Help figuring out MAME in a Red Tent...

[LasVegasIRA]

Hi all. I've been lurking on here for a while but this is my first post. Hopefully someone can help me.

I have a Nintendo Red Tent that I'm restoring and I want to use MAME in place of the board sets so that all the games that were originally playable on that system can be accessed without having to change out the PCB.

I know I can hook the two monitors up to the same computer, and I would figure that there's a way to have two separate sessions of MAME that would allow each monitor to play a game independently, but I'm hoping to be able to somehow configure the system to allow for the players on each side to play head-to-head on the games that originally had that feature.

Is this even possible? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[DeLuSioNal29]

You're better off waiting for the Universus upgrade kit to come out:

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=355106

You're not going to get much love around here for killing MAMEing a Red Tent.

D

[vwalbridge]

You lost me at MAMEing a Red Tent.

[yotsuya]

You're better off waiting for the Universus upgrade kit to come out:

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=355106

You're not going to get much love around here for killing MAMEing a Red Tent.

D

Meh, Red Tents are the Kardashians of the Arcade world... everybody talks about them, but nobody knows why.

[yotsuya]

But yes, DeL has offered sound, if not expensive, advice.

[LasVegasIRA]

I'm a member over at KLOV and am well aware of keeping original games in their original state. In fact, I've restored (and am currently in the process of restoring) several games. The Red Tent I have was missing the monitors, had no electronics, and had the CP's hacked up for a multicade.

That being said, my idea for a MAME version of this is so I can have a working machine that can be used while I continue trying to source some original monitors and other parts. I'm currently restoring the game to look completely original, and once I'm able to find everything to make it original again, I can finish it up.

So my original question still stands.

Aside from that, I don't see how utilizing the Universus (which I would love to have once its done being developed) is any different than using MAME as far as "killing" a Red Tent is concerned. Either way, you're altering the inards of a game and making it something that isn't original.

[yotsuya]

The way I see it, you basically want two screen independent of each other except for cases where you want to play head to head games, which would require one screen to mirror the other.

There are a few ways to do it that come to mind, but I'm not sure how convoluted and jerry - rigged they would be.

[Phreakwars]

You lost me at MAMEing a Red Tent.

Ditto, and a damn shame.

[harveybirdman]

Well it's not like he's slapping LED'S a beta Brite and LCDS in the sunnabitch and painting it blur and slapping on a Sonic the Hedgehog decal....

Besides Nintendo sucks.


Lol jk!!!!!!!!

[Howard_Casto]

I say mame the crap out of it.  You can play maybe 20 arcadified Nintendo titles stock... or you know, mame it and play them all, plus all that's in mame.  The red tent is already a XXX in 1 machine, so there is no harm.  Plus Nintendo arcade innards are odd... with the odd sticks and the inverted voltages ect....

[pbj]

Put two computers in it and get creative with a KVM switch.

[yotsuya]

Put two computers in it and get creative with a KVM switch.

This is what I was thinking myself.

[LasVegasIRA]

I figured some type of switch would work too, I was just hoping to have everything switch over via software...

I appreciate the comments, guys.

-

[vwalbridge]

Sounds like you want to have it fully restored someday and in the mean time, you will not be making any changes to it that can't be undone. I can be down with that. 

As a matter of fact, I've been putting some thought to this myself and here is the deal:

Most of the games that were on the Red Tent were just NES games anyway. Some were just harder version like Super Mario Bros... but all-in-all the games were just NES games. With the exception of one game:  VS Wrecking Crew

VS Wrecking Crew was unique in that P1 played as Mario in the foreground and P2 played as Luigi in the background. And vice vera on the other screen. A multi-player game on multi screens if you will. Almost like playing a LAN arcade game.

A really fun game that can be explained by

Now I'm not sure if MAME can support it but I would be pretty damn awesome if you could hook up 2 screens to the same computer, yet have each display show P1's and P2's perspective appropriately. In other words, a one-player game is easy, but a two-player game is where the real challenge is. You would need the computer to output P1's screen to one display and P2's screen to the second display. Not sure if this is possible. If you could make this work, it would almost be worth it for just this game alone.

[agwood]

You could always do something like this:

http://lime-technology.com/virtualization-host/ - software used

I have done the same on my home server running a 20TB WHS 2011 and a separate PFSENSE linux router setup, works flawlessly.

The system will basically boot into a VM host and them load double (or 3 or 4) installs of whatever you want depending on your host hardware. Something like this with highly customized windows VM setups or even something like dual groovyarcade (linux) VM's.

This would work very well and not too hard to setup. Buy a used AMD Phemon X3 or X4 or an older C2Q cpu/board setup if you want to keep it on the cheap, and if running groovyarcade 1 core for each VM is plenty for simple mame emulation as well as the Unraid core.

[Howard_Casto]

Well keep in mind that MAME has no problem managing multiple displays and can easily clone a display to multiple monitors. 

Ok so bear with me.....

You need three versions of mame and two instances of a custom built front-end.  (Or a front-end that handles two lists on two displays... either way).   

Ok so the front-end is launched twice... one instance is displayed on monitor #1, the other on monitor #2

MAME #1, is for player one... it's configured to use p1's controls and ignore p2's.  In addition it's configured to use monitor #1, and ignore the other.
When the person sitting at monitor #1, wants to play a single player game, the first instance of the FE always launches for mame #1. 

MAME #2, is for player two... all of the above applies, but for instance of the fe #2, monitor #2, and player 2's controls respectively. 

MAME #3, is for co-op.  Here's where things get interesting.  If either player 1 or 2 want to play co-op, they set their fe to 2 player mode.  When they try to launch
a game, a message is sent to the other instance of the fe and a prompt is displayed for the other player what game it is, asking if they want to play.  If they select yes,
MAME #3, is launched, which reads both players controls and clones the display to both monitors.  If they select no, the original player gets a prompt stating that they
reject the request and they are dumped back to the game list. 

MAME 1, 2, and 3 would be fairly simple to implement.... just the same instance of mame copied into three folders with each instance configured appropriately.  Nothing I've described can't be done with a stock build of mame. 

The front-end would take a bit of work, but it wouldn't be terribly difficult as long as you are satisfied with something simple.  For a NES list, that'd probably be the best anyway.

So it'd be possible to do it on a single pc.... obviously running two builds of mame at the same time is heavy on the resources, but I just ran gorf and pacman as a test on this rather old pc and they both did fine.  So as long as one sticked to older games, it'd be ok.