Hi all,
I'd reached a dillema for my cabinet design, regarding front-ends... I wanted to run MAME ROMs as well as Daphne emulated games, yet do it all from a simple unified Front-End.
I couldn't find any
So, I settled on
MAMEd as it has simple design, displays screenshots and plays background music files. It also has a slick screensaver mode.
So with some minor tinkering, I've produced a patch for MAMEd v0.3 which will allow Daphne and MAME games to appear in the same unified list!
Update: I have now filled in details of game manufacturer and year in the "gamelist" file. If you are upgrading, just extract that one file over your existing gamelist file.
Here's the file: MD5Hash = a358f49651bdfe12102d0716f8fb49ff
mamed-daphned-v0.02.tar.gz (176kb)
Here's a quick screenshot:
And here's the INSTALL file:
Code:
This patch is intended for MAMEd v0.3 available from:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~phulshof/mame.html
This patch is maintained by Nathan 'yibble' Reynolds <yibble@yibble.org> and notthe maintainer of MAMEd.
The mamed-daphned patch will add functionality to launch Daphne emulated games
via the MAMEd interface. This functionality is limited, directions are below
you will need to follow these configuration steps.
Note: I wrote this document at 2:30am. So be patient :)
Installation:
1. Download MAMEd v0.3 source code tarball from
http://www.xs4all.nl/~phulshof/mame.html
2. gunzip and untar the archive to a convenient work area.
3. Patch the source with this patch. cd into the MAMEd directory. And patch with "patch -p1 < mamed-daphned.patch"
4. Follow MAMEd's installation and compiling instructions. Don't bother editing
mamed.cfg, we're going to copy over it anyway :)
5. Copy the contents of .mamed/ in this patch to your .mamed/ directory. This
contains a customised catver.ini (.80) and gamelist (.80) which has
LaserDisc game entries at the start. Also there is a extended mamed.cfg
which has some Daphne specific entries that you should change.
6. Next comes the nastiness. MAMEd will validate ROMs in your xmame
directory, so for LaserDisc games to appear, their ROMs also need to be
in your xmame ROMs directory. They also require specific names relating
to there entries in catver.ini and gamelist. These are tq.zip, astron.zip
badlands2.zip (badlands.zip is another MAME game!) bega.zip, cobraab.zip
cliff.zip, esh.zip, galaxy.zip, sdq.zip, lair.zip, sa.zip (still waiting
for my Space Ace DVD, so this is a guess. Let me know if it's wrong.)
7. We only support playing from MPEGs, each MPEG must reside in a directory
that shares the same name as the ROM... e.g.:
/usr/local/share/daphne <- MPEG root Directory.
/usr/local/share/daphne/tq
/usr/local/share/daphne/astron
/usr/local/share/daphne/badlands <- Not Badlands2!
/usr/local/share/daphne/bega
/usr/local/share/daphne/cobraab
/usr/local/share/daphne/cliff
/usr/local/share/daphne/esh
/usr/local/share/daphne/galaxy
/usr/local/share/daphne/sdq
/usr/local/share/daphne/lair
/usr/local/share/daphne/sa
Your framefiles, must also reside in each relevant game directory and also
abide by the same naming convention... e.g.:
/usr/local/share/daphne/cliff/cliff.txt
8. You can copy .png screenshots to your xmame screenshot folder (MAMEd uses a
directory called 'snap'.) MAMEd will use these screenshots when a game is
selected, and when it screensaver mode. I did originally include some but
the package size was 4MB.
9. You must be 'in' the main Daphne binary directory when you execute mamed.
Else you'll receive the same errors for when you execute Daphne from outside
its directory.