Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: jtslade on July 25, 2009, 06:34:34 am
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If anyone knows Wayne could they please contact him and let him know I need his help bigtime!!
http://www.youtube.com/user/WayneThomason (http://www.youtube.com/user/WayneThomason)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Zm_qqjuks[/youtube]
Hyperspin Posting
http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?p=34563#post34563 (http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?p=34563#post34563)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v180/Zizzer/neogeoaccess004.jpg)
Neo Geo Posting
http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=187755 (http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=187755)
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what happens when you press the Player Start Keys on the FE ?
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So this would basically allow for monitizing of MAME cabs? hmmm....
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v180/Zizzer/neogeoaccess004.jpg)
This may sound dumb, but is there any way to get a close-up on that 7-segment LED module? I'd like to have the part number. :P
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Stupid question, but what is the MAME UI in the video?
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Stupid question, but what is the MAME UI in the video?
HyperSpin
www.hyperspin-fe.com
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Deleted
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v180/Zizzer/neogeoaccess004.jpg)
This may sound dumb, but is there any way to get a close-up on that 7-segment LED module? I'd like to have the part number. :P
If you don't have it by this Friday, PM me. I have a couple of these at home and can look for you this Friday or Saturday.
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So this would basically allow for monitizing of MAME cabs? hmmm....
My concern precisely. I know multi-game JAMMA boards also effectively use a custom FE and hardware that supports retaining a universal credit system as part of the FE, but at least that doesn't incriminate any popular FE developer (though it does the MAME project of course). However, if this function has been built in by the HS team for major distribution to home users they may be leaving themselves wide open, as creating an openly available 'pay per play' feature to the FE means anyone who downloads the software could start knocking out direct revenue-earning MAME based cabinets - is this correct? :dunno
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hmm i dont understand is'nt it already possible to use mame for monetary gain? not in such a nice pretty format with selectable games, but it seems to me already be possible going with a single game unless someone see's the boot up they'ed have no way of knowing.
has there been any cases of anyone using mame in such a way? it's against mame policy not to mention illegal?
can't really see someone going thought the trouble really.. anything that mame can emulate 95%+ is either no longer a money maker or cheaper to buy the real board..
all the newer games that might actually bring in some money run like crap unless you have a wizbang 4ghz+ system and still they're not emulated fully.
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So this would basically allow for monitizing of MAME cabs? hmmm....
My concern precisely. I know multi-game JAMMA boards also effectively use a custom FE and hardware that supports retaining a universal credit system as part of the FE, but at least that doesn't incriminate any popular FE developer (though it does the MAME project of course). However, if this function has been built in by the HS team for major distribution to home users they may be leaving themselves wide open, as creating an openly available 'pay per play' feature to the FE means anyone who downloads the software could start knocking out direct revenue-earning MAME based cabinets - is this correct? :dunno
This feature isn't part of Hyperspin front-end. It also is strictly for my own private use and short of my cabinet being stolen from my house, it will never leave my possession in its current configuration. The main purpose for the credits and display was to add realism to play. I purchased 500 pachinko tokens off of eBay and converted my coin slot mechs to take .984" tokens.
The display is simply driven by a batchfile that copies lines of a logfile to the comport. If you surf over to my YouTube video where I show it being tested, I am driving the display with a series of 100 lines echoing 1 thru 99 to the com1 port. The program that is generating the log file I am reading is what is responsible for handling the tokens and sending them to the games. Unfortunately I can't help you with the software. You will have to search these forums for information. I have promised the author of that software that I would never distribute it. If the software's author is reading this post and wants to chime in, it will be up to them to do so.
One more note: The way this handles credits isn't perfect. It is easy to drop credits when a button is pressed before the game is ready to receive them. It is also possible to feed multiple credits to a game that will get lost if they aren't played before exiting. Since pressing P1-start or P2-start inserts a coin and tries to start the game, you would end up going through everything on the counter before you would start to deplete what was accidentally dropped into the game while it wasn't ready to start a new game.
No danger of monetising Mame with this program as it's got enough flaws to cause major P-O'ed customers.
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Thanks for the info. I'm glad to know you plan on keeping this mostly secret and that it doesn't work well enough for public use.
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Oh in that case fair enough. A few select members have also done this in the past for similar reasons, either by creating certain scripts to 're-insert coins' upon a rom load or by writing an associative program to interact with their front-end and retain the coinage display in the FE itself. I understand what you say about your system and inevitably it will have flaws but it's a nice system to retain for yourself, particularly with the nice addition of the LED display.
