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Screen saver while MAME is paused

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rCadeGaming:
nitz.  That... is.. awesome!  Thank you!

Questions:

Where do you insert this?

The time is in increments of thousands of a second?

The ending sequence thing is kind of a problem.  Could you show me how to make it only do this during pause?  I compile my own MAME anyways.  For a few reasons, including this:

http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=266133&page=0&view=expanded&sb=5&o=&vc=1

Thanks again.

Howard_Casto:
I would reccomend against this.  Mame is a fullscreen directx app.... pausing it and going to another ap while paused is possible, but it can cause issues.  Every time mame drops out of fs all the textures have to be destroyed and recreated.  If there is even the slightest bug in mame's source, constantly re-creating the texture cache could create a memory leak.  On top of that you are essentially wanting to run two instances of mame at once.  Again, this is possible but it could cause issues.  For example, if your users are using a app that takes advantage of mame's output system, having two instances of mame running at once is going to confuse the heck out of it.

I would actually reccomend not using mame's pause feature at all.  Real arcade games don't have a pause feature you know.  If you insist on adding this feature, a simple slideshow would be better for when mame's paused.  Perhaps only showing artwork related to the game playing?

rCadeGaming:
I'm not trying to run two instances of MAME at once.  I never said the screen saver during pause had to work the same way as the screen saver in my front-end, just anything to stop burn-in.  I certainly agree that it would cause problems to run two MAMEs.

I know real arcades didn't let you, but I'm making a custom cabinet, so I'd like to add the ability to stop and go to the bathroom without starting over.

A slideshow in MAME itself would be fine.  It wouldn't even have to be more than different colored balls bouncing around the screen.  Just something to prevent burn-in.

nitz:

--- Quote from: rCadeGaming on March 17, 2012, 02:04:22 am ---Where do you insert this?

--- End quote ---

You would just put it into a text file, name it with the extension .ahk and then run it. You could put a shortcut to it in your startup folder to have it running all the time.


--- Quote from: rCadeGaming on March 17, 2012, 02:04:22 am ---The time is in increments of thousands of a second?

--- End quote ---

You got it. 120000 milliseconds = 120 seconds = 2 minutes


--- Quote from: rCadeGaming on March 17, 2012, 02:04:22 am ---The ending sequence thing is kind of a problem.  Could you show me how to make it only do this during pause?
--- End quote ---

Certainly. First I'll direct you to another thread, check out step 4 in reply 20 here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=105538.0 You'll need to compile mame to accept keypresses from a program for this to work.

When you've done that, try a script like this.


--- Quote ---setTitleMatchMode, 2

paused = 0

#IfWinActive, MAME

$p::
send {blind} {p downtemp}
send {blind} {p up}

If (paused = 1)
{
paused := 0
return
}

paused := 1

sleep 120000

If (paused = 1)
{
setworkingdir, C:\Windows\System32
run ribbons.scr /s
}
return

--- End quote ---

This is untested as I don't have the special compile of mame handy, but it should work.

Howard_Casto:

--- Quote from: rCadeGaming on March 17, 2012, 11:19:25 am ---I'm not trying to run two instances of MAME at once.  I never said the screen saver during pause had to work the same way as the screen saver in my front-end, just anything to stop burn-in.  I certainly agree that it would cause problems to run two MAMEs.


--- End quote ---

Good... that simplifies things dramatically.  There is a setting in your mame.ini called "pause_brightness"  set that to 0 and the screen will blank when you pause a game.  You could also set it to a stupidly low number like 0.01 and I don't think you would have to worry about burn in unless you leave it paused for several hours.

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