So I've got this Cyberball cabinet... (dual monitors & MAME)

[driph]

[At this point, this is purely speculation and rumination]

I own a fairly beat up dual-screen Cyberball cabinet, and have been considering the idea of turning it into a MAME cab for several years. Has anyone done something similar? I've spent more time than I'd like to admit over the last week or two catching up on the boards, and as yet I haven't come across any dual screen/vs cabinets.

Now the only way to make this worth it would be to allow players to game with or versus each other on the two monitors. Either by mirroring, supporting dual monitor games(ie how Cyberball works), or LAN vs play via two MAME boxes. Independant play on either monitor could be a nice secondary benefit, as well.

I've seen mentions of MAME branches with dual monitor support, and I've seen a couple dead-in-the-water network support projects, but there's nothing up to date or in current development that I'm aware of.

Still, there are a ton of possibilities for a cabinet of this design, and I think it'd be a hell of a project.

Any suggestions or recommendations?

[dmsuchy]

I would rotate one monitor and have a verticle and horizontal cab all in one.

[ahofle]

Wow, that would be cool to have two monitors and two control panels hooked up to the same MAME machine.  I'm not sure how you'd be able to have the monitors showing independently of each other (different games of different views of the same game) unless you just had two networked computers inside.  Let us know what you end up doing.

[RayB]

Tough choice. What's your budget? Obviously two computers = more costly. (Two computers, two keyboard encoders, two ArcadeVGA cards...)

For simplicity the mirroring the same image to both monitors sounds cool enough. You get room to have a wide variety of controls without a frankenpanel, and as stated already, one monitor could be vertical.

Only down side to that (one monitor rotated) is you couldn't have VS play on seperate screens.

[driph]

I wouldnt have a problem building two PCs for the cab..figure it'd be worth the extra money for a better gaming experience.

I'd love to have the option of two screen vs play, if only to at least keep the original functionality of the Cyberball cabinet. I'm guessing that would require dual monitor support within MAME so it pushes the two monitor images across both monitors(rather than squishing both views into one monitor as I believe it does now).

I'm not sure how the hacked netplay versions solved the dual screen issue..

[Kremmit]

You could run a vertical + horizontal setup off of one computer with a KVM switch.

For multi-monitor games, I believe somebody did it with a two-screen Punch Out! cab. using Windows Extended Desktop (or whatever Microsoft calls it) to spread MAME's picture across two monitors.  That setup would also let you play 4-player games, two guys per screen.  Or two player games, each with his own screen.  Handy if you've got fat friends.

How much space is there inside that thing- ambitious enough to go for a rotating monitor?  You'd only need to do it on one side, and you'd get the best of both worlds.

Or, (and here's what I want do do someday) if you want to go for two computers, you could wire both sides as a standalone machine, but also wire the Player2 side through a KVM switch that would switch the video and controls over to the Player1 PC.  Then both sides could be running totally different games, except when you want to play a 4-player or multi-monitor game- then you just shut down the Player2 PC, and switch the KVM and you're good to go.  Add ope rotating monitor and you've got everything.

Or, you could put a TV in the P2 side, and hook up your PS2, Xbox, ColecoVision, DVD, etc.

Or, you could put a vector monitor and a ZVG unit in the P2 side.

Or, ...


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Edit:

Found the dual-monitor Punch Out thread:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=41788.0

Looks like dude didn't actually do it.  But it appears it could be done with VGA capable (WG D9200, Betson MultiSync) monitors and a modern dual-display video card pretty easily.

[RayB]

When I was speaking of VS play, I was referring to just sending the exact same image to both monitors. Street Fighter 2 for example, each player would have their own monitor.

For games that were multiscreen to begin with, with slightly different visuals for each player (like Cyberball), well, there are so few of these games that I would think it's not worth it.

[driph]

When I was speaking of VS play, I was referring to just sending the exact same image to both monitors. Street Fighter 2 for example, each player would have their own monitor.

Yeah, that's most likely the way I'd handle it, too. For mirrored gameplay, probably something like players 1 & 3 on the first control panel, players 2 & 4 on the second.

For games that were multiscreen to begin with, with slightly different visuals for each player (like Cyberball), well, there are so few of these games that I would think it's not worth it.

Agreed, but it'd be nice to retain something similar to the original functionality of the Cyberball cabinet if at all possible.

[SithMaster]

maybe find a game that is made for windows that you could play with to people.  not really arcade but maybe tie fighter academy or something similar.  for kicks have chess.

[driph]

Took a look inside the cabinet, both monitors are Model 20-Z2AW, with a manufacture date of 1984, marked with a Nintendo address. From what I've read, I'm guessing those are the Sanyos that some Cyberball cabinets had instead of WG monitors.

Not sure if I want to keep those in it, or go with something else. I'd hate to have everything set up and running only to have a 20 year old monitor finally crap out.

[Crowquill]

Can't find the thread right now, but not long ago someone was talking about their Nintendo Vs. Cabinet and it was mentioned that displaying different images on the monitors might be a problem due to how close the monitor yokes were. Cyberball's a bigger cab though, so it might not be a problem.

The more I think about it though, Cyberball actually DID display two different images originally (the Vs cabinets showed the same thing) so it shouldn't be a problem. Carry on...never mind me.

[driph]

Can't find the thread right now, but not long ago someone was talking about their Nintendo Vs. Cabinet and it was mentioned that displaying different images on the monitors might be a problem due to how close the monitor yokes were. Cyberball's a bigger cab though, so it might not be a problem.

