PC Games in Cocktail Cabinet

[astro57]

Will PC games such as the"Return of the Arcade" stuff run in a cocktail cabinet, rotate and switch ends for 2 players? This mame stuff is driving me nuts, I have some games that are in a small high resolution screen, some in full screen and some don't run at all. Building this cabinet, setting up all the controls, computer and moniter was great but the mame set up is getting to me.

Thanks, Dave

[loadman]

Hang in there Buddy 

I have a cocktail cab too. They are great for resting a beer on.. ohh and play the odd game.

Forget the PC arcade games. Mame is the way to go for your cocktail table.

Mame will rotate for two players for 'some' games if it allows for 'cocktail' mode (as apposed to upright) in mame config. While in a game hit the tab key and then dip switch settings. See attached pic.

As for the resolution I would suggest enabling hardware stretching. Most games look pretty good.

in mame.ini  set something like:

### Windows video options ###
autoframeskip           1
frameskip               0
waitvsync               0
triplebuffer            0
window                  0
ddraw                   1
hwstretch               1

[astro57]

Thanks, I think I'll try to make a handfull of games run well instead of 100's of games just run.  Now I am going to try to find the top 20 games for a cocktail table. Suggestions are welcome.

Dave

[astro57]

Hang in there Buddy 

<I have a cocktail cab too. They are great for resting a beer on.. ohh and play the odd game.>

Maybe I need to get into cocktail mode, chill out and play pacman (only game that works perfect)

[NOP]

this may also be of use to you:
http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Lists

Some other fellow cocktail owners and I put together that list o' games that support player flipping for cocktail mode.  Note that you will still have to go into each game and enable cocktail mode (start the game, in MAME, hit the tab key, go to dipswitches and flip the cocktail mode switch, then reset the game)

At the very bottom is a group of games that while not cocktail, are perfectly playable on a cocktail machine because they are top-down viewing.  All you have to do there is adjust the jostick controls so that they are relative to a player where they are sitting.

good luck, we're here to help.

-jeff!

[astro57]

OK, I'll dump the PC game idea and stick it out with mame.  Thanks for the help.  I am going to pick a handful of good games, make them run and serve cocktails.

Thanks, Dave

[loadman]

this may also be of use to you:
http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Lists

Sweet, I had not seen that before.

I just need to kick my niece off my machine . See attached

[turbo6]

this may also be of use to you:
http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Lists

Sweet, I had not seen that before.

Gee, where have you been??? I gave a list to NOP and uploaded here about a year ago...  

[DrumAnBass]

No one has created a hotkey enabled screen flip utility...? I am surprised.

Would be nice to be able to smack a utility button to rotate the screen 180 degrees at will.

Maybe there is an NVidia utility or something that could pull this off...?

[loadman]

No one has created a hotkey enabled screen flip utility...? I am surprised.

Would be nice to be able to smack a utility button to rotate the screen 180 degrees at will.

Maybe there is an NVidia utility or something that could pull this off...?

True ..I'm sure there is, but you may conflict with Mame's internal cocktail flipping

[headkaze]

iRotate or SoftSpin can rotate using hotkeys. If you need a single button to flip your screen, then create an AutoHotkey script to invoke the hotkey combination using a single button. You can then use a "shift" key on your keyboard encoder, like IPAC so you can press, say your Pause button with the joystick up or down to flip.

[danny_galaga]

i dont see asteroids on that list? that works fine on a cocktail (",)

[NOP]

i dont see asteroids on that list? that works fine on a cocktail (",)

Aha!  maybe you're the one to answer this:

How did you get asteroids set up into cocktail mode?  (so player 2 uses a different set of controls, not for screen flipping, obviously)

The last time I looked, asteroids used a jumper for setting cocktail mode, not a dipswitch, so MAME didn't have support for it, which seems downright silly to me, considering a dipswitch is the same thing as a jumper...

anyway, I could find nothing in the tab menu for asteroids to get it into cocktail mode, so that's likely how that one wasn't added to the list.

-jeff!

[danny_galaga]

i dont have my cab here, but im pretty sure all i did was map the player two controls the same as player one since mame only seems to have the upright rom. true, the scores are upside down for player two but it doesnt really effect gameplay. the only problem then is if the other player fiddles while you play!

[NOP]

bummer. 
yeah, mapping P2 controls to P1's is unacceptable to my situation-I can't trust my opponent to not hit my hyperspace button and make me blow up.

Perhaps this will influence me to start digging around in the MAME code and see if I can force that cocktail mode jumper to be set.  Sounds like a good rainy afternoon project.

-jeff!