actions that you can map to any key to save screenshots or the game state. Other emulators probably have similar functions, but whether they can be mapped to a gamepad button, I'm not sure (Mame's can be mapped to anything).

[Jigenjuke]

Drventure, thank you sir.  I will look into AllInOne.  Thanks for the other info as well.

Jigenjuke