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Building 2x bartop cabinets (Second cabinet complete!!!)

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punxrus:
I can't wait! Your thread really inspired me to get my project started! Early congrats on #2!

dmworking247:
At last, The Alien Bartop is Revealed!

dmworking247:

--- Quote from: leapinlew on November 17, 2007, 08:03:08 pm ---
--- Quote from: dmworking247 on November 17, 2007, 07:02:55 pm ---If I go with a 19" screen, remember that I don't HAVE to rotate to vertical to play a vertical game... no more than they HAVE to remove the 8-way/6-button joystick and install the 4-way/3-button panel.  I'd reserve changing it around for when you want to have a 'serious' game of pacman/frogger/1942 etc, and leave the 'kids' with whatever setup its on at the time.

--- End quote ---

How would you accomplish this software wise? Meaning - how would the computer know if the LCD was oriented vertically or horizontally? Heres the situation: your playing a game of Joust and the monitor is horizontal, now you want to play a game of Joust 2 which is vertical. Lets say you didn't want to rotate the monitor, and played a vertical game on a horizontal monitor. Now, lets imagine you wanted to get "serious" with Joust 2 and play in the proper orientation. You flip the monitor (either manually or electronically) - how would you then tell the system to change it's resolution?

Personally, I like 17" or smaller displays for bartops. I even made the LCD portion of my bartop smaller because I liked how it looked. It's all relative to the machine I guess. I've used 15's, 17's and 9" screens and they all look fine because the machines are proportioned properly.



--- End quote ---

leapinlew,

Hopefully the finished product ca now answer your question.



Towards the end of this video you can see a horizontal AND a vertical game being played with the monitor mounted horizontally, then vertically (ie there are 4 ways you can play it). MAME starts the game in whatever the orientation was of the monitor at the time, rather than the orientation of the game itself.

To achieve this I use a setting within Mala (the front end). Originally I had a setting in MAME.INI to automatically rotate the game to suit its original orientation, but that would mean you'd have to rotate the LCD to play it (too bad if you're lazy). Thus, the button that acts as P1-Credit in MAME acts as 'switch orientation in Mala', and I've enabled the option within Mala to launch MAME in the orientation matching the Mala layout (it edits the MAME.ini just before launching the game).

This way, I can play a horizontal game OR a vertical game on a vertical OR horizontal rotation of the screen (best of both worlds) which makes it great for me, whilst letting my little kids play without saying "Dad, can you rotate it for me".

I'm glad I didn't use a fixed orentiation, as that would have defeated the purpose of what I set out to achieve with this particular bartop.

By the way, I ended up using a decased 17" BenQ LCD. I could have possibly squeezed in a 19" but I totally agree with the comments that it'd be too big for a bartop.

leapinlew:
It turned out very nice. Good work!

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