Been a while with no posts. :)

I bought a blue LED cluster from SVC when they were on sale a while back to light up my trackball. Looks quite nice. Will get a picture up shortly.

I've been having some trouble with the cabinet crashing and rebooting unexpectedly, and I have a feeling the bargain-basement ram/motherboard are probably responsible, but I don't have the time/patience/money to really get in there and fix it.

On a somewhat-related note, I've decided that I prefer playing console emulators on a couch in front of a big ol' projector screen than on the arcade (60" Mario!), and, as I'm the proud owner of a newly modded xbox it's no longer inconvenient to do so. I'm going to be removing the console emulators from the arcade (NES, SNES, and N64), but it means remaking much of the frontend skin.

Added script (see AutoHotkey section on right) to prevent accidental escape-key bonkage(yes, that's the technical term).

Swapped out the tv in my cabinet with another one (it was the living room tv until recently), and I can't believe the difference. The large discolored patch I was unable to degauss away is, of course, not present, but more importantly the screen is so much more clear! I had assumed that the blurriness I was seeing on the old tv (a Zenith) was a function of using a television instead of a monitor, and I was prepared to just live with it. I can read text easily now, and the picture's just incredible. All I can say is "wow." I'll get comparison pictures up as soon as I can find a spare s-video cable and a camera.

I've been having a grand old time with AutoHotkey. I have so far created:

• A user-friendly GUI front end for DancingMonkeys for my wife
• 5 wrappers for pc programs that needed key remapping and so forth
• A coin counter almost identical to this one here but with a few modifications I needed.
• and a replacement shell that launches MameWAH, the coin counter, and VolumeTray by looking for apps in an .ini file

AutoHotkey is regularly updated, has a strong and helpful user community, and an incredibly responsive developer. And it's free.

Added a new very fun game to the cab that I've wanted to have available for some time: EveryExtend with the help of this wonderful (not to mention free) utility: AutoHotKey.
EveryExtend works alright in a cabinet (escape to quit, playable (menus and all) with a joystick and one button), but has a couple of problems:

1. There's a dialog box that pops up every time it's opened asking whether you want to play fullscreen or not and
2. the controls aren't remappable.

Solution:
Download and install EveryExtend, download and install AutoHotKey (doesn't need to be installed in the cabinet, see below), and create a new script like the one in the sidebar.
Edit: code no longer inline
Next convert your script to an exe (which will let the script run on a machine that doesn't have autohotkey installed) with AutoHotKey's included "Convert .ahk to .exe" utility, and point your frontend to that instead of the actual PC app.

Spent a bit of time tweaking some software stuff I hadn't gotten around to/had been putting off, mostly windows-hiding stuff.
Finally re-setup a one pixel cursor in windows.
Download: 1 pixel cursor | Invisible cursor

Created a few bootscreens using BootXP,and set them to randomize. Windows once again well hidden.


Added a couple more games, specifically Lego star wars and Gish. Both play very well with arcade controls, but Gish requires a modified exe (which they said they'll make available soon) to make the GUI system work without a full keyboard or mouse. Also, on screen pointer for this game is stored in Gish/textures/mouse00.tga. Making its alpha channel black makes it invisible.


Lastly, replacing instances of 'desktop' with 'mamewah' in the Hamsterball.exe with a text editor had this nice effect:


Still can't believe how long these take before they're really done.

Working on cleaning up some of the cabinet's wiring, will have pics when I'm all done. Also dremmeled out some N64 female plug mounts out of scrap aluminum bar. These will be mounted the the inside of the control panel to give the plugs some support when they're being constantly yanked on.

Finally back up and running (though the cabinet is currently in pieces).
Here are some pictures comparing my new marquee to the old one.

Source image

Unlit
Top to bottom - ClassicArcadeGraphics, EmDKay

Lit
Left to right - ClassicArcadeGraphics, EmDKay

Note that's direct sunlight, but it really does give an accurate representation of the relative print quality.
Major differences: EmDKay marquee does not appreciably wash out when backlit, is much closer to source file's color (particularly in areas of darker blue), and does not suffer from the extreme color banding in areas of gradation that the ClassicArcadeGraphics one does.

I received an absolutely incredible marquee from EMDKAY to replace my ClassicArcadeGrafix one. The difference is just amazing. I'm in the process of moving, so while there will be pictures, it'll be a while until they're posted.

New guestbook script (should be) all set up (adds a few features that were necessary, and wouldn't take much work to be set up as a forum, should the need arise).

DDR pad graphics have been printed and installed. The print quality is surprisingly good and the whole thing came to about $12 after tax. Well worth it, in my opinion.