led-wiz question

[buks]

Okay, so I'm waiting for a parcel to arrive from GGG in the states......... only ordered the stuff yesterday though

Anyway, I've got big plans to illuminate my CP and buttons and trackball. I was just wondering if (at present) what options I have regarding mame. I know theres Power MAME but is there any other versions out there that supports led-wiz ? And also what about other emus ? I use Daphne, SNES and Genesis emus (can't remember which SNES and Genesis emus though).

Also, can anyone explain how the attract sequences work PRIOR to running mame ? What I mean is, can you have an attract mode running while sat in the MAMEWah menus ? I've messed about with Power MAME32 and I can see the options in there for the attract menus but presumably they only kick in when running PM32 so MAMEWah won't pick them up ?

I know I should just wait till the stuff arrives and then have a play but i can't wait !!!!

Buks

[KillerArcades]

I just finished mine a few weeks ago, and had some of the same questions. Minwah answered them for me though in this post:

MAMEWAH and LED's

Hopefully that will help you out enough.

[buks]

SKondris,

Cheers mate - just what I needed. I really must learn to use the search ........

I'm going to search for the fe led software you mentioned as that will also be exactly what I need. I got powermame32 working last night in mamewah (even though everyone says to use the command line) but until I get the leds and stuff its all just playing

[KillerArcades]

I got powermame32 working last night in mamewah (even though everyone says to use the command line)

Well, if you're using a FE, like mamewah, then yeah, I have to ask why you're messing with the MAME32 version?

One other note about the LED's, and I don't mean to give you a downer, but last night I finally made the decision to drop powermame and go back to an older version of MAME that I have. In the end, no matter how I tried, too many games did not have the correct controls listed somehow , so I would get controls lighting up during games that really shouldn't have been, and some that should've been lit up, weren't even lit.

So, combining that with the fact that I ran into some trouble getting the 1.62b of mamewah to work consistently on my machine, I finally decided last night to simply have all my LED's light up all the time, instead of trying to get the animations all working and coming in and out of each emulator, etc. I just couldn't get it to work.

In the end, I'm sure it's nothing more than what should be expected in working with multiple beta version software apps, a bit too many bugs/variables than what my brain/computer system can apparently handle.....?

So, I wish you the best of luck, but in the end, I chose to drop the whole "animated LED's/dynamic control lighting" dream and am now just enjoying having all my lights on all the time. Still looks great (check out my blog: KillerArcadeMachine, but not quite the same as having things animated.

anyways, let us know how it goes for you once you get around to it, hopefully you'll have better luck than I did.

[buks]

SKondris,

I'm just messing with powermame32 rather than the command line version as I wanted to see what "extra" options have been added - a lot easier with a gui. Once I hook up the led-wiz etc I'll probably install the command line version.

Sorry to hear that you had problems - one thing I noticed the other night was I reconfigured the Asteroids controls to use buttons for left/right rather than the joystick and when I restarted Asteroids the CPViewer app showed the old key. Now this is probably something to do with controls.ini I think ? So I'm not sure how to get round this problem - will lthe lights reflect the new button changes or will they display the "defaults" ? I have zero knowledge of how mame/powermame/etc work but I presume its impossible for the software to interogate mame to see what controls are mapped ? I presume this is why controls.ini exist. I may be wrong but I think SirPoonga is involved in the creation of controls.ini so maybe he can shed some light ?

Even if I end up doing what you do its still a neat mod for a mame cab - although I spent twice as much money as I intended. Just don't tell the missus !

I'll post my findings when I get the stuff (GGG site says its shipped so should be next week !).

Cheers for taking the time to answer my queries.

Buks

[arzoo]

I presume its impossible for the software to interogate mame to see what controls are mapped ? I presume this is why controls.ini exist.

That's the primary reason to use PowerMame; it's a modified/recompiled version of mame. It will light the controls that are active during a game regardless of any defaults. If you remap a button while playing a game, the LED will also change. It does not use controls.ini. Plus, it has many other cool features!

[buks]

arzoo - hmmmm. Thats what I had hoped but SKondris has reported that some games don't light up the correct controls. I wonder what the problem is there then ?

SKondris - wow - just checked your blog. Excellent machine ! And its HUUUGE ! No wonder its called KillerArcadeMachine - it would definately kill if it fell on you ! Artwork and wiring is spot on. Not a massive fan of the two tiered CP but thats a personal preference. I presume you dont use the rgb leds and went for single colour leds ?

[KillerArcades]

I'm not trying to knock PowerMAME, I think MikeQ's done an excellent job, and it seems like there are people who aren't having the same problems I am, so it might just be something I'm doing wrong that I haven't figured out yet, but I can't get the controls to be accurate enough for it to be worth my time. The biggest deterrent for me was in trying to get the LED's to be do one thing while in my FE, and another thing while in PowerMAME, and then back to the first thing again in Mamewah when I come back out of PowerMAME. And then, on top of that, I've got 5 other emulators running through Mamewah, and I need a third app to get the lights working properly in those emulators (which that part I got working, but I ran into the same problems when trying to come back into Mamewah).

So, I gave up. In the end, my wife kept telling me she thought that the cabinet looked best with them all on, and I was starting to agree. I was liking the LED's better and better not as indicators of active controls, but simply as color-coded controls for each player in my control panel, etc.

As for the LED's themselves, yeah, I went for single color LED"s in order to have more control for animations with a single LEDWIZ with only 32 outputs. I have over 32 different buttons/balltop joysticks with LED's, so in order to control them each individually, I had to use only one output per button. And even with that, I still had to combine some buttons together. For example my six admin buttons across the very top of my control panel are on the same LEDWIZ output, so they just all turn on and off at once (different colors, but same ON/OFF switch). And both credit buttons are controlled together, etc..

Remember that with RGB LED's, you can control their color, but they take 3 outputs per LED set that you want to control, so you can only have 10 separate ON/OFF controls for RGB LED's, so you need either multiple LEDWIZ's (which I believe people have gotten to work now), or else you need to have your buttons in groups. Like all the P1 buttons controlled together, all the P2 buttons with the same settings, etc.

Ok, I'm just rambling now....