PowerMAME - feature or foolishness?

[MikeQ]

I had an idea for a feature and want to see what people think.

What if you started a game (say asteroids).  And each button flashed one at a time synced to this: demo

Let me know.  Don't know if this is too gimicky.

[Crazy_Mack]

It's a nice idea.

To build on that idea, you might wish to have an option that would allow someone to program a "help" button, that can be pushed at any time to trigger that help feature.

[Farmboy90]

I say no.

But this does bring up a question I was going to post in the other PowerMAME thread.....

I think a lot of these "ideas" are subjective.  For me, I just want to make PowerMAME a build that makes cabinet play more user friendly.  But I would like them optional.

In other words, if you implement the above feature I would add a parameter to the ini file so people to turn it off or on.

A lot of the powermame features should be done in this manner in my opinion.

[quarterback]

I don't know if it's too "gimmicky" or not, but are you thinking about similar things for every game or was this just an asteroids thing?

[MikeQ]

I don't know if it's too "gimmicky" or not, but are you thinking about similar things for every game or was this just an asteroids thing?

It would be done for all games.  Asteroids was just an example.  The spoken name would depend on the button name in controls.dat.  So for Gauntlet it would say up,down,left,right, magic, fire.

[MikeQ]

I say no.

But this does bring up a question I was going to post in the other PowerMAME thread.....

I think a lot of these "ideas" are subjective.  For me, I just want to make PowerMAME a build that makes cabinet play more user friendly.  But I would like them optional.

In other words, if you implement the above feature I would add a parameter to the ini file so people to turn it off or on.

A lot of the powermame features should be done in this manner in my opinion.

So far, all PowerMAME options are configurable.  I wouldn't force any feature to be on all the time. 

[MikeQ]

It's a nice idea.

To build on that idea, you might wish to have an option that would allow someone to program a "help" button, that can be pushed at any time to trigger that help feature.

I thought about this too.  I thought that if you hit pause, it would either go through the sequence again or allow you to push buttons and it would tell you what they did.

[Farmboy90]

Hold on...  I will try to integrate Buddabing's "display image when paused" technique for PowerMAME.  Then you could just show an image of the CP when pause was pushed.

However the "push button when paused to find out what a button does technique" is neat too.

MikeQ, while I am in that code tinkering with things I will look into this option as well.  Stay tuned.  Give me a couple weeks though as I will be on vacation for a few days.

[mahuti]

Pretty cool.

[MYX]

Hey Mike, when you were in pause, could it call up a LWA and have it's own pause "attract sequence"?

I like the idea of pressing pause and a display of the buttons used for that game comes up.

[MikeQ]

Hey Mike, when you were in pause, could it call up a LWA and have it's own pause "attract sequence"?

I like the idea of pressing pause and a display of the buttons used for that game comes up.

Release 104.1 already does this.  If you are running PowerMAME32, you will see the same "attract sequence" as in the menus.    If your are running normal PowerMAME, you can define a sequence for pause.

[MikeQ]

Hold on...  I will try to integrate Buddabing's "display image when paused" technique for PowerMAME.  Then you could just show an image of the CP when pause was pushed.

However the "push button when paused to find out what a button does technique" is neat too.

MikeQ, while I am in that code tinkering with things I will look into this option as well.  Stay tuned.  Give me a couple weeks though as I will be on vacation for a few days.

Sounds good.

[shags]

MikeQ, i think it is a great idea.... especially the pause/what button is this. 


thanks...

[Tiger-Heli]

Hold on...  I will try to integrate Buddabing's "display image when paused" technique for PowerMAME.  Then you could just show an image of the CP when pause was pushed.

However the "push button when paused to find out what a button does technique" is neat too.

MikeQ, while I am in that code tinkering with things I will look into this option as well.  Stay tuned.  Give me a couple weeks though as I will be on vacation for a few days.

While you are at it, could you also maybe add an option to call Johnny5 when paused rather than displaying a static image.

See http://www.mameworld.net/tigerheli and my link to Johnny5 if MW ever comes back up, if you don't know what I mean . . .

This should eliminate the timing synch issues that Howard C is having with the AutoHotKey script.  He didn't want to have to incorporate it into a custom build, but since we are making one anyway . . .

[AllisterFiend]

While you are at it, could you also maybe add an option to call Johnny5 when paused rather than displaying a static image.

See http://www.mameworld.net/tigerheli and my link to Johnny5 if MW ever comes back up, if you don't know what I mean . . .

This should eliminate the timing synch issues that Howard C is having with the AutoHotKey script.  He didn't want to have to incorporate it into a custom build, but since we are making one anyway . . .

This is the feature I like the most, but instead of having it just do Johnny5, could it be set up in a way to let the user define what program he would like to be called up.

For instance, I have a cabinet that only has about 60 games on it.  I also have about 60 .jpg files with what controls do what for each game (they are named the same as the roms files).  I would like to be able to pause my game and have it call a simple graphic viewer that displays in 1024x768 the .jpg of the controls.

Also, maybe have something that is definable by the user to let them choose whether or not when mame is paused if it instantly goes to the program they define or if they want to press a different key after mame is paused and then have it go to the program the want.  After pressing that key again, it would go back to mame in it's paused state and you would have to press 'P' to have the game continue.  For example on my cabinet when you press 'p' to pause the game and then if I want I can press another key I named 'View Controls' and then it displays a .jpg which has what controls do what on the game you are playing.  I then press the 'View Controls' button again and you are brought back to the paused mame game, then I press 'p' again and the game continues where you left off.

