Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum

Main => Software Forum => Topic started by: rockhopper on November 25, 2003, 08:15:08 pm

Title: Vertical Frontends?
Post by: rockhopper on November 25, 2003, 08:15:08 pm
What good fe s are there for vertically oriented screens?
I know this has been discussed before, but I wanted to know what the outcome was, and the 'search' function doesn't work properly!

Is this going to be a future addition to MAMEWAH? (say yes please)

Cheers
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: EndTwist on November 25, 2003, 09:04:46 pm
Well...A few FE's can rotate to be vertical, but unfortunally, MAMEWAH can't. Most likely (I'm not Minwah, but I can make a good guess) it will not be done because the programming language he is making it in doesn't support something like that.

You could try a program called "Pivot Pro" (http://personalcomputing.portrait.com/us/downloads/). It works well, and rotates windows, so it can be used with MAMEWAH.
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: SirPoonga on November 25, 2003, 09:32:07 pm
Pivot is extremely slow.  Try getting a new ATI or nvidia card that support screen rotation in hardware.

AdvanceMenu and Gamelauncher rotate.
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: SirPeale on November 25, 2003, 09:36:24 pm
ArcadeOS rotates as well.
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: EndTwist on November 25, 2003, 09:51:38 pm
Pivot is extremely slow.  Try getting a new ATI or nvidia card that support screen rotation in hardware.

AdvanceMenu and Gamelauncher rotate.


What do you mean by slow? I was going to use that for my cab, but I didn't know it was "slow".
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: rockhopper on November 25, 2003, 10:04:03 pm
Yeah, i'm aware of pivot pro, just hoping there was a better alternative, might look at that video card option, thanks

Minwah, anychance of a vert. MAMEWAH?
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: chris_lemasters on November 25, 2003, 10:35:27 pm
Mr. Salty created a nice vertical skin for MameWah, so we're ready once the software is! <grin>

Count me in as eager for a vert MW!  The cocktail is begging for it!
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: )p( on November 26, 2003, 01:53:40 am
Also advance menu, emutron, the original cocktailfe and mine (3darcade) support rotation in the fe itself. With arcadeos I think that are currently all.

If you want to run mamewah vertically don't use pivor pro. But get a farely recent ati or nvidia card. They will support full hardware accelaration vertically. For nvidia cards from the first ti series onwards will be ok.

peter
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: dreamfreak on November 26, 2003, 06:30:34 am
hi,
I
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: Minwah on November 26, 2003, 07:09:24 am
Yeah, I'm sorry MAMEWAH can't rotate natively (and isn't likely to).

As suggested, try a video card which supports rotation (or PivotPro if it works OK for you), and then you can make a vertical layout :)
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: rockhopper on November 26, 2003, 05:16:22 pm
Thanks, guys I might look at 3darcade tonight..

I tried game launcher, and liked the basic layout, changed it to vertical and.....wrong way! I wanted it to rotate 90deg clockwise, but no luck!  Can't even turn the monitor the other way because of the fans in the cocktail I'm building...grrrr!

It will be finished one day, yes, one day!
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: mushmouth on November 26, 2003, 07:24:45 pm
Ah man, bummer... I had decided I was going to use Mamewah in my upright pac cab... :(

How much can I expect to pay for a video card that will allow hardware flipping?

[EDIT]-- Also, what do video cards call the feature that allows the flipping. I know nothing about monitors and video cards, so it'd be helpful to know what "spec" to look for in a product description so I know whether or not a card can do it.

Thought I was gonna get by with a trusty old Diamond Viper card... lol Silly me.
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: eightbit on November 27, 2003, 09:35:03 pm
Ah man, bummer... I had decided I was going to use Mamewah in my upright pac cab... :(

How much can I expect to pay for a video card that will allow hardware flipping?

