mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support

grant2258

the game would have to support this do you have an example of a game that does this ? so i can see the naming conventions used. makehooker isint using mame communications by the looks of things it uses dde.

I see you pointing out examples which is helpful but i need a specific game and example that you do use so i can look at the source of teh game and makehooker. It would give me a clearer picture of whats going on.

let me be more specfic teh outputs would need customized per game it isint hard to make code to send to a raspberry pi io ports to blink a led driver ect there is no need for mamehooker in that sense. we need something that works on linux and windows dde is windows ill try take a look at what rgbcommander is

grant2258

from the info i have looked up rgbcommander lights up the buttons / leds based on romname via an xml file.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,154590.0.html

janderclander14

@grant2258 In the following posts you can find some examples of games that have outputs:

Outrun:

forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,101789.0/all.html

Ajax:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,82987.msg866938.html#msg866938

Spyhunter:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,82987.msg866958.html#msg866958

Dig dug, q-bert:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,151464.msg1583332.html#msg1583332

Moreover, many games should send outputs to blink the start/coin buttons.

Personally, I use RGBcommander with Retropie (other led management softwares like Mame hooker or LedBlindky are Windows only), and employ a led driver to light up leds (Ledwiz), because the Pi gpio is too limited for this. Indeed, RGBcommander lights the buttons used by the games/system by using an config Xml file and the name of the game and emulator/core. Also, it can also read some basic mame outputs, such as start, coin and a pair or in-game leds and make this leds blink when needed. See the Mame section of its homepage:

users.telenet.be/rgbcommander/

Obviously, the latter only works with the standard Mame.

grant2258

I just need one game that blinks the start and coin buttons for you then i can start piecing something together on how the information is sent. from what i can see the xml is setting the lights so i need a game that behaves like this for you to start to see whats going on here.

janderclander14

@grant2258 You can use classic games such as: Galaxian, Dig Dug, Galaga or Asteroids. For these, the start button blinks when you insert some credits. This is the behavior of the original cabinets and it is properly emulated by Mame via outputs.

grant2258

@janderclander14 is this working on your setup right now is what im asking. We can control leds very easily on the pi with a driver like here

grant2258

the only reason im asking this is because every video ive seen is a random led flashing that we can do easily

janderclander14

@grant2258 Yes, this works with the regular Mame. You can see some videos with proper outputs linked to leds here:

Terminator 2: leds blick when guns are fired, or get impacts

Chase HQ police leds: only when the chase starts

And yes, Ledwiz is a commercial led controller similar to the controller you linked. It gets the input via the Pi's usb port and has it own power input to feed many leds.

grant2258

again we can make a led blinker dont need rgbcommander for that.

I dont see any vids where the joystick credit is button flashing you just want a generic blinker thats easily done. You could even display a row of leds at the top of the screen in an ra overlay and blink them. i did see a overlay led driver in RA not sure if its functional though

janderclander14

@grant2258 This video shows what you ask: in Outrun, the start button blinks after introducing some credits and stops blinking after pressing it (seconds 42-52). This is achieved in the cabinet of the video with Mame outputs and Mamehooker.

grant2258

Ok this looks like a specific setup that is mapped to the real arcade outputs. I know you can do this if you wire everything to outrun specs.

What im asking is do you have this hardware?
do you need to config your mame outputs per game to physical hardware

I need a specific example from your personal use that use the io and what your doing with it. IE are you coin and credit buttons flashing in games that support it or do they need setup per game.

Are your credit and coins all blinking for games on your joystick panel for games that support it or do you need to map your outputs to something per game.

What would happen in dig dug if it was run in this cab. If it set per game it seems the user has to decide what to do with these outputs. Led or servo of some sort.

Can you give me a real life example that you have setup. I just need this to start working on a solution

janderclander14

@grant2258 None of the vids is my hardware, but all of them use mame outputs rather than physical connections to drive leds, as you can see in the descriptions.

I just use led buttons in a generic arcade cabinet. To use mame outputs I just configure RGBcommander or Mamehooker to tell them which physical leds from by cabinet correspond to the led mame outputs.

For example, RGBcommander supports outputs for P1coin led, P1start led, P1button led, etc, which I assign to the leds of my buttons. This is done once and in general, not per game basis. If you download Rgbcommander you can see this at the beginning of the Xml config file.

Then, when a game that has outputs runs (such as the examples I listed above), the leds act as they have been emulated in the game's outputs, e.g., blinking when inserting credits, or when some in game event occur. As you can see here:

https://aarongiles.com/old/?p=181

Whenever these events occur, Mame sends a predefined signal, and the softwares that have hooked the Mame outputs redirect the signal to the physical led, as stated in the generic configuration of the software hooked to the outputs. If the games do not have ouputs or those have not been emulated, then I get nothing.

So, for this to work:

the Mame version in use should have the output protocol, as described in the Aaron Giles blog.
games should have outputs emulated
a led management software should listen to the mame outputs and act on the physical leds.

Hope this helps.

grant2258

well the information you giving in helping me understand im looking at the mame0.121u4 source for galaga/digdug and its not making much sense why this is mapping to coins and start as it just a general led signal not sending a message out as a coin.

https://github.com/mamedev/historic-mame/blob/6f03755e212f33ae6e4681d56351bf3c44f20916/src/mame/drivers/galaga.c#L786-L797

{
set_led_status(1,data & 1);
set_led_status(0,data & 2);
coin_counter_w(1,~data & 4);
coin_counter_w(0,~data & 8);

grant2258

just one last question what hardware are you using fro your encoder and led driver

janderclander14

@grant2258 My led driver hardware is Ledwiz, which is connected to the Pi' s usb.

https://groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=239

Both Rgbcommander and Mamehooker support it (they also support other drivers, such as Ultimarc's). You only need to tell them that you are using this driver model and how many leds you have physically connected. After that it is plug and play.

grant2258

well im seeing this in the docs.

http://dragonking.arcadecontrols.com/static.php?page=mhsniping

i does appear you do need to configure it perhaps there is pre configured files for know games. This info here makes sense from what ive seen in the code

Mebejedi

@markwkidd

"Here's warrior for example:"

I've just set up my first RPI gaming machine, and this was one of the games I was thinking it would be cool to find, but could not remember what it was called. Thank You!!!

markwkidd

Big update to the MAME 2003-Plus docs: https://docs.libretro.com/library/mame2003_plus/

@grant2258 I will migrate your diagrams to the libretro/docs repository next time I get a chance. The docs generator doesn't like pulling them from another repository it seems :)

grant2258

Im really put off the idea of fixing this. People want to copy fba which basically let an arcade panel map to a gamepad so its a quick fix to work on both.

Which takes the point of having and arcade panel away. Anyway short story is ill leave it as is because the user can just pick classic as default and just pick the panel for the 6 button games I dont want my panel mapping like a gamepad for one

Clyde

@grant2258 said in mame2003-plus: hundreds of new games, improved input, features, new bugs - now with runahead support:

Which takes the point of having and arcade panel away.

Not really. I for example have an upright arcade cabinet with the typical 6-button layout for players 1 and 2. But I also have two wireless Wii U Pro controllers for players 3 and 4. (I can mirror the cabinet's picture to my video projector if it gets too crowdy at the cabinet.)

For my desktop mini pc, I have two wired arcade joysticks with 8 buttons, and I can also use the two Wii U Pro controllers mentioned above with it, depending on the games I wish to play and with whom I play them.

Thus, having presets for 6 and 8-button arcade-style controllers as well as for typical gamepads to change the setup on the fly without re-mapping the single keys seems very useful to me.