The more I think about it though, Cyberball actually DID display two different images originally (the Vs cabinets showed the same thing) so it shouldn't be a problem. Carry on...never mind me.

Heh, yeah, two different images. One interesting aside, at least as far as I can tell, is that it appears that one of the two monitors is mounted upside down, although that could just be the orientation of the junk hanging off the back.

I found that old Nintendo VS cab discussion when I was searching my head off trying to find prior art on this sort of project. Unfortuntely I still havent found evidence of anyone bringing a dual-screen vs style cabinet to fruition. The idea is really starting to grow on me.

[driph]

Hmm, from the lack of specific responses or examples, I'm guessing this hasn't been done before. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing. 

So far, it doesnt look like I'd be able to retain Cyberball vs gameplay functionality within MAME.

I see enough of the 4-player Cyberball cabs selling that I wouldn't be too worried about converting it, especially with the current condition of my cabinet. On the other hand, I'm not going to drastically tear into it(aside from wood restoration aspects), either.



Should I be worried about display longevity, and look at replacing the 20-Z2AW monitors? (personally, as long as games display fairly accurately, I have no problem going with something other than arcade monitors, especially as I'm assuming that'd increase my usage options).

[Kremmit]

Why worry about longevity?  If you replace them now, you're out the cost of two monitors now.  If you wait and replace them if/when they break, you're out the cost of one monitor if/when the first one breaks, and the cost of one monitor sometime later if/when the 2nd one breaks.

I'd only replace them now if you want to swap in PC monitors, TVs, or multi-res arcade monitors, to make it easier to try the multi-screen thing with a standard video card and one PC.

[driph]

I'd only replace them now if you want to swap in PC monitors, TVs, or multi-res arcade monitors, to make it easier to try the multi-screen thing with a standard video card and one PC.

I think I'll replace them with something with the capability of displaying higher resolutions. What kind of displays, I dunno, I'm still reading on the pluses and minuses.

[driph]

Did a bit more digging around. From a TwinGalaxies discussion on Punch Out, I found an interesting thread where they talk about dual monitor games and MAME.

Here are the related bits:

TW, something cool that I recently found out while asking around at the MAME forum:

My question was this:

Punch-Out!! and Super Punch-Out!! had dual monitors in the arcade with the gameplay on the bottom monitor and the damage meter and other game information on the top monitor. In MAME this is of course combined into one image. Is there any way to split it back up into two monitors assuming you have a machine with two video cards and two monitors?

After much speculation, debate and flat-out "no" responses, someone suggested that a dual head card such as the GeForce 5700 series could do that with the special drivers that accompany the card. One of them offered to try it out and this was his response:

Hi,

As promised, here are the results of my experiment with 2 monitors and Punchout! at your request.

Equipment: GeForce 5700 with dual monitor output, 2 monitors of course.

Drivers; latest Nvidia driver along with Nview monitor utility also provided by Nvidia at no charge.

MAME32 for Windows v0.85, Punchout! ROM set

Directions: configure the NView utlity to use your monitors in a "vertical span" configuration. This has the effect of taking two monitors that are for example running at 1024x768 and creating one virtual monitor running at 1024x1536. As far as the video driver is concerned, this becomes one of several new video modes available to choose from. MAME32 sees the same video modes the Nvidia driver is making available to the OS, so for Punchout, I chose a full-screen mode, 1024x1536 resolution. The results look fantastic and quite frankly, I'm amazed it works so incredibly well.

Since it sounds like you're a huge Punchout! fan, you will probably be quite happy with this configuration.

Cheers!

He also said:

Hi again,

I was fooling around with the NView utility and found something potentially very useful. If you're planning on using your desktop PC as your Punchout! platform in addition to using it as a productivity PC, the Vertical Span mode won't be very useful to you much of the time compared to Dual Display mode. The NView utility will allow you to set up the monitors the way you like, then save that configuration as a profile. I called my profile "Windows Productivity." Then I set up the monitors in the Vertical Span mode and saved another profile, calling it "Punchout!" I went from one profile to the other quite easily and with way less effort than would be the case if I did it manually each time.

Anyway, enjoy! I could actually see buying a defunct Punchout! machine and dropping in a cheap motherboard along with this video card and a pair of low-end VGA CRTs to make the machine infinitely more reliable than it probably was before. I wonder how my wife would feel about that...

So basically, with the right hardware and possibly a little scripting, I'm thinking this is entirely doable.

Standard games would be mirrored, and dual monitor versus games(however few there may be) would be spanned across the two monitors. Basic Cyberball functionality retained while enabling MAME usage as well.   

[Kremmit]

That's the same info that was in the thread I linked to a few posts up.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=41788.0

[driph]

Ah, hell, and I thought I'd found something new.

[Kremmit]

Just off the top of my head:

Punch Out
Super Punch Out
Playchoice 10 (was there anything that matters on the 2nd screen?
Run & Gun
Cyberball
Cyberball 2072
Tournament Cyberball 2072
Cybersled
lots of recent-year driving games that aren't emulated yet
6 player X-Men

That's all I can think of..

[dfmaverick]

Just off the top of my head:

Punch Out
Super Punch Out
Playchoice 10 (was there anything that matters on the 2nd screen?
Run & Gun
Cyberball
Cyberball 2072
Tournament Cyberball 2072
Cybersled
lots of recent-year driving games that aren't emulated yet
6 player X-Men

That's all I can think of..

vs. baseball
vs. tennis
et al