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Nice job so far, Ond!

I have started re-vamping and updating my cabinet.  Inevitably I thought about this project.  I don't have the time for this, but I thought about how I would change it for the modern day.

First, has this been moved anywhere else?  Is the data still used somewhere?  Is there an alternative?  Do I even need to spend any time on this?  Does mame even provide control information anymore and in a usable format?  I know when I stopped working on this is was because mame provided control information but ina  difficult to use format.

As I am looking at how I change my cabinet and update it to modern times I would like to indicate the controls of a game. Tech has changed quite a bit since I stopped working on this project . Nowadays if you were to provide a physical file it would be in the JSON format.  Though the real modern way, if you have the bandwidth, is to create an API that others can call.

Here's what I would do for my cabinet.  I would embed a small USB monitor into the bezel and that would display control information.  I would not light up the controls on the control panel for several reasons.  One of the main reasons is with a mini-display I could label the buttons like jump, punch, shoot, etc...  One of the issues back in the day was though you could light up which buttons the game uses you couldn't label them.  For my cabinet, if you have seen it you know I have a shelf in front of the monitor.  I would actually embed the mini display in that. 

AI code development is pretty crazy these days.  I honestly think AI will replace my job in the next 2 - 5 years.  BUT, I could use AI to take the data from this project and convert it to what is needed for a revamp.  Maybe even write an API for it.

So, has anyone done any work similar to this yet?  Has someone else already put the time in to do something better?

It looks like someone started to get Crusn USA Mame linked. It’s a work in progress but that is great news. This and the R San Francisco Rush project is awesome. I wonder if gpt5 will help when it comes out help speed up the development time on linking these.


https://youtu.be/HrLVG2da8MU?si=fffa24NnFI7RRA27

I have a build 2022.10 of GroovyArcade installed on my KI cabinet, and it works great. However all the P1+direction hotkeys are being up MAME on screen menus. So my kids are always screwing up the settings. I want to disable hotkeys.

I cannot for the life of me find where this is defined at, I’ve been scouring the config files, and google is getting me nowhere.

On my Pi setups, it’s in the boot scripts.

Please help me, I’m going crazy haha


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Zexion

Steam

Native resolution is 320x224. It works perfectly.

Awesome metroid-like game.

Great write up on this mod including pics and diagrams Zeb. I had a similar problem with overscan in screen geometry and got myself a One For All universal remote. Once I found the code for the TV model I could adjust all the parameters needed.

Thanks Ond!

Yeah, I've encountered overscan issues with almost every CRT TV-cum-arcade monitor I've ever worked with. It can usually be reduced/removed/tweaked/improved/minimised via service menu or even pots to get a good picture with little or no cutoff. Usually. Sometimes I need to tweak the CRT_emulator settings a bit to get it all fitting in.

There are also one or two hardware tricks too. For example, adjusting width by changing a certain the big "brownie pillow" poly capacitors near the width coil to a different (but close) value (usually looking at values like 384, 474, 564, 684 ((0.38uF to 0.68uF). Just got to find the right cap lol.

The China TVs (earlier modding thread) are designed for second hand CRTs, and come with several different width coil connections to make it a bit easier. However, none of these hardware tricks don't do anything to help centre the image.

Anyway, yes, universal remote is probably the way to go. I imagine it'd work with my TV - this TCL brand is a budget one right out of China, so pretty common.

I messaged him & he pointed me to the ROMs. I'm just super busy, & this is a low priority, so I'm not sure when I'll get to putting it on my old MAME cab. You'll probably win.

Thanks

Yeah that has been suggested by gpt. Tried AHK as well. Sure there is workarounds but I was hoping there is a straight mame solution.
 

If this cpu can't play it, the game needs optimization. This is why I bought the CPU haha

Great write up on this mod including pics and diagrams Zeb. I had a similar problem with overscan in screen geometry and got myself a One For All universal remote. Once I found the code for the TV model I could adjust all the parameters needed.