Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Jeeeez! - Work on this Arcade Cabinet never seems to end! Just as I thought I was satisified with the current selection of games on there (we're talking almost 15,000 in total!) I decide to go and test a 3D game using the Zinc emulator, just for the heck of it to see if the Arcade PC could handle it with its Graphics Card.
The game I tested was my favourite 3D fighter, Streetfighter EX Plus, and guess what? - worked perfectly at full speed/framerate.

So for the sake of being a ROM completist, I am going to formally add Zinc games to my Arcade setup. Not all games work full speed, some require minor tweaking here and there which is what I am setting to do tonight.

Also I have found a rather nifty application which I also plan to implement tonight -CPViewer.
CPViewer is an add-on for MAME. More specifically for the MameWah front-end used to launch the various games. It uses a file called controls.ini to lookup the controls for a particular game. It then displays them on the screen so I will know what buttons and movements perform what actions in the game that is currently highlighted in my MameWah front-end. Handy for when one decides to sitdown and to try a NEW game, which can usually be a pain as I often ask myself, "What buttons do what?" Well if the game has been documented in the controls.ini file, this won't happen again. By simply pressing a hotkey (one of the X-Arcade Buttons) a graphic of the control panel will be displayed with all of the character movements or button assignments displayed so I know what buttons perform what actions.

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