Any Links to Good MAME Guides?

[CRTGAMER]

I can not get MAME to stop opening games on the 2nd monitor.

Not having a two monitor setup I can only offer a guesstimate. Maybe MAME sees that 2nd monitor as the primary? Must be a way to tell Windows which monitor to boot up first, maybe a painfull uninstall-reinstall of monitor driver layout?

[Octopod]

I can not get MAME to stop opening games on the 2nd monitor.

Not having a two monitor setup I can only offer a guesstimate. Maybe MAME sees that 2nd monitor as the primary? Must be a way to tell Windows which monitor to boot up first, maybe a painfull uninstall-reinstall of monitor driver layout?

Mame itself opens in my primary monitor but when I open a game it opens it in the secondary. That is what makes no sense to me.

[Hobie-wan]

Mame itself opens in my primary monitor but when I open a game it opens it in the secondary. That is what makes no sense to me.

I haven't messed with Mame in a long time, and not on 2 monitors, but I can see it defaulting to something like that. If you had set up a Mame cab with a little screen just for the interface and getting the OS going, then the bigger screen for actual games. I could see that.

[CRTGAMER]

I do know MAME changes resolutions after a Rom load, looks like a DOS screen resolution separate of the Windows environment. Does the Mame Menu still show on the first screen? Not optimistic on this, maybe before loading a Rom, drag that menu over to the other monitor. Not familiar with popping images between monitors using keyboard commands, gotta be something like the ALT TAB or WIN key.

[Jayson]

Mame itself opens in my primary monitor but when I open a game it opens it in the secondary. That is what makes no sense to me.

I used to run a program called ultramon years ago (when I used a 2 screen setup)that allowed you to make rules on a program by program basis on which screen to open on. It was very useful when sometimes I wanted to watch a movie on the computer monitor and sometimes I wanted to watch on the TV. It also had a hotkey you could define that would switch screens (kind of like a laptop) for the times when you either didn't have a rule set for the program or changed your mind.

<edit>now that I am thinking about it, I definitely used it with MAME32 (albeit a way older version), so hopefully it still works.

[MidnightRider]

Myself, I use MAMEUIFX. Regular MAMEUI has the advantage of showing what works(green) and what doesn't(red), before you even get a rom, but in FX you can just right click>properties to see if lists it as working or not anyway. Once you get a rom in FX, through the same type of color coding, it even shows you games that don't work 100%(yellow). It also allows for rapid fire without the use of cheat codes.

Earlier in the thread someone brought up whether it'd be worth it to download the individual roms or the whole set. I'm slightly outdated right now, 0.138(which another thing one might consider against FX is that it doesn't do the "u" updates), but the 0.138 rom set was some 25 gigabytes. If you think you can handle it for a boatload of games you won't use, by all means go ahead. It's definitely worth only going for what you want though, I think. If you hear of something later, go for it, but the roms will pretty much always be somewhere out there on the net.

For something different, maybe some of you might be interest in light gun games. You can use the setup you already have for keyboard/gamepad with a crosshair always on screen. For mouse you just have to assign the buttons to also be your first 2 or 3(assuming you have a middle). Usually with the mouse though, you'll be out of sync. The quickest way to fix that is to pause the emulator(P button), and unpause, and for most games the mouse will be synchronized with the crosshair. One game, I think it's Zombie Raid, you have to actually go into service mode(F2), and manually sync the crosshair from there, after getting the mouse synchronized with the usual crosshair.

[Octopod]

My solution? Reach behind my computer and unplug the HDMI cable running to my 40" Samsung, aka the second monitor, before I play anything in MAME. PITA but it works. Or if my wife is in bed I just play on the 40" if I feel like it.

[CRTGAMER]

My solution? Reach behind my computer and unplug the HDMI cable running to my 40" Samsung, aka the second monitor, before I play anything in MAME. PITA but it works. Or if my wife is in bed I just play on the 40" if I feel like it.

A finale way to to it. I wonder if an inexpensive HDMI switch would work.

[Octopod]

I tried MAMEfx lagless 137b and it opens all windows in the primary monitor but I am using 138xxxwhatever. There has to be a setting somewhere but I give up looking for it. lol

[AppleQueso]

probably a .cfg type thing.

I learned mame by using the standard version offered on the site, I just dug through the readme and help files all day.