Author Topic: My Arcade (+a question about skipping)  (Read 9835 times)

Offline LittleKaneda

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My Arcade (+a question about skipping)
« on: August 02, 2008, 03:24:00 PM »
Hey guys! I just wanted to make this thread to let you know how much of a fan I am of FBA. All the work you do: my whole family is impressed with. As soon as I first used your Emulator a few years back, I knew I wanted to start a project someday. So about a year ago I say to my dad "Let's build an arcade machine!" Well, when we first started working on it, it went by smooth as ice. I had the construction plans and a basic knowledge of how to get it to work from reading other persons' blogs and howto guides. Every article I read mentioned MAME, but I already had what I wanted within FBA. We took a long break from working on it because we didn't have the money for the rest of the materials, but now the cabinet is finished with minor absences. With the recent burst of updates from barryharris.me.uk, I figured I would post and say that it's not going unnoticed; not only by programmers of these forums but by me either, and I'm just a regular fan.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures I took of my first, and hopefully not last, cabinet.

EDIT: Removed old pictures; next post for newest!



[Also! My question regarding speeding up of cinematics and/or 'loading' screens: Is there a way to remove keys that do this? For example, my second player stick, when moved, will speed past moments of resting in action games.] EDIT: And even the first player side will skip these moments on certain games

(and a note to barry: i'm not sure whom you were speaking to when you implemented the 'full screen after load' option, but I appreciated it as well!)
« Last Edit: November 02, 2008, 07:53:32 AM by LittleKaneda »

Offline iq_132

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Re: My Arcade (+a question about speeding)
« Reply #1 on: August 02, 2008, 05:01:35 PM »
Looks very nice :)  My grandmother has those same barstools lol

Anyway, it sounds like you've got your left joystick mapped to the "F1" button.
Otherwise, it shouldn't affect the game speed in any way. :S


Offline LittleKaneda

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Re: My Arcade (+a question about skipping)
« Reply #2 on: August 02, 2008, 05:18:50 PM »
Hmmm, let's say you're playing a fighting game and the moment it says Player versus Player, if you press a button it will skip the screen and rush to gameplay. In a way, that acts like F1 but it's different in that you can only do it when something isn't a gameplay or selection screen. I always thought this was normal, but if it isn't let me know!

My only problem is that when a second player is moving his stick before a fight, it'll skip ahead straight to the fight--

EDIT: I just found out that even the first player side will skip ahead. Is there a way I can remove the skipping in the source?
or are these the way the games were intended to work in the arcade?
« Last Edit: August 09, 2008, 05:27:35 PM by LittleKaneda »

Offline LittleKaneda

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Re: My Arcade (+a question about skipping)
« Reply #3 on: October 17, 2008, 09:04:52 PM »
Update: I switched up the layout to favor the Neo Geo games a little better, and to mimic the X-Arcade layout so I wouldn't have to create a custom preset. This made my previous control artwork unusable, so there's a new one of those too! I'm finally getting a feel for what I want as in color...it's warm with orange and reds so I'm goinna run with that. Not completely finished but completely enjoyable. :)

I'd take a better pic, but it's in an awkward location.




Note: The artwork used on this cabinet is from Udon's Gallery @ http://www.udonentertainment.com/
« Last Edit: November 02, 2008, 08:01:08 AM by LittleKaneda »

Offline Aquashark

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Re: My Arcade (+a question about skipping)
« Reply #4 on: October 18, 2008, 04:05:20 AM »
wow.. looks great :)
btw why do you want not to be able to skip intermission screens?

Offline isamu

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Re: My Arcade (+a question about skipping)
« Reply #5 on: October 18, 2008, 12:17:55 PM »
 That is one kickass cabinet man! I am going to get/build a cab just for FBA one of these days. FBA is the PERFECT emu for a cab, especially given Jan's scanlines blitter :)
GENTLEMEN: START YOUR ENGINES!!

Daytona USA is emulated for the PC.

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Offline LittleKaneda

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Re: My Arcade (+a question about skipping)
« Reply #6 on: October 18, 2008, 06:43:03 PM »
wow.. looks great :)
btw why do you want not to be able to skip intermission screens?

