launch mame32 rotated? or best dos FE that launches vertical on startup

[Xphile]

I have win98se on a 266mhz/96mb/ with an all-in-one Motherboard and I wanna make a 'happy-hour' style bartop arcade with a vertical screen instead of horizontal.. just for a few classics like DK, Pac Man... (galaga runs a tad slow-so actually I guess that's about it for now..)

anyways, Mame 32 seems to be perfect for me, I select the game and it auto-rotates it 90 degrees and displays it full screen vertical, and plays DK and Pac full speed..

Is there any way to get mame32 to launch on boot, full screen, and rotated?

I did a search for vertical here, but the results  had more to do with sorting roms and such..I did find a reference to emulaxian, but on further investigation, their web page suggests a 1 ghz pc to 'avoid disappointment'. :-(

suggestions or pointers to a front end that works with a 266 and boots with a vertical screen would be appreciated

[Howard_Casto]

Well there is emutron and the upcoming release of my fe but both need farily decent pcs as well.  I would say game-launcher is your best bet.

Note:  If you run gl in rotated mode then you have to run all of your snapshots through a batch conversion program like irfanview and have it rotate them for you.  

[caykroyd]

I'm having problems with vertical games.  I just got a new computer and have windows XP running.  Installed mame32 and am trying to run vertical games through to GUI.  They come out sideways on my monitor.  I didn't have this problem with my old computer (win2000).  The old computer automatically rotated the vertical games.  None of the options in mame32 help.  Am I missing something?

[dirt]

Well there is emutron and the upcoming release of my fe but both need farily decent pcs as well.  I would say game-launcher is your best bet.

Note:  If you run gl in rotated mode then you have to run all of your snapshots through a batch conversion program like irfanview and have it rotate them for you.  

so you cannot run mame32 rotated? I was really hoping I could.


dirt

[Magnet_Eye]

I believe there is some program for windows that will rotate the windows desktop..which might work...

[Howard_Casto]

Pivot pro won't help as it's painfully slow 90% of the time.  Imho mame32 is ugly and has no business on a arcade cabinet, but that's just me (and 95% of the byoac population).  

[creatine28]

Have you tried ArcadeOS?   You can set it to launch Vertical on the start.   I think with your older system I would go with an older version of mame, maybe .36 or something and load it through straight DOS.  Dos should run things a  little faster, maybe it will solve your speed problem with Galaga?  

[BobA]

Game launcher and Arcade OS will both do what you need.  The games and FE only not the OS,  Just hide the OS best you can,

One snag that I ran into is  I perfer Game Launcher but I am using Arcade OS because AOS can rotate in both directions.   Gamelauncher can rotate only in one direction.   I had already built my cab when I found out that I had rotated the monitor in the wrong direction for Game Launcher.   It was already mounted and I did not want to take it apart to remount it.

Dave has the rotation on his to do list but I have not seen a new version of GL since I installed mine.   Still waiting patiently.

BobA

[Impostor]

WHich way does GameLauncher rotate?  90-deg counter-clockwise or 90-deg clockwise?

I recently converted a horizontal Impress cabinet to a vertical cabinet.  I'm in the exact situation you are.  Using Mame32, but my OS and Mame32 GUI is still on horizontal axis.  

Impostor

[Xphile]

Game launcher and Arcade OS will both do what you need.  The games and FE only not the OS,  Just hide the OS best you can,

I guess if I go dos and straight into the FE, i'll only see the sideways bios and OS for a few seconds during boot...I'll be able to get over it..

(although I haven't used dos (and what now seems cryptic autoexec.bat/config.sys) since my first 486 in '94, so I'm kinda squeamish getting this all-in-one motherboard set up with drivers and such under dos ..:-)

BTW, I saw your tabletop first, and then Kelsey's centipede style and it was what inspired to try my hand at this..should be a blast

I saw a couple "galaga '88 "graphics somewhere at (I think) the oscar controls site a month or so ago that would be perfect for the sideart and panel bugs <similar to the 'happy hour' graphic layout> , but I can't remember where I saw them (I believe it was a directory list of files), how I got there, or what happened to them... anybody seen the galaga artwork at oscar controls or skum.org?  If I find them again I'll have to beg him to let me use them for sideart..they'd look great on a white cab with red trim/buttons/balltops:-)

[Impostor]

After searching around, I've settled with using Mike Billings' MAME Cocktail FrontEnd.  It's pretty easy to set up.  Just 1 .ini file.  I'm running XP Pro, so I set the compatibility mode to Win98.  This solved all the problems of the FE crashing.

His Cocktail FE allows for vertical monitors.  My OS is still displayed horizontally, but the FE displays vertically.

As for configuring it for vertical monitors, inside the ini file, I set one of the option to "ROR", rotate right.  Then in my Mame.ini file, I set for hwstretch so that all my vertical games stretch to fill the vertical screen.

You can select games via the joysticks and launch them with P1 start button.  P2 start button brings up a menu list that allows you to switch between a snapshot preview style selection screen or a list style selection screen.

I have the FE in my Startup folder so my cabinet goes right into the FE.  This allows me to put away the mouse and keyboard.

Check out Mike Billings' FE at http://www.mikebillings.com/postnuke/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=frontend&file=index

Mike Billings, if you're reading this board, Thank you so much for your Front End!  

Impostor