Setting up cocktail config, do I use gamelists?

[melarky]

I'm trying to get my cocktail set up with Mala (this is my second attempt, I got a faster computer now so Mala is running better now, but I'm not really sure how to get the cocktail stuff working).

I guess I should start by saying I have a 3 sided cocktail, the screen orientation is so that on the 2 ends, it is set up with single player panels on each side, perfect for vertical games that flip, and on the long single side, it's set up with a 2 player panel so people can play horizontal games.

I see in the controls area where I can define specific controls for that, but it also has the drop down to load specific gamelists for each side which I think would be great since it looks like I'll be able to set it that if someone uses the 1 player controls it will orient it to the 1 player vertical station, and load a gamelist of only vertical games, and if they use the 2 player controls in the front end it will switch to a horizontal orientation and only load horizontal games.

I looked at making a seperate gamelist for vertical and horizontal, but when I created a new one, it didn't give me the option to sort by the screen orientation.  Am I missing something?  Is that not the best way to do what I'm trying to do?  I like Mala, but I feel really stupid since it seems like this should be a pretty easy thing to figure out, but I'm not getting it.  Would love all feedback especially if you think there is a better way to set this up (keeping in mind that I have both the player 1 and 2 on vertical and horizontal panels wired to the same buttons).

[loadman]

The idea is you make you game lists in advance and allocate the appropriate list to the orientation.

You can use the MaLa Gamelist Editor


or.....

http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/

[melarky]

I see, I only downloaded Mala, I didn't download the seperate gamelists editor.  Since there is the gamelists tab, I figured you managed it all there, but it makes more sense that I need to download the seperate program and set it all up there.  Thanks for your help, I'll try this as soon as I get home today.

[melarky]

I have another quick question about Mala.  It seems to be working great, and once in it scrolls through the games well enough, but I noticed if you press esc to exit or pull up the options, it takes a long time (around 5 seconds) and looks "halting" while it dims the screen and pulls up the next prompt (like the esc one brings up the box that says "Quit?").  Not a huge deal, but since everything else runs smoothly, I'm not sure if that is configured wrong somewhere or something.  Is that normal?

[csa3d]

I have another quick question about Mala.  It seems to be working great, and once in it scrolls through the games well enough, but I noticed if you press esc to exit or pull up the options, it takes a long time (around 5 seconds) and looks "halting" while it dims the screen and pulls up the next prompt (like the esc one brings up the box that says "Quit?").  Not a huge deal, but since everything else runs smoothly, I'm not sure if that is configured wrong somewhere or something.  Is that normal?

What desktop resolution are you running MALA at?  I've found that if I run a super high resolution (since my LCD's native res is 1600x1200) then MALA runs slower then cold molasses.  The only fix i've found is to run MALA at something low like 640x480, and then have MAME run at native resolution by setting some ini settings.  I presume the slowness factor has something to do with code behind image stretching/processing.  This solution has helped me make the FE experience much smoother.

-csa

[NOP]

I see, I only downloaded Mala, I didn't download the seperate gamelists editor.  Since there is the gamelists tab, I figured you managed it all there, but it makes more sense that I need to download the seperate program and set it all up there.  Thanks for your help, I'll try this as soon as I get home today.

I have a special place in my heart for cocktail owners running mala, so I'd be glad to help you figure out your gamelists too.  I'm running a customized version of the retro arcade layout on top of mala (it displays a cocktail machine instead of an upright) and I love it to pieces.

http://www.waste.org/~winkles/winterMAME/pix/winterMALA.jpg  (picture of my machine)

I'm the author of the above mentioned romlister program, and I'd be more than happy to help you get your gamelists in working order.  You could even do me a favor and try out my new beta of the program:
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/ROMLister13Beta5.zip

You'd want to use the same list for the vertical players on your cab, and then a 2nd list for all your horizontal games.  Mala should be able to handle the list changing and screen orientation easily enough.

-jeff!

