ArcadeCab

11/27/04

Doom Legacy
One of the games I had always wanted to be able to play on my cabinet has been the original Doom.  When it first came out way back when it ate a huge amount of hours.  The difficulty in loading it to the cabinet has been the inability to remap all the keys (and to use the mouse).  These are no longer issues since Doom Legacy has been installed.

The goals of the Legacy project were to retain the original Doom game play and to keep it simple and fast.  However, they did add features that made better use of today's (faster) machines.  Legacy supports key remapping just like the Quake series.  It also improves on the basic engine by allowing many more video sizes.   The main requirement now is a commercial or shareware version of either DOOM, Ultimate DOOM, DOOM2.

I have spent quite a few hours over the long holiday weekend revisiting Doom.  Having it on the cabinet adds a great deal to the experience.  Visit the Legacy site to see what else it offers.

11/25/04

Winamp Web Interface
I am working on a project to allow my MP3 collection to be played through the main home stereo and to be controlled via any PC in the house.  And to keep the expense as low as possible.  Read about the road to this goal on the Projects page. 

11/20/04

Mamewah FAQ
I am working on a help page for Mamewah users.  This page will include the knowledge gained from my experiences with Mamewah and some of the most popular questions from the various boards.  This is in no way intended to be the definitive resource but rather another stop when researching a configuration issue.  It will be added to as I discover more of this great frontend.  Keep an eye for the new page within the next week (or so) on the Projects page.   

11/18/04

Arcade Music Box
In my search for a better jukebox program for my cabinet, I have been using the Arcade Music Box for the last several days.  It was a quick download and installed easily with no problems at all.  This jukebox application uses a  simple interface that feels very much in sync with Mamewah.  It is still a very new product so I'm confident future enhancements will show up soon.  This "early" version has been extremely robust and has a reasonably complete feature set. 

The features of the Arcade Music Box (from their site):

• "Arcade Music Box is skinable full screen "Explorer" Like interface.
• Arcade Music Box has support for vertical arcade and pc monitors.
• Arcade Music Box is great for your arcadecab and using MAMEWAH.
• Arcade Music Box does only use a joystick and a button.
• Arcade Music Box use MS Explorer like interface (directory based).
• Arcade MUsic Box support FLAC, WAV, OGG, WMA, MP1 -> MP3.
• Arcade Music Box have a queue and a 2 songs player system.
• Arcade Music Box have a little buildt in a simple Screen Saver.
• Arcade Music Box have now 2 credit modes (per song or time).
• New: Arcade Music Box can now add a whole album to the queue (free mode only)."

11/14/04

Store
With the holiday season swiftly approaching, shop time is becoming exceedingly scarce.  As a result, no further custom controller orders will be taken until after the new year, January 1st.  Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

Note that the Ultra-trackball controller is still available as there is (currently) an inventory of them.

11/07/04

Mamewah
During the course of reviewing the installation procedures of the three frontends I promised, I got sidetracked with all the features that Mamewah offered.  It is an extremely full featured front end that is now in operation on my cabinet.  It is a dramatic improvement in both style and useability over the more pedestrian Mame32.  It will take a while to get a grasp of everything that it can do so I will be holding off on any further frontend review.  See more of what I thought of Miniwah's product on the Projects page. 

10/29/04

500,000 hits!
We have finally reached a half-million hits since the February debut of ArcadeCab.  The traffic has continually increased each and every month, which is great to see.  The two sets of plans bring the most traffic, with interest in the BarCade climbing at a steady rate.  The examples of the Visitor's cabinets has seen a dramatic increase in visits this last month, too, so if you have built a cab using my plans send in a picture!  Thank you for your interest and feel free to link to me.

Frontends
I am also investigating different front ends for my cabinet to make it less confusing for the casual user.  Again, this is with the holiday season in mind when the newbie count rises.  Mame32 is currently being used but with Dragon's Lair (on Daphne) and Tiger Woods 2004 being requested, I wish to limit the number of calls for assistance when they want to switch between apps.  ArcadeOS, Mamewah and Ultrastyle are being explored.  I am taking notes as I go on the installation process.  Once I have chosen the front end, look for a write up on each of them in the Projects section.  This will likely happen within the next week.