Mostly because I let my nephews play it a lot and when they're at the intermissions they like to pretend they're still fighting with the stick and they always ask what just happened because the game goes all crazy lol!

That is one kickass cabinet man! I am going to get/build a cab just for FBA one of these days. FBA is the PERFECT emu for a cab, especially given Jan's scanlines blitter :)

Also, I'm running a television for display...would you recommend any blitters? I have all effects off right now and I'm running 640x480 video mode with ATI Catalyst and it makes the screen really clean. I haven't seen a real arcade running for a long time so I can't decide what I think looks best.

Offline isamu

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Re: My Arcade (+a question about skipping)
« Reply #7 on: October 19, 2008, 02:01:18 AM »
Mostly because I let my nephews play it a lot and when they're at the intermissions they like to pretend they're still fighting with the stick and they always ask what just happened because the game goes all crazy lol!

Also, I'm running a television for display...would you recommend any blitters? I have all effects off right now and I'm running 640x480 video mode with ATI Catalyst and it makes the screen really clean. I haven't seen a real arcade running for a long time so I can't decide what I think looks best.

That's a good question. What kind of TV display are you using? Is it  CRT? DLP? LCD? If it's a CRT then you may not even need to enable any blitters, especially if the connection to you're TV is via S-Video, Component or DVI/HDMI.

In my opinion though, even the best consumer CRT TV can't match the quality of a real actual arcade CRT monitor, which is something I will definitely have in my future cabinet. I'm not sure how much better Jan's scanlines blitter will make games look on a standard consumer CRT TV. It may or it may not significantly add to the image, since any CRT display will already deliver its own native scanline effect.

You should enable scanlines and let us know how it looks :)
GENTLEMEN: START YOUR ENGINES!!

Daytona USA is emulated for the PC.

*NOTHING more needs to be said*

Offline LittleKaneda

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Re: My Arcade (+a question about skipping)
« Reply #8 on: October 19, 2008, 05:31:11 PM »
You should enable scanlines and let us know how it looks :)

Well I turned it on today and it looked pretty bad. They weren't normal looking scanlines, rather big flashing bands...
(actually that was with SuperScale 75% Scanlines; fba's normal scanlines had no effect on the picture...)

But I gotta say, none of the blitters (SoftFX? didn't see the one you mentioned; I'm using official fba build) have a real difference on the picture. I'm 100% happy now with all effects off, using this tv. It's just really clear looking! Not as true as a proper arcade monitor like you said I'm sure, but it's great.

And to be honest that's only because of my ATI card. I used its Catalyst software to enable the tv as a monitor through S-Video, and turned on video mode in the advanced options. This makes normal window screens flicker but it doesn't effect the game screen at all. So instead of a blurry, S-Video quality picture, you get a super clean image when booting a game.

I'd still like to know if there's a way to reduce the flicker that does exist on window screens...I've actually gotten used to looking at it but new people are sometimes set off by it.

One problem I do have though, is since the video mode is on, it pushes the image past the borders a bit, so the games bottom or sides are somewhat cut off. I think this is called overscan, and I'm pretty sure I can fix it by setting the geometry of my television set, but I've yet to mess around with that. If you guys have any info on that I'd appreciate it. All I know so far is that I can go into a service mode by using the buttons on the front of the tv, and since I'd have to remove the plexiglass/bezel, I figured I'd ask here first.


« Last Edit: October 19, 2008, 06:03:57 PM by LittleKaneda »

Offline Death Metal

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Re: My Arcade (+a question about skipping)
« Reply #9 on: October 31, 2008, 10:37:32 PM »
Kaneda, this is f***ing outstanding and you have my very sincere cumpliments on it. Congrats man, that's one VERY beautiful cabinet.

Offline CaptainCPS

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Re: My Arcade (+a question about skipping)
« Reply #10 on: November 01, 2008, 05:05:12 AM »
Like Death Metal, I think that's a very nice Cabinet too, and I might contact him in the future for reference when I finally can afford to build one ^^

SeeYaa!
 :biggrin: