Cocktail cab themes

[jeepguy81]

hmm...not sure if I know what your gettin at Steve, can you explain a bit more? Are you talking about the vid of the game?

[dasaint80]

I want to know if there's a way to play the cocktail games with the cocktail themes you're doing. So that way you see you're playing the actual game inside you're themes instead of the video playing in the black window in the center.

[SORHP]

...that'd be cool jeep, to make use of the themes for gameplay.... but that sure is a load of screen real-estate...

[jeepguy81]

aaah, I gotcha. Well technically it would be possible, you would get into creating ".lay" files for mame to arrange placement just like it does with graphic overlays. Only problem is I think the artwork used in those files is really big, instead of just 768x1024 it would be 3500x3200 or something like that (dont quote me on that). Either way I guess it's something to check out, worse that we find out is it wont work! lol.

@sorhp - your right, there would be allot of screen lost, maybe just increase the table a little to fill up the screen mostly, just leave a black background or something.

[BadBoyBill]

Can anyone here chime in about running vertical monitors. I've run into a problem with the next HS, I had vertical support working, but at this point I'm realizing that the app does not like to be rotated and it slows down big time. So I thought fine and I can just recalculate the aspect in horizontal mode and it works so much faster. But basically the problem with this the window of HS is vertical and the aspect is correct, just the app itself isn't rotated, so you would have to rotate windows to the orientation where the taskbar sits on the bottom of your screen when its rotated. I know some people had done this on in the early days of pinball setups, when using other frontends before HP came along. But since this is arcade related do you think you could run HS this way if you really wanted to run vertical? Does MAME play well with Windows rotated? Good thing about doing it this way also is if you have your monitor rotated and you need to go back to windows you wouldnt have to twist your head. So for now this might be the way we have to go, I just need to know if it would work for you guys.

[jeepguy81]

I think this would help simplify it for some, as we found out some people may rotate or have rotated their screens in an opposite direction and use an app to spin it around. So being able to adjust that from within windows and not having to physically swap it around would be really nice.

I just ran through about a dozen games on my system here at work, it's a fairly lower spec system, win7, but I spun windows both left and right and mame ran without a glitch. I tried it from the win option and nvidia settings and both ran fine, I will try on an XP machine when I get home but I say recalculating the aspect should work out fine. (plus my neck will stop hurting!)

[BadBoyBill]

Ok, cool, just finished writing this part and it works a lot better than rotating the app internally. I'll leave it as is.

[jeepguy81]

awesome sauce!

[iammud]

Can anyone here chime in about running vertical monitors. I've run into a problem with the next HS, I had vertical support working, but at this point I'm realizing that the app does not like to be rotated and it slows down big time. So I thought fine and I can just recalculate the aspect in horizontal mode and it works so much faster. But basically the problem with this the window of HS is vertical and the aspect is correct, just the app itself isn't rotated, so you would have to rotate windows to the orientation where the taskbar sits on the bottom of your screen when its rotated. I know some people had done this on in the early days of pinball setups, when using other frontends before HP came along. But since this is arcade related do you think you could run HS this way if you really wanted to run vertical? Does MAME play well with Windows rotated? Good thing about doing it this way also is if you have your monitor rotated and you need to go back to windows you wouldnt have to twist your head. So for now this might be the way we have to go, I just need to know if it would work for you guys.

PLEASE NO! It MUST rotate 90 degrees counter clockwise! I estimate that 25% of the games on my tate cabinet don't support rotated windows (that's 95% of the ones I play). Half that 25% won't load at all w/ windows desktop tated, the other half will load sideways, and all jacked out.

Why not give a simple option to rotate wheel art, and have alternate vertical theme packs? There has got to be a way to recalculate all that xml data to work sideways. I tried to do this a while back, and succeeded to some extent. I abandoned it when I decided I wanted fullscreen video instead of vertical themes.

Edit- Jeep, I just noticed the Jeep and Slime Ball elements to your persona. I'm Toledo born; CJ raised! And I've been setting up cruiser boards with Slime Balls for ages now. Bones for everything else though.

[jeepguy81]

@iammud - YEAH buddy! I was raised on all CJ's as well, although I do have my first XJ while my CJ starts to get torn down for allot of work done. Slime balls/ Bones were always my wheels of choice back in the day. Now that i've got a garage i've been on this nostalgia kick, pickin up what i consider old school stuff from back when i skated allot. Slowly laying together graphics for a Slim Ball / Skate themed pincab.

