DJ_GLiTCH

No worries, hope you enjoy it. Not all games/ROMs in MAME require these LUA scripts to enable recoil/rumble in light gun games, only some. What you need is any version of MAME, but I always recommend the latest version (currently 0.285), a tool called Hook Of The Reaper (HOTR), which is needed to communicate between games and your light guns to control recoil/rumble/etc, and then my files, which enable support for games/ROMs in MAME that don't typically support recoil/rumble. To install my scripts, you just need to copy the relevant files into the relevant MAME and HOTR folders, which are already in the correct folder location in the downloaded file. Hope this helps.

This tool is designed to enable simultaneous output of network and windows in MAME without modifying the core MAME source code. To achieve this, the MAME Bridge NetToWin tool will handle "output windows" as an additional add-on when you have "output network" set in MAME. The reason this tool exists is because natively you can only choose "windows" or "network" in MAME settings (mame.ini), not both at once. To enable simultaneous dual output, configure MAME to output "network" (find the relevant "output" line in "mame.ini" and set this to "output network"). If "network" output is detected on 127.0.0.1:8000 for MAME, then this tool will interpret all state outputs received by the TCP server and relay them to windows by simulating the native MAME "output windows" method, which is used by tools like LEDBlinky or MameHooker. I have previously proven that simultaneous dual output is possible natively in MAME with a custom build of MAME (I called this "output netwin"), but as I am not confident in my ability to maintain this code within the main release branch of MAME, I thought this tool would work better as it can be used with all future vanilla releases of MAME without code customisation. MAME Bridge NetToWin (Download Link / GitHub): https://github.com/djGLiTCH/MAME-Bridge-NetToWin LEDBlinky (https://www.ledblinky.net/) Specific Notes: If you are using LEDBlinky (v8.2.2 or lower), then you will need to ensure all ROMs are loaded with the command "-output network" when launching ROMs with MAME, as LEDBlinky can revert the output setting in mame.ini from "network" to "windows" (even if mame.ini is set to read-only). This may not be an issue in newer version of LEDBlinky if they make use of network output functionality in MAME, but while it relies on windows output this will remain the case. Launchbox Launch Parameter Settings: The steps below will add network output to MAME when launching ROMs through Launchbox. This will override whatever output setting is used in your mame.ini file (which is needed since LEDBlinky can change the mame.ini setting to "output windows", but we need "output network" for HOTR, and MAME Bridge NetToWin will relay the messages from network to windows so LEDBlinky can work as intended in parallel). 1. Open Launchbox 2. Select Tools > Manage > Emulators 3. Select MAME (it will highlight once selected), then select "Edit..." 4. Select Details in the left pane, then in the "Default Command-Line Parameters", you will want to add "-output network" (without quotations), then select "OK" 5. Close the Emulator window 6. Restart Launchbox (not needed, but good practice) General Notes: I would recommend using this tool with Hook Of The Reaper over MameHooker, as that is what I have tested with. Hook Of The Reaper (https://github.com/6Bolt/Hook-Of-The-Reaper) uses "network" output, which is why LEDBlinky can access the "windows" output created by this tool, and both can work together without any communication clashes. Feel free to experiment with other combinations, but please know I may not be able to assist with any issues you may encounter.

I just wanted to share my project with everyone that aims to add light gun force feedback to a bunch more MAME games via LUA script and is compatible with Mamehooker and Hook Of The Reaper (preference is to use HOTR as that is what I'm personally more familiar with). It operates under a universal script I made that has enough settings to be useful for any game, so the community can use it and add support for more games, which I can add into future releases. The list of supported games is available in the "Progress Notes" text file on GitHub, and in the release description. Please read the GitHub readme for more details. It's still in the final beta testing phase, but it should be finalised very soon. I hope the community finds it useful. https://github.com/djGLiTCH/MAME-LUA-SCRIPT-STATE-OUTPUTS

No worries, and thanks for the appreciation. It sounds like my tool may not be needed for all that much longer, as LEDBlinky may have support for network output soon, but it's still handy for use today and for any versions of LEDBlinky v8.2.2 and below (and for those who do not want to upgrade from working copies of older LEDBlinky versions of course). The steps below will add network output to MAME when launching ROMs through Launchbox. This will override whatever output setting is used in your mame.ini file (which is needed since LEDBlinky can change the mame.ini setting to "output windows", but we need "output network" for HOTR and my tool will relay the messages from network to windows so LEDBlinky can work as intended in parallel). Open Launchbox Select Tools > Manage > Emulators Select MAME (it will highlight once selected), then select "Edit..." Select Details in the left pane, then in the "Default Command-Line Parameters", you will want to add "-output network" (without quotations), then select "OK" Close the Emulator window Restart Launchbox (not needed, but good practice) Some screenshots of these steps are below with red highlights of what you need to do:

