Does this help at all?
Not every game is going to have outputs, and not every game is going
to have an appropriate display file that is controlled by said outputs.
So a secondary monitor is
blank most of the time right? Wrong! Mame Hooker can use any image in a
display file, not just images in the display files folder and if you
make it generic enough,
you can display front-end style artwork on that secondary display. In
this case we are going to make the secondary monitor display a marquee
image.
The display file to do this is already included with Mame Hooker. To
use it we need to edit the default.ini so that it is loaded for every
game.
So first up Mame Hooker, click "Script Editor/Edit Default.ini" from
the menu and in the "MameStart" section (NOT MameHookerStart) use the
Add/Command function tool
to add a "Load Display Artwork" command or manually type in the command
so that your general section is similar to the one below:
[General]
MameHookerStart=
MameHookerStop=
MameStart=lds marquee
MameStop=
StateChange=
OnPause=
OnRotate=
Go ahead and save. Now assuming your marquees are in png format and
they are stored in a "marquees" folder inside your mame folder you are
done. Mamehooker will now
automatically load a marquee for a game when it is launched if
available.
If you want to know how things are working or your marquees are not stored in that location, then read on.
Mamehooker comes with a few display files that are added as templates
so that you can do things like display marquees. The one we are using
is called "marquee" (clever)
and is in the "displays/marquee" folder. Go ahead and open it up so we
can see what is going on.
------------
Description:
------------
This is a generic layout file that will display the marquee for a given game on your secondary monitor.
To get it to work add the line "lds marquee" to the "MameStart" entry in your default.ini.
Don't forget to setup your monitor posiiton in default.dis and to change the path below!!!
[Layout]
NumberofImages=1
x=
y=
width=
height=
image=
[Image1]
x=0
y=0
height=1
width=1
length=1
'Note: change this next line to the path to your marquees to get this to work.
'As of now it is set to look in your mame path for the best match out of rom, parent and driver images
image=%mamepath%marquees%rpd%.png
keepaspect=1
-------------
Credits:
-------------
Layout by HowardC
Again, lots of comments. I shouldn't even need to do this tutorial,
but oh well. Basically everything is exactly the same as a normal
display file as described in the previous tutorial,
except for two lines. Note the "image" entry. Instead of pointing to a
image or group of images, it uses a full path (or in this case a path
built by special flags). Note the flags, which allow this
display file to be more generic. %mamepath% is replaced by the path to
mame you defined in mamehooker's setup. Then the "marquees" folder is
tacked on, followed by %rpd%, with a ".png" tacked on at the end.
The %rpd% flag is very special and only works in display files. It
stands for "rom, parent, driver." When rpd is used, mamehooker first
looks for the file named after the rom, then the parent, then the
driver.
This will give us the best possible chance of finding a accurate marquee
image. (You can also use %rom%, %parent%, and %driver% flags
specifically.)
The other new additon is the "keepaspect" entry. Normally images in
display files are stretched to fill the area defined, but with keep
aspect turned on, they are scaled, retaining their aspect ratios. This
is crucial when
using artwork of unknown dimensions so that it looks properly. Also it
makes defining the image area a lot easier. We want the marquee to fill
the whole screen so we can just use 1s (100%) for the width and height.
Edit, it's from here and if you've read this it requires Mamehooker
http://dragonking.arcadecontrols.com/static.php?page=mhdismarquee
ZedEx48K2015-04-01 23:03:50
