game orientation question

[Nailz]

Right now in my upright cab, I have a 27" Eygo VGA monitor, everything is oriented horizontally obviously because it is a computer monitor, the vertical games as well but it works out fine because the monitor is so damn big.

My question is, and please forgive me if it is a dumb one.... When I pick up an Arcade VGA card and a 19" Arcade Monitor for my new cocktail cab, will the games be automatically translated into their vertical or horizontal positions?  Or will I need to switch them to vertical or horizontal with the Front End?  I just wasn't sure how the arcade monitor or ArcadeVGA displayed the vertical games.  I was planning on looking at ArcadeOS... any other recommendations on FE's would be welcome as well.

Thanks as always for the recommendations.

[tom61]

It's Mame that selects the orientation. If you leave it to the defaults, vertical games will display horizontally with black bars on either sides. If you turn rotate games to no, then the vertical games will display vertically.

[Nailz]

Thanks, another quick question, just did this in the mame.ini file and noticed that just about every video game rotates to the right, however, Centipede rotates to the left.  At the command line, I can just type in:

"mame.exe centiped -flipx -flipy" and it will be the same orientation as the other vertical games, which ini or cfg file would I have to edit to make sure that gets done everytime I start the game in ArcadeOS or whatever FE I use?

[jets]

Fyi, cfg files aren't meant for you to edit since mame writes them in it's own code. The mame.ini is a file that stores global options for all games. For other options for specific games use the options in the command line like you suggested.

Also note that mame is not a genius and rarely picks the best resolution to display. If it picks a res that blows use a specific one and add that to the command line also.

[Nailz]

Ok, that's still what I am trying to find out.  Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying.  Can I edit the mame.ini to do certain things for certain games?  It appears to only be a global file that will affect every game when I make a change and not just individual games.

I know in Mame32 I can change the orientation, even resolution for each particular game I want.  With Emuloader in windows, I can also rotate and change resolutions for individual games.

I am wanting my cocktail cab to be DOS based and use ArcadeOS, can you change the settings for individual games like you can with the Windows based FE's?  Again, I apologize if this is a dumb question, I just haven't played with the DOS FE's as of yet.

Thanks for all the help.

[Smack]

 It appears to only be a global file that will affect every game when I make a change and not just individual games.

You can have .ini files for each game. Just use the romname.ini and put it in the directory with the mame.exe file.

That's what I do on my cocktail cab. I have my main .ini file set to rotate all vertical games, but I have some individual .ini files to override that and not rotate some games (Battle Garegga for example) so that I can play on the 2 player side of my cocktail.)

Same thing for horizontal games. They are set to not rotate all games, but I override some (missle command) to rotate so I can use the trackballs on the ends.)

Hope this helps.

I'm not sure if the DOS port uses .ini files (I haven't used that port in ages.) I do know that Advancemame lets you do that. In its main ini/cfg file you can add options at the end for specific games. I had done that before I switched to the windows port.

Smack

[Nailz]

Smack, that is exactly what I am looking for.  I just tried it and I think I am doing something wrong...

I took the mame.ini file and copied it as centiped.ini and made the changes that I wanted it to do in game (i.e. turned flipx and flipy on), and it didn't affect it.  

For DOS Mame, there is a mame.cfg with the same type info, I tried the same for that with the centiped.cfg file with no luck.

If you could provide an example of one of your ini files I would appreciate it, I am sure I'm missing something easy.

Thanks!

[Smack]

Check a few things.

Did the centiped.ini save as an .ini file, or a .ini.txt file?

An easy way to do it is to do a "copy" of the mame.cfg file, then paste it into thesame directory. Then rename it. Then edit it.

I removed everthing out of the file and just left the parameters that I wanted to change. Maybe try this?

norotate            0
ror                     0
rol                     0
flipx                   1
flipy                   1

I wonder if you still had the ror or rol function on.

See if that does it.
Smack

[Nailz]

Check a few things.

Did the centiped.ini save as an .ini file, or a .ini.txt file?

Yes, it saved as an ini file

An easy way to do it is to do a "copy" of the mame.cfg file, then paste it into thesame directory. Then rename it. Then edit it.

I did just that the first time, left everything in and then made changes specific to the game.

I removed everthing out of the file and just left the parameters that I wanted to change. Maybe try this?

norotate            0
ror                     0
rol                     0
flipx                   1
flipy                   1

I wonder if you still had the ror or rol function on.

I did just that, the ror and rol were not turned on, only norotate and flipx and flipy.  Any other suggestions as to what might need to be changed?  I tried it both ways with the .ini file, leaving in everything, then cutting everything out and just putting in the changed lines....

Thanks

[Nailz]

DUUUUUUUHHHHHH!!!!!!!     I just figured it out, looking at the mame.ini, there is a path for those ini files, it was set to d:\mame\ini.  As soon as I dropped it in that path, it worked.

Thanks again for the help!

[Smack]

Cool. I didn't even think of that one, i had thought it was for the ctrl.ini files so it never came to mind. Plus I don't use them anyways...

Word.
 
Smack