Networking Mame

[jlfreund]

Has anyone ever discussed networking two MAME boxes together?  For example, me and my buddy each built the same 2 player cabinet. 

I would think it shouldn't be too hard to get MAME to support any number of players networked from any number of arcade machines.  Basically instead of just feeding MAME the input from the local control panel, some external networking software could feed events from another machine on the network. 

Of course the various machines would have to reserve their own private key spaces so as to not conflict, and I'm not sure how easy it would be to handle analog input, etc.

I would guess that because MAME uses heavy internal software synchronization of various processing units to an internal clock that it doesn't really matter what kind of hardware each box runs on.  As long as MAME can synchronize with the other machine one time, the exact time the two machines start running the game, they will stay in sync with each other forever, right?

-Jason

[PsychoAU]

The idea is already implemented with SNES and N64 emulators (at the least), so it would be possible for mame.  Someone just has to sit down and do it.

[Zero_Hour]

Don't know that it is exactly what you are looking for, but check out:
http://www.kaillera.com/forums/

It's designed for internet play, but may work for you.

I haven't messed about with it in several years, but apparently there are newer builds of Mame32 Plus! Plus!(including .116) that support Kailera. There was also a message on those forums from June 15, 07, claiming that a major revision would be coming in 3-4 months. I have no idea what that means and the message really didn't elaborate.