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Top 10 Mame design tricks that we don't see enough of.

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spacies:

My number 1 thing I would like to see more of, is people building classic cabs.

I know its probably boring for you guys but I dont' think there is enough classics being built.

I hate big ass cabinets with a million buttons, 10 trackballs, 50 joysticks and enough lights to drain the national power grid.

I'm all for the classics. You can still tweak them with some fancy products to make 'em look nice.

Knievels machines are cool. So is Bellas Pink one, Psychotechs Bombjack, and VRFs little bartop. And there are many others very nice original designed machines.

But STOP building those super-duper huge cabs.
You wonder why you arent allowed a machine in your house?
THAT is why!

John160 with Tempest.
Hoopstar with Galaga.
Audiomidimans  DK Jr.
The Defender upright and cocktail restorations.

Thats where my heart is.

These guys get stuff all recognition on here because they aren't building something different.
But yet put in as much hard work as anyone else.

Not sure I agree with that at all.

Rant over.



paigeoliver:
A lot of people don't like the feel of the various top switch joysticks. I have used most of them and they are generally fine joysticks but they don't really have the feel that I prefer. That is why I am a fan of 4-way/8-way side by side. Plus that has the added advantage of being able to switch control types mid game. And yes there are some games and times you might actually want to do this, particularly for multistage games that have some 4-way type stages, or when things get really heated up in modern puzzle games.

I'll update the top 10 list later tonight.

btp2k2:

--- Quote from: spacies on March 14, 2007, 05:08:01 pm ---
My number 1 thing I would like to see more of, is people building classic cabs.

I know its probably boring for you guys but I dont' think there is enough classics being built.

I hate big ass cabinets with a million buttons, 10 trackballs, 50 joysticks and enough lights to drain the national power grid.

I'm all for the classics. You can still tweak them with some fancy products to make 'em look nice.

Knievels machines are cool. So is Bellas Pink one, Psychotechs Bombjack, and VRFs little bartop. And there are many others very nice original designed machines.

But STOP building those super-duper huge cabs.
You wonder why you arent allowed a machine in your house?
THAT is why!

John160 with Tempest.
Hoopstar with Galaga.
Audiomidimans  DK Jr.
The Defender upright and cocktail restorations.

Thats where my heart is.

These guys get stuff all recognition on here because they aren't building something different.
But yet put in as much hard work as anyone else.

Not sure I agree with that at all.

Rant over.


--- End quote ---

Nice rant! I completely agree....I started building those monsters....the Lusid clones, 35" deep by 30" wide...friggin monsters. Don't get me wrong...Lusid made mimself a great looking cab....but imagine 2 or 3 of those beasts in a room! Now I prefer the classics. I am in the process of painting a Centipede clone (paint is drying as I type this...stinking the room up) and getting ready to build an Assault clone. Granted, I do enjoy having a multi-game capable machine, so I alter them a tad to accomodate some different controls, but for the most part they are clones of the originals. I love the way the old cabs looked, pre "Shelf" style control panels....with the CP part of the cab itself...

Aurich:

--- Quote from: spacies on March 14, 2007, 05:08:01 pm ---
My number 1 thing I would like to see more of, is people building classic cabs.

I know its probably boring for you guys but I dont' think there is enough classics being built.
--- End quote ---

I'll have pics soon of my hot-rodded Galaga (scratch built). I'm not real big on in-progess pics and logs, so I haven't showed it off any yet. Hopefully I'll be able to spray the paint in the next few weeks then I'll put something in Projects. So there's at least one more fan of building classics out there. ;)

Tiger-Heli:

--- Quote ---Tiger-Heli
I have images of my control panel mappings for all of my 30+ non-mame emulators.  I am just waiting for some frontend (MALA hopefully) to offer the ability to display an image when the emulator is paused.  I do not know of any front end which does this yet.   Since I am mainly interested in being able to view the control panel mapping image when the game is paused, I have not looked into Johnny5 or CPViewer .... I simply show the players the image manually now (ie: get it out and place it on the table next to the cabinet).

--- End quote ---
What you want can be done fairly easily, but not through a frontend, AFAIK, and since different emulators support different methods for pause, I doubt it will be incorporated anytime soon.

My page will tell you basically how to do it, though.  Here are some hints:

First off - Emuloader (and I'm fairly sure Mala) will allow you to display the image before you launch the game.  In EL you scroll through what image is displayed - I have Titles, Snaps, Marquees, CP's, Instruction Cards, and finally CP Hints, which is my Johnny5 images.  In MameWah (or I think Mala), you would have to design this into your layout bezel, but it can be easily done.  I'm attaching a quick Photochop based on shock_'s excellent mala layouts just to give you an idea of the concept.

As far as displaying your image when a game is paused, you just need to combine several of the concepts on my page.

For MAME, you can use BuddaMAME (not sure what the latest version is), but the image is scrunched for vertical games.  I cover that on the bottom of the main page.  http://www.mameworld.net/tigerheli/johnny/static.htm

Howard Casto wrote an AHK script to lauch Johnny 5 when MAME was paused and then go back to MAME, but I don't think we ever resolved timing issues with it.  (Sometimes MAME would not pause when Johnny5 was displayed, sometimes Johnny5 would come up and exit, but MAME would remain paused).  I explain that here: http://www.mameworld.net/tigerheli/johnny/ahk_hc.htm  (I don't think I mention it on the page, but this script will work with any full-screen emulator that uses P to pause, not just MAME.  You could easily change the places where P is called out to some other key to make it work with Emu's that use a different pause key.)  (I don't know if other emulators will have the same timing issues as MAME did (does?) or not.  Howard Casto could likely tell you.  IMS, it was pretty much specific to MAME.

An alternative that I came up with was to have MAME pause normally and then have a different hotkey to call Johnny5.  I cover that here:  http://www.mameworld.net/tigerheli/johnny/ahk_th.htm  This is just a modification of Howard's script, so it also could be used with any emulator.

The final piece is that you want to display static images rather than setting up Johnny5.  On this page, I explain how to use Irfanview to display a static image prior to launching MAME: http://www.mameworld.net/tigerheli/johnny/static.htm and further down, I even mention how to modify the above scripts to call Irfanview and display the images rather than launching Johnny5 (See AHK SCRIPT INTEGRATION on the page above).

Shoot me a PM if you didn't follow all of this, so we don't hijack the thread any more than already done.

 

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