John Bennett
Senior Member
So a friend (Slot-AAA) asked if I could help get a G-LOC shell moving again using a PC. He'd done his own motor drive interfaces, but needed a hand with the MAME bit.
Then, via chatting to a UKAC friend with a sim rig, I gradually wound-up here:
It's basically an (unofficial) fork of MAME where, (via an external Pi Pico 2 - £4), Deluxe motion games will move a virtual joystick.
You then feed this joystick into your simulator control software (I believe a few setups accept motion targets via a joystick).
I modified MAME to rework some of the motion support and add it for a fair few other games.
The games are fooled via basic motor simulators (in MAME) which move like the real rig would and keeps all the self-tests (potentiometers, limit switches) happy. The sim rig then just follows this position.
The Pico is needed as it was the easiest way to take a MAME output and make a virtual joystick from it. Just buy one and plug it in, then leave it hanging there. It does provide some bonus features though - A 3-axis homebrew joystick with 8 buttons, plus some servo outputs (see the video
) .
There's an interface program that takes (motion)MAME outputs and sends them to the Pico2 (over USB). A bit like Mamehooker, I belive.
The code is on GitHub (and I'll keep updating it).
Happy to help anyone who wants to have a play with it in any shape or form. I'll put the Pico code and the PC interface tool up there later, just need to check my cut-and-paste antics are all above-board.
github.com
And the zipped files to simply run it (includes .pdf)
drive.google.com
(no ROMs included, but they're easy enough to find - the zip is already big enough)
At the moment, it's NOT a way to put a PC in an old machine, but that could come next. It would be a case of removing the motor simulators and instead interfacing the pico to the real machine potentiometers and motor drive PCBs. Of course, you'd have to make sure the rig moved in a way to keep the game PCB happy to avoid setting lots of faults.
Sadly some games won't be able to support this easily, particularly those with complex interfaces and undumped drive boards (Galaxy Force, Metal Hawk)
Might be of interest anyway.
Use with caution - it's a WIP and have your hand near the emergency stop if you're being flung around your room on a sim rig.
I doubt you'll kill yourself with the Lego option though.
There's a list of games in the video. Some are less WIP than others (I'm still working on Galaxy Force 2).
At some point, I'll look at:
Rad Mobile
Winning Run
Taito WGP
Top Landing
Top Speed (did work, but I deleted the code - oops)
If there's other motion games of that era you can think of, let me know.
Then, via chatting to a UKAC friend with a sim rig, I gradually wound-up here:
It's basically an (unofficial) fork of MAME where, (via an external Pi Pico 2 - £4), Deluxe motion games will move a virtual joystick.
You then feed this joystick into your simulator control software (I believe a few setups accept motion targets via a joystick).
I modified MAME to rework some of the motion support and add it for a fair few other games.
The games are fooled via basic motor simulators (in MAME) which move like the real rig would and keeps all the self-tests (potentiometers, limit switches) happy. The sim rig then just follows this position.
The Pico is needed as it was the easiest way to take a MAME output and make a virtual joystick from it. Just buy one and plug it in, then leave it hanging there. It does provide some bonus features though - A 3-axis homebrew joystick with 8 buttons, plus some servo outputs (see the video
) .There's an interface program that takes (motion)MAME outputs and sends them to the Pico2 (over USB). A bit like Mamehooker, I belive.
The code is on GitHub (and I'll keep updating it).
Happy to help anyone who wants to have a play with it in any shape or form. I'll put the Pico code and the PC interface tool up there later, just need to check my cut-and-paste antics are all above-board.
GitHub - Beaumotplage/MotionMAME: MAME with experimental support for more 'deluxe' motion games (and some addons for hooking up to motion things)
MAME with experimental support for more 'deluxe' motion games (and some addons for hooking up to motion things) - Beaumotplage/MotionMAME
github.com
And the zipped files to simply run it (includes .pdf)
Motionmame_22_2_26.zip
drive.google.com
At the moment, it's NOT a way to put a PC in an old machine, but that could come next. It would be a case of removing the motor simulators and instead interfacing the pico to the real machine potentiometers and motor drive PCBs. Of course, you'd have to make sure the rig moved in a way to keep the game PCB happy to avoid setting lots of faults.
Sadly some games won't be able to support this easily, particularly those with complex interfaces and undumped drive boards (Galaxy Force, Metal Hawk)
Might be of interest anyway.
Use with caution - it's a WIP and have your hand near the emergency stop if you're being flung around your room on a sim rig.
I doubt you'll kill yourself with the Lego option though.
There's a list of games in the video. Some are less WIP than others (I'm still working on Galaxy Force 2).
At some point, I'll look at:
Rad Mobile
Winning Run
Taito WGP
Top Landing
Top Speed (did work, but I deleted the code - oops)
If there's other motion games of that era you can think of, let me know.
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