Per your tate cab, are you also running allot of games not in mame? Anything i've tried in mame was fine. I imagined at some point vertical orientation would be a headache for some given the fact that others are running games other then in mame, typex, etc... But the vertical option will be just that, an option. I would imagine whatever theme set you are using in your setup now should/hopefully work the same way in 2.0. Rotating the wheels is an option, thats all I did in the themes i've done. Not sure if those would fit your setup or not.

[iammud]

Yeah, Naomi and TTX are the two styles of games I use the most, and they both break w/ rotation. Heck, they're the reason I made my vertical hyperspin setup a few years ago (I think I beat errbody ).

Assuming you mean an XJ Cherokee, since no one rocks Wagoneer anymore.

To me, CJ isn't just a chassis code, it's any Jeep you or I can purchase. When I say CJ raised, I mean I was pretty much raised at the plant where your Jeep was more than likely assembled. Grew up off Willys Parkway. Come from a line of Willys/Jeep employees. I guess you can say Jeep is in my blood.

edit- When I was snagging the fixed rips for TTX from that weird GUI they made, I noticed it had some rotation features. I'm redownloading it, so I can toy with those features. Maybe I can get em working with the portrait desktop. I'm not really crossing my fingers, as I can rotate any TTX game on landscape desktop by scripting, but not when it's set to portrait.

Do you by chance know if anyone has got Makaron working with portrait desktops?

[jeepguy81]

yeah i would say you probably beet feet to a vert setup before everyone else.

XJ does = cherokee. Jeeps have been the main in my family as well, although I am jealous you grew up off Willys parkway thats awesome! About to start tearing down a CJ2 with my dad he was able to dig up.

I haven't gotten to putting all the TTX games together quite yet, but I haven't kept up much with Makaron so im not to sure if someone has it working with portrait or not.

[iammud]

Since there's only a few vert ttx games, Makaron is the real kicker in this. I do have a solution though: NAOMI NETLOADER!

Oh yeah, not sure if the new demul has rotation features, but if it doesn't, say good bye to all the newer Cave games.

Was it mentioned earlier that people are using 3rd party apps to rotate their games, or are they just using mame's built in settings? I've had nothing but problems when trying to rotate non-mame game displays while desktop orientation is portrait.

Well, the XJ is 84-01 Cherokees AND 84-90 Wagoneers. I rarely see compact Wagoneers on the road anymore, so I assumed Cherokee.

Where'd you dig up a CJ2 at? Does it have the mounts on the side for the spare tire?

I have a funny CJ2 story: I was at the gas station a few months back, and this guy rolls up in one with a for sale sign on it. Painted all nice and pasture green, with autumn yellow rims. I inquire about the price, and he wanted 100k for it! I about shit myself. When I asked why the price was so high, he went on about how his father built it on a production line, and has been in his family ever since. Wait a minute, CJ2 and production line?! My bullshit meter started flying. So I ask "so your father is from Toledo?" His response, "what the hell is Toledo?" - I guess he didn't expect to be talking to someone who really does have family members who built that Jeep. I should also add that he obviously shaved the bolts off the side panel to make it look like a prototype (which were never painted pasture green).

[jeepguy81]

Lol that's a good story. There are allot of people out there with tall tales regarding how "original" their particular jeep is. Yeah there is a program a few peep have been using, I think its mentioned earlier on this thread. If Sorph reads this maybe he can chime in he's running all Vert games as well.

My dad is in GA, and found it in an old barn believe it or not. My moms friend, her husband had passed a few years ago and she wanted to clear out their old barn. Well when her husband was a little kid, his dad was in the service I think and brought it home, from where I have no clue. So bout 10yrs ago the husband started to tear it down for a frame up rebuild. He put every single washer n nut on little bags and labelled them, dozens of bags. But he passed before he could get it back together. So my dad offered her $400, she said its yours. I haven't been down to look at it closely so I'm not sure if the side carrier is there or not. It does have an OLD pto winch on it I know that. Hope to get down soon to see exactly what he's got. Ah, good times! Lol

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

[iammud]

Wait, it was military purchased? So it's likely an MB then, not a CJ. Here's a little Jeep history for you: the first two CJs (Civilian Jeeps) were just prototypes on the Willys MB (military model . It wasn't 'til the CJ2A that you were able to purchase it. A lot of people think their CJ2As are military MBs, but if it has the spare tire bolts on the passenger side real panel it's a 2A. If it doesn't, you'll have to look into other variables to determine it's not a prototype.

If BBB really doesn't want to make regular HS easily convertible to vert, I'll release my alternate vertical wheel pack. I'm not sure if I'll release my whole vertical pack, as my internet really really really sucks. The themes are a little too advanced for most computers, too.

