Weeders Mame bartop Project.

weeder

might aswell give ye an update.

i was running the latest version of mame, generally wasnt impressed with the framerate and no amount of tweaking would sort the graphical errors.

went back an older version from 2006, reason being a search revealed that this was the last version before they rewrote the graphics engine within mame virtually from the ground up to be optimised for newer hardware, now everything runs at full speed but isnt fullscreen(fullscreen but the actual game is in a small centered box on the screen), ill get around to sorting it

EDIT: the version you want for older hardware is 0.106

also got around to ordering my buttons and ipac, 11 buttons 2 joysticks and an ipac2 from arcademachines.ie for 70 euro and he posted it today.

ive sold the monitor from the machine also, just got back what i paid for it, have a 17" HP monitor lined up for 30 euro tomorrow.

weeder

some panel porn, honestly the first time i turned this over after mounting everything I felt a sudden surge of amazeballs even though its only a few buttons and sticks mounted to a bit of wood.


then came the fun part.



38 crimps later my hand is quiet sore

also, if yer looking to get in some gear quickly arcademachines I would highly recommend, ordered monday night and got the stuff today.

Elbow

weeder wrote: »

if yer looking to get in some gear quickly arcademachines I would highly recommend, ordered monday night and got the stuff today.

Control Panel looks good, dat's a lot of crimping

I got a great price off arcademachines when i was trying to sort out my gear, unfortunately he didn't have the joysticks in stock at the time so i had to order from the UK

weeder

I have to say i cant recommend them enough, i woke up thismorning to an email from aidan to ask me had i got the stuff and was it all ok.

weeder

new monitor with proper mounting holes.




w00t!!

still trying to figure out how to make it fullscreen though. ahwell its not too important at the time being


Control panel needs to be cut down to suit the new monitor so i had to dissassemble my beautiful wiring adding an extra button also and widening the joystick holesto 30mm, also thinking about disassembling the whole cabinet and putting some paint on it. if only i had the money for paint!

Optimus Prime

Nice, try lowering the resolution on your desktop? or i think if you press the tab key in the game there are some video options in there too. or whatever front end you are using.

CiDeRmAn

Check the display options on Mame, there should be scaling and the like in there, just use a front end that will insert these into the command line, again Mala did it all for me, once it was told to!

weeder

well i took the cab apart, its time for paint!

weeder

well its finished, and let me tell you im never painting mdf, im pretty handy with acrylic paint but mdf just doesnt like it, and vinyl would have probabaly been cheaper for a much better finish, that said its not a terrible finish, grand for the bedroom cab really. just waiting to laquer and its back together and cutting out my bezel/marquee

CiDeRmAn

Painting MDF is like painting a sponge...
Better to seal it first then paint it.
But a coating of clear varnish should bring up a nice gloss finish.
Really looking forward to seeing this up, working and finished.

weeder

also learned the hard way that laquer takes around a week to fully cure, 19 hours after cp paint i put fingerprints on it >.>

its all in the shed now till thursday or friday when my fingers wont kill the finish.

all thats left is a bezel and marquee and the free plexy i got can do the marquee,leaves a nice few days to focus on software

weeder

my 5 year old neice has already fallen in love with mario bros.

CiDeRmAn

That is beautiful!
I take it that the twin sticks are good for Robotron, I may soil myself slightly if that is the case....
What sort of marquee you putting on it?
Any luck scaling the display to full screen?

weeder

robotron is on the romlist , as is smash tv

theres a few cosmetic bits i could have finished better but its more than acceptable and the unit itself is very solid and playable so i dont mind too much, my next one can be a showpiece lol

as for the marquee, I was going to do a midway one but so far i havent been able to find anything decent but ive got something i hope will look ok done up in photoshop printed on glossy card.

still havent figured out the scaling, that said i havent really tried, will look into it more now that the cab is playable again, have another different older version of mame that i might try also since ive a full romset for it (i own all the gameboards of course) so it might just sort it, trying to get maximus arcade running as the front end to see will it run at all decently but im constantly stopped because its giving out about my mame media folder being wrong but its not.

weeder

just noticed somthing potentially cabkilling there, when i looked at the monitor setting during mamage and it was outputting in the native res of whatever game i had running, perhaps im looking at yet another monitor? or perhaps i could just force the roms to run at 800x600

bah im too tired now, going to try to add a forced resolution to my mame launching command thingy within mala tomorrow

CiDeRmAn

I am running my Ikea cab on a laptop, the display has a fixed res, but mame, via the tools in the front end, should fix the display.
I used directdraw, turned off direct3d to keep speeds up.
Also turned off effects, scanlines and the like.
But like I said, in the mame config, next to where you browse for the mame.exe you find a comprehensive package of options that modify the mame commandline setting each run of the emu to do what you want, including autoscaling to the available display.

Jack burton

Looks great, hope mind turns out half as well as yours!

weeder

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

I am running my Ikea cab on a laptop, the display has a fixed res, but mame, via the tools in the front end, should fix the display.
I used directdraw, turned off direct3d to keep speeds up.
Also turned off effects, scanlines and the like.
But like I said, in the mame config, next to where you browse for the mame.exe you find a comprehensive package of options that modify the mame commandline setting each run of the emu to do what you want, including autoscaling to the available display.

I was try to avoid mame.ini alas i seemt o have no choice now.

sham69

Looks great weeder.
I am in the process of making an ikea and a bartop so will post when up and running properly.
I have a full size cab already.
Its addictive this arcade stuff...
Well done again on the bartop, really looks great.

weeder

just blasting away in metal slug(what a game) and my speakers buzz and then die, the board from the speakers i stripped is toast and its probabaly my fault. not to worry ive got another set ready to strip.

as for this scaling i cant get my head around it, have some games filling the screen vertically and some horizontally but none both ways, dont have aspect ratio locked and ive just got a headache from it all now. its not the monitor or the version of mame as ive tried with different versions of both, using the mala mame.ini editor.

weeder

switched to d3d and everything is scaling, everything is also still running full speed, so for now it will have to do.

segasega

Looks great. Was meant to start a project last year but got put on the back burner due to funds. But it's back on the cards again hopefully. I'm doing my with an old CRT.

segasega

Are they Happ Super Joysticks your using, if so, do you possibly have photos of how you mounted them?

weeder

no they are these
http://www.arcademachines.ie/shopping/product_info.php?cPath=3_25&products_id=83

i just mounted them with screws, there probabaly is a better way but they dont move or anything with the screws

segasega

So you just screwed them in under the wood control panel? Given time that may come loose so Id keep an eye on them. Did you find doing the T-Molding tough?

weeder

they might, hope they dont lol,worst case scenario is removing the cp and remounting properly., didnt t mold it in in the end, mixture of me being cheap and not wanting to wait for the bits to t mold, just painted the edging red, waited 2 days and masked it off and sprayed the cab black, and laquered everything. looks good for the amount of time and money spent on it but when i build another cab I think laminate/vinyl and t mold is the only way to go, mdf is like a big sponge when you try to paint it.

Optimus Prime

I got a mate to help out with theTMolding on mine, if i had of known how easy it was i would have done it myself. Honestly its easy as pie if you have a router and the right arber\cutter.

I bought two sets of these for my joysticks, you drive them into the underneat of the control panel with an alan key the screw the joysticks in.

http://www.ultimarc.com/controls.html#mountingkits

very handy.