Adding an emulator for a cocktail cabinet HELP

[mikedpitt]

Hi, I am rebuilding an old midway cocktail cabinet. I have an IPAC Ultimate keyboard emulator AND 2 ps3 controllers for a total of 4 players. What I would like to do, is add another instance of MAME to Emulationstation, with it’s own retroarch.cfg file, which contains “force screen rotation=1” and it’s own theme (just the same MAME theme, but with the SFV file edited to say something like “MAME Cocktail”). I have all of the controls working, but I cannot add the extra emulator. What I’ve done so far, is to install another copy of mame, which I put into /opt/retropie/emulators/MAMEFLIP/, I also added a folder in /opt/retropie/emulators/cfg/mameflip. I then copied the lines defining the MAME emulator system in es_system.cfg. I changed the path to it’s own rom folder /mnt/usbhdd/roms/mameflip (to specifically hold roms for cocktail flip). I changed the executable path to match where the second instance of mame is (/opt/retropie/emulators/MAMEFLIP). I also copied /etc/emulationstation/mame to /etc/emulationstation/mameflip.

Ideally what I’m trying to accomplish is:
Having in the main emulationstation menu, an instance of MAME4ALL-PI which points to a retroarch.cfg file that keeps the screen oriented the way it is, and utilizes the ps3 controls.
Having a second instance of MAME on the main emulationstation menu (preferably with an altered graphic that said “MAME Cocktail” or something, but I understand that SFV files cannot be edited in this way) that points to it’s own romset and it’s own retroarch.cfg file that rotates the screen 90 degrees, and utilizes the joysticks as controllers.
So I guess my question is, how do I add another MAME emulator, with it’s own menu graphics, and romset, etc.
If there’s anyone with a better way to accomplish this goal without adding another instance of MAME, like possibly how to program MAME to flip an individual game 90 degrees when it’s loaded?

Thanks for any help you can give me.

[josterch]

I second this. I’m building a 4 player cocktail retropie setup and am looking for how to rotate specific roms. The in-game dip switches to rotate don’t usually have any effect. Any hints?

[mikedpitt]

actually, what I ended up doing worked. There is no support for screen “rotation” in mame4allpi. You can only reverse the X and Y axes, which doesn’t help. I now use AdvMAME for all of my “screen flipping” ROMS, and use it’s own romset in it’s own directory. I then used the dipswitches in the menu, to pick cocktail, and the screen rotates between players.

[josterch]

Thanks Mike. Are you happy with the speed of AdvMAME? I haven’t tried it yet, but have read it is considerably slower than MAME4All. But if this is how I can fix the rotation, I will definitely give it a shot!

[mikedpitt]

ADVmame is slower. But I don’t use it for anything but games that I want to play “cocktail” style. Like old galaga, or Ms. Pacman. So they don’t need blazing speed. It’s a raapi after all. So use mame4allpi for all your more graphics intense games, and only use advmame for the ones in which you want the screen flip. For me, that’s about 30 games. Like I said, I have a separate menu option in emulationstation for advmame, and one for mame4allpi.

[josterch]

Sounds like the direction I will head too. Any troubles getting both instances to work in EmulationStation?

[mikedpitt]

Not at all. Just add another entry in the cfg file, and point it towards the binary and the romset.

[josterch]

Thanks for the help!

[mikedpitt]

The only thing I would have liked to have done, is to make another graphic for the main emulationstation. Now I just have two instances of MAME, and one is named MAME Cocktail. I would have liked to have done another vector graphic, and them. Alas, my design skills are not so much.

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