Mamewah
Introduction:
In this how-to I want to explain how to set up Mamewah to use Visual Pinmame and the X-Arcade tankstick. This could also be helpful for other configurations, use whatever you need and experiment yourself.
First let me explain what Mamewah is:
Mamewah is a front-end for lots of emulators. By using Mamewah you don't have to start individual emulators to start games, you can do that with one program.
In this how-to I will only let you see how you can use Mamewah for starting arcade games and visual pinball games, but you can add a lot of other emulators yourself.
Mamewah is probably mostly used in self build cabinets, they don't have a mouse and only use a joystick and some buttons. By using Mamewah it is possible to select the games you need without interference of a mouse or keyboard. That doesn't make it useless for other setups, I think it's even fun to install without a joystick and if you only use the keyboard.
If you're still not sure what to expect after installing, here is a youtube movie with a very nice looking skin
http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=MtBDwosquZM
In this movie you see how you can select the games you need and you see screenshots of the games in a separate section. In the setup I have you can change from the mame emulator list to the visual pinmame list and choose the games you need.
I have made a small video for youtube as well. Only to show the gui and how you can select pinball tables.
http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=xwamo-ZikVw
Ok, now you know what it is. This is what you need!
Ingredients
1. I assume you already have installed visual pinball / pinmame
2. Mame (you can skip this if you only want vp/pinmame)
http://www.mame.net/downmain.html
Download the Windows command line version (so not the more common mame32 version)
3. Mamewah
http://mamewah.mameworld.net/downloads.htm
Download the systemfiles and the new Mamewah version
4. Vplauncher http://dragonking.arcadecontrols.co...wrapperdownload
Download the Visual Pinball Wrapper
5. Autohotkey
Only needed if you want to use the 2 pre-programmed buttons of the X-Arcade Tankstick
http://www.autohotkey.com/download/
6. Game list generator.
To make a vp table list, selectable in mamewah.
http://www.emuchrist.org/cpviewer/mamewah.htm
With this links you should be able to set everything up.
Installing
- Mame:
After downloading mame, click on the file. It will automatically extract all files you need. I extracted the files in c:\mame, if you want to be sure you'd better also extract it there. In the mame directory you see a rom directory. Put all your roms in this directory. I have a directory named c:\mame\snap where I put my mame screenshots.
You can download screenshots for all available Mame games in one pack here
http://www.arcadeathome.com/aah.phtml (select the full set).
- Mamewah
Mamewah is zipped, so open the zip file after downloading and place the files in c:\mamewah
Selecting Mamewah.exe will start the main program, but it is not configured yet. So first we need to set mame and mamewah up.
Mamewah uses some configuration files you can adjust manually and sometimes with help from programs.
- In the mamewah directory is a mamewah.ini file. Here you can set up some mamespecifics like enable or disable sound etc. I didn't change this file.
In the c:\mamewah\config directory are the most important files placed.
c:\mamewah\config\layout.lay (this file contains the way mamewah is presented, you can make a layout with c:\mamewah\MAMEWAH Layout Designer.exe
c:\mamewah\config\mamewah.cfg (this file gives you some controle over input devices like mouse, joystick and keyboard. I didn't change this file.
In the C:\mamewah\config directory is placed a mame directory, so C:\mamewah\config\mame In this directory are 2 mame specific ini files stored.
With these ini files you tell mamewah, where mame is placed, where to find the snapshots etc.
I also did not change the C:\mamewah\config\mame\mame.ini file because I installed everything in the default directories as you can see above. I think it's better to use the default locations, to avoid any problems.
The other file in the same directory C:\mamewah\config\mame\mame-0.ini also not changed.
If you have installed everything as explained, did not change any config file and placed some rom files in c:\mame\rom and some screenshots in c:\mame\snap you should be able to start mame roms with mamewah like this:
Start Mamewah with c:\mamewah\mamewah.exe
Select 2
Now you see "Game List Options" highlighted
Select 1
Now highlight "Generate List"
Select 1
A list with all your roms should be listed now including the screenshots.
Start the games you want by highlighting the game and select 1.
- MAMEWAH's Layout Designer
In the c:\mamewah directory you will find MAMEWAH Layout Designer.exe.
With this program you will be able to change the lay-out of mamewah with more ease.
Click on c:\mamewah\MAMEWAH Layout Designer.exe
There will be started an Untitled layout. This layout is pretty basic and only suited for 640x480 screens. I'm using 1280x1024 so I needed to adjust the settings to make selecting programs with mamewah more comfortable.
First start by selecting drop down menu "Background" => Size and choose the size of your background.
Choose the picture you want to use as your background (in my case c:\mamewah\config\main.jpg)
Now make the designer screenfilling so and drag all information to the place where you want it to be. You can also change the size of the boxes. So that's all up to your imagination. There are nice pics on the internet for mamewah with nice boxes for placing the most needed info.
Unfortunately I've not seen them yet for 1280x1024 so I've used a random picture.
A very nice effect is transparency, click on the box you want to make transparent and select "Object Properties" => transparent. This way you make the box transparent.
Boxes you don't need unselect them "Display objects" => main form =>
There are many more settings you can adjust, just look at all the drop down menus and try them.
After you finished, save the lay out "File" => save layout as
Save it as c:\mamewah\config\layout.lay
Start mamewah, and you will see it with your new layout and background.
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List generator.
The automatic list generator in mamewah works good for mame roms, but doesnt seem to be working for vp.
There is a program, "Game List Generator.exe" that helps.
The program needs to be placed in the mamewah directory. After starting C:\mamewah\Game List Generator.exe you need to select the games folder. The games folder for vp is the Tables folder where you keep the vpt files.
For your rom extensions, choose vpt. The Mamewah files folder is c:\mamewah\files\. For the filename enter vpinmame.
After that get codes and you should be able to select something. In my case that is tb6 or tb8. If not change the names of the files into something like FireballClassic_1-1(tb6).vpt
- This is a part I don't exactly understand. I've renamed all my pinball tables and added (tb6) or (tb8) in the names to be able to get them generated. Probably not needed, but I don't know another way at this point. -
Select the tb6 and other (individual list) and click generate. After that; write file.
Now there is a file placed in c\mamewah\files called vpinmame-1.lst.
Rename the file to vpinmame-0.lst and the list should show in mamewah.
I'm sure this is not the best way to handle it, but it works and I don't know another method.
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I will continue to change and expand this until I think it is good enough.If you have any questions or comments let me know in this thread. I'm not an expert, just learned this very recently, so don't hesitate to add suggestions to improve this tutorial.
