Invincer's Arcade Cabinet

[Invincer]

(Posted on wrong forum area at first, sorry...)

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Won't be able to work (or play) on it for a while very shortly now, so posting my progress so far. Gonna post a hardware and then a few HyperSpin ones with games, movies, jukebox, and comics playing on it.

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I sound horrible talking on this thing, not my thing, so bear with me. Oh well... This shows most of the hardware and things hooked to my cabinet. I know the "MAME" purists will yell sacrilege, because this thing is like Frankenstein with all the controls etc... I really don't care though, it's for me, it runs PC games just as well as MAME or other emulator games, and that includes FPS non-Cab-Friendly games that run fine thanks to the added controls. I guess I have always been a more "buffet" kind of person anyways.

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Anyone interested in the side lights that shine the ambient lights on the sides of the monitor can go to http://www.arfx.nl/ where I got these. They work great and as a returning customer they are also giving me a great deal on a TV package for the lighting to work on my 65" HDTV... they are awesome... They somehow make the screen look even bigger since the lights shown are based on the lights on the screen.

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Light switch burned out under cab, so when it goes dark (sorry) was showing KVM switchboard Xbox and PS2 also running on the cab.

The one thing offhand I forgot to mention was the receiver you may see over the keyboard which is for 3D mode with Edimensional glasses. Just as well though, as they don't work the way I would like them to just yet.

Also have a rumblepad hooked up wirelessly, for 4th player in MAME games and possible PC games or emulated consoles where they may be more comfortable playing with a cab that way. Will still need to add the guns; had them (Top Gun IIs) but they are worthless as I run XP 64 on the cab and they won't work on it.

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As for the movie and showing an intro before the actual movie through Hyperlaunch, I found a crude way to do it and will post later today how I got that to work.

Will also post later today how I got the ComicRack working as well.

[Zinger19]

Very cool

[BadBoyBill]

Nice dude.

[Drakin]

Awsome...How did you get the artwork on either sides on main screen with 1943?

[Invincer]

In MAME.ini there is a choice for artwork=1 if I remember correctly (along with overlays, etc.) I am at work at the moment and can not check my ini for MAME, but will check when I get home if no one else has yet posted where it is on ini...

[Rawd]

Very nice cab. Good work!

[Drakin]

In MAME.ini there is a choice for artwork=1 if I remember correctly (along with overlays, etc.) I am at work at the moment and can not check my ini for MAME, but will check when I get home if no one else has yet posted where it is on ini...

I believe I have that enabled...I'll check for sure...no images showing up and if I remember right there are images in the 'artwork' folder under 'mame'.

[Master Blaster]

Looks great! I cannot wait to build my own free standing cab - kudos!

[The Loafer]

Artwork: I'm leaving now and can't double check but basically I think you press tab while in mame, go to video and ensure/cycle through the "cropped/show artwork" options. If no one's helped, I'll take a look when I get back tonight.

[Tricky]

I'm amazed! Fantastic work! Few questions though:

1 - What are you system specs? Everything seems to run so flawlessly!

2 - What screen are you using? Have you found that using a widescreen can be a pain with mame games or is it worth it?

3 - The LED buttons that light up depending on what game you pick, what software/hardware did you use to set that up?

[daautiger10]

As others have mentioned, great work! That's pretty cool! Just curious but how do you launch movies from the frontend? Do you use dvd files or are they isos? Wouldn't want to watch movies on my cabinet, but i think it'd be great to use hyperspin as a frontend for a home theater pc.........

[jtslade]

Amazing work on your cab, very impressive.

I too have a question about your size bezel artwork for 1943..


Do you have side bezel artwork for all of your vertical games in Mame.

When I enable all of the different options under TAB in mame I end up with a much reduced game size. Since I have a 4:3 TV in my cab it would be nice to have something to fill the black bars on the side with something.


again great work and looking forward to everything you post in the future!

[jtslade]

I have been doing some surfing on the subject and will try the crop artwork option tonight.

I have the full artwork set but I'm not sure if its frowned upon to share it. Mr Do's website is the place where this stuff is cleaned, created.

[Invincer]

As for the artwork on the sides, the previous post is correct, in MAME game, press tab, then choose video. Here there is options for backdrops (enabled), Overlays (enabled), Bezels (enabled), and View (cropped). For the top part I select 3:4 standard so it doesn't mattter that my monitor is a wide screen, it still views the game without stretching, and the artwork can take up the wide-screen parts of the screen. I wish we could do something like this in HS :) ..

I originally purchased the main system from DreamAuthentics... as some of you may have read on BYOAC, they kind of bent me over on the cost and support; but I won't get all into that again. Needless to say, I made some adjustments and additions and will try to run down the specs a bit here from the requests for details. The cabinet was from DreamAuthentics, and Invincer is a comic character I had created many years ago (also wrote many comic scripts, but haven't got around to trying to do anything with the stories yet). I contracted an artist to give me some high def images and the side artwork is what came of it. The monitor is a 32" Wells Gardner LED with multiple changing resolution (part of the DreamAuthentics package).

