Arcade Talk 24/7/365

o1s1n

That Gnet and Shikigami are still available! :eek: for £70! What a deal.

Just talking to the seller now. Are these easy to mod to boot games from compact flash cards? Anyone know if it's just a matter of changing the bios?

TechnoFreek

How do you set Mame to recognise a long button hold as just opposed to a single press?

o1s1n

Trying to use rapid fire on a game that doesn't have it eh?

TechnoFreek

o1s1n wrote: »

Trying to use rapid fire on a game that doesn't have it eh?

Ha! No! I'm genuinely looking for ways to exit Mame and Hyperspin, especially that don't interfere with gameplay and accidentally exit a game.

Andrew76

o1s1n wrote: »

That Gnet and Shikigami are still available! :eek: for £70! What a deal.

Just talking to the seller now. Are these easy to mod to boot games from compact flash cards? Anyone know if it's just a matter of changing the bios?

I think this is where Pyongyang got his from, not sure if the site tell you how to mod as opposed to selling the service. Worth a look though: http://www.arcademodbios.com/gnet.htm

TechnoFreek wrote: »

Ha! No! I'm genuinely looking for ways to exit Mame and Hyperspin, especially that don't interfere with gameplay and accidentally exit a game.

Was a while ago now but I think I used a 2 button combination for Mame and another 2 button combo for HS. In Mame General Setup it was P1 button 3 + P1 Start (because they were close to each other. In the HS key config screen I had Exit set to P1 Start + P2 Start. Something like that anyway.

TechnoFreek

TechnoFreek wrote: »

Exiting Hyperspin & Mame.
What buttons combos on your cab control panel are peeps using to exit the aforementioned programs.

Looking for ideas. Thanks

This is where my cab's main admin buttons are.



The red button is mapped to "esc" on the encoder, which exits all of my emulators (thanks to custom key configurations in a few of them, and the default settings in others). Where possible i used Hyperlaunch to kill the emulator process using the ESC button, but some emulators don't work with hyperlaunch, so you have to reconfig their keys so pressing ESC registers an exit command with them instead.

Once you back out of your game and emulator to the hyperspin interface, pressing the same red button again offers you a shutdown option, and hitting 1p start confirms the shutdown and knocks off the machine (you can set this up in the settings for the frontend).

In MAME, the green button inserts a credit, and yellow is pause (corresponding keys are 5 and P). In the console emulators those same commands have been set to be the 1 and 2 player select buttons in the button configs for each emu. I didn't see any need for 2 separate coin buttons as any credits you insert are usable by both players.

You can get the 3 in 1 buttons here:

http://www.gremlinsolutions.co.uk/products/sspb4.htm

They come apart easily in case you want to spray paint the button housing to match the cab or the other buttons. I intend spraying mine white to match the start buttons on the panel, but who knows if i'll ever get around to it....

The Last Bandit

You can't configure Mame to wait for a long keypress as such, the keyboard encoders like IPac can detect lonn keypress to enter a shift mode to send an alternative set of keys.

You can however setup Mame to exit on a key combination. You manually change the UI_CANCEL keycode thru the Mame GUI or edit the cfg\default.cfg file with your own key combination.

In this example, Mame will only exit when '1' and '2' are pressed together.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- This file is autogenerated; comments and unknown tags will be stripped -->
<mameconfig version="10">
<system name="default">
<input>
<port type="UI_CANCEL">
<newseq type="standard">
KEYCODE_1 KEYCODE_2
</newseq>
</port>
</input>
</system>
</mameconfig>

CiDeRmAn

The more I read the less I am looking forward to trying to configure Hyperspin next week! I remember Mala being a pain at times but, by the end, it was all controlled by an 8 button CP.

TechnoFreek

The Last Bandit wrote: »

In this example, Mame will only exit when '1' and '2' are pressed together.

Could this not case the game/mame to exit when playing two player games I.e. both player one and two happen to hit start at the same time. Like on the street fighter character select screen

Steve X2

I've a hidden button underneath the cpanel that's connected to the jpac and mapped to the escape key. I use that to exit MAME or Hyperspin (exiting Hyperspin shuts down the pc as well).
It works quite well as the button fits nicely into the cpanel lock hole.

CiDeRmAn

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

The more I read the less I am looking forward to trying to configure Hyperspin next week! I remember Mala being a pain at times but, by the end, it was all controlled by an 8 button CP.

I don't envy you. It's a bit of a pig to get running. That's it's big flaw. Shame it's so good otherwise. There'll be plenty of help around here though, and the hyperspin forums are good for info too. Most problems you'll run into will have been covered before.

You can actually get away with just 5 or 6 buttons for the admin functions in hyperspin, that part of it has been quite well designed. Escape, start, genres and favourites, as well as up and down are all you really need. If you customise your key configs so the same commands are mapped to the various functions in your emulators you can keep the number of buttons you need to a minimum.

Myrddin

Are you going to use a *pac product Cidey? If so, you don't need any extra buttons or anything like that. The 1p start button becomes your default shift button if held down, & all your existing buttons then have shift functions.

EnterNow

EnterNow wrote: »

...The 1p start button becomes your default shift button if held down, & all your existing buttons then have shift functions.

And you can then have no extra admin buttons or loads, or somewhere in the middle depending on what suits you. Personally I prefer the important ones to have dedicated buttons and shift the rest, but lots of people go shifted keys route and use the existing buttons doubled up instead, with no extra buttons at all, especially when they don't want to drill new holes (to keep a classic cab unmodified for instance) or haven't built/designed it from scratch.

The main thing though is planning your key configs. Figure out what inputs you'll need for all of your emulators combined and make sure you can get each one from your panel somehow (whether by means of a shifted button or a dedicated or hidden one) and then just set up custom key configs in each different emulator and the frontend using the buttons on your panel.

