Please Verify: Cocktail Mode w/ No Screen Flipping

[wakerlet]

All,

I have a cocktail cabinet set up with two separate control panels.  The problem is that they are on the same side of the monitor.  Thus, in order to play single player alternating games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, etc., I currently need to map both sets of controls to the same movements.  This is a pain when my young nephews want to play and can't stop wiggling the joystick when their brother is playing.

On normal cocktail cabinets, when the player changes, the screen would flip and the alternate set of controls would be used.  I know that the screen flipping and the alternate set of controls is controlled by the roms themselves and MAME just emulates these functions, but....

Is there an alternate version of MAME out there that could "manage" player states and set alternate controls for player 2 for single player alternating games?  Specifically doing it without flipping the screen.

I've attached a screenshot of my cabinet for those who need some visual help with my situation.

Thanks,
Todd

 

[whammoed]

I don't think so, but there are some games, like galaga 88, that let you assign different controls for one and two player without flipping the screen.  Hit f2 for service mode.

[screaming]

Wasn't there a thread recently in the Main forum that talked about something along these lines?

IANAMP (I am not a MAME programmer), but I imagine this would be a tough endevour since you'd probably have to change code in every single cocktail game (parent).

How about building some kind of hardware solution? Maybe, like a 3-way switch that would switch between 1p controls, 2p controls, and then both.

 Hmm.. okay, maybe it's easier than that...

Since 1p alternating games only use one set of controls, you could have a 2 way switch that would switch the 2p controls between a set of 2p inputs and a set of 1p inputs. Personally, I would use a 3 way switch still though, to make it easier for the non-MAME types to understand what they need to do.

Did any of that make sense?

-sab

[AlanS17]

The hardware switch would be your only current option. You don't need 3 modes, though. You only need two. The first player would always be p1. You could then install a rotary switch like from a serial or parallel switching box to manually alternate the second player between p1 and p2.

[SirPoonga]

That still don't solve his problem.  The problems is a person at the other control is mapped the same on those games.

Unless you actually have a switch to turn one side of the controls one to the other, which isn't kid friendly.

I'm not seeing a good kid friendly solution.

[JoyMonkey]

The hardware switch would be your only current option. You don't need 3 modes, though. You only need two. The first player would always be p1. You could then install a rotary switch like from a serial or parallel switching box to manually alternate the second player between p1 and p2.

You don't even need a serial/parallel switching box, you only need one switch if you're using a KeyWiz or IPac to switch the common ground between P1 and P2.

[wakerlet]

That still don't solve his problem.

[Popcorrin]

You might look into advance mame.  It currently has the option to change the control of a game from plyr1 to plyr 2 controls and flip the screen with a simple keystroke.  It was added for games that do not support cocktail mode.  It would just need to modified to only switch the controls and not flip the screen.

[Lilwolf]

You might consider a 3 way switch for ground.

So you can turn turn off all the inputs on one controller or the other with a quick switch... and in the middle... they are both turned on.

The great thing about common grounds... you can commonly cut them

[ddockery]

If you know your way around code at all, it would probably be fairly easy to turn off the screen flip for cocktail mode. It's worth looking into.

[richms]

I would use the parallel switch, and have it reverse player 1 and 2 when toggled, so that the annoying nephew was just bashing away on the player 2 controls when swtiched and therefore having no effect on game play, and it means that there is no way that it can end up with the controls deactivated leading you to think that its broken.

You could even hook a red/green led ontop of each cpanel to let you know what player you are playing as.