In answer to the question about widescreen, it is more of an issue with Hyperspin where it stretches a bit than it is in MAME. In MAME you can play the games fine and both sides of the screen may have black area or artwork depending on how the resolution of the original game was. Never a problem though in MAME or any other emulator though really. If anything, it adds to the ability to see HD content both in movies, plus the added benefit of being able to play some recent wide screen PC games that may not look as good without widescreen support. I imagine eventually, everybody will be going widescreen formats at least some, just like eventually everyone will be using OS of 64bit instead of 32 bit.

System Specs:
The DreamAuthentics package came with a crappy little eMachine. It was a complete and utter joke. So I bought parts from NewEgg and a few other places and built my own machine for in the cabinet. Tracking down all the order parts from what I purchased would be difficult, but here is the gist of the main stuff (I started from an article about 6 months ago on MaximumPC.com which described the best bang-for-your-buck components for an economic dream-machine build... will post link if I can find it again)...

Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E8600 (With the purchase of a highly rated CPU heatsink these badboys can be overclocked quite a bit). Mine is normal 3.33Ghz, but I bumped it to a cool 4.0Ghz. At.4.2 it would run fine too, but I figured why push it, it is probaly hotter in a cab than most PCs have to deal with, and Coastal Georgia is VERY humid and hot most of the year. Hasn't hung up or crashed once at 4.0

4 GB RAM (will double soon)

ATI Radeon 4890HD Video Card

4 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda HDs

Windows XP 64 bit variety

Had to upgrade the PSU (Got one with the case based on MaxPC suggestions, but I upped their suggested video card 4850 to the 4890 and the PC would not start. Uppped the wattage from 500 to 800 and no probs)

The lighted buttons are lighting up from using LED Blinkie which is compatibly with Hyperspin. You can program how you want them to work in the software (check BYOAC)

The movies are AVI files. If you have FTP access here to Hyperspin, some wonderful movie themes have been made available that look great by member contributors here. There is even the explanation for using the movies played with VLC and what settings to use. My level of use in AHK is still amatuer, but I did change enough of the Hyperlaunch script to make Hyperspin automatically play the short curtain intro before any movie it launches with some crude coding (someone here could probably figure a way to make it work better). You can probably find a decent movie intro on Youtube, it's how I found the curtain intro. Would be great if we had a movie Hyperspin intro :)

My Movie Code to give you an example in HyperLaunch:
;**********************************MOVIES********* **************************
else if (systemName = "Movies" && executable = "vlc.exe")
{
hideDesktop()
Hotkey, %exitEmulatorKey%, CloseProcess
Run, "%emuPath%%executable%" "Z:\Movies\intro.flv" --key-quit=ESC --playlist-enqueue --video-on-top,
sleep, 25000
Runwait, "%emuPath%%executable%" "%emuPath%%executable%" "%romPath%%romName%%romExtension%" --key-quit=ESC --playlist-enqueue --video-on-top --play-and-exit,
}

I think the problem about reduced size in MAME using artwork is because of cropping. You want to turn on cropping so it doesn't reduce the game resolution size. This way some of the artwork may not dsiplay, but that is not as important as having the game full screen. Plus it's better to have cropped artwork there than just black screen...

I download all the artwork and stuff through Pleasuredome, which in turn got it from Mr. Do I believe, but on PleasureDome it is all one big download of MAME extras (cabinet pics, marquees, title, control panels, artwork, etc)...

Hopefully that answered the questions... if I forgot something please remind me.... :)

Oh, did someone voluteer to cab-sit for me while I am in the hospital? :P Just kiddin...

[Tricky]

Awesome, I now have system specs to save up for. Once again, great cab and awesome information. Thanks Invincer!

Also I'd cab sit whenever you need it, I'm sure my job and gf wouldn't like me leaving to the south for days on end but it'd be worth it to me. :P

[jackhammersalm]

what was the small screen setup above the cab where you have your CP setup

[Invincer]

it's just a 7" touchscreen as a 2nd monitor. Works great for comics, virtual pinball, and setting up CPwizard. Unfortunately, had lots of issues with hangs and whatnot on CPwizard and had to shut it down. Hopeful he will have a newer version soon that works on 2nd screen and uses multiple emulators like Marquee Magician does for GameEx

[jackhammersalm]

all I can say it look's the dogs nuts mate
loved how you did the comic collections
wouldn't mind seeing DVD covers on that touchscreen

[strykr]

Great stuff mate, really gone to town on it, its not a purists cab, but in my mind demonstrates just about every way the retro gaming experience of mame/hyperspin can be brought into 2010 technology.

am in the process of finalising my HS setup and customising an old videomaster cab and can fully imagine the dedication, cash, and hard work you've put into this!!

the 1943 bezel thing looks great and would love to have that applied to every mame game, possible HS future addition perhaps? really adds to the authenticity.