You'll need to tweak a few settings in hyperspin (such as starting games with "1" instead of enter, which is mame and the encoder's default setting) or possibly changing a couple of hidden commands that conflict with MAME. If some of your 2P buttons in mame are giving you trouble when you launch it from hyperspin but working fine outside of hyperspin, just post back here for a fix, there's a stupidly programmed conflict with MAME in hyperspin's default commands that had me scratching my head for days, but it's easily fixed. For the most part once you've planned your panel inputs well it's all downhill from there.

Myrddin

Less is more on cabs imo. A two player six button setup is the perfect amount of buttons, anything more just seems overkill.

Steve X2

EnterNow wrote: »

Less is more on cabs imo. A two player six button setup is the perfect amount of buttons, anything more just seems overkill.

Very true, I remember I was thinking of a 2 player 8 button panel at some stage!! The madness of it
But I do like the 2 hidden buttons on my Egret 3. They fit perfectly in the lock holes that I wasn't using anyway and do come in handy.

o1s1n

Spot on. Anything more is overkill. I know some people want the maximum functionality out of it, but you are sacrificing aesthetics.

Here are how control panels should look if you want it to look like an arcade machine











Doing this makes it look like a MAME machine and not an arcade machine.







Just ask yourself, are you really going to use that flight stick/trackball enough to warrant your cab looking like this?

Optimus Prime

haha spot the Rocky fan above.. haha.. what about the Rocky films makes you think , "you know what, a Rocky themed arcade machine would look great"

The Last Bandit

TechnoFreek wrote: »

Could this not case the game/mame to exit when playing two player games I.e. both player one and two happen to hit start at the same time. Like on the street fighter character select screen

In the case yeah, but can use whatever key combo suits - doesn't have to be P1+P2.

Yeah Hyperspin can be a right pain to set up first time round, having to configure every emulator keys etc gets a bit tedious after a while.

KeRbDoG

Steve SI wrote: »

Very true, I remember I was thinking of a 2 player 8 button panel at some stage!! The madness of it
But I do like the 2 hidden buttons on my Egret 3. They fit perfectly in the lock holes that I wasn't using anyway and do come in handy.

Might you know off hand the diameter of those lock holes? Might be a handy solution for the work cab

TechnoFreek

Just tried hooking up a laptop running hyperspin & Mame to jpac and cab.

Oddly hyperspin isn't recognising player one button 2 but this button is fine in Mame and other pcbs. Hyperspin recognises player 2 button 2 alright.

Any ideas?

Steve X2

KeRbDoG wrote: »

Might you know off hand the diameter of those lock holes? Might be a handy solution for the work cab

Not the holes but all the details on the buttons used.

http://www.arcadeshop.de/Special-Mini-Miniature-Button-white_523.html

TechnoFreek

TechnoFreek wrote: »

Just tried hooking up a laptop running hyperspin & Mame to jpac and cab.

Oddly hyperspin isn't recognising player one button 2 but this button is fine in Mame and other pcbs. Hyperspin recognises player 2 button 2 alright.

Any ideas?

Yep. Sounds like you have a conflict in your .ahk file for a hidden command in hyperspin. There are lots of hidden commands to do stuff like quitting scripts etc while hyperspin is running. Hyperspin reserves these keys for itself, so if any of the keys used are assigned to functions in other programs they won't work while HS is running.

You'll need to manually edit your ahk file to change the hidden command and then recompile it. There are lots of threads on the HS forum about it but this one will give you the jist of what you need to do.

http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?7953-Q-button-not-registering-in-MAME

o1s1n

Cap kit done, chassis back in the cab and the monitor is working again. Oh sweet relief!!!

Didn't doubt you for a second Enternow...but it was still bloody terrifying

TechnoFreek

Cheers mack,

I'm actually not using hyperlaunch or does that make a difference?

TechnoFreek

TechnoFreek wrote: »

Cheers mack,

I'm actually not using hyperlaunch or does that make a difference?

I'm not sure but I don't think so. I was scratching my head for ages and I'm sure I tried hyperlaunch both on and off and it didn't help. As far as I remember you can either recompile the ahk file using autohotkey, or reconfigure your encoder to use different key inputs and change your inputs on all your emulators. I chose the recompile because I had all my other emulators set up for the mame default keys too and it would have been too much hassle to change them all but depending on how many emulators you have under hyperspin it might be an option.

Recompiling takes 2 mins, just edit the values and save the file in notepad and select the file and hit recompile using autohotkey from your right click menu. You need to have autohotkey installed in order to do the recompile.

If you're stuck have a look under my posts on the hyperspin forums (same username as boards.ie). I think I posted on the subject a few times. Let me know if you can't find it and ill see if i can dig it out.

TechnoFreek

Thanks mack. Ill probably be tapping ya for some specialist advice as I try work through these issues :-)

KeRbDoG

Steve SI wrote: »

Not the holes but all the details on the buttons used.

http://www.arcadeshop.de/Special-Mini-Miniature-Button-white_523.html

So 15mm button worked, cool stuff

CiDeRmAn

It seems that the BAS cab shares CP mountings with the Leisure 2000 cabinets, could be a possible source of a new CP, save me having to fill and drill a new CP.
I asked those lovely gents on Jamma+ to look about, we'll see.....

TechnoFreek

TechnoFreek wrote: »

Thanks mack. Ill probably be tapping ya for some specialist advice as I try work through these issues :-)

No worries, i'll be happy to help. Good luck with it.

Myrddin

o1s1n wrote: »

Cap kit done, chassis back in the cab and the monitor is working again. Oh sweet relief!!!

Didn't doubt you for a second Enternow...but it was still bloody terrifying

Yeah went very smooth man, was a delight to see it all up & running