Tell me about touchscreening mame stuff

[Le Chuck]

Last night I was looking for some good rail style shooters to add to my yoke cabinet as the kids are really into those right now and a yoke plays positional guns great.  Going to add some Beast Busters and Gundam and stuff like that.  But, in the process I was checking out some of my other favorite lightgun games, like Point Blank, and got all sad that I don't have my ACTLABS lightgun cab anymore because it was the tits, but got necked moving to Germany, and then I pieced it out since I'm a moron. 

But I don't have room for that monster anymore even if I do want to rebuild it something fierce, so what are my options?  A touchscreen seems pretty ubiquitous nowadays and seems to be perfect for the madcap fill the screen with garbage style of all my favorite shoot/don't shoot games. 

Ideally I would just jailbreak one of my ipad2s that are collecting dust, toss some roms on there and call it a day.  Is that doable?  Is that a thing.  Can I play Point Blank on a ipad2?  Short of that, what are my options?  Ideally I use a tablet rather than a full build, and I'd like to play lightgun games (egg-venture, the aforementioned Point Blanks, Hammerin (not technically a gun game), police trainer, that kinda stuff), some popcap games, and open to suggestions for others. 

What is the best way to get after this stuff?  Anybody else done it?  Do I need a special version of MAME?  Is it easier to get an old Merit with a working screen and replace the guts with a donor computer?  Seriously, I'm all ears.
 

[leapinlew]

Hey Chuck -

Not sure how useful this will be but I've posted a few touchscreen questions over the years. I have 4 devices I've used and I would always try to get it to work with the midway touchmaster series. When setting up Touchmaster, you configure the game to act as a light gun and I've only had luck with 1 piece of hardware working properly. I've tried a ton of different versions of mame. From what I can tell, the different touchscreen controllers just react differently. I definitely haven't tried every combination and every trick. After hours of troubleshooting, I gave up.

I love Point Blank and I actually keep a PS2 and 32" Tube TV around just for it, but like you, I may be getting rid of that setup soon. It just takes up too much space. I imagine some of those mini games that require you to shoot a bazillion targets in 15 seconds might be tough with a touchscreen.

Let me know what games you end up with on your star wars cabinet. I have 6 games and would like to get it to work with a few more.

[Le Chuck]

The following post is about yoke games and has no bearing on the touchscreen convo from the first post: 

Lew, so I've tried a ton of different stuff on my SW and have it down to a pretty small list right now, tho I'm getting ready to add some more.  List is off the top of my head. 

Keepers: SW, ESB, ROTJ, STUN Runner, Thunder Ceptor*, Night Striker, Space Harrier, Paperboy, Star Wars Trilogy, Star Wars Racer* (PC port for now), Hydro Thunder, Off Road Thunder**, Mario Kart GP2. 

Any positional gun game works but the only ones my kids really like are Space Gun and T2 - tho I'm looking to add some more

Games I tried and ended up taking off:  Roll Cage and sequels (menus navigation a pain), Hydra* (I just hate this game), Starfox (SNES, N64 - too consoley), Mario Kart (SNES, N64 - both great6 but GP2 fills the niche for me and the kids), Sonic Racing Transformed (damn xpadder or whatever plugin you have to use keeps messing up.  Half the time to controls don't work.  Should probably just rewire my yoke onto a 360 controller and call it day but that's a PITA for one damn game).  HOTD series (kids love them but not having auto center work is the suxor)  Wipeout XL (love it on the couch, didn't love it on the cab) Wings of St. Nazaire* (not ready for prime time last I tried), A bunch of regular racing games (too pedestrian for this cab and my tastes), Lightgun shooters (require tracking too fast for a yoke, not good with analog controls IMO)

Things I'm looking to try, just haven't gotten around to yet:  Hyperzone (SNES), A few other Spacey time Positional Games, Panzer Dragoon (PC), Cyber Sled (providing I can get the controls sorted), Star Blade, Solvalou, Planet Harrier, Prop Cycle, Solar Assault

PS2 Games I'm looking to try but haven't yet: Star Wars Racer Revenge, Super Bombad Racing, Crash Nitro Kart,   

*requires an additional axis or two (like an accelerator/brake or other)
**not analog, hoping that gets sorted by my man HC.

[pbj]

Does it play Galaga?

[Titchgamer]

If you have a Normal TV just hook it up to a lappy or a pc with your light guns plugged in.

Sorted

Playing lightgun games with anything other than a lightgun just sucks nuts.

[yotsuya]

If you have a Normal TV just hook it up to a lappy or a pc with your light guns plugged in.

