Handling rotation/scaling from Mala/whatever, for horiz/portrait play

[skeezix]

hey there my friends,

I've got my 'emu cab' working really well now (and thanks for some tips here -- this particular cab is a heavily modified cocktail cabinet. I've mounted joysticks on all 4 sides of it in fact (currently 3 sides, the two vertical ends and the facing main landscape side. Took the opposite landscape side off since never used, and needed to get it through a doorway

Currently set up with Mala on Windows startup, which in turn fires up Mame (for windows). I'm using an ArcadeVGA card and so using 'no scale' and 'no rate' and direct draw type options. Running on an original 1982 Electrohome G09 ("Orion" rebranded?) monitor, so no 31khz display modes. Works great most of the time.

The only odd times are..
1) Higher rez games (such as Super Sprint)
2) Vector games (ie: needing a higher rez to fake them)
3) Vertical games work fine, but letterboxes onto the landscape display (so look fine, black boxes on left/right side of playfield though.)

The problem seems to be that Mame is set with one set of launch params from Mala. (I need to check into Mala settings, but off the top of my head I think it can have one global setting, and maybe an override per-game?)

I'm rather thinking I need to have a global set of settings (as they are now, for 90% of games), and then another set of settings for those 3 special cases above.

I've not looked into current Mame config, to see if it has 'inheritance' for settings and allows this sort of thing .. perhaps I'm already covered?

Some obvious options..

1) Instead of launching Mame direct, have Mala launch a .bat (or python/perl/etc job) that in turn looks up the romname in a list, and then in turn launches MAME with appropriate command line parms
2) Hack Mala or Mame to have a flexible config system, ie: per game (too tedious) or 'per genre' or some sort of classification system

I'm a coder (and have been writing my own emus for a lot of years so I'm not afraid to hack. but with a small child around.. I just don't have time ot hack as much as I used to.. so I'm realyl hoping theres some obvious way to do what I need, even though I'm sure my situation is a little less common.

To reiterate, I'd like to be able to have some games or some class of games launch with different params..

1) Most games with the usual ArcadeVGA settings
2) Vector games I want to scale down to low res settings (sucky as they will feel), or perhaps run at highest rez monitor and ArcadeVGA can do. Anyway, presumably just different MAME options.
3) Vertical games .. launch vertical, some more MAME options
4) Med/High rez games, different MAME args, to scale them

Now, even going further woudl be when launching the game, to pop up a submenu to pick option.. ie: if lazy, don't want to move stool, then vertical on horizontal is fine .. but other times, I Want my vertical on vertical so it looks sharper

(Also, I made my vertical sticks into leaf sticks, while the horizontal is microswitch.. I always thought verticla games felt nice on squishy leaf sticks/buttons, while more modern games like micro switch....)

Any ideas?

Thanks!

jeff

[u_rebelscum]

Mame handles multiple levels of .ini files already.  Quote from mame's docs/config.txt:

   - mame.ini
   - <mymame>.ini (i.e. if MAME was renamed mame060.exe, MAME
         parses mame060.ini here)
   - debug.ini (if the debugger is enabled)
   - vector.ini (for vector games only)
   - <driver>.ini (based on the source filename of the driver)
   - <parent>.ini (for clones only, may be called recursively)
   - <gamename>.ini

Mame reads them in that order, with later ones overriding newer ones.  As long as the -readconfig (or -rc for short) is enabled.

As you can see, there already is a vector.ini file.  You can go with a <parent>.ini for say, pacman (puckman.ini), so all of its clones will get the same settings.  Or do <driver>.ini for games that all games are "med res" like super sprint (atarisy2.ini).

Note that the ini files don't need to be complete.  In fact I suggest limiting them to just the settings that are different than mame.ini's.

So make a list, group them by common settings and vector, or driver or parent.  To find the source of a game, mame game -ls