Cocktail mode set universally?

[Pete Rittwage]

I recently finished up a cocktail MAME machine and ran into an issue.

Is it possible to universally set all games (that support flipping) to cocktail mode?  As it is now, I have to switch it and then exit/reenter MAME on every game (since the reset function is gone from the menu).  If I could make this the default, it would be nice.  

[NOP]

there was talk of such a tool being generated, but you're actually better off doing it by hand because there are still a few games that have a lot of issues in cocktail mode (like the 2nd player not getting any controls mapped, etc)

Or, let me know the specs of your new machine, and if it's close to mine, I can send you the list that I have and all the ini/cfg files that go along with it.

my setup:  19" vertical screen (in an original galaga cabinet), U360 and 3 buttons for each player.

I currently have 330 games on it, that I have personally verified to be playable in cocktail mode.  I also added a few top down horizontal games that are perfectly playable in a cocktail machine. 

-jeff!

[Pete Rittwage]

Hi jeff,

I have an old Pac-Man cocktail that was converted to MAME.  (It wasn't sacrificed, it had water and mice living in it before I got it). 

I added two buttons per player and left the 4-way sticks.  I used to filter for vertical games only, but MAME has that cocktail mode where horizontal games are mirrored and shown upside down to player two, which is really cool and solves a lot of problems with other games.   However, this situation is not a DIP switch like regular cocktail mode, but a video option instead.

[NOP]

ok, I'm more on the trolley now with what you're trying to do.

I *think* the settings for that cocktail mode are in the .ini file that gets generated for every game.  (I only have joust done up in this method, and I haven't looked at the .ini file for it)

If that's the case, then romlister could be used to generate a batch file to copy an .ini file (or append the cocktail mode setting) to each rom's .ini file that you needed.

I can try and step you through the process of this, but I'd hate to do something to trash your existing .ini files in case it gets screwed up.

How many horizontal games that are simultaneous 2 player are there?  As I mentioned, joust is the only one I've got in this mode, but if I'm missing out, I wanna know!

-jeff!

Oh, BTW: the reset game is now Ctrl-F3 I believe.  It's just not in the menu.

[Pete Rittwage]

Hi Jeff,

What I would like is for all cocktail games to be in cocktail mode (DIP switch setting) so they flip, but all horizontal games should come up in "mirror" mode (duplicate screen upside down).

That's probably a bit to filter and ask.  It'd be nice if MAME knew how to do this...

[Pete Rittwage]

I see what you mean on the "Cocktail" video option.  MAME inserts this XML in the CFG file:

<video>
    <target index="0" view="Cocktail" />
</video>

However, the cocktail DIP switch will be nearly impossible, since it only notes it by the DSWx tag, which is different in every game. 

<input>
   <port tag="DSW2" type="DIPSWITCH" mask="2" defvalue="0" value="2" />
</input>

[NOP]

Good info!

ok, for the cocktail video option, I think we could do this, or something similar:

1) in ROMLister (http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/) do a query for horizontal games only.

2) select batch file output.  For the batch file, type in "type c:\cocktail.txt >> %rom%.cfg"
2b) save this batch file in your c:\mame\cfg folder.

3) take that <video>...</video> snippet and save it as c:\cocktail.txt

4) run the batch file from your cfg folder.  It'll append the video snippet to each .cfg file in the folder.

caveats: ok, I don't know if this will actually work.  It could, provided that video xml bit isn't embedded inside any other XML data, which it probably is.  Option B would be if the same .cfg file data is used on all the games.  If that's the case, then you could just copy a .cfg file into every %rom%.cfg by changing the batch file slightly.  Option C would be to quickly write some kind of XML injector to do the work.  I could easily write such a thing for you.

----

For the dipswitches, yeah, you're kinda stuck doing that by hand.  I could send you all the cfg/ini files for my machine to save time, but my monitor resolution/orientation might be different that yours.  (I know we're both vertical, but mine might be 180 degrees off from yours, in which case you'd have to do them all by hand anyway!)