RedCapsMan

Hey man, that skin.ini link is down. I'd like to have a look at that if you could fix it or pm me. As for testing I just brought an xbox back to life tonight and I'm going to make it a dedicated Vertical box. I successfully got Frosty's dual boot VGA softmod to boot directly to vga when the power comes on instead of having to open the tray everytime. I'm sure nobody knows what I'm talking about but believe me it was a chore, especially since I thought this box was toast. I'm excited to test things, especially if its in the next two weeks. The better half is away and I can be extra geeky while shes gone... bulge2: when you're testing your mouse setup could you see if you can control a gun cursor for any shooting games with it? I'd try but I seem to have lost my usb hub adapter I had made and I'm too lazy to make another one.

Thats just what I wanted to hear. Click buttons aren't an option yet in FBL, that was my only worry. As far as being able to launch a dash from the CoinOps menu that would only make sense if CoinOps was set as the dash in the first place. My boxes are softmodded to go to unleashx if the tray is open on boot so ftp is not really an issue for me. Neat idea though. I think updated dats would be great since I get the sense that we're using a mixture of .084 roms and newer sets with the driver updates. Thats all I can think of for now.

I'm sure he knows how to use megaupload and mediafire and whatever else there is out there. The button config option screen sounds fantastic as long as we have access to all the buttons like left and right clicks. There are lots of control panel layouts cuz we have to build our own or sometimes (like in my case currently) take something thats slightly broken and try to make it work.

Wow, is that Mortal Kombat I or I, II and 3 that are running at full speed? NBA Jam sounds promising too. Thanks for Ms Pacman, its much more fun than the original. In fact, I think every bar that I go into only has the speed hacked versions nowadays. I have got to get these new updates!

Any chance of taking another look at the rotated screen build? Or maybe adding the rotation into the newest revision that you've been working on? It looks like you're cruising along adding games and hacks and thats cool if thats your focus, but it'd be great to have this done. Oh... and maybe add the speed hack Ms. Pacman... yeah that's be cool too. Known about DK2 for awhile, that'll be a good addition.

+1 on that for me too. I think the ability to set up individual games the way you want them is a great feature, but those settings should be exceptions to a rule that the user can set globally.

so im guessing that means you are not interested in something like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000639KZ...me=&seller= i saw the topic and thought i would be able to help more, sorry. Dude, You might as well get that wireless stick, hack it and put it in a case like the one you want. The board inside that ugly case is probably pretty thin. You'd still need to find the common ground and trace the switches though. Red

There are some big ifs here. IF: If you can still have access to the right analog click and the back button with your psx adapter then you're golden. If not then its going to take some creative button assigning in the emulators to get everything to work smoothly. Back is always the Coin button by default and its almost universal that the right click gets you out of a game and into a menu. These can be changed for coinops and fbl but its better just to leave it than to figure out what else is going to work. No Back button means assigning a coin button for every FBL game you want to play. If you're going to hack apart this psx pad like I think you're going to then all you need to do is find a common ground and you should be ok. You might want to think about what you're going to use as a case for your control panel too. Heavy mdf or metal will really shield you're wireless' signal and you won't be able to sit across the room like you would with just the pad. My first arcade machine that I put an xbox in was a Capcom Big Blue, a giant thing made out of MDF (plywood type stuff) and a big metal panel. I put the xbox inside it on a shelf I had made and put a wireless controller in the 4th port for like a wireless remote. Well, it works ok to control music but nobody wants to be player 4 for super mario war. If you want the least amount of lag with your controllers then you should look into some Xbox Logitec wireless controllers. I've got madcat minis, pelicans, no name weird wireless controllers and they all have a delay for me. I really feel it when playing Surreal64 or Soul Caliber II, but the Logitecs are great, plus theres no on/off switch to forget about and waste your batteries. I think the problem with your question is that wired controllers are just more reliable and so no-ones really tried to use a wireless for this. I've made a bunch of control panels by hacking xbox pads and if you follow the diagrams that exist it works with very little fuss (just alot of soldering). You're going to need to figure out the proper solder points for each switch, take clear pictures and post a guide so the rest of us can try it too. I wish you the best of luck in your project. And really do take some good pics so I can try after you. Red PS. Get your joysticks and buttons here: www.groovygamegear.com RandyT is a cool guy. He actually brings me my orders personally cuz I'm on his drive home!

