Johnny T

I'm not sure what's going wrong with your setup for American Laser Games but, for the light guns, I use the AimTrak ones from Andy at Ultimarc.com I've found them to be really good so far. I had to open them up and put in stronger springs but, apart from that, they are superb. Cheers

Well, in answer to your original question of "what people think of them", I would say they are awesome!!! Really like the clean look of them. Great work!!

Are you putting game info above the logo's? Or is there something else going in that space? Or are you just making them neat and tidy like that with the system at the bottom? Thanks

Okeedokee. Will do. Thanks again

Wow!! After adapting your script to my needs (i.e. changing the two paths that are in there) it is working an absolute treat!!! I've even got an overview of lives and score at the top which is awesome! I really appreciate you sharing that with me @twobucks thank you very much! And for reference here is my *new* .bat file thanks to twobucks. Daphne.exe %1 vldp -framefile "..\..\Emulators\Daphne\vldp\%1\%1.txt" -ignore_aspect_ratio -blank_searches -fastboot -noserversend -min_seek_delay 1000 -seek_frames_per_ms 20 -homedir "T:\LaunchBox\Emulators\Daphne" -useoverlaysb 2 -bank 0 11011001 -bank 1 00100111 -latency 100 -sound_buffer 2048 -fullscreen -x 640 -y 480

Yep, I just checked and it's just Dragon's Lair... must just be something specific to this game. Not a problem. Thanks for all your help

I was specifically talking about Dragon's Lair - yes. I've not really played the other games but, what is strange is that Dragon's Lair didn't do this on my RocketLauncher/Hyperspin set up? I'll double check it all tonight when I get home from work and find out which games cycle through the screens and which ones don't. Just thought it was strange and wasn't sure if it was just me. I also wondered if there was a command missing from the startup that would get rid of this behaviour?

No problem mate. Hope you get your guns and get it all working ok. Enjoy

Yep, the guns aren't cheap. I was surprised just how much they were too!! It was easy to configure. The guns act exactly the same as a mouse so, if you can use your mouse in American Laser Games then you can use one of the AImTrak guns. I got the ones with the recoil as well. They are quite good but I found (initially) that if you shot multiple times the slider inside would 'stick' and then it just became a normal gun without recoil. I sorted it by opening them and putting in slightly stronger springs. Cheers

Hi matey I just used the in-built MAME importer in Launchbox. As you go through the options there's a page that asks you what games you want to exclude (such as Mahjong games etc) and also whether you want LB to automatically create those Playlists (Lightgun games / 2 Player games / Bat and Ball games etc). I then just went into the newly create Lightgun games folder and "selected all" then right-click and Edit and edited the Emulator to be MAME_GUN_GAMES. Cheers

That's great Retro. Thanks for the info

Hi all, I've got strange behaviour with Daphne within BigBox. When I start a game it goes black for several seconds and then cycles quickly through all the screens before launching into the game? It didn't used to do this with Hyperspin - it just used to boot up (and a lot faster too). I wondered if something is wrong with the command line parameters I'm passing to the games? Daphne.exe %1 vldp -fullscreen -x 640 -y 480 -framefile "..\..\Emulators\Daphne\vldp\%1\%1.txt" Daphne.exe %1 vldp -fullscreen -x 640 -y 480 -framefile "..\..\Emulators\Daphne\vldp\%1\%1.txt" Is this the same as other peoples .bat file to start the games? And do you get the screens cycling through before the game starts? Thanks

Hi matey You can use a mouse to control the game if you want. I personally use an AimTrak light gun. They're very good once they're set up correctly. I recently got American Laser Games working and wrote some info down here American Laser Games that you might find useful? To set up my guns I just used the calibration software that came with them and then told MAME that I was using guns as the controllers. To make it simple (for myself as I'm not 100% with all this yet) I just created a new copy of MAME and called the folder MAME_GUN_GAMES. I then added that as an Emulator in LB and I pointed all my Lightgun games at that Emulator. Then, within the MAME Gun Games exe I just told it that up/down movement was going to be Gun Y axis and left/right was going to be Gun X axis, then set the fire buttons up and off it went. Hope that helps

Brilliant! Thanks for sharing. My next question is - how do you create a "Recently Played" playlist? That would be really handy for me? Thanks

Great stuff. Glad you got it sorted

Yep, I think I'll stick with non-merged for that very reason, the simplicity of adding/removing games. I'm making two playlists... one will be "Every Arcade Game" and the other will be "Arcade Classics". The Classics will be Lord M's list and the other will be all the rest. I'll be able to just have a mess around in the other list and see if anything grabs my attention and then copy it over to the Classics list and build on the excellent work that Lord Monkus has done.

I've currently got a "non merged" set. I mistakenly thought "non merged" and "split" were maybe the same thing as the names mean similar things. I've gone with non-merged as I wanted to put in Lord M's All Filler Mame set but it's handy to know that I can save space in the future if I need to by switching to a merged set without any detriment to the game playing experience. Cheers

Thanks @DOS76 that makes perfect sense

Hi all, I was looking at different MAME rom sets and see that there are different types (merged, non-merged, split etc). I just wondered what people use and why? Thanks

Have you tried going into Task Manager and seeing what else is running and what CPU usage etc it's using? If it's running so slow then it might be something eating your CPU cycles. You could try just getting rid of background software one by one until you find what's causing the conflict. Another thing to check is your CPU temps. I recently had a problem with my cooler not working correctly and it was causing my CPU to go to 100% load when I ran BigBox (there was enough cooling to get away with Launchbox) and if I tried to do anything intensive in BB (such as audit a system) I got the Blue Screen Of Death. So, maybe download a small program like Core Temps and just make sure you're not over-heating?

Thanks for the info @Vereor Nox that's great. I'll check it out.

Hi @FlightRisk that's great info. Thanks very much. I'm not too fussed for the warning messages as, I agree, it's a good thing as it lets you know to potentially expect problems. I'll stick the disclaimer/gameinfo bits in my .ini though. Thanks again for taking the time to answer. Cheers John

I get the guys (sellers) point here. It's like buying a classic car in order to cut a massive hole in the bonnet and stick in a huge engine. That cabinet is a little piece of history. It holds the hopes (and coins) of a generation. I hope it finds a good home and gets restored. Why not buy some plywood and knock something up (if space/health/ability allows). If not you can buy flat pack cabinets I believe. Good luck in your search

That's brilliant Dragon!! Thanks!! I'll get on to that tomorrow after work. Thanks again for sharing that