- Beretta -
Yes of course it is possible to quite easily mask a cabinet's true origins if no-one sees the boot and you run one game. Most would not know the difference, even if a few of us here could probably spot a PC-run game in comparison to an original PCB-driven system (things like the occasional sound clip or frame skip being the most obvious giveaways).
Your observation about potential profitability however couldn't be further from the truth. Whilst most original games in their own right would mostly go ignored in many different locations (a store, a pub, even a modern arcade), a shiny, resto'd or replica cabinet with one game might pull enthusiasts in the right setting. More likely though, is that if MAME was somehow made to accept universal coinage and retain that whilst switching games (either by a Neo-Geo type switch or by use of a custom FE), this could be of huge appeal to some businesses as it could offer so many gaming choices (and hence appeal to more people) in just 1 cabinet.
You may not think it but it is more common than you think. We alone have several requests a month for this type of machine from various sources including these: chip shops, pubs, clubs, casinos, a recording studio (?!), children's playgroups, pool halls, rec centres. We get these despite the warning/disclaimer we post on our website saying these type of requests will not be entertained, and the fact we do not advertise anywhere focused at commercial customers. Most requests I just ignore as they know what they are asking for is illegal, but for those who are obviously naive I re-iterate the point by replying and telling them both the legal issue and that the software is just not designed to operate that way. It's enough to stop them asking and also usually stops them asking elsewhere or seeking those multi-game PCB cabinets. At the end of the day it's their neck at risk, so it's doing them a favour as well as us by steering them away.
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There is a restaurant (Texidelphia) near where I work that actually has a restored SNK cabinet (lousy restore, bad paint, damaged wood, old "SNK" side art on both sides) with a MultiCade marquee and a vertical monitor. I think it's a 16-game machine.
I have a wild suspicion that it is a MAME hack.
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If anyone is actually interested in the inner workings of the hardware, I designed and built the display driver board, cable and display board from scratch and used a PicAxe 18x microcontroller chip to drive it. Unfortunately I got a Common Cathode display instead of Common Anode, so I had to had several 74LS04 hex-inverter chips to flip the outputs from the BCD to 7-segment driver chips (74LS247). On top of that I miswired the data lines from the PicAxe to the drivers, but was able to program around it.
You can read more about the hardware and PicAxe software that controls the display here:
http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=12700
There is a schematic for the board at that site. My Arcade Machine homepage has photos of the progress of building the machine and on the last page it has not only the schematic, and the PixAxe program but also the batchfile I wrote to drive the display. You can find my arcade machine homepage here:
http://sbcglobalpwp.att.net/w/a/waynet2
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There is a restaraunt (Texidelphia) near where I work that actually has a restored SNK cabinet (lousy restore, bad paint, damaged wood, old "SNK" side art on both sides) with a MultiCade marquee and a vertical monitor. I think it's a 16-game machine.
I have a wild suspicion that it is a MAME hack.
There was actually 1 small arcade in Ilfracombe, North Devon, UK that I once visited about 2 years ago that had what I suspect to be some kind of mechanical or software restrictor inside and was playing Sega Megadrive games. At first I suspected it was a re-housed Mega-Tech or Mega-Play system, but it was running games that did not appear on those arcade systems. Once your money ran out it simply froze the screen util you added more money, as though the hardware was somehow paused. I didn't get chance to assess it for long enough to see wat it really was, though I did notice it had a very suspect looking coin door/mechanism area. The arcade is now closed down though, so obviously it can't have been that profitable!
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Thank you for the feedback guys.
Do you know what hardware I would need to wire up MV-LED credit leds and start trying to figure out how they are driven.
I may need to take a couple months off of work.
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Thank you for the feedback guys.
Do you know what hardware I would need to wire up MV-LED credit leds and start trying to figure out how they are driven.
I may need to take a couple months off of work.
You need the pinouts for the MVS board where these plug in. If you know which pin does what, it is possible to deduce how to drive it through Mame. It may be necessary, however, to add additional hardware to make them compatible with the PC motherboard. That may be the hard part. We just won't know until we know how the display modules are interfaced.
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You may not think it but it is more common than you think. We alone have several requests a month for this type of machine from various sources including these: chip shops, pubs, clubs, casinos, a recording studio (?!),
You would be surprised how much down time there are for musicians in the studio. While the singer is doing vocal over dubs the rest of the band is twiddling their thumbs. Rinse and repeat for each person.
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This is boring due to the credits not continuing from one game to the next, and loss of credits in game switching, let him do it if he wants, i came up with a very similar idea but never looked into it for the various faults it had, I'd rather have credits not even partially carry over then only sometimes carry over in specific circumstances, it just makes it look buggy in front of friends!