TIGRAC - now the TORONTRON!

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 9:24 pm

Ok I have posted about this previously,.

"The Toronto Indie Game Retrofitted Arcade Cabinet project or TIGRAC is a project of The Hand Eye Society here in Toronto."

Update; I got the laptop booting XPpro from the USB drive,. had to partition it to 2GB to get it to boot, much trial and fail to figure that out! Then dug up the hardware drivers for sound and graphics,. . seems to work well so far. USB gamepad was working then cut out,. the conector was a bit mashed I may have to find another if this one is unstable,. . but is did work for a bit. just got the s-video out to send to a TV,. not the actual one we will be useing but wanted to test the laptop and it worked well.

The actual cabinent should be delivered in a day or two. I will need to get the gamepad stable then hack it apart and wire to the actual stick and buttons,. this leads me to my question for you guys,. what we are looking for with this is a way to launch the games from a menu that is controled with just the stick and buttons on the cabinent,. there are a bunch of ones for MAME and other EMU stuff but I may just build my oun to keep it looking nice,. I'm wundering how to get the menu to re-launch when a game is quit? anyone done anthing like this?? one idea is that the menu just keeps running, and the games have higher priority,. also looking to have this launch automaticly when the system is booted.. any other thoughts on this?

some history on the box we found; http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=13560

apparently it is an Italian bootlag of Centapide,. but ours has a stick that looks original?

Post by **Kjell** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 11:04 pm

Hi jph,

Back in college I did a similar project together with a classmate .. although we went with DOS if I recall correctly. Anyway, you could write a looping batch file ( that starts the launcher and emulator sequentially ) or use for example Game Maker to execute the emulator passing the selected rom as command line argument. And windows has the startup folder as equivalent to autoexec.bat

Good luck ~
K

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 12:38 am

ah yes,. Game Maker does have such a function; execute_program(prog,arg,wait)

I could use that,. should work for a menu and I can do some nice original graphics sounds,. . hummm.

as far as emu/roms we are not doing that,. this is for toronto area indie games,. so all original works, mine will be done in ZGE of course!

UPDATE; yup, the GM menu is launching the ZGE games and runs in the back so exiting the game returns to the menu,. works a charm. Next,. on to the physical integration of all the hardware, should be fun .. .

Post by **VilleK** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 2:36 pm

Good luck with this Jph! I have a original Robotron 2084 cabinet but sadly it is broken at the moment. It did not respond well to being moved from my old office to where I live. The last time it needed repair I had to replace the monitor at the cost of $500 so I'm hoping it is not as serious this time.

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 2:23 pm

I been busy with this project for last few days (as well as being out of town for a long weekend here; thanksgiving) and will be working for a few more days on this,. so here is an little update,. .

also the name has changed to TORONTRON,. . cheesy buy makes it point.

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 3:21 pm

Video of the maiden play test;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfkAdHdF51Y

mostly just showing the menu system working,. notice how FAST lockon loads and how slow the menu loads when i quit the game,. ZGE vs GM.

I am re-working LockOn 2 to work on here,. changing the contols so only 2 buttons needed main fire and burst,. so the flare type shots are fired with the main fire button held and more are fired with each level up,. also due to the display being a TV and the rez 800x600, I have doubled the size of all objects,. (scale=2) and adjusted their hitboxes a bit to match,. this has the interesting effect of making the gamplay seem half as fast,. not sure I like that, but at least you can see the objects clearly,. and it does look nice

and feel right on this hardware.
The machine is set be launching at Canzine Nov. 1st; [ https://id408.van.ca.siteprotect.com/br ... index2.php ] when that is done I will be doing an update to lockOn 2 for public release as well. cheers.

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 2:09 pm

Well, we actually pulled it off for the Canzine Artcade last night,. . after some last minuet tech problems, that had me pulling out hair, and a delayed delivery due to that,. it all ran well. and loads of ppl where able to play it and gave great feedback,. mostly crys of "Wow that's Awesome!"

Of course I turned lots of folks on to ZGE while I was there chatting up the crowds,. . and made contacts with some writers, amazing artist, and illistrators some of whom may be contributing to some future projects as well.

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Sun May 02, 2010 2:22 pm

The TORONTRON has now been to more interesting events in Toronto than I have! Here is a video of it's latest outing, as shot/narrated buy Jim Munroe, the projects coordinator, and all around cool guy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTAp6BAENQQ

I will have you know, that selecting LockOn2 results in IMEDIATE game play,. as ZGE is provides efficent and fast loading! Unlike some of the other (GameMaker created) selections,.

ZGameEditor forum

TIGRAC - now the TORONTRON!

TIGRAC - now the TORONTRON!

ok first running game on the machine!

TORONTRON update!