Sorry man, I was reading it backwards.
What I'm talking about is here in network.cpp:
virtual void notify(const char *outname, INT32 value) override { m_server->send_to_all((const uint8_t*)outname, strlen(outname)); }
So let me re-phrase that. The original function is given the name and value, but the override just sends the value.
Now if you look at console.cpp the notify function is like this:
virtual void notify(const char *outname, INT32 value) override { osd_printf_info("%s = %d\n", ((outname==nullptr) ? "none" : outname), value); }
So in this one the name and value are formatted and sent along to the console output as a string.
Yeah I'm using winsock as well btw... it's just easier, but I'm unsure if bytes received can be influenced by the variable type and the data.
I thought originally that we had to poll mame to get the value, but afaict there aren't any functions to receive data.