[melarky]

I have another quick question about Mala.  It seems to be working great, and once in it scrolls through the games well enough, but I noticed if you press esc to exit or pull up the options, it takes a long time (around 5 seconds) and looks "halting" while it dims the screen and pulls up the next prompt (like the esc one brings up the box that says "Quit?").  Not a huge deal, but since everything else runs smoothly, I'm not sure if that is configured wrong somewhere or something.  Is that normal?

What desktop resolution are you running MALA at?  I've found that if I run a super high resolution (since my LCD's native res is 1600x1200) then MALA runs slower then cold molasses.  The only fix i've found is to run MALA at something low like 640x480, and then have MAME run at native resolution by setting some ini settings.  I presume the slowness factor has something to do with code behind image stretching/processing.  This solution has helped me make the FE experience much smoother.

-csa

That's more than likely it since I have my computer on my LCD at a high resolution to configure it, and then I'll move it down to the CRT with a lower res when I actually hook it up to the cocktail cabinet, I  will try to adjust the res and see how it does.  Thanks for the help.

[melarky]

I see, I only downloaded Mala, I didn't download the seperate gamelists editor.  Since there is the gamelists tab, I figured you managed it all there, but it makes more sense that I need to download the seperate program and set it all up there.  Thanks for your help, I'll try this as soon as I get home today.

I have a special place in my heart for cocktail owners running mala, so I'd be glad to help you figure out your gamelists too.  I'm running a customized version of the retro arcade layout on top of mala (it displays a cocktail machine instead of an upright) and I love it to pieces.

http://www.waste.org/~winkles/winterMAME/pix/winterMALA.jpg  (picture of my machine)

I'm the author of the above mentioned romlister program, and I'd be more than happy to help you get your gamelists in working order.  You could even do me a favor and try out my new beta of the program:
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/ROMLister13Beta5.zip

You'd want to use the same list for the vertical players on your cab, and then a 2nd list for all your horizontal games.  Mala should be able to handle the list changing and screen orientation easily enough.

-jeff!

Wow, your cocktail looks awesome.  I like that layout you have on yours, and I looked at using the one that has the upright as the arcade image but thought I better not since it's going on a cocktail, that's great that you made your own.  Do you have that modified layout available anywhere?  I tried looking on the mala page itself, but the layout page wasn't loading all the way (only loaded the top part of the page and didn't display any of the available layouts).  Sorry if it's there, I will check back later to see if it's available (maybe it's just my work computer that is goofed up).

Since I haven't used any gameslist maker yet, I'd be happy to use your program, especially since it looks like you probably had a cocktail cab in mind while programming it   Let me know if you want me to try anything specific, and if you have any pointers/recomendations on how to set my machine up since you obviously have much more experience with this...

[NOP]

Wow, your cocktail looks awesome.  I like that layout you have on yours, and I looked at using the one that has the upright as the arcade image but thought I better not since it's going on a cocktail, that's great that you made your own.  Do you have that modified layout available anywhere?  I tried looking on the mala page itself, but the layout page wasn't loading all the way (only loaded the top part of the page and didn't display any of the available layouts).  Sorry if it's there, I will check back later to see if it's available (maybe it's just my work computer that is goofed up).

Thanks!
I'll post the updated graphics files when I get a moment (probably tomorrow night).
It's pretty much the stock retroGUI layout with just a couple graphics changes plus a few changes to the layout so it displayed the # of buttons and stick type as needed per game.  I am also using movie previews instead of still snapshots.  The movies themselves are over a gig in size, so I don't think I can post those anywhere, but I could give you FTP access to my machine if you wanted.

My layout doesn't do a 3rd/4th player at the horizontal position, so you will have to get your hands dirty in photoshop and the layout editor if you want that to work properly.  (in fact I have no idea what happens to my modded layout when it goes horizontal!)

Since I haven't used any gameslist maker yet, I'd be happy to use your program, especially since it looks like you probably had a cocktail cab in mind while programming it   Let me know if you want me to try anything specific, and if you have any pointers/recomendations on how to set my machine up since you obviously have much more experience with this...

The key to romlister is to plug in what controls you have on your machine for each player, then RL chews on the master list and attempts to find the games that suit your criteria.  (doesn't it make sense to not list games like Marble Madness when you don't have a trackball?)  In your case, you'd make at least 2 different lists, assuming the vertical players have the same controls, and the second list for your horizontal players. 