My local market, the Matty St Dairy, had two arcade machines in the back: POW and something that looked like Galaxian I think but it looked like it had been on fire. When I was 9 I lived two blocks away and I would dig into the couch cushions for change, turn in what I found for quarters from the counter and then stand on a stepstool to play. I had an NES at home but I couldn't get enough of that machine. Then there was a pizza shop with a real Donkey Kong machine. I had Donkey Kong Classics for NES but never really enjoyed it, but the real machine adds another layer when a life actually costs money. Plus, its a lot tougher in arcade form. In the 90's Turtles in Time was THE game to play. That and Simpsons. Four player beat'em ups have never been better. After that I think I moved on to SNES and N64 and didn't frequent arcades too much. It wasn't until my adult life that I had the bug to MAME a cab. And now I live with someone who lets me keep an arcade machine in the livingroom. Not sure how that happened but I don't question it...

Thats pretty hot right there. Are you going to make one for us lowly SDTV users too? It'd be pretty sweet to get the marquees to change along with the videos instead of the screenshots at the bottom, but I guess that would mean putting all the marquee.pngs in the screenshots folder and resizing the window so they'd all fit somehow (I think the marquee pics are all different resolutions/shapes). I might actually give that a try... No word on maybe changing the rombrowser's text layer to go on top of videos nes?

I'm really new to skinning but I've been attempting to modify some of the great skins that some of the more experienced skinners have posted. I'm really digging the Fire & Ice skin as well as FBL Heroes and I'm trying to make a combination of both. That parts going really well cuz I can mix and match the backgrounds. The issue I'm having is that I'd like to have the movie previews and screenshots be almost full screen with the games list over the top of everything, but it seems that that layer of text is underneath and the list gets covered up. So how do I change the text layer so its on the very top? Can this be done yet? My apologies if this is something simple. The gui is just so customizable that I couldn't help playing with it.

Thanks for the batch! Thats perfect. The other programs I had been using either converted the audio incorrectly for wmv2xmv or crapped out on me after 400 vids. We'll see if this does avi to wmv in one shot. The button configuration is still confusing me. I understand that I can set the buttons for each individual game in the emulation menu and they save for that specific game, but is there a way to set buttons for all the games at once? For example, I'd like the Coin button for all games be the Left Analog Click. Or, could I change all the games that use the Black button to use the Right Trigger instead? And heres something I've been looking for for a long time: An xbox arcade emulator with a rotated skin that I can set up for a rotated screen that will work with frosty's VGA bios. MameOX and its variants do NOT work with the VGA bios (with the exception of coinops, but the rotated build was half finished) Damn, after re-reading thats alot to ask for. I wish I could code, I'm really just a musician with an xbox\arcade hobby. Update: Got 3,106 mame avis changed to xmv. Total size came to 11 Gigs. I transferred them all to the box, they look pretty good plus the one folder covers all of FBL and Coinops (Parent Sets at least). The one exception is that all the vertical games weren't cropped from the start and they all have black bars on either side. I can deal with that I guess. By the way, Vista sucks! The batch file never worked because of a Vista error which I decided wasn't worth fixing. I used the demo version of Blaze Media Pro and it did a stellar job. Anyone else doing avi to wmv conversions should give it a try.

Ran my .135 mame set through romcenter yesterday and have been playing the crap out of FBL. The one thing I think it really needs is some kind of button configuration screen like in FBAXXX Pro with the addition of being able to set the coin and and menu buttons. I know this opens pandora's box of configuring buttons for tons of different machines but FBAxxx did a great job of it. I'm currently attempting to convert a ton of mame vids from avi to wmv to xmv just so the menu can look as good as it can. Anybody know the best way to go from avi to wmv?

but my arcade stick also dont have back button for insert coin, i hope for next release there an option to change that that will affect all ROM I'm in the same boat. My current arcade machine control panel is without a back button as well. It would be great if there was a way to make global changes so that we could setup the GUI to use whatever button we needed. Funnily enough I've got access to the Left Analog Click (but not the Right Analog Click) on the panel. The option to set it doesn't exist anywhere in the menus. I've set a couple of my favorite games to use the black button for credits, but having to do this for every single game makes using Legends hard for me. Or am I just missing an ini file somewhere that I can set this up myself?