[EDIT]-- Also, what do video cards call the feature that allows the flipping. I know nothing about monitors and video cards, so it'd be helpful to know what "spec" to look for in a product description so I know whether or not a card can do it.

Thought I was gonna get by with a trusty old Diamond Viper card... lol Silly me.
Newer ati cards, all the radeon series (as far as I know) support rotation. A 64mb 7500 can usually be found for under $35.
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: mushmouth on December 01, 2003, 05:16:05 pm
But what is the feature called?? I'm looking up specs on cards after looking on e-bay and I'm not seeing anything remotely close to "Hardware rotation" or "Hardware flipping" or "Screen rotation" or anything like that.

If it's not something that can be found in a spec sheet, has there ever been a list generated of cards that can do it? While "ATI or Nvidia ti and up" is kind of a clue, if you don't know anything about cards on the PC side, it doesn't give me much info to take with me on my search. Which ATI cards specifically?

If it were a spec you'd find in a feature list or spec sheet, it'd make life a lot easier? Is it?
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: )p( on December 01, 2003, 05:34:00 pm
-for nvidia cards hardware rotation at full speed works for geforce 3 cards of the ti series and later. so all geforce 4 and geforce fx cards are also ok.

peter
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: Serpent on December 01, 2003, 06:06:23 pm
I'd like to use my ArcadeVGA with rotation and MAME32. Although it works fine, games don't load when I set them to be displayed rotated. Any idea where's the problem?
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: paigeoliver on December 02, 2003, 05:20:21 am
Geforce 2MX has software rotation of windows in the newer drivers, that is an OLD card, and you should be able to buy it for nearly nothing. Works fine with Mame that way too. (You might have to futz with your Mame settings though.
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: Lilwolf on December 02, 2003, 08:43:03 am
ATI radeons can do it... I hear... I can't

I believe ATI can do it on XP and thats it.  I don't get the tab in 98se.

but now that there is an analog+ mame for XP that has multiple mice... I might move that machine back to XP at some point... and test my theory.

Anyway, with ATI you either have the tab or you don't.... And I haven't found the definative answer on why / how yet.
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: mushmouth on December 02, 2003, 10:57:32 am
Crap, that's right... There's also the matter of which OS you're allowed to use if you're rotating with the newer cards that allow display rotation. Almost forgot about that.

Maybe a better question is this: Is anyone here running Mamewah on a vertical monitor? If so, what OS are you running and what video card are you using and how are you setting it up? Just tell me that and that's what I'll buy. lol I just want this to be easy... Also, if anyone has pictures of what Mamewah looks like on a vertical monitor, it would be cool to see it in action.

Right now I only have 98SE. I'm going to have to buy new OS software too, aren't I?... *ugh*

Paige, define "futz with your mame settings"... How much futzing are you talking about?
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: Minwah on December 02, 2003, 02:09:21 pm
Crap, that's right... There's also the matter of which OS you're allowed to use if you're rotating with the newer cards that allow display rotation. Almost forgot about that.

Maybe a better question is this: Is anyone here running Mamewah on a vertical monitor? If so, what OS are you running and what video card are you using and how are you setting it up? Just tell me that and that's what I'll buy. lol I just want this to be easy... Also, if anyone has pictures of what Mamewah looks like on a vertical monitor, it would be cool to see it in action.

Right now I only have 98SE. I'm going to have to buy new OS software too, aren't I?... *ugh*

Paige, define "futz with your mame settings"... How much futzing are you talking about?

Well I have tried MAMEWAH rotated using PivotPro, and also using hardware rotation of my ATi Radeon (on an Athlon 1.4Ghz).  Although I have only used these briefly, I do seem to remember that both ways worked just fine.  When I tried PivotPro, I do not recall speed being an issue for MAMEWAH.

I must add that a) I force MAME to use a resolution using MAME.INI (I *think* this makes Windows not rotated when MAME is launched, so no performance loss), and b) I only used this setup BRIEFLY.