This might help
http://www.mameworld.net/tigerheli/johnny/ahk_th.htm

Tiger-Heli brought up a good reason for this particular setup in previous discussions about this feature.  If you pause the game and it immediately brings up an external viewer and your happen to be away from the game for an extended period of time you would not want to come back to the game and start it up again and have it immediately go back into the game as there is a good chance you forgot what was going on and you would not have a plan of action when it started.  But if you can see your player and see what situation he is in you could have some sort of plan when you press the button to continue playing.

I hope all this was clear, if not just let me know and I will try to explain it better.

Thank You,

Allister Fiend

[Tiger-Heli]

This is the feature I like the most, but instead of having it just do Johnny5, could it be set up in a way to let the user define what program he would like to be called up.

This option would at the very least have to have the path to Johnny 5 specified, so I think it would be easy to set it up so that it just needed a path to an .exe an the parameters to pass to it (fixed or variable (for instance romname, drivername, etc).

For instance, I have a cabinet that only has about 60 games on it.  I also have about 60 .jpg files with what controls do what for each game (they are named the same as the roms files).  I would like to be able to pause my game and have it call a simple graphic viewer that displays in 1024x768 the .jpg of the controls.

Basically, that's what BuddaMAME's feature that Farmboy mentioned does now, but I could see advantages (both in display and in ease of setting the options in MAME) for a universal option to call Irfanview or a graphics viewer.

Also, maybe have something that is definable by the user to let them choose whether or not when mame is paused if it instantly goes to the program they define or if they want to press a different key after mame is paused and then have it go to the program the want.  After pressing that key again, it would go back to mame in it's paused state and you would have to press 'P' to have the game continue.  For example on my cabinet when you press 'p' to pause the game and then if I want I can press another key I named 'View Controls' and then it displays a .jpg which has what controls do what on the game you are playing.  I then press the 'View Controls' button again and you are brought back to the paused mame game, then I press 'p' again and the game continues where you left off.

Another possible way to set this up would be to have the first press of the P key pause MAME normally, the second press display the image, the third press cancel the display, and the fourth press resume the game.  (The drawback would be you would have to cycle through launching and closing the image viewer if you were just taking a quick pause to talk to someone.)  Then again, it's possble the code could be set up so that if you set Pause and View Controls to the same value it would work this way. . .

[AllisterFiend]

Basically, that's what BuddaMAME's feature that Farmboy mentioned does now, but I could see advantages (both in display and in ease of setting the options in MAME) for a universal option to call Irfanview or a graphics viewer.

I'm not that familiar with BuddaMAME's feature (I will have to look into it).

My biggest concern is that when it displays the .jpg/.png of the controls you can have a fixed resolution, like in my case, 1024x768, as all my pictures are in that resolution.  I remember reading a while back that if things were done through mame you were stuck in the resolution of the game mame was playing (224x256).

It does not even matter to me what viewer is used as long as it can display .jpg/.png images at a resolution of ones choosing in full screen view.

Allister Fiend

[Tiger-Heli]

My biggest concern is that when it displays the .jpg/.png of the controls you can have a fixed resolution, like in my case, 1024x768, as all my pictures are in that resolution.  I remember reading a while back that if things were done through mame you were stuck in the resolution of the game mame was playing (224x256).

BuddaMAME has you stuck basically at the resolution of the game MAME was playing (not quite accurate, but that's the idea).  However, if we are modifying MAME we might be able to have it switch to a specified or the desktop resolution when paused, although apparently BuddaBing couldn't figure out how to, so maybe not. . .

[Kremmit]

Maybe Pause should just trigger a batch file.  Users could run any apps they might want, and go back to the game whenever they exit the batch file. 

Users could even create custom "Pause Menus" to run inside the batch file.  "Johnny 5"  "History.Dat"  "High Scores"  "Tips & Tricks" etc. 

There's really no limit to this approach- Want to call up a .jpg of the Pac-Man pattern you're trying to learn during game play?  Allow the default "pause.bat" to be superseded by "Pac-Man_pause.bat", and have links to the patterns in "Pac-Man_pause.bat".

Another upside to this approach, is that other, non-PowerMAME coders can work on pause menus, freeing up MikeQ's time, and allowing people who can't code C, but can write a batch file, to contribute.

[Tiger-Heli]

I think you need a separate key to trigger the batch file, and/or two presses of pause, but otherwise this could work - See AllisterFiend's comments above regarding extended paused problems.

[AllisterFiend]

While we are on the subject of MAME calling other programs...

Howard Castro and a few other people were working (thinking) on a way to have MAME or maybe it was the frontend launch programs on a second display.

I was thinking about adding a second screen (if anyone ever came out with a program that could do it) on top of my cabinet (LCD maybe) like they used to do on the more popular games so others could see someone playing the game from a distance.

Instead you could have it show the controls layout or even what Kremmit was talking about.  You could have it show what you want on the second display (Johnny 5, History.dat, High Scores, a .jpg of the controls layout, etc...)

Just something else for others to think about.


Allister Fiend

[mccoy178]

The dual monitor support would be excellent.  I would love to have the ability for mame to call the johnny5 file for that game.  I guess some of this would be a powermame thing, but it would instead be more of an outside application to work with other emulators.

[Howard_Casto]

Actually it's not a power mame thing or a mame thing for that matter.

Dualie will be a resident program, able to automatically detect the running game and bring up the correct information for any emulator that "broadcasts" the game name in some way (can be as simple as the window caption). 

Development halted as I couldn't get the psone vga hack to work well on my spare rage 128.  I have a matrox in the mail though so hopefully I can get the secondary display mounted soon and I can get to coding. 

[mccoy178]