MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Sadness in the front end world....

> Haze, you are only trying to dodge the core of the subject here, but lets go further.
>
> > There are plenty of things that will work in a cab if you pick and choose from
> what's
> > available tho, and with the lua autoboot features / save states you can set up a
> good
> > number of the non-arcade systems to jump straight into gameplay, at which point
> even
> > plenty of the computer games only require a joystick to operate.
>
> What kind of answer is this to what i have wrote?
>
> Look closely what i wrote: Nearly no 2nd gen. console would make sense in a cab.
> Anything with analog controllers and shoulder buttons for sure. Nearly no computer
> (especially how this is solved with currently official MAME) makes sense in a cab.
> Too many freaked feature stuff in it, not to mention that many drivers are working
> only partially and with (still) better alternatives to it.
>
> My cab setup, doesnt include any console/computer or to make it short, its
> ergonomically a pain in the ass (or foot ) to play such games with a cab. I have
> another setup for such a case, where i indeed use official MAME or better alternative
> emulators for some cases, or the absolute best of all... the original stuff (nothing
> can beat this).
>

What I said is perfectly relevant, there are games on all the platforms that are perfectly suited to cab use, MAME includes a decent amount of scripting that would make them easier to use.

Heck these days you could probably write a lua coin management script and wrap it around the games, automatically pressing any buttons to start games etc. (much like the TourVision bios does in hardware)

Atari 2600 is 2nd Generation, plenty of those games would be just fine. Many of the Japanese consoles from a similar period would likewise be fine.

As for computers, something like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_bLr-1gDGw
would be fully playable on a cab, just use an auto-boot script for the loading, and map your up/down/left/right and start buttons to the ones the game actually needs, and you're done. The high score name entry might not really work as you'd be limited to the keys you mapped, but I've seen worse in games 'ported' to arcade platforms. Other games wouldn't even have that issue as you never enter a name, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPXNGxxm_ao for example.

> save states are for the trashcan, especially when it comes to updates, where you can
> configure/ make them again. find a solution for this and we are fine.
>

Yes, our Save State system could do with being a bit more forgiving.

> > Most people using a cab aren't going to want a Windows interface anyway, the
> > fullscreen interface, if nothing else, is perfect for use with cabinet controls; if
> > we did force a Windows style interface it's most likely the group running it on
> > cabinets that would scream at us for 'killing MAME' ;-)
>
> No they wont and me neither, but i use UIFX through GameEx. UIFX is way faster/easier
> for organizing the setup, keeping updated than any official MAME probably will ever
> be, as it dont need to go through trillions lists, making me watch a whole simpson
> episode incl. advertising, until i can move the joystick again and back to gaming.
>

You do know one of the things the team is hated the most for is the video rewrite done after 0.106? because it means that low-res fullscreen, exact resolution modes are much more difficult to use?

If anything it's the largest amount of hate we've ever received over anything, so yes, cab users would go apeshit if MAME's primary gui was a Windows one, there's a reason things like FBA don't really get used on Windows based cabs.

Now I'm not saying keeping cab users happy is a good reason to have the internal GUI (being cross platform, and automatically ported without any need for OS specific GUI code is a better one) but it again shows that you're really only looking at your own closed little world rather than one that has benefits to everybody.

>
> I will explain it with a simple example. Many people like books, still they dont need
> to have the whole city library at home just to read some of them. You on the other
> side try to force people to have exactly this scenario and is the reason why we all
> hated our teachers, trying to teach us a lot of useless crap. If i am interested in a
> book i dont own, i go to the library and borrow it and if i like it, i buy it. This
> applies the same for MAME and how the majority of users treat this case. I am not
> interested in the whole history of books or the whole encyclopedia in my home, but i
> still would like to see a city library in my city. BÄÄÄÄM

You're still trying to insist that MAME be designed around your personal interests, it's not going to be, ever, because your interests are selfish, the project is about more than you. Your education towards attitude tells me all I need to know tho.