I replaced all the videos with high quality gameplay videos in containers that allow you to skip forward levels. This way I can watch speed or high score runs of a level before I play it. I also used normalized bgm sample loops instead of video music, so the wheel doesn't sound insane. All tween sounds are straight from shmup games that are in the list. Soon it's going to get upgraded with menus for all the shmups, that interacts with the cheat.dat & savestates, so I can stage select, and have cheat/training modes. I don't focus on themes anymore, cause the ones on my hori cab got old quick. I ended up having to make multiple themes per game, with random loading, so you wouldn't have to see the same theme every time. If I did actual themes for the vert again, they'd be exactly like this. So no go.

Here's an old version of it:

BTW, I'm using a blast city w/ 31khz display, so some of my ghetto wheel art is simply there because I'm lazy, and you can't tell it's bad on arcade monitors. I'll clean it up before release.

[jeepguy81]

Well all we know is he was in the service and brought it back from somewhere, thats not to say he picked it up when he transfered somewhere, or just grabbed one from the base. I'll be able to find out more when i look at it first hand. I did know the CJ2A was the first purchase version, but I'll be the first to say some of the small differences between the MB and CJ2A i've always been fuzzy on lol. Thanks for the tip.

Your setup looks great, so you have the vids in containers? Im curious how you coded this.

[iammud]

Your setup looks great, so you have the vids in containers? Im curious how you coded this.

The gist of it is: the normal flv that hyperspin loads is just like everyone else's. Then I built a flash exe that loads flv via xml, then I control it same way you would any video in flash. It replaces the emulator in hyperspin's eyes, so I can obtain the game name to load the appropriate game video. Once I'm done watching the video, I hit the start game button again, and it passes on that variable to the emulator. If I don't want to watch the video, I just hit the start game button twice. I'm planning on including this with my game menus program. However, as of now, that program isn't vert friendly.

[jeepguy81]

aaaah, i see. very trick sir.

[will2084]

Hey Guys, how is everyone, any new themes coming out, or any new projects anyone working on.

[jeepguy81]

Hey Will, I haven't had much time to work on more themes. I have artwork but the house has been bleeding the life out of me!!! Hopefully I can get back to putting together some themes, both normal and vert. Still drawing out artwork for a pincab or two, who knows when i'll get to those lol

[SORHP]

Bill......

Just my thoughts concerning vert.

In a perfect world, everything would work perfectly rotated vertically, and it would be native to all related programs, but we were born in a horizontal world, and no matter what, everything has to be configured to be vert. One day; along came irotate and when ahk is scripted to handle the in-between program switching, our horizontal and vertical worlds collided. Now when I run HS, using jeepguy81's theme design, HS runs a script that rotates the orientation to make the image vertically correct, the games run from mame are pre-rotated to be correctly oriented, and when HS quits, another script runs that tates windows back to be vertical, so I never have to twist my head to see what I am doing.

boy, was setup a crick in the neck though

I'm fine with the way things are, and I believe everyone else probably will be as long there are some good instructions to go with a vert setup, maybe even work a deal with irotate and programatically help HS to rotate as needed.

any thoughts?

[SORHP]

I'll be back into theme making soon.... I have not unfortunately been working on anything, work has been swamped, baby is getting heavy, and I just went to Peru for 12 days, just got back, and the wife needs lovin.... nuff said.

[will2084]

@ Jeepguy81 yeah i belive it, i just remembered you got a new house a few months back, hope all is well and your getting to enjoy the house.

@ Sorhp it sounds like you have been busy on a lot of differant things, i hope the trip was for some relaxation not just work.

[Bennage]

I know I'm just echoing what everyone else has sai already, but this is a truly brilliant bit of work you've done. Bravo!

I've just finished putting my cocktail cab together and your stuff makes it look epic¬

Have you got a blank wheel image I could grab to do some more?

There are a few games that are certainly not for a cocktail cab (like Mortal Kombat etc) which I still like to play (split screen).

I'll happily do a bit of work on them, soas to not use up your time skills on games that probably very few would actually get any use out of.

[jeepguy81]

@Bennage,

Thanks dude, hopefully sometime soon I will be able to start up on some themes again. I can shoot you just a blank wheel, or you can use the AutoKustom wheel app that Skarstoker put together. I put together a resource pack for it so people can make wheels for this style of layout. The pack is on the ftp, under uploads/jeepguy81/vertical themes/autokustom resources.

Just let me know which will work for ya.

Any pics of your cab??