Webcade 1.0 demo (arcade cabinet web interface)

[bitblitt]

As appreciation to all the great contributors to MAME, Mamewah, and all the other software and artwork that brought my cabinet to life, I'd like to contribute something of my own.  I wrote a program that allows the world to take a look at my arcade cabinet and see what its doing via the web.  I call it Webcade.

I'm still testing it, but feel free to take a look at my installation at http://67.10.193.188, assuming I still have it powered on when you view it.

Webcade just generates the images, and with its integrated web server, hosts the webpage.  This means, you can make your own webpage assuming you know how to write HTML.  The cam.jpg and screen.jpg files are generated automatically by Webcade. 

The image on the top left is from the webcam.  My USB cable won't reach yet, but I will eventually have it mounted on the top looking down at the control panel.  If you see a black image, the lights are probably just not on.  The bottom right image is the realtime screenshot.  When I'm playing, you can see still images from the game I'm playing.  Usually, you'll just see the snapshot screensaver from Mamewah.

Images are generated only when somebody views the webpage, but no faster than the configured rate.  I currently have it set to 30 seconds, so if two people view the site within 30 seconds, it will only generate a NEW set of images for the first person.   The webpage I created for my implementation also automatically reloads the images once every 30 seconds, but staggers each by 15 seconds.  All of this is configurable at runtime.

I've had it set to generate new images no faster than every 2.5 seconds with two people viewing at 2.5 second intervals, which eventually did slow down MAME and crash Webcade a minute into Pac Man, returning MAME back to normal.  However, with the settings listed above, I can't tell that its running while playing MAME.

Before I go through the process of setting up an installer and cleaning it up for general use, would anybody even like to use this?

[Hiub1]

That's pretty effing cool. So it will host the server for you on your PC automatically?

[jfunk]

I've often thought of doing this as well..  However, there are other features I'd like to see.. 

1) Instead of hosting the webserver on the PC, push the images (via ftp or whatever) to a remote server for viewing.
2) Maybe parse the high scores lists..?  Show current high scores on games..?

Erm..  I actually had more thoughts on this at one time..  I'll think on it.

But LOVE IT so far! 

[bitblitt]

Hiub1:  Yes.  It has a very rudimentary web server.  Rudimentary by design.  Keeps it as small and fast as possible.

jfunk:  1)I thought about pushing it also, but decided I didn't want to consume so much bandwidth for something that I thought would not be viewed much.  Two images, sent twice every minute slowly starts to add up.  The way it is now, it only generates new images and transmits them when somebody views the site.  But I can see where a push would be nice to have.  Its not too hard to make it push via FTP.  Maybe version 2.0. 

2)  Definitely version 2.0.  I'd also like it to list the game currently being played.

I've been out since last night, but anybody that recently viewed my cab would see that its not quite ready for release.  I think I have a memory leak somewhere.  I'm going to add some more error checking and determine where the webcam capture dies and when.

[jfunk]

Excellent.  The 'currently playing' is also a nice feature..  How are you going to determine that?

What language is it in?  Will you be making the source available?  (Just curious at this point.. I _WISH_ I had time to do anything with it..)

Thanx!

[deadsoulz]

Nice, i would like to check this out.

[bitblitt]

I just submitted a request for a project on Source Forge.  If/when its accepted, I'll post the code there.  I have a 2 day old infant, so I might have difficulty finding the time for this project over the next few months.

[bitblitt]

I just got my Source Forge project approved.  You can find it at http://sourceforge.net/projects/webcade.  I'll upload the code in the next few days. 

I also added the "currently playing" feature.  It creates flat files with certain content like the name of the current game, manufacturer, emulator, start time, and year released.  I then included HTML code in the index page with java script that displays and updates this data via client side includes.  It also appends to a log with game name (or idle if exiting a game) and time so that, eventually, I could create historical reports from the data.  I'll try to leave mine online for the next couple days so you can see it.

By the way, I noticed that this doesn't work well with Daphne.  If you see a black screenshot and the current emulator is Daphne, its because I'm probably playing Dragon's Lair.  It doesn't capture video too well apparently.

[Howard_Casto]

There's nothing to capture.  Videos in windows are displayed via overlay and your hardware.  It didn't caputre anything because as far as windows is concerned, there isn't anything to capture.  The only (easy) way I know of capturing an image in daphne is to use it's screenshot function.