I suppose I would suggest try PivotPro (and state resolutions for MAME).  If that is not good enough then borrow(/steal!) a Radeon to try.  I honestly don't know what OS's the rotational features are limited to tho.

EDIT: I can try my Radeon with XP again if you like, but I guess you really need to know if will work with '98, which I can't try :(
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: Serpent on December 02, 2003, 04:21:44 pm
Do you have the same problems that I find with Pivot Pro?: many res modes previoulsy available are no longer there when the program is installed, and the mouse cursor orientation is not always correct when the screen is rotated.
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: EndTwist on December 02, 2003, 04:33:59 pm
Never had that problem on my machine (98). Also, I don't know if you want to wait, but I am trying to build a vertical FE kinda like MAMEWAH. It might be a little while though.
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: rockhopper on December 02, 2003, 05:04:07 pm
Quote
Never had that problem on my machine (98). Also, I don't know if you want to wait, but I am trying to build a vertical FE kinda like MAMEWAH. It might be a little while though.

That would be great, although it would be good if the screen could be rotated both directions too  :)

At the moment i'm using 3darcade using the rotate left skin, seems to be working ok, but haven't had a chance to play around with it much
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: )p( on December 03, 2003, 02:34:09 am
Quote
At the moment i'm using 3darcade using the rotate left skin, seems to be working ok, but haven't had a chance to play around with it much

if you want it to startup in list mode and without any 3d stuff showing just set show3dmenu to false and showglcabsorpics to false in the general configuration menu.

peter
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: mushmouth on December 10, 2003, 05:39:11 pm
Two questions about the 3D-Arcade front end:

1) is the only vertical interface for it the Emulaxian version? I want the virtual 3-D museum vertically... :(

and

2) How would the 3D-Arcade run (how well) on a P3 450 with 364 meg of ram, a decent video card (Nvidia GeForce4 MX440 128MB), and Windows 98SE?
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: )p( on December 10, 2003, 06:05:42 pm
Two questions about the 3D-Arcade front end:

1) is the only vertical interface for it the Emulaxian version? I want the virtual 3-D museum vertically... :(

and

2) How would the 3D-Arcade run (how well) on a P3 450 with 364 meg of ram, a decent video card (Nvidia GeForce4 MX440 128MB), and Windows 98SE?

ad 1 you can run it fullscreen vertically if you want ;-)

ad 2 ahum the fpsarcade pretty well I guess...cylarcade probably not...listbox only if you disable some of the advanced feautures that are processor intensive...the current default skin is pretty heavy on resources...

peter
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: mushmouth on December 10, 2003, 06:21:33 pm
What is "ad1" and "ad2 ahum".

Assume I know nothing about this front end. (I know nothing about this front end...)

Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: )p( on December 10, 2003, 06:35:31 pm
What is "ad1" and "ad2 ahum".

Assume I know nothing about this front end. (I know nothing about this front end...)



ad1) my response to your question number 1
ad2) my response to your question number 2

;)

peter
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: mushmouth on December 10, 2003, 06:38:28 pm
as for question 1, I can run WHAT at vertical full screen? If it's a horizontal skin, how do you run it vertically?
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: )p( on December 11, 2003, 02:06:57 am
as for question 1, I can run WHAT at vertical full screen? If it's a horizontal skin, how do you run it vertically?


No you run the default vertical skin... set the fe to show the 3d sprite fullscreen with the arcadefull property in the general configuration menu. As it is fullscreen now..no visual elements of the skin will be visible while walking through the museum.

peter
Title: Re:Vertical Frontends?
Post by: mushmouth on December 11, 2003, 03:18:25 pm
Excellent. It's clear as mud now. lol

Perhaps it will make more sense when I'm actually loading it into the machine and I can see what's happening. As of right now, this is Greek to me. As soon as my DVD drive arrives, I can start working on installs.

I can't wait. I should find out just how inept I really am at that point. lol