Another thing to consider is that not all vertical games flip for cocktail mode (and some that claim they do are broken!) so you might also consider making a "1 player only" vertical list of games.

On my machine, I managed to dredge out 330 roms that were 2/4/8 way stick+3 buttons and had working screen flipping.   There are also a few games that are top down viewable (like gauntlet, wizard of wor)  that can work just fine on a cocktail machine with only minor changes to joystick maps. There are some games that are essentially horizontal, but have the same X+Y coordinate values, so it doesn't really matter what orientation they are in.  Unfortunately, those need to be examined and tested by hand, but if you find any, please add them to the below wiki link.

There is a list of cocktail mode roms here:
http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Lists


-jeff!

[melarky]

Ok, I am getting closer, but still have a few lingering problems.  I used the RomLister program to make 2 different gamelists (one for vertical and one for horizontal).  I also used it to remove the mature games (that was nice, been trying to do that for a while and this made it super easy).

I then went and set it up so that when you use the player 1 controls, it changes to the vertical list, and when you use the player 2 controls in the menu, it changes to the horizontal list, but I can't figure out how to make it actually load the roms appropriately.  If I check the box that says "Let Mala Flip Mame" or whatever it flips the actual game orientation whether it's vertical or not, but if I don't, it's the other way (not flipping no matter what).  Is there something I'm missing?  Do I need to create the game lists with some sort of command that says to flip them?  I don't know mame command line very well, but it looks like RomLister will let me add custom code in that line, so that is my guess on how to fix this, but maybe I'm overlooking a checkbox or something in Mala that does it for me.  Any help would be appreciated, I'm really close now, shouldn't be too much longer.

[csa3d]

I then went and set it up so that when you use the player 1 controls, it changes to the vertical list, and when you use the player 2 controls in the menu, it changes to the horizontal list, but I can't figure out how to make it actually load the roms appropriately.  If I check the box that says "Let Mala Flip Mame" or whatever it flips the actual game orientation whether it's vertical or not, but if I don't, it's the other way (not flipping no matter what).  Is there something I'm missing?

have you specified rotation options in your mame.ini file?

Code: [Select]

#
# CORE ROTATION OPTIONS
#
rotate                  1
ror                     0
rol                     0
autoror                 0
autorol                 1
flipx                   0
flipy                   0
-csa

[melarky]

I hadn't done that yet, I added those lines to my mame.ini, and it looks like we're almost there, but now the vertical games rotate to the wrong side (they default to the vertical player 2 view).  Not sure what I would change in that file to get it to flip the other way.

Also, since I added that to the mame.ini, the mala seems to run in a small window within windows, but it doesn't actually have a window.  I'm attaching a screenshot to show you what I mean (sorry for the size, I only have ms paint on this computer since it's going to be in the cocktail, don't want to actually install photoshop or anything on it).

[csa3d]

rol == rotate left from horizontal position
ror == rotate right from horizontal position
autorol == automatically rotate the screen 90 degrees left from horizontal
autoror == automatically rotate the screen 90 degrees right from horizontal

I'd first set all left options above to right options (0=off, 1=on) and see if that solves the problem.  If you are still out of luck, maybe enabling 1 of the 2 flip options solves it.  Maybe a pic of the cocktail table layout is necessary to pinpoint which combination you need.

-csa

[melarky]

rol == rotate left from horizontal position
ror == rotate right from horizontal position
autorol == automatically rotate the screen 90 degrees left from horizontal
autoror == automatically rotate the screen 90 degrees right from horizontal

I'd first set all left options above to right options (0=off, 1=on) and see if that solves the problem.  If you are still out of luck, maybe enabling 1 of the 2 flip options solves it.  Maybe a pic of the cocktail table layout is necessary to pinpoint which combination you need.

-csa

Thanks again for your help, I bet I just need to change the ini file to from autorol to autoror.  I'll play around with it as soon as I get home from work.

