I have a cabinet with an existing Makvision Tri-Mode monitor and I am trying to add a second monitor to my cabinet for purposes of displaying marquees and playing two-monitor games (basically Punch-Out). I am using BigBox to display marquees, and I have turned them on in options. I see marquees displayed on the platform and game screens, but when I select “Play” within the game, the marquee vanishes and only the game screen is displayed (I see a second, different screen where appropriate like in PO).
My primary emulator is/was GroovyMAME, but it apparently crashes when launching when BigBox’s marquees are enabled. I can start the game, don’t see the marquee, and then I can’t exit. So I am using MAME .202 which I had also installed. I thought I had it correctly configured, and it briefly showed marquees during game play. For Punch-Out, the marquee was replaced with the second screen. This was exactly the outcome I wanted.
The problem is this configuration suddenly no longer works. I tinkered with the mame.ini file so much that I created a new one from scratch. I changed the following from the defaults:
Marquees: 0
Numscreens: 2
Video: d3d9x
Screen0: \\.\DISPLAY2 (this is my main CRT monitor)
Screen1: \\.\DISPLAY1 (this is my LCD)
In configuring MAME, the only way I got anything other than a black 2nd monitor was with the d3d9x setting. With the above settings, I see the game screen on both monitors.
I still have the problem with no marquees in game play. MAME does not crash, so I intend to use it going forward unless anyone knows a way to make GroovyMAME work. I use Retroarch to emulate a bunch of other systems like Atari, NES, Sega, and the marquees all show up during game play as intended. This must be something in MAME or BigBox.
I’ve read some similar posts, and I’ve tried everything that others have done, but I’ve not seen a solution to this specific problem. Any and all help is appreciated.
Thanks.
Scott