Marquees on a secondary Display. Help

[jlampc]

 

I've been working on this for almost 3 days and I think its time to ask for some help. I recently purchased an ultra wide screen monitor (2560x 1080) for use as a Marquee (and maybe a back glass for Virtual pinball). I've been trudging through partial explanations and incomplete posts in an attempt to get the Marquee feature of MAME to work.

Lets start off with what I'm using. I have a PC with a core I7 and it built in video card( I have also tested with a 7600gs). Its sending to a 4:3 lcd monitor across a DVI connection, and to the Ultra wide LG Monitor across HDMI.  On a normal windows 7 64 bit system, I have my desktop splayed across both monitors natively with no issues

I am running mame64 version .153. The different posts I've read have stated different ways to enable 2 monitors with one displaying gameplay and the other displaying the Marquee for the game. My first attempt started with me modifying the original MAME.ini file. Changing the setting for 2 monitors and another setting for "# PER-WINDOW VIDEO OPTIONS" where I enable Standard and Marquee to  View 1 and 2 sections.  This ended up being redone and made into a darius.ini file. I placed the Darius.ini file into the ini folder located in the mame folder. I also created a Lay file for a test game (DARIUS) and placed it in the artwork directory in a subfolder called "darius" This folder contains the .lay file and the Marquees .PNG file. When I run it, the Darius marquee runs more or less fullscreen and the game shows up in the primary window. I did notice that the game is also playing behind the Darius Marquee!! It seems its just hiding behind the Marquee.

I originally tried the same setup with DigDug 2 but that attempt ended with me running 2 gamefields with no type of marquee visible. On one the main game monitor and the other on the Marquee monitor.

It seems like no matter what I do I cannot get the playfield confined to just the Main display.  My goal is to have the game play on the main monitor while the Marquee designated monitor displays a static Marquee only.

My goal is to have the PC display the marquee information on one screen and the the game play on the other. Ive tried reading up on .lay files and  tried finding others who have already installed successfully a MAME marquee, but without any luck.

I'm wondering If I'm better off using something like Marquee Magician instead of the built in Marquee settings. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

James

[Malenko]

mame on the main screen and use mame hooker to display the marquees?

http://dragonking.arcadecontrols.com/static.php?page=mhtutorials

(specifically http://dragonking.arcadecontrols.com/static.php?page=mhdismarquee )

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah it's by far the easiest method.  You don't have to set the dimensions for each individual game/marquee... point your display file to a folder with marquees and it just works. 

The next version will be even easier... you don't need to even define the dimensions/position of your secondary monitor if you are only spanning a single one. 

[lamprey]

I haven't messed with multi-monitor stuff in a while, but I think this thread from MameWorld is still relevant. At least it worked for me a couple years ago when I was playing with the idea of a separate marquee monitor.
Displaying artwork on a separate monitor 

[Howard_Casto]

Well with all mame-centric methods you have to make a lay file for each individual game and your artwork and the file have to be put in folders named after the game. 

With mamehooker and alternate methods you don't have to fool with all of that.  As a matter of fact as Malenko linked to, I include a generic marquee display file with mamehooker.  You set it up in one of mamehookers default.ini files and you are essentially done. 

The other methods certainly work and there are even more ways to do it, but if the OPs problem was everything being a pain to setup.....

[jlampc]

I swear I'm following the instructions to the letter, but I just cant Mame hooker to play nice. I went into the displays folder and setup the display.dis file with the size of the Secondary Monitor like this:
[Layout]
x=0
y=-240
width=2560   
height=1080

Its a ultra wide monitor and I'm using its correct dimensions.
-240 for the top corner location and the resolution of that monitor. I wasnt sure If I needed to also have the primary monitors location so I didnt add it.

I then went into the display subdirectory of the mame hooker folder and modified the marquee file per the comment sections.

[Layout]
NumberofImages=1
x=
y=
width=
height=
image=
[Image1]
x=0
y=0
height=1
width=1
length=1

'Note:  change this next line to the path to your marquees to get this to work.
'As of now it is set to look in your mame path for the best match out of rom, parent and driver images

image=c:\mame\marquees\%rpd%.png

keepaspect=1

I saved it to exactly where I found it.

I also edited the Default.ini file  exactly as shown:
[General]
MameHookerStart=
MameHookerStop=
MameStart=lds marquee
MameStop=
StateChange=
OnPause=
OnRotate=
[KeyStates]
RefreshTime=33

[Output]

For a test, I copied the digdug2.png to a directory called marquees inside of my mame folder.  when I run Digdug2 using mame64 this is the output of the debug screen.

mame_start

Emulator=MAME
Game Info:
----------
Rom=pacman
Parent=puckman
Driver=pacman.c
Orientation=0

**PAUSED**
mame_stop

When I bring up the debug window this is what I see after I quit the game. When I play Digdug2 all I get is the Game displayed on both monitors. No marquee at all.

In Mame the only changes to the Mame.ini file are. in the Windows Video options section where I changed it to use 2 screens:
numscreens                2

No matter what I choose I cannot get anything other than a second copy of the game screen to display.

I know I'm missing something I just cant seem to figure out what.
James

[Howard_Casto]

Well that's why.  If you have mame setup to display on two screens, obviously mamehooker can't display on one of them. 

Set it back to one and you should be ok.

[jlampc]

Finally got it to display marquees.. It seems that there are 2 default.ini files. I was editing the one in the Main ini directory .... I found a second one in the /ini/MAME/ directory. When I added the LDS marquee change, it began to work.

Thanks for the assistance.