Any ideas what could be causing the weird "window" problem?  I don't see anything in that ini file editing that would affect that, I must have ticked something in the mala options without thinking that is doing it, but I'm not sure what.

[swindus]

Any ideas what could be causing the weird "window" problem?  I don't see anything in that ini file editing that would affect that, I must have ticked something in the mala options without thinking that is doing it, but I'm not sure what.

You are using a 'fixed size' layout.
http://www.malafe.net/index.php?page=layouts&subpage=retrogui
As you can see on the layout page it is designed for a resolution of 640x480 pixel. Thats the reason why MaLa 'hangs' in the top left corner of your screen.

[csa3d]

Any ideas what could be causing the weird "window" problem?  I don't see anything in that ini file editing that would affect that, I must have ticked something in the mala options without thinking that is doing it, but I'm not sure what.

Have you rotated your windows desktop to be vertically oriented before launching MALA?  I get a similar looking thing if I have my windows desktop set to be vertically based instead of the default, horizontal windows desktop before launching the program.

To remedy this, there's a program out there called iRotate (google it, it's free).  This program sits in your system tray, and allows you to quickly toggle all 4 windows screen orienations from a single click, or by a hotkey combination which your setup is likely unable to reproduce, even after messing around with iRotates .ini configuration.  The good news is that iRotate has a command line option which I found through their forums, which allows you to launch the program, rotate the windows screen to horizontal, then close itself, all through one DOS command.  If I remember correctly, I believe I have the frontend loading from a batch file, in which windows is forced into horizontal mode before calling MALA.

My current boot setup is kinda queer, largely due to the "unique" loading behavior of the GGG Key Wiz.
1.  KeyWiz uploader loads custom key set "A"
2.  KeyWiz uploader set to launch my batch file when it finally decides it's OK to upload set A  (pssstt... buy an ipac next time
3.  Batch file
     a.  run iRotate to force horizontal orientation (my setup rotates, and depending how the last game was oriented, I tyically have the desktop set to match due to internet browsing or something) then close it out, so this resource isn't being kept around in memory.
     b.  run MALA with the /wait flag set, which means when I close MALA then continue with the batch file commands
     c.  Run iRotate again permanently so it shows up in the system tray always for quick screen rotation to play in windows
     d.  Launch a keyboard program which I got from google, which is better then the one that comes with windows, so I can use my trackball and buttons to navigate windows w/o a wireless keyboard pulled out.

Hope that helps.  Getting close for sure!

[melarky]

Any ideas what could be causing the weird "window" problem?  I don't see anything in that ini file editing that would affect that, I must have ticked something in the mala options without thinking that is doing it, but I'm not sure what.

You are using a 'fixed size' layout.
http://www.malafe.net/index.php?page=layouts&subpage=retrogui
As you can see on the layout page it is designed for a resolution of 640x480 pixel. Thats the reason why MaLa 'hangs' in the top left corner of your screen.

I don't really know in depth how the layouts work on these front ends, but from doing a search I found this:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=81035.0

Does that mean I can just pop those larger files into the layout folder replacing the other ones that are there and it will work in larger resolutions?  Or do I have to send those images through some sort of layout converter?  Sorry if this is a dumb question.

[NOP]

More on rotation:

If you launch a game and it comes up in the wrong orientation on the screen, hit the TAB key, go to video options and select rotate screen until it's in the correct position.  Once it's in the right orientation, you won't have to mess with it again-these settings get saved in the game's INI file (or somewhere) which overrides the rotation settings that MAME has in it's INI file.  It seemed to me that of the 330 ROMs I loaded onto my machine, I probably had to rotate 327 of them by hand.  

While you're poking around in the TAB menu, for each of your cocktail games, you will need to go into the dipswitch settings and change the cabinet to cocktail.  This won't take hold til you either reset the game (ctrl-F3) or exit back out to mala and launch it again.  *none* of the cocktail games come up defaulted in cocktail mode, except for the dedicated ROMs like Tetris Cocktail. 

