Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum

Main => Software Forum => Topic started by: noapparentfunction on October 01, 2013, 08:34:53 pm

Title: Twitter-Enabled Cabinet?
Post by: noapparentfunction on October 01, 2013, 08:34:53 pm
Hey guys, I came up with an idea the other day and was seeing if there was any advice to be given. My arcade cabinet is fairly popular with my friends and roommates so I wanted the arcade to be able to send a tweet whenever it was started, and whenever a game was launched.

It's easy enough to rig the first part because there are command-line executables that can automatically send an email with a pre-written message to a Twitter account set to post by e-mail. However the difficult part is to get a script (or even a frontend like Mamewah) to read any logfiles and extract the name of the ROM just launched, put it into a script, and send that as an e-mail. If i got this working I'd have it tweet something like "[Super Metroid] for [SNES] is being played!". I know it's marginally useless but I guess that's half the fun, right?
Title: Re: Twitter-Enabled Cabinet?
Post by: BadMouth on October 02, 2013, 09:13:40 am
First thing you need is a front end that will pass along variables to a batch file or autohotkey script.

Mala does this.  %1 is the name of the rom.
It's only going to be the rom name though, not game name.

That's about as much info as I can give.
Title: Re: Twitter-Enabled Cabinet?
Post by: Alistair Keith on October 07, 2013, 09:45:40 am
You can probably create a php app that uses a database (MySQL) which matches up the rom name to the game name. And then use the .bat file to send the information over to that app which then sends the email.

Sounds round-about but there are easy to install mini-webservers like XAMMP