I ended up rethinking my approach, as I felt it was cumbersome to rely on knowing what keywords to search for and relay between windows and network outputs (which is what the LUA script had to rely on in my previous post). Instead, I built a new tool which relies on the native "output network" setting in MAME. The tool then relays all network outputs to windows using the appropriate windows output parameters, so tools like LEDBlinky can listen to windows messages while other tools like Hook Of The Reaper can listen to network messages. Sharing the link to my tool here in case it helps anyone else: https://github.com/djGLiTCH/MAME-Bridge-NetToWin If you use this tool, be sure to add the "-output network" launch parameter to Launchbox as well, since LEDBlinky can revert the mame.ini config file back to "output windows" every now and then. MAME-Bridge-NetToWin-v3.6.0.zip

@gStAv I have attached the first fully functional version of my MAME plugin ("NetworkOutputServer"). Extract and copy the "plugins" folder into your MAME root directory. Ensure your mame.ini is set to output windows as well (since this plugin will handle the network output side of things). You can download Hook Of The Reaper from GitHub and should only take a couple of minutes to configure your light guns (first add the light guns and assign the relevant COM ports, then set the light guns to the relevant P1/P2 player). The latest release is available here: https://github.com/6Bolt/Hook-Of-The-Reaper/releases Let me know how it goes for you, as I've tried to account for as many state outputs as I could find. All light gun games are accounted for in MAME, but there may be some other game specific state outputs I might have missed (such as driving games, but I did try to capture everything I could find at the time). Keen to hear how it works out for you. Download link below (make sure you download the latest version, as I will upload new ones here): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ToUFS8Y-S_zrvj2cN_yGZUm89AGuIF60?usp=sharing A backup of the latest version available today (v1.0.6) has been attached to this post: MAME-Plugin-DJ_GLiTCH-NetworkOutputServer-v1.0.6.zip

Hook Of The Reaper is meant to be a modern replacement for Mamehooker, and uses network instead of windows for output in MAME. This is a good thing as it allows multiple software to tap into the same TCP network server to monitor game output state changes, which overcomes the limitation of a single program being able to access the windows output states (which at this time is required for LEDBlinky or Mamehooker, can't be both simultaneously). https://github.com/6Bolt/Hook-Of-The-Reaper HOTR is primarily used for light guns at the moment, but in the future it may have LED controller support for Ultimarc products too, but I wouldn't expect this to replace LEDBlinky for things like default RGB configuration per platform or animations for lunchbox and alike, but it could perhaps add support for dynamic game state changes for LEDs - just not sure how this will affect LEDBlinky as that tends to be pretty good at overriding state changes. The details on future light controller functionality is here: https://hotr.6bolt.com/pmwiki.php/Main/LightController Regarding your monitor idea, I installed a 3m Philips Hue Gradient lightstrip behind my arcade, and I have the Philips Hue Sync app set to autostart on boot up and sync the lightstrip to the main arcade monitor (I have a marquee too, but it ignores this screen). It doesn't do colour for independent game events (like damage), but it does sync with the colours around the edge of the monitor so everything lines up nicely. Looks pretty cool, and could be an easier (albeit expensive) option if you're interested.

I've had a breakthrough and have managed to develop a MAME plugin that will output states via network, while MAME natively outputs states via windows. This enables me to have LEDBlinky controlled via windows and Hook of The Reaper (HOTR) via network (and other more modern software). I'm just trying to ensure I've captured the relevant output state variables, as there's a lot to account for. When I'm done, I'll share the files so others can use this in the future. 😁 I just need to finish testing the most popular games to ensure I've fixed as many issues as possible before sharing.

