MAME Cabinet: What Front End?

truepusk

I'm building a 4 player Mame Cabinet and I could use some expert input into what front end would be best for me. I've played around with MaLa and I just barely touched Hyperspin. I know there are other options out there as well.

Does my pro-con list seem accurate or am I missing something?

MaLa-
Pro:

• Good vertical/horizontal support
• Low powered (works well on an older computer)
• Automatic switching (changes front end to face whichever side's joystick is used)
• Support for LED attract (blinky light sequences)

Con:

• Not as nice/flashy from a graphical point of view
• Pour controls for navigating/skipping ahead through a long, bloated games list

Hyperspin-
Pro:

• Great controls for navigating through large game lists, skipping ahead to games
• Very pretty and polished interface

Con:

• Might not work well on a slower machine (I'll have to test it out on mine, maybe later today).
• Not great support for vertical cabinets (I saw in another thread that this feature is coming?)
• No auto switching of interface to face the current joystick

In general, I'm interested in games lists and a front end that is easy to use with both editing and navigating games lists. I haven't tried editing games lists on any of the systems so I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on that as well as the above.

Thanks!

CathalDublin

truepusk wrote: »

[*]Not great support for vertical cabinets (I saw in another thread that this feature is coming?)

This is not going to be an issue unless your planning a rotatable CRT/LCD?

Definitely hyperspin, without a doubt, I wouldnt even bother trying to run it without a dual core, I've been using it since the 1st beta and I originally had an over clocked P4 single core with 4GB ram and had some very annoying joystick lag issues in mame when launched from hyperspin.
Upgraded to a dual core and it runs like a dream

truepusk

CathalDublin wrote: »

This is not going to be an issue unless your planning a rotatable CRT/LCD?

In my case, I'm building a cocktail table cabinet. I might have controls on several different sides. I guess that's the same as rotatable.

CathalDublin wrote: »

Definitely hyperspin, without a doubt, I wouldnt even bother trying to run it without a dual core,

I'm using a non-dual core. I'll try Hyperspin, but it sounds like I won't want to use it based on what you are saying. Maybe I'll try some others today.

truepusk

Other front ends to consider include:

Maximus Arcade and Mamewah

You were right. Hyperspin seems way too slow. When I'm trying to scroll through the wheel it's quite slugish.

Myrddin

truepusk wrote: »

Other front ends to consider include:

Maximus Arcade and Mamewah

You were right. Hyperspin seems way too slow. When I'm trying to scroll through the wheel it's quite slugish.

What are yous up to lads? My mame pc is:

Core2Duo 2.8Ghz
4GB Ram
Ati Radeon 256MB

And Hyperspin is flawless. Those specs are quite minimal, I think those with HS issues need to examine their setup more closely & ensure if its a dedicated machine that its cut right back of any excess.

Optimus Prime

I had the same problems with Hyperspin on my pc, originally i had xp installed with 4gbs of ram and the animation loading when scrolling through games was very jumpy. I upgraded to 64bit dual core and now have 8gbs in it and its grand. I have nothing else installed on the pc other than windows 7 64 and hyperspin. Ive seen it running on your cab though Enternow and when you showed it to me there was 0 lag so i dunno where i was going wrong.

You can turn off a lot of the fancy animations in the settings of hyperspin too.

Myrddin

keithgeo wrote: »

Ive seen it running on your cab though Enternow and when you showed it to me there was 0 lag

I'm glad you said that Keith as I was begininng to think I was losing it...either that or my standars were slipping Honest to God those are my specs & to my eye too its fluid & lag free on my cab.

Basic Windows XP x64 installation too, no antivirus, system restore, updates etc all turned off.

truepusk

EnterNow wrote: »

What are yous up to lads? My mame pc is:

Core2Duo 2.8Ghz
4GB Ram
Ati Radeon 256MB

And Hyperspin is flawless. Those specs are quite minimal, I think those with HS issues need to examine their setup more closely & ensure if its a dedicated machine that its cut right back of any excess.

I have an Athlon 64 3200 or something similar to that. So I most likely won't be using hyperspin (although maybe I'll see if I can kill some of the animations to make a difference). I see no sense in buying a new computer for this project when this one will play MAME just fine at 100% and I have it lying around doing nothing.

LoGiE

Hyperspin gets my vote although Mala will do the job just nicely if your pc is of a lower spec.