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Author Topic: Looking for Solution: Make Console Games Require Coins, Like Arcade Games  (Read 2888 times)

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edgeofblade

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First, let me be clear I'm not trying to actually monetize emulated console games, same as I'm not trying to monetize arcade games in MAME. There is no ethical issue to discuss here.

I'm in the process of building a cab with a coin acceptor. I'm doing this to give my 3 year old daughter something to do with her allowance. Ya know, teach her the value of a quarter, the way we learned, and expose her to the classics at the same time. Really, it's just a fancy piggy bank for her...

I'm looking for a way to make a game lock down it's controls until it accepts a coin, cycle through menus, then start the game. I've seen some questionable arcade operators do this with console versions of fighting games.

I'm wondering if there is a flexible system out there for managing control lockout, detecting game over, and tracking coin credits. At a minimum, unlocking controls for a limited time like PlayChoice cabinets would be acceptable.

gamepimp

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Unfortunately I don't have any suggestions on a solution for this. However, I do think it's a great idea. Too often parents these days just dish out money without expecting anything in return. Then their kids just think that's how the world works. I wish my company would just give me money when I ask for it without expecting anything in return. The reality is that they keep expecting more and more of me for the amount they are currently paying me. And I fully expect that at some point they will eventually try to replace me with someone cheaper. Now that's how the world really works. LOL!

DrakeTungsten

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There is a thread around here somewhere about this idea. I think it was more geared toward arcade games (I think the guy either didn't have a real coin door, or maybe he wanted to limit it by time instead of 1 coin =  1 credit). If you already searched and came up up with nothing, I suggest trying a search with different terms.
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keilmillerjr

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You could make an autohotkey that does this. You would have to make use of mame window command pause.

However, lots of older console games had actual arcade counterpart. Perhaps hand selecting these games would be easier for yourself.?

the_77x42

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You could map the coin door key code to the start game key code in your front end. Or you could map it to the start button in your emulator, but that would cripple some games.

DrakeTungsten

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The only way I see autohotkey detecting that the user is done cycling through menus and has started the game proper is by coding the menu sequence for each game in the script. I"m almost positive there are console games which use the Start button to select options in the menu, so depending on your games, just detecting the Start button might yield a false positive.
No Quarter - a basic FE, WIP

nugarp

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This could be quite trivial if you dont mind using an arduino. How are your controls wired up?

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Trnzaddict

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Years ago I did this on my arcade machine with autohotkey on some close to perfect console arcade ports that MAME did not work with (Raiden II) and some arcade like PC games (Outrun 2006 Coast 2 Coast, Streets of  Rage Remake)

Basically you have an ahk script run that blocks input to your emulator when the game is started, and code your coin key to kill the script and press start. I even added a custom mp3 sound that played when a coin was inserted and controls were unlocked to make it more authentic, however when I recently redid my cabinet I removed this stuff as I wanted strictly real arcade games on there only.

This is a very old video of my cabinet you can skim through it to where I demo the custom coin script.



Osirus23

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You could have a script that launches a game from the front end when the coin button is pushed and then closes the game after a fixed amount of time like Playchoice did, but that's unfair if you're having a good game IMO.

There's no way I'm aware of to detect a game over without really getting deep and monitoring the memory state of the game, which of course would be completely different for each game.

acvieluf

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    • forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,147793.0.html
What about the playchoice 10? It was a console that was coin operated AND functioned on a time limit. Would something like that work for you, using mame? 

EDIT: didn't see this, sorry.
  fixed amount of time like Playchoice did,