Minor update, as I recently had some time to start setting up my light guns after several delays from home renovations. I've got Hook of The Reaper (HOTR) working well with MAME using output network, but this obviously clashes with LEDBlinky for any interactive controls. I've avoided using Mamehooker as it's quite old now and seems to be running into compatibility issues, which isn't something I want to encounter in the future when my memory is hazy on how I built and configured my arcade. There is a new LED feature being developed within HOTR, but I doubt it will be a suitable replacement for LEDBlinky directly, but would be amazing as an input for or integration with LEDBlinky. At this time, I'm almost convinced that the only way to achieve what we're after is to use HOTR and LEDBlinky simultaneously, which would require MAME output to use both "network" and "windows", respectively. The problem with this idea (beyond the duplication of output) is that no option exists in MAME for simultaneous output - it's one or the other, not both. As I'm at a dead end for configuring what already exists to work together, I'm going to attempt building a little script/tool that can read the MAME output over network (required for HOTR) and then forward that to windows (required for LEDBlinky). This would have the added benefit of enabling support for older tools that aren't being actively worked on. If I have any luck with this or find a better solution, I'll post another update. If someone else has a better idea, then please feel free to share as well.

So did you get it all working after reconfiguring MAME to use the correct controller buttons?

After many months of encountering this issue, I found the cause. Sharing this here in case it helps others in the future. I was reading the fine print on everything I set up, and there is one plugin I use called ThirdScreen to help manage my marquee. There is a setting in that plugin turned on by default that can cause this issue: “Marquee Shift” which must be set to “Disabled”, rather than default “Medium Shift Handling” Once I set this to disabled, I could open exclusive fullscreen games consistently again. I do remember removing ThirdScreen at some point to see if that was the culprit, but I must have had a different issue with the inbuilt Marquee function that I forgot about, so when switching back to ThirdScreen I must have mistakenly ruled it out of potential conflicts due to whatever else I encountered with the inbuilt marquee function. Either way, it’s all sorted now, and something to keep in mind for other users since so many use ThirdScreen for their marquees.

Sorry for the bump, but I'm just wondering if anyone else has encountered this issue over the years? As this is a fresh new build and there's no legacy settings from Windows, emulators, or LaunchBox / BigBox being carried over, I would have thought this issue might be more widespread, but if it isn't I'd love to know what I'm missing so I can fix this. Updating to the newer v13.22 of LaunchBox hasn't helped my issue with BigBox and exclusive fullscreen games sadly.

It's not super old games with older renderers I'm talking about, it's just any game that only supports exclusive fullscreen, which Bigbox isn't playing nicely with. I mentioned semi-recent Street Fighter games as some examples, like 4 or 5. They only support windowed mode or exclusive fullscreen mode. Open it from your desktop, set it to fullscreen, save, close the game, then try to launch it from BigBox.

As the title implies, I am having difficulties with BigBox failing to launch games that utilise Exclusive Fullscreen mode from Steam/Windows. For reference, I am using Windows 11 Pro (latest version as of today) and Launchbox 13.21. The games themselves do launch ok from BigBox, but the issue is that BigBox takes the window focus back from the game. Even if I alt+tab to the game directly, BigBox will immediately after retake the window focus and completely prevent the game from being displayed (besides a temporary black screen). I have tried everything from disabling startup messages and images, to disabling the pause screen and any other UI elements that could be interfering. If I close BigBox and open the game, the game works fine. If I open the game from BigBox, then close BigBox, the game then works fine. Only while BigBox is running am I unable to have any game open that uses Exclusive Fullscreen mode. Launching games from Launchbox works fine too. It is only BigBox that causes this issue. As a minor workaround, I have modified an AHK script I found online and assigned it to a button on my Elgato Stream Deck, which will take whatever Windowed mode game is currently open and make it borderless. This is useful for games that I can force into windowed mode (but don't support borderless), but it's still clunky as it requires the player to know this button exists in the first place, and if they don't do anything there is an ugly windowed view of the game on the screen with borders and all. Regarding the above AHK script, this is the code for those who are interested: ^+a:: WinSet, Style, -0xC00000,a ; remove the titlebar and border(s) WinMove, a, , 0, 0, 3840, 2160 ; move the window to 0,0 and resize it to 3840x2160 return So, I guess I'm wondering if anyone else had this issue and if you ever found a workaround/fix, as there are a lot of older native Windows games out there that only support Exclusive Fullscreen mode or Windowed mode, but not Borderless Windowed mode (which is what BigBox seems to prefer). If you're wondering if this issue exists on your machine, many of the older fighting games do not support Borderless Windowed mode, like the Street Fighter series. I have been using SF4 and SF5 for my testing. Many thanks in advance for any suggestions or tips you may have. 🙂

This plugin will enable Launchbox marquee, with some extra settings for more customisation (might do what you need):