Need help in Game Orientation in AOS

[mortacci]

I have a mame cocktail setup using:
DOS mame .67
Arcadeos 2.52
A Vertical Screen.

I have mame setup to rotate left. So all games are in vertical mode. Works great.

But there are some games that I want to be in horizontal such as HatTrick hockey. This way I can play head to head.  How can I setup an individual games orientation with out affecting all the games?  Can I edit hattrick.cfg to force just that game to be oriented the way I want it?

[dax]

In searching this forum for help, I have come across a ton of unanswered questions like this.

Is there another forum where there are more knowlegable, more helpful people?  I'm just curious.  I've seen several dozen posts in the archives on key issues that I assume someone knows about.  Maybe there is another web site with a more active community?  Can someone help these people out??

[brophog]

Not every question gets answered. Deal with it.

And no, there is no other website as conclusive as this one.

[SirPeale]

In searching this forum for help, I have come across a ton of unanswered questions like this.

Is there another forum where there are more knowlegable, more helpful people?  I'm just curious.  I've seen several dozen posts in the archives on key issues that I assume someone knows about.  Maybe there is another web site with a more active community?  Can someone help these people out??

Are you freaking serious?

I mean really...are you serious with this question?

People bend over backwards for each other on this forum.  The technical expertise is absolutely enormous.  Responses are usually quite quick, IF someone knows the answer.

I dunno...I actually feel insulted by this post.

[Orclord]

Whoa....

I Was gonna suggest a few things....Till I saw the original posting date and realised this thread was just someone whining about unanswered posts...

Sheesh...

As I say on my board.....If a post does not get answered it's because nobody knows the answer...nobody just ignores a post out of spite when they know the answer

Maybe I should frequent here a bit more often.....

 

[loadman]

Rude

Maybe there is another web site with a more active community?  Can someone help these people out??

Good Luck Buddy. My experience is there is a plethora of helpful people here with a broad knowledge. 

In fact often I see people answer questions that have been answered many times before (not bothering to do a search), but it usually gets a answer and/or a thread link 

Did you mean to insult the good folk here?

[RayB]

Dax,
Sometimes newbies come here and post the same question multiple times all over the place. So of course some of their posts will remain unanswered.

~Ray B.

[dax]

I'm just being honest. 

Which is it?  Is there a ton of technical knowledge here, or not?  Because I see a lot of basic questions go unanawered.

I think one of the first messages I posted, someone criticized me instead of answering my question.  It put me on the defensive.

I think some of these questions seem way to simple, and I looked through the FAQ and couldn't find much info, like about monitor orientation (FAQ's comprehensive solution to this is to say "blame the front end" but I eventually found anohter thread with more info), or config file structures for games (when was the switch from .cfg to .ini), or where these files are put by default across different versions, or different key changes to the MAME development tree over various versions.   Another question nobody answered was whether or not you can use new roms with older versions of MAME or vice-versa.  I didn't think these were stupid questions. Maybe they've been answered before, but when I did a search to see if I could find out about monitor orientation, I came across a lot of unanswered posts on the same subject.  There is undoubtedly some standard troubleshooting details that can help people out of this annoying yet common problem. 

I did not mean to insult anybody by my earlier reply.  Admittedly, I was frustrated because I've been dicking with this arcade setup for two weeks and I'm running into what I think are supposed to be simple glitches that I'd normally expect others to know about.  Not to mention that I've been out of the MAME scene for about two years and a lot of things have changed and there's this big, gaping hole of knowledge on how the software has progressed that I can't get answers to for some reason.  Sorry about that.

[brophog]

All of those questions have been answered already. A simple search will find those answers in seconds.

[pointdablame]

In searching this forum for help, I have come across a ton of unanswered questions like this.

Is there another forum where there are more knowlegable, more helpful people?  I'm just curious.  I've seen several dozen posts in the archives on key issues that I assume someone knows about.  Maybe there is another web site with a more active community?  Can someone help these people out??

Maybe it's because the SAME questions are asked a million times around here.  We don't have to answer teh same question over and over again if someone isn't willing to do some simple searches.

[brian23]

No question is stupid. There are just stupid answers. Do you deserve to be criticized for asking a question? No. Since this is an online forum and tone is never conveyed, a comment like "I'm having trouble with xyz, I have searched the forums and found a,b,c solutions, tried them, but now I am confused..." is preferable over "I need help with Mamewah. No one will help me..". I guess what I am getting at is no one will reasonable beat you up for asking a question as long as a little effort is noticably put forth at the get-go. I've seen these situations pop-up on multiple forums and it happens all the time. Most people on here dedicate their personal time to help others. The frustration is also felt on those answering questions as well as those asking.

Finally, the message to take home is caveat emptor. You get what you pay for and since a lot of this is free advice/tips, your questions will have to be answered at the earliest of someone's convenience.

[Hoopz]

I'm just being honest.

Which is it? Is there a ton of technical knowledge here, or not? Because I see a lot of basic questions go unanawered.

I think one of the first messages I posted, someone criticized me instead of answering my question. It put me on the defensive.

I think some of these questions seem way to simple, and I looked through the FAQ and couldn't find much info, like about monitor orientation (FAQ's comprehensive solution to this is to say "blame the front end" but I eventually found anohter thread with more info), or config file structures for games (when was the switch from .cfg to .ini), or where these files are put by default across different versions, or different key changes to the MAME development tree over various versions. Another question nobody answered was whether or not you can use new roms with older versions of MAME or vice-versa. I didn't think these were stupid questions. Maybe they've been answered before, but when I did a search to see if I could find out about monitor orientation, I came across a lot of unanswered posts on the same subject. There is undoubtedly some standard troubleshooting details that can help people out of this annoying yet common problem.

