Second Screen Trouble in GroovyMame/MAME

[wichitakid71]

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 2^nd 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 

 

[Headrush69]

Are you making those setting is a specific punchout.ini or the mame.ini?

If in mame.ini, it will take control of the second (marquee) screen even if it is not used. So best to place your above options only in punchout.ini.

Edit: Just to add to this, on my setup this works OK, but sometimes the main MAME screen looses focus. I believe this is likely related to the BB marquee code, as it's not an issue started from LB. In this case it would probably be fairly easy to use a AutohotKey script to grab the focus back a few seconds after starting.

Edited March 28, 2020 by Headrush69

[wichitakid71]

Thanks for the reply.  All the changes I described are in mame.ini, not punch out.  But right now all my two-monitor games work.  My current problem is I can't see all the marquees when playing the single monitor games like Centipede.  The marquee vanishes when the game boots.  

I'm new to the two-monitor stuff, so are you saying that I need to:

1. turn off two screens in mame.ini

2. turn on two screens one-by-one in punchout.ini and any other 2 monitor game?

Thanks.

Scott

[Headrush69]

42 minutes ago, wichitakid71 said:

Thanks for the reply.  All the changes I described are in mame.ini, not punch out.  But right now all my two-monitor games work.  My current problem is I can't see all the marquees when playing the single monitor games like Centipede.  The marquee vanishes when the game boots.  

I'm new to the two-monitor stuff, so are you saying that I need to:

1. turn off two screens in mame.ini

2. turn on two screens one-by-one in punchout.ini and any other 2 monitor game?

Thanks.

Scott

Correct. 

I don't think there is a specific override for dual screens like there is for vertical.ini, raster.ini, etc.

If you have a bunch of dual screen games that use the same driver or system you might be able to override several at once that way.

More info here: MAME overrides

Edited March 28, 2020 by Headrush69

[Headrush69]

I don't know how BB's marquee support works or the mechanism Jason uses to display the marquee, so I can't say if that is grabbing control back after a dual screen MAME game starts, but currently I use a real blunt force AHK script to grab it back.

I use the following in the Running AutoHotkey Script section for MAME in LB:

Quote

#Persistent
#NoEnv
#SingleInstance force
SetTitleMatchMode 2

WinWaitActive, Screen 0 ahk_class MAME, , 30
if ErrorLevel {
   return
} else {
    sleep, 5000
    WinActivate
}

WinWaitClose

ExitApp
 

Basically it waits for MAME to start, waits 5 seconds (which is long enough on my system), than brings MAME's screen 0 back to front.

It will run on every MAME game (not just dual screens), but that doesn't seem to be a problem and I'm sure I could clean it up to wait for the window to lose focus and bring it back rather than using a sleep, but for now it's good enough.

Edited March 30, 2020 by Headrush69
Fixed typo in script

[wichitakid71]

Creating punchout.ini with the correct 2 screen settings did the trick.  Didn't have to set up any program or file, MAME simply launches straight into two screens and replaces the BigBox marquee.   The marquee reappears when I exit the game.  Works in other games too.

I'm off to try to figure out why MAME works and GroovyMAME hangs when I try the same thing.

Thanks for the help.

Scott