Emulation CAN be fun. [Archive] - Retrogaming Roundtable

Arasoi

08-31-2006, 10:35 PM

Ingredients:

1 Matrox Triplehead2go

1 monitor rack

3 17" monitors

1 computer with 600 dollar video card

Time to screw around at work with MAME

Result:

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n310/Protogem/3.jpg

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n310/Protogem/4.jpg

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n310/Protogem/5.jpg

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n310/Protogem/6.jpg

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n310/Protogem/7.jpg

Pantechnicon

08-31-2006, 10:38 PM

Very nice! Especially those wide-screen X-Men shots. Me = jealous.

Ed Oscuro

08-31-2006, 10:51 PM

XMEN XMEN

Bloodreign

09-01-2006, 06:43 AM

Looks like the mission you told me about over IRC was a success Protogem, great job. :)

Pico956

09-01-2006, 06:54 AM

geez that xmen shot looks good. it brings back many memories. i can still imitate the colisus noise perfectly.

johno590

09-01-2006, 08:54 AM

That looks awesome. Now if only you had 3 more monitors on top of those, haha.

Oobgarm

09-01-2006, 08:58 AM

Very nice! Especially those wide-screen X-Men shots. Me = jealous.

Looks juicy! And I was excited since I finally got a complete ROMset. :)

poloplayr

09-01-2006, 09:05 AM

oh man...sweet setup!!!!!

Kitsune Sniper

09-01-2006, 11:09 AM

How the

What the

How the HECK DID YOU GET XMEN6P WORKING?!

Arasoi

09-01-2006, 11:15 AM

Kitsune, its been supported since Mame 1.03 =)

Other games that look fantastic on this rig are Ninja Warriors and Rastan 3, Darius 2 as well. Its just perfect for those old Taito widescreen titles.

Anybody have suggestions on other games I could try?

The nice thing is, you can get a rig like this with a monitor rack, triplehead2go, and 3 cheap 17 inch flatpanels for under 500 bucks. The triplehead works with most newer ATI or Nvidia cards and its about 800 dollars cheaper than a decent Matrox QID card. If you dont like the small 17s you can mount widescreens on the rack as well, a couple 24 inch wides would do the trick probably just as well.

B - Mark

09-01-2006, 11:28 AM

Hey Arasoi.

His work is excellent.

The games X-Men and Darius are fantastic in wide-screen.

His work can be used in other plataforms emulation?

Kitsune Sniper

09-01-2006, 07:42 PM

Kitsune, its been supported since Mame 1.03 =)

It's 0.103! Not 1.03! Such a version doesn't exist! :P

But yeah, sorry. I didn't know.

Synergy

09-01-2006, 07:53 PM

Very cool, Arasoi! Geez, a $600 card? Which card is it? I thought I splurged on my first PCI-E card which was $250.

XYXZYZ

09-01-2006, 07:55 PM

I was actually going to start a thread about three monitor arcade games. Does anyone know how those cabinets were set up? They had the monitors down in front of the control panel, flip mode on, with a mirror set up in front of the player, right? How did they get rid of the spaces between the screens? Just think, you could build a MAME cabinet just for those.

That's a damn nice setup, Arasoi. Is it perament? And COME ON with those Ninja Warriors pictures!

Neil Koch

09-01-2006, 07:57 PM

I salute you sir, both for the ability to pull that off and having a job to allow you to do so :b

Arasoi

09-01-2006, 08:05 PM

Very cool, Arasoi! Geez, a $600 card? Which card is it? I thought I splurged on my first PCI-E card which was $250.

Its one of the FireGL cards by ATI, it was purchased for CAD 2007 on the machine I was running this one, but we dont have a new guy in engineering to take the machine yet =)

That's a damn nice setup, Arasoi. Is it perament? And COME ON with those Ninja Warriors pictures!

I can get some on Monday, along with any other widescreen games anyone might suggest.

norkusa

09-01-2006, 09:31 PM

Very nice. I bet the 3-screen Ferrari F355 challenge would look great on that setup.

Ze_ro

09-01-2006, 11:24 PM

Excellent stuff... although I bet that division between the screens gets a little annoying at times. I suppose doing the goofy mirror tricks that the arcade machine does would be going a little too far though.

--Zero

Arasoi

09-01-2006, 11:36 PM

Its not too bad with three monitors, due to the fact that the center of the display is in the center of the middle monitor. The black strips arent too much of a bother really. Pretty soon Ill be testing the rig out with 3 BenQ digital projectors across a long wall, that should resolve any black strip problems =)

cyberfluxor

09-02-2006, 12:03 AM

That's really a great setup and interesting to see. The only flaw I see is the thick sidings between each screen that would become a bit annoying to me. Other than that though it's kick ass. Do you really need to dump that much into a video card though to display that? I'd think you could get 2 moderate dual outs or 1 powerful dual out on 2 wider screened monitors. Of course many combinations you can do and just more tweaking that'd have to be done.

Arasoi

09-02-2006, 12:08 AM

As stated in my previous posts, the triplehead works with most modern ATI/Nvidia video cards, the FireGL was just in the machine for the engineer who is getting it later.

The black strips are not so bothersome, because the center of the screen is in the center of the middle monitor. Its far more annoying on a dual screen setup, where the black strip is right in the middle. When I set it up with 3 projectors there wont be any strips at all though.

idrougge

09-02-2006, 10:33 PM

I was actually going to start a thread about three monitor arcade games. Does anyone know how those cabinets were set up? They had the monitors down in front of the control panel, flip mode on, with a mirror set up in front of the player, right? How did they get rid of the spaces between the screens?

It's been a while since I played Darius, but Taito had some rather ingenious reflection system to get rid of the spaces. It's probably noted on Wikipedia.

As for the topic of this thread; yes, emulation can be fun. About 10% the fun of playing Darius on a real machine.

idrougge

09-02-2006, 11:03 PM

I was actually going to start a thread about three monitor arcade games. Does anyone know how those cabinets were set up? They had the monitors down in front of the control panel, flip mode on, with a mirror set up in front of the player, right? How did they get rid of the spaces between the screens?

It's been a while since I played Darius, but Taito had some rather ingenious reflection system to get rid of the spaces. It's probably noted on Wikipedia.

As for the topic of this thread; yes, emulation can be fun. About 10% the fun of playing Darius on a real machine.

Arasoi

09-03-2006, 12:06 AM

As for the topic of this thread; yes, emulation can be fun. About 10% the fun of playing Darius on a real machine.

So can double posting. j/k =)

Theres no beating a real arcade cabinet, but I think this rig will be more convenient for the company picnic, especially with it hooked up to 3 projectors and with wireless controllers/sticks.