FE for seamless mame and Vpinball?

[JLR2000]

Okay, this may be a dumb question by now, but I'll throw it out there anyway.  Just got my cab back together after being in pieces for 1 1/2  years (moved to a new house)  I'd love to put PinMame on my cab, my question is there an FE that plays the visual pinmame games seamlessly like the mame roms?  At one point I tried a windows gui FE for pinmame that worked OK, but would still bring up the "exit or edit game" button.  I guess I'm looking for the FE that will play the mame roms and vpinball games seamlessly.  MameWAH looks like a great FE, but I've had to experience with it yet.  I'd appreciate if others could let me know what they are using and how well it works for the above mentioned purpose.  Thanks for your input!

[)p(]

use howards vp wrapper with any fe you want.

http://www.oscarcontrols.com/lazarus/

peter

[BobbyG66]

I am working an a exe right now for VP in Mamewah.
I currently have an exe setup and running for individual games and created shortcuts and setup MameWah as PC.

However, after creating the script, compiling the exe and than shortcuts for about 20 games I had enough.

I am working an a generic exe that will take the *.vpt file from MameWah and insert that into the exe to run it from VPinball.

Does anyone know how or what MameWah sends as commands when launching a game?
I have tried using $cmdLine[1] and %1 with no luck.
Am I close? Is there another command to use?
I need to find out what will go into this run command:
Run("c:\vpinball\WhatGoesHere.vpt", "", @SW_MAXIMIZE)

Checking the MameWah.txt file it shows the exe than the *.vpt file, but the game does not launch...
I have it set similar to a Mame config and tried settings all the commands to 0 or 1 with no luck.

My exe currently launches a pinball table and when you press <ESC> it closes out and returns to Mamewah.

I tried Howards wrapper but did not like the"Don't Use Drugs" screen. I want something more seemless.

Any help would be great!

Thanks
BobbyG66

[Minwah]

I tried Howards wrapper but did not like the"Don't Use Drugs" screen. I want something more seemless.

JCrouse has also written a VPinball wrapper - I don't have a link to hand right now but it is linked from the ArcadeOS/MAMEWAH board @ MameWorld (I think the boards are down atm ).

Have a look at mamewah.log to see what mamewah is doing when you hit 1...

[BobbyG66]

mamewah.log

Get ready folks...dumb question coming...
Is that different than mamewah.txt? I am at work now, will have to check when I get home...

[Howard_Casto]

Assuming mamewah parses .dat files you should NEVER have to manually make a million shortcuts.  Use one of the three dat file makers on my site, point to your tables folder, and have it generate a dat.  Poof!  you have a list of the visual pinball tables.  I don't see how you lanuch the games could have anything to do with making shortcuts.

For the record, the don't steal pinmame roms screen was added after countless emails of "Your wrapper doesn't work, I booted it up and just got a blank screen" only to find out that their machines sucked, it took forever to load a table, and since they were looking at a blank screen, they thought their computer had locked up.  After I added it, those emails stopped, so apparently it was effective.

Well that and the misconception that visual pinball rom aren't illegal, just because they don't come with a table simulator. 

[BobbyG66]

I tried Howards wrapper but did not like the"Don't Use Drugs" screen. I want something more seemless.

JCrouse has also written a VPinball wrapper - I don't have a link to hand right now but it is linked from the ArcadeOS/MAMEWAH board @ MameWorld (I think the boards are down atm ).

Have a look at mamewah.log to see what mamewah is doing when you hit 1...

I downloaded JCrouse'S wrapper but it is not working.
When I press "1" the screen will flash "Loading ABDUCTION" and then go back to the Mamewah menu...
The log reads C:\vpinmame\pinballwrapper.exe "C:\vpinmame\tables\ABDUCTION.vpt"

I've check all the settings many times and tried changing the 1's to 0's with no luck.

I also tried running in the run command with no luck.

Any ideas?

[lucindrea]

acctully howard , on my machine the dont use drugs FE locks up , but an eirly ver i have from before you added that screen doesnt .. so in my case , it created a problem that wasnt their hehe .. ya ya i know , the screen probely has nothing to do with why it's locking up , just thought i would mention it.

[jcrouse]

My wrapper has only been tested with Windows XP (SP2). Also, it requires the .NET Framework. Go to http://download.microsoft.com and do a search for "dotnetfx.exe". Download and install the redistributable 1.1 package. This SHOULD work.

The issues with Howard's wrapper are well documented in another post on this board. Search the board here. I had the issues with his wrapper but beleive it was somehow a stupid-user error on my part. I re-downloaded and installed everything from scratch and then everything worked fine. I have a link to a tutorial for installing Visual Pinball on my downloads page at http://home.comcast.net/~cpviewer

Merry Xmas,
John

[BobbyG66]

I figured it out.  My bad.
I had downloaded everything again and the MS .net download. It wasn't working until I looked at the wrapper .CFG file.
I had to redirect the file and it worked fine.

Thanks!