Doing this is, I guess, part of the fun of setting up a machine, but it's also quite tiring to kick of a game, tweak the settings til it's in the right orientation and cabinet mode, reset the game, drop in 2 credits, start a 2 player game, kill off player 1, run around to the other side of the machine and make sure the controls work for player 2 and that the screen flipped correctly.  It took me several afternoons of work to get through them all.  I'd gladly share all my .ini files for all of my games, but my video setup is different than yours, so you're probably going to have to do it all by hand too.  have fun!

-jeff!

[csa3d]

Any ideas what could be causing the weird "window" problem?  I don't see anything in that ini file editing that would affect that, I must have ticked something in the mala options without thinking that is doing it, but I'm not sure what.

You are using a 'fixed size' layout.
http://www.malafe.net/index.php?page=layouts&subpage=retrogui
As you can see on the layout page it is designed for a resolution of 640x480 pixel. Thats the reason why MaLa 'hangs' in the top left corner of your screen.

I don't really know in depth how the layouts work on these front ends, but from doing a search I found this:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=81035.0

Does that mean I can just pop those larger files into the layout folder replacing the other ones that are there and it will work in larger resolutions?  Or do I have to send those images through some sort of layout converter?  Sorry if this is a dumb question.

MALA has a layout editor, which defines all of the layout properties.  You can download this from the MALA website.  Each layout has an attribute to specify that layout's dimensions.  You can tell a layout to scale, or to be a fixed size which you specify.  If you've downloaded a layout with a fixed size parameter, and that fixed sized is smaller then your screen resolution, then I'm assuming you need to grab those .ai files from that thread you mention, resize them to what you need, save them out, and adjust some layout properties using the MALA editor.  I don't use this layout, so I'm not much help other then theorizing.



-csa

[NOP]

sorry to bounce this thread all over the place, but here's the updated retroGUI files for a cocktail machine.

http://www.waste.org/~winkles/winterMAME/retroGUI_MAMECocktailVertical.zip

Unzip and overwrite the existing files.  This is my layout for a 3 button machine, and the control panel on the machine in the layout displays the number of buttons used as you scroll through the list.

I have no idea what this will do if you rotate it to horizontal, but it will likely be a disaster.  Hopefully I've included all the files that I changed-if it doesn't seem to work, lemme know.

-jeff!

[csa3d]

As you are messing with new layouts, do remember that ultimately you'll want to run a small resolution on your high resolution monitor (which means you need a layout that scales to fit instead of a fixed size one) or else the performance of MALA is super slow when displaying snaps and performing fade effects.  I'm not certain this particular layout you want is set up to scale..  just a warning.

-csa

[melarky]

Wow, I spent most of last night after work going through the vertical list and setting the dip switch for each one to "Cabinet = Cocktail".  There were also a bunch of games that didn't load, so I removed those from the gamelist at the same time (weird that it displayed non working ones after I checked to only list playable roms in both mala and romlister).

It's nice to have the vertical list out of the way, but now I'm making my way through the horizontal list (not changing the dip switch settings, but just loading them, and if a game on the list doesn't load, I remove it).  That's going to take a little while (there are around 2500 on my horizontal list).  I did get to the "F's" last night though (around 12:00).  I showed my wife how to do it, so she says she will try to do some more today while I'm at work (I have an arcade party tonight, I have an upright machine they can play, but would be nice to get the cocktail done for it too, I'm not holding my breath though as there is a lot left to do).

I also noticed that most of the games I load stretch off of the screen.  I haven't messed around with the resolution stuff too much yet though because I am doing all of this while it's hooked up to my main 20" widescreen LCD at my desk.  When it's done, it's going to be hooked up to a 17" standard CRT monitor in the cocktail cabinet, so I figure I would look at it then.  I'm getting pretty close to finishing now though and thought I better ask here just in case anyone here has any insight on what I need to do to get my video set for all of the games to work on that 17" CRT it will be going into...

[NOP]

Wow, I spent most of last night after work going through the vertical list and setting the dip switch for each one to "Cabinet = Cocktail".  There were also a bunch of games that didn't load, so I removed those from the gamelist at the same time (weird that it displayed non working ones after I checked to only list playable roms in both mala and romlister).