Sorted

Playing lightgun games with anything other than a lightgun just sucks nuts.

What the ---fudgesicle--- is a lappy?

[_Iz-]

Lappy = Laptop

[Le Chuck]

What's a normal tv?  How does this get me to playing games on MAME by touch?

[yotsuya]

Lappy = Laptop

No ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.

[Titchgamer]

What's a normal tv?  How does this get me to playing games on MAME by touch?

Tv = television = thing normally found in living room to watch tv shows on :p

Doesnt help playing by touch, but you can play light gun games on it via mame!

[jdbailey1206]

...I don't have my ACTLABS lightgun cab anymore because it was the tits, but got necked moving to Germany, and then I pieced it out since I'm a moron. 

Oh you kids today and your hip lingo.

[Le Chuck]

Not a fan of IR guns. I'm a die hard light gun CRT cat so if ima not going to use those I'd rather try a whole different approach. I don't want to fake the funk, but find a new way to enjoy the content. So touch, and if that sux or doesn't work I'll cross that bridge towards giant cabinet again when I have to.

[Titchgamer]

Well the main prob you will have with touch is when you are shooting someone top left you cant see the guys to the right coz your hands in the way. (Assuming you are a righty)

IR guns work perfectly well once they are set up properly.
They aint as easy as CRT ones I admit (And I do miss them) but they still do the job just fine.

[Le Chuck]

So it looks like mame4droid has it figured out pretty well, I only have apple tablets in the house but I'm willing to toss $50 towards a fire tablet and see how it works.  Worst case scenario, I load it up with other content and give it to my kids.  Found some videos of folks playing lightgun games with their big sausagey mits and having a pretty good time. 

[leapinlew]

So it looks like mame4droid has it figured out pretty well, I only have apple tablets in the house but I'm willing to toss $50 towards a fire tablet and see how it works.  Worst case scenario, I load it up with other content and give it to my kids.  Found some videos of folks playing lightgun games with their big sausagey mits and having a pretty good time.

FACEPALM!

Dude, I can tell you I've futz'd for hours with windows tablets and mame. Windows computers and mame. While I've used mame on android, I didn't even consider mame4droid and an android tablet. Truth is, it should have been my first choice, doh!. I fired it up and had no issues playing midway touchmaster. Well, the only issue was some seemingly random popup ads. I have a chintzy android tablet. Let me know how the fire goes.

[leapinlew]

Bumping this!

I got a Fire 8 and it plays midway touchmaster perfectly. It stutters in Point Blank. Curious if anyone has any other lightgun games worth playing. I wish the newer megatouch games were available, but I'm pretty happy with touchmaster 8000 (I loves me some triple 11's).

[Le Chuck]

Bumping this!

I got a Fire 8 and it plays midway touchmaster perfectly. It stutters in Point Blank. Curious if anyone has any other lightgun games worth playing. I wish the newer megatouch games were available, but I'm pretty happy with touchmaster 8000 (I loves me some triple 11's).

Honestly, point blank is the only one I care about so that's disappointing to hear that it's not playing clean. Booo!

Glad you're getting some fun out it tho

[Titchgamer]

Bumping this!

I got a Fire 8 and it plays midway touchmaster perfectly. It stutters in Point Blank. Curious if anyone has any other lightgun games worth playing. I wish the newer megatouch games were available, but I'm pretty happy with touchmaster 8000 (I loves me some triple 11's).

Crypt Killer and Carnevil are good but prob wont run on a tablet.

Theres another game very similar to point blank but I cant recall the name at the moment!
Ile get back to you on that....

Also just to mention theres a Game on steam you can play with a mouse called mad bullets that alot of fun!!

[Titchgamer]

Ok so a few others I have on my cab:

Bang, One shot one kill, Sharpshooter, zero point (all point blank type games)

[menace]

This thread inspired me to dust off my old Ipad 1 and see what could be done.  Naturally apple made these obsolete so I had to jailbreak it and add cydia to return some functionality.  Inside cydia there are sources for programs and mame4all was one of them--so I installed it and then moved over some roms (.37b5) from my other machine via SSH.  For the controls I gutted an ION icade and used just the control panel.  It works ok, but I don't like the button arrangement and the buttons and stick themselves are pretty crappy.

Next step, replace the buttons, stick on the icade, rearrange the buttons (I can't get it to accept different mappings inside mame4all) and maybe build a little 1/2" mdf cabinet around it--although the cradle that comes with the icade works quite well...

I'll post pics once i get them

[pbj]

I've got a working touchscreen cabinet under one of my pinball machines... someone trade me a 12 pack of Shiner... plz....