I did not mean to insult anybody by my earlier reply. Admittedly, I was frustrated because I've been dicking with this arcade setup for two weeks and I'm running into what I think are supposed to be simple glitches that I'd normally expect others to know about. Not to mention that I've been out of the MAME scene for about two years and a lot of things have changed and there's this big, gaping hole of knowledge on how the software has progressed that I can't get answers to for some reason. Sorry about that.

Another thing to consider is how many questions are being asked in a given thread.

[RayB]

I didn't answer that last question in Dax's thread because I don't think I saw it. I tend to read threads on page 1 of forums. Threads that move off page 1 kinda get "lost and forgotten".

Regarding the question in THIS thread... It might have gotten answered if the user stuck around and bumped his thread, but that's the guy's VERY LAST POST. He hasn't posted since.

[dax]

It's no biggie.  I apologize if I was being overly provacative there.

Right now I'm very frustrated with my setup.  I've gone through a half-dozen front ends and nothing seems to work right.  I've re-installed the display drivers at least 150 times... things just behave crazy.  I've wiped the whole system and started fresh.  I'm really frazzled.  I'm not happy with the ArcadeVGA card and I can't find a front end that works right, or isn't anti-intuitive.

Last night I yelled at my girlfriend because after 6 hours, I got AOS working well, and she wanted to play Tetris so we fired it up and it worked perfectly - the display looked great.  Then after she finished playing and I went to re-run AOS, the next time Tetris was sideways!  I was asking her what she did; what she pressed, 'cause I had just twiddled everything for several hours to make it work and I was praying it would stay that way... sigh... This is driving me nuts.

I just started playing with MameWah and I have a very ominous feeling about this software as well... as a software developer, I get kind of depressed when I see some of the stuff that's out here and how problemmatic or badly documented it is.

It looks like the AVGA card is pretty nice, but it also looks like it's not the most reliable thing under Windows98.  I can't tell where the problems are, with the drivers, or the FE software or the Mame version... one second things work perfectly, the next the display mode is either flickering, off, or sideways.  It's slowly driving me insane and I just can't figure out why or how things are so chaotic.  So please pardon me if I am taking any of this frustration out on others.

One thing I think that is plaguing me (aside from bugs in the AVGA Win98 drivers) has to do with which versions of mame are reading which config files, and which front ends use separate config files for game options, and where do I tweak this stuff.... the AVGA program that auto-generates resolution data crashes under Win98, but if I knew what the hell the program did, I could run it on another PC and copy the files over to the Win98 machine, but nobody seems to know what these programs do or what files they read where... it's very confusing.

I am messing around with several different versions of Mame trying to find something that works.  It's really amazing how each front end has a totally new and unique way of obfusciating simple configuration information...

[RayB]

Your symptoms are very unusual. So much so I am tempted to say you have faulty hardware somewhere. Either faulty harddrive or memory. Do a full ScanDisk with surface test. Run a memory test. Do all this with a regular PC video card.


For me, I did things in steps, so that way trouble shooting is easier. These are the steps I took:

1. I did a fresh install of Win98 SE (Second Edition!) and had the drive re-formatted in the process.

2. Installed whatever drivers Win98 needed for my regular video card (Nvidia Geforce4), sound card, etc. (Note above that I used Second Edition. Its well known that Win98 prior to SE was BUGGGY).

3. Once Win was working normally, I tried out a couple versions of MAME and got them working. (No front end at this point!--Get the main software running correctly!).

3B. I went through some headaches too. I don't want to make it seem like problems are non-existent. I tried to use AdvanceMAME and gave up. But I got DOS MAME 0.78 working and configured like I like it.

4. Tried some FE's and finally settled on GameLauncher due to it being DOS and simple and easy to set up.

5. I created game lists and rebuilt ROM sets for 0.78.

6. Had soundcard issues. Worked those out.

7. Now that everything was working corectly, the LAST step was switching to an arcade monitor with AVGA card. It was as simple as uninstalling my curent vid card drivers. Installed the AVGA card. Hooked up the arcade monitor. Booted and ... it worked "out of the box".

8. Windows booted up and detected the card but I hit CANCEL instead of installing the drivers. Why? Cuz it said I needed DirectX 8. Win98 SE comes with Direct X 6 or 7. So I just cancelled. Kept the desktop at something like 640x480 with low colors. Didn't matter in the end because DOS MAME works flawlessly without Win drivers.

9. Configured Windows bootup so it would go straight into DOS mode.

That's it!

Your symptoms are totally weird. Problems that occur only some of the times, or configurations changing on you sounds like "corruption" of some sort. Files on the drive, or data in memory.

[dax]

Good advice there... I was just hoping to keep windows working without making this a dos only machine but that's may be what I end up doing. 

How do you "rebuild ROM sets" for a particular version?

[brophog]

And FYI, you want CLRMame Pro to resolve any issues with rom sets different than Mame verisions.

It comes with documentation.

[Hoopz]

How do you "rebuild ROM sets" for a particular version?

CLRMame Pro.  Follow the link in my previous post to it. 

And like Brophog said, it comes with documentation.

And like Rayb says, start basic and build from there.   Worst case may be to use command line Mame or Mame32 to make sure you have the structure in place, then move to a frontend.  Building my cabinet, getting the pc working properly and setting up my CP took about 3 weeks.  Working out the software side and tweaking to make it "perfect" is an ongoing process.  Let the FE come last because that seems to be causing the most frustration. 

And when you get stuck, ask a few questions in the right forum (and search) while being patient.  Don't use the same thread for different topics.  People want to help.  But you need to make it easy for them to find your questions easily. 

And post pics so we can learn from you too.  And continue to blame your girlfriend.  We dont mind!