Yes Yes! Could you put in all the rotation stuff from the other build you made quickly, and do something about the screen rotating the correct way so horizontal games aren't displayed upside down? A separate hidden menu or another options page to put these features in would be a good thing too. The other build with the rotated skin was much appreciated but wasn't fully finished and didn't have all the features the new releases have. Thanks BP

Wow, I'm super impressed with the plexi cutting. Lexan is a bitch to cut along with mdf if you don't do them both at the same time. Thats great work there, which makes me sad to ask some small questions: did you put the right click button way on the right there? and on both controllers? I'm worried that you, or even worse player 2, will be pounding away during a frantic game and hit the menu button (which is a bummer when you've got someone over to see all your hard work). Not only that but you only really need one menu button and that you could put up high and in the middle, or even drill a hole in the bottom of your panel and hide it so its not in the way. I hide the two back buttons under my panels so they're like hidden credit buttons and then daisy chain them with the actual coin slots so you can put in quarters/tokens if you want. You should head over to the Build Your Own Arcade Controls forum ( www.byoac.com) and post your project on there as well. There are a TON of knowledgeable people that would be impressed with what you're doing. They might not agree with you and me that an xbox is the way to go for a cab, but we'll just know that we're right and take their other good advice.

Do you need it? No not really. Is it worth it? Hell yeah it makes it super easy. The picture above is for connecting an xbox to a JAMMA wired cabinet. So if you've got a real arcade machine you just take out the original game board and plug that part labeled as J-Pac into your cab where the game board was. If your monitor and controls work in your TMNT cab this would be great for that, barring the fact you'd need another controller adapter for players 3 and 4. (and after that you'll want to drill some holes and add more buttons on your control panel, these modifications get addictive real fast) I always thought a TMNT machine would be great for 4 player Super Mario War.

My advice is to go on Pricewatch.com and do a search for an IDE drive. They're still available and pretty cheap. I'm about to get a 500GB EIDE drive for about $70. No adapter means no fuss! Do the search and find a good deal, then go to the compatibility chart and search for the model number to see if it locks or not. Theres a spot on the chart where people leave comments and they give tips on how the process went. I've done twenty or so hdd upgrades this way. Good luck! Edit: No you won't need a special bios. You may need to format the partitions at a different cluster size depending on how you want the space partitioned.

Nice! Can't wait to get my hands on this.

I guess its cuz I've been gathering up roms for a long time, but all of that is second nature to me now. I'm explaining those suffixes to friends all the time so thanks for the list!

First Console = NES First Computer = x386 Packard Bell Best Console Memories = Being one of the first kids around with an N64 and Mario 64 (Grandma told me to sell it before Xmas for $1000. I could have, too) Best Computer Memories = Full Throttle/Sam & Max LucasArts Games (then discovering emulation freshman year of college, what a revelation)

Here are some other resources you'll need. First is http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/ Then you'll need these guys: http://groovygamegear.com/webstore/ for buttons and joysticks and http://www.ultimarc.com/xba.php for the monitor adapter and ipac controller

I don't think theres any reason to exclude a game that would work in CoinOps. If it works ok then put it out there as an optional rom pack without the video intros. Alot of us would like that. If a game has only a screenshot and no video it would be pretty clear if it was a recommended game or not. You might consider them clutter but when you're looking at a list of 800 games or 1200 games its hard to tell the difference. The more games the better! I like the random game selection and the ability to make a favs list so if I try a game I don't know and it ends up being fun I can get back to it easily. I've got more games than most users but not nearly as many as I would like. But hey, thats just me.

Those would be great things that will really streamline my scrolling experience!

We're having a beer and playing some 4 player Super Mario War tonight!