MameHooker Wip

[Howard_Casto]

This app has been catching dust for a few months, so I thought I would give a update:

I added dde/command line support today.  This should make it easier for non-mame emulators/apps to use mamehooker.  I will try to contact the daphne team and some visual pinball authors (visual pinball, in theory, should already be able to do dde) about getting support added once the next release is established. 

I also fixed the artwork issues with 1.3, so everything should work now.  Originally I was going to get Mr. Do! to host the artwork files, but Saint doesn't seem to be worried about bw atm, so for now they will be hosted on the Dk homepage.  I have around 5 or so artwork files finished in both low and hi res formats. 

I added a more advanced force-feedback command for ff freaks out there. 

Andy has sent me the details on his new output device, and it should be rather trivial to add support as it's very similar to the io-warrior.  I've decided to wait a version to add it though, seeing as the newly-added dde support required some minor core changes and it could cause bugs.  Of course, his new device isn't exactly out in the wild yet, so there shouldn't be any hurry.

Expect a new release sometime next week. 

Any authors of emulators, fes or whatever that are interested in using the new dde interface should contact me asap. 

[Howard_Casto]

The new release is virtually ready, I was just side-tracked by issues with my latest pinball wrapper.  Expect a relase soon.

[headkaze]

Mabye you should paste your readme.txt in this post, otherwise people who don't come here regular may not know what you mean.

And DDE for those too lazy to type it into Google is just a way to communicate with MameHooker through an external program like a FE.

P.S Howard I'll be e-mailing you soon about the Mame input mapping stuff

[Dariusz]

Hi Howard_Casto,

Can you provide infor on what the purpose of mamehooker is about (for FE?) please, and details what the forcefeedback feature is too. I curious to understand the app you are working on as I can figure it out from the above post.


Thanks,

Dariusz

[Howard_Casto]

To quote the readme......


Overview
========
Arcade games have always had outputs.  Lights, sirens, motors, solenids scoreboards or what have you, cabinets have always had ways to interact with the player.  Until recently, mame had all but ignored this, with flashing keyboard lights as our only source of output.  Thankfully, Aaron Giles built us a whole new output system last summer, that allows mame to relay the states of various outputs to any windows application.  Unfortunately, knowing the state doesn't magically make a device fire, thus the need for this app.  Mame Hooker keeps track of outputs and uses their state to control several output devices including, but not limited to the keyboard leds, ledwiz, the parallel port and force feedback controllers.  More devices will be added as the project progresses. 

[Dariusz]

Thanks Howard_Casto for the information. I look forward to the release. I belive it maybe of use to me as I have a rock'n'ride simulator which I hope the forcefeed back feature of your app can be used with the simulator on such as car and plane games.