Is your romset matched to your mame version?  It sounds to me like you're using an older set and a newer mame, and that will cause lots of games not to load because you're missing roms, or they've changed.  A game shouldn't be in the list if it doesn't even load up.  Whenever I get one of those, I pop out to a command prompt and try launching the game from there.  Mame will kick out a list of what went wrong.

-jeff!

[melarky]

Wow, I spent most of last night after work going through the vertical list and setting the dip switch for each one to "Cabinet = Cocktail".  There were also a bunch of games that didn't load, so I removed those from the gamelist at the same time (weird that it displayed non working ones after I checked to only list playable roms in both mala and romlister).

Is your romset matched to your mame version?  It sounds to me like you're using an older set and a newer mame, and that will cause lots of games not to load because you're missing roms, or they've changed.  A game shouldn't be in the list if it doesn't even load up.  Whenever I get one of those, I pop out to a command prompt and try launching the game from there.  Mame will kick out a list of what went wrong.

-jeff!

You're exactly right, the roms are from an older version of mame, I did have the old mame (but it was really old, and was causing some problems since it didn't support some of the new files that mala uses).  I didn't realize that it would make that big of a difference.  I'm too close to finishing now to change it though   I'm in the "T" roms on the horizontal, as soon as I'm finished with this, I will need to fix that resolution problem (still not sure where to start there) and then I'll be done.

[melarky]

Well, i finally finished going through all of the games last night, so it's nice to have that done.  I also got the resolution thing fixed.  The problem is I was using a wide screen LCD to do the testing, and the mame.ini had the aspect raction set to 3:4 (standard more square screen), so I changed it to 16:9 (not sure if the monitor is 16:9, but I know my widescreen TV is that aspect ratio, but the monitor looks longer and skinnier, but figured it would be close enough to test).  That did it, after I changed that the games started loading correctly.  I just need to set it back to 3:4 before I put it on the real monitor.

There are only a few little lingering things now.  One that is bugging me is the "Get Ready To Play" loading screen that comes up after you click on a game to load.  It only stays up for a few seconds, and if the game takes longer than a few seconds to load it just goes back to menu while it loads.  This could be confusing for someone that isn't familiar with the setup.  Is there some way to set it to keep that screen up until the game finishes loading?

Also, when I load a game, a windows command prompt opens and does the run through of loading the game with mame, is there any way to have it do all of that in the background so people never see that window?  I thought there was something in the options to set that, but I went through all of the options last night and couldn't find it, maybe it was just late and I missed it though.  Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Thanks for all of your help, this forum is so great!

[melarky]

Ok, I did a search and found a million other people posted about the dos window being hidden, I'm sure I can find that now, but I didn't find any other threads about my other problem, the "Get Ready to Play" screen disapearing before the game is finished loading, so it just puts people back to the menu (which can be confusing making it seem like it didn't work and people may try to either click start again or move on to a different game).

I did read some post that talked about taking the verification process out of the mame loading step in the ini file, I wonder if that would shave enough time off to make this a moot point.  I will try that when I get home, but let me know if anyone has any other ideas.

[NOP]

Is the "get ready to play" message coming from Mala itself?  I've never seen that before.  If it's in mala, there's likely a way to turn it off altogether. 

I'm custom builds of MAME's, where all the "type ok to continue" stuff has been removed too, so my machine just launches the game, with only a "Loading xx%" displayed on the screen while MAME loads the ROM up.  It's pretty clean overall.  IIRC, when I start a game from mala, it clicks over to full screen pretty much immediately, so no other messages from anything but MAME can be displayed.

I can certainly make my setup available to you if you'd like to experiment.

-jeff!

[loadman]

The 'get ready to play' is from mala and can be turned off. Options/gui/game-start

Iwould not recommend hiding the dos startup box until you have all your mame games working as it shows MAME errors

[melarky]

Just wanted to say that I got it all sorted out.  Once the dos box was hidden, it fixed the other problem with the "Get ready to play" screen not staying up long enough.  I am really happy with Mala and now that I have it set up think it's wonderful and works great in my cocktail.  Thanks for your help everyone, couldn't have done it without you.