Sorting out vertical&horizontal games

[Carsten Carlos]

Hi there!

Any chance or batch-file to sort all horizontal (or vertical) roms in a seperate directory?

As I feature a automatically rotating monitor, I want to have two seperate MAMEs installed, e.g. MAME-vertical & MAME-horizontal.

I guess this should be the easiest way to implemente it with automatic rotation & frontends like GameLauncher - also I need this seperated so I can make the emu-screensaver to show only games featuring the actual monitor orientation, I don't wanna let the monitormount rotate all five minutes!

Speaking from emusaver, (Howie? Are you here?) is there any chance that I can change options (romfolder in this case) by writing to its ini and it would accept the changes without rebooting, but the next time it gets active?

[JLR2000]

Carsten-

What I did was use romorg.exe to create a complete list of games in a comma delimited format, then imported that into an excel spreadsheet.  This gives you the ability to sort by any column, orientation, controls, year etc.

I have then cut & pasted the resulting rom names into an editor to create a batch file to copy the files to sep. directories.  Right now I have a friend looking at creating a script that would create the .map file for GameLauncher that would have game name followed by year.

Not sure if this answers your question, but I found the romorg.exe utility very helpful. Here's the link: http://pigseye.kennesaw.edu/~dhirschl/mame/

[Carsten Carlos]

Thanx, this tool looks really helpful!  

Guess I'll write a little visualbasic-program for importing the generated list and do the copywork for me.

[)p(]

As I feature a automatically rotating monitor, I want to have two seperate MAMEs installed, e.g. MAME-vertical & MAME-horizontal.

Just curious why? Can't you just use seperate commandline options for horizontal and vertical games in the fe that you use?

Lucky bastard finding that rotating thing on ebay    

peter

[SirPoonga]

http://www.geocities.com/thepinnyparlour/

And if you goto the hacks on my page you can add horitzon.ini and vertical.ini so you can put in ror 1 in vertical.ini.

[Jakobud]

There's also that SortInfo program where you can organize all the games by whatever you want, including screen orientation.  You can then import that list into excel, putting everything into their own columns.  Then you could copy/paste that into a "good text editor" (i.e. not Notepad or Wordpad) like Ultra Edit.  Here you can setup some clever macros and create a batch file to move everything where it needs to go.

[JLR2000]

That's what I'm doing with romorg.exe, but maybe I'll try the SortInfo program.  I didn't look at it enough to see the export/inport option....that's what I get for only looking at the screenshot!  

[Carsten Carlos]

Just curious why? Can't you just use seperate commandline options for horizontal and vertical games in the fe that you use?

Yep, now when I think about it, the only problem left to solve would be the emu-saver - I really wan't this screensaver that loads every five minutes another game. Somehow this thing must know which orientation the monitor currently has (easy, I could write this to the .ini whenever a game is started), and worse, it should only randomize between the fitting orientation!
If they were in different folders, I just would change the romfolder-setting for the emusaver and it all would work.

Lucky bastard finding that rotating thing on ebay

Can't believe it took me about 9 months to build it in - tomorrow I might get the last part I need to mount it completely with the tube

[1Spoon]

...As I feature a automatically rotating monitor, I want to have two seperate MAMEs installed, e.g. MAME-vertical & MAME-horizontal.
... I don't wanna let the monitormount rotate all five minutes!

When you say Automatically - does that mean it rotates to the orientation of the game that you choose to play? If so - how have you solved that?
(I want this feature in my cocktail..   )

[Carsten Carlos]

When you say Automatically - does that mean it rotates to the orientation of the game that you choose to play? If so - how have you solved that?

Well, I haven' t solved it yet - I'll wait 'til everything else works, but yes, that is exactly what I mean. I'll just need some rather simple circuit and a cheap interface to let the motor start.

I'll try to use Game Launcher, but I fear someday I've to make my own frontend - just to many special needs & ideas!

[SirPoonga]

...As I feature a automatically rotating monitor, I want to have two seperate MAMEs installed, e.g. MAME-vertical & MAME-horizontal.
... I don't wanna let the monitormount rotate all five minutes!

When you say Automatically - does that mean it rotates to the orientation of the game that you choose to play? If so - how have you solved that?
(I want this feature in my cocktail..   )

Do you really need to rotatoe a monitor ona  cocktail?

[1Spoon]

Do you really need to rotatoe a monitor ona  cocktail?

No I don

[Carsten Carlos]

Cool, you're going to make one of of those Joust-like cocktails? Should be double fun with a lovely girl by your side!  

[1Spoon]

Oops.. that ended up saying exactly the opposite of what I meant..
I want it to be like an ordinary cocktail (not side by side Joust-style) so I can take advantage of screenflipping. But I also want to play horisontal games from the player 1 controls. Thus the rotation.
Sorry about the cufusion..

[SirPoonga]

so you don;t want controls on all sides of the cabinet?   There isn't very many horizontal games you can play across from each other.  Space Dual is about the only one off the top od my head, and that one can be played on the same side too.

[1Spoon]

That was the plan. But I

[Carsten Carlos]

I'll just need some rather simple circuit and a cheap interface to let the motor start.

Just ordered an USB-interface-kit for $50 - featuring 12 combined inputs/outputs (each channel like you want), also the ability to regulate the voltage on any output with 4bit, and examples for Visual Basic.

Serial would've been much cheaper I guess, but at least this solution is 100% XP-compatible and so I can still upgrade my system some day.
As far as I remember my Atari800-emulator doesn't support XP that nice, so I stuck at Win98 for now.

[1Spoon]

Just ordered an USB-interface-kit for $50 - featuring 12 combined inputs/outputs (each channel like you want), also the ability to regulate the voltage on any output with 4bit, and examples for Visual Basic.

Have you got a link for that?
Would like to learn more about it.

[Carsten Carlos]

I've a link for that, but it's only german:

http://www.elektor.de/pagina.htm
There is a .pdf with the full article including circuits & pictures. You can also order the programmed chip (CY7C63001A) and the pcb without parts there.

I'm pretty sure that there extists something similar in the US, maybe you 'll find something by googling after the chip-number and interface?

[Carsten Carlos]

Before I forget, four of the inputs/outputs can drive 15mA, the others only 1.5mA.
So you better use a driver-circuit, a simple transistor-circuit like shown on my homepage and somewhere here under LED-buttons. (This was the really popular thread with how to light your Happ-startbuttons up)

[1Spoon]

Thanks Carsten.
I

[Larry Smith]

You've probably already seen this but here is a link to another persons site with a motor driven rotating monitor (The Lily Pad). He has some circuits that might help.
http://lillypad.4mg.com/lillypad/extraspad.html#TXTOBJ7D065109F3B26C1

[SirPoonga]

That was the plan. But I

[Carsten Carlos]

You've probably already seen this but here is a link to another persons site with a motor driven rotating monitor (The Lily Pad). He has some circuits that might help.
http://lillypad.4mg.com/lillypad/extraspad.html#TXTOBJ7D065109F3B26C1

Thanx, yes, that is exactly the site where I got most circuits from concerning the motor-control! I already have an original motor-pcb that came with the rotating mount, but had no plans how to connect it.