Hack32.Play MAME Anywhere

Hack 32. Play MAME Anywhere

Use LaserMAME to project vector arcade games onto any surface .

If you've ever seen a professional laser light show, you know what a thrill it is to watch such vivid , colorful light patters projected onto enormous screens (or the sides of buildings , or any flat surface). And it's a safe bet that somewhere in the audience, there were more than a few people thinking, "You know, it would be awesome if this were a video game."

Well, if you have LaserMAMEand about five thousand dollarsit can be.

LaserMAME, or more appropriately, the LaserMAME Vector Engine, is a program that works with MAME and a laser projection setup to display arcade games that use vector graphics on any surface. Created by Rob Mudryk and Matt Polak, the project's official web site is http://games.lasers.org.

Unfortunately, the site hasn't been updated in about five years , and there's a large notice on the Downloads page that says "NO MORE COMING SOON!" So if you're itching to replicate this hack, you'll have to dig around a few different web sites to find the info you need. In this hack, I'll explain a bit more about LaserMAME and what equipment is required to pull it off.

Note that this hack is written by a total amateur . The most complicated thing I ever did with a laser was shine a tiny keychain laser on a wall to get the dog to jump at it. It worked, and for the record it was way more fun than Lunar Lander.

3.13.1. Why Only Vector Games?

In the early days of the video arcade, most games used raster-scan monitors whose video display was similar (identical, in some cases) to the home television sets of the time. But some used vector displays. Put simply, these could only display graphics made up of solid, straight lines, but the lines were much sharper and brighter. Popular games of the time that used vector displays include Asteroids, Lunar Lander, and Tempest.

The projectors that run laser light shows do something very similar to vector monitors, since their displays, too, are made up entirely of thin, solid lines of color . Only because of this commonality of design does LaserMAME make sense. This doesn't mean, however, that it was a simple hack. The electron beam that powers vector displays can change direction almost instantaneously, but the mechanical apparatus inside laser projectors isn't nearly as fast. So the LaserMAME authors had to do quite a bit of coding to get everything to work right, hence the need for the LaserMAME Vector Engine in addition to the MAME software.

3.13.2. What You'll Need

You'll need the LaserMAME software. The version developed by Mudryk and Polak is no longer available on the web page, although you can download "teaser" frames of the display output that you can run on a laser projector (if you just happen to have one lying around, I mean).

Fortunately, a new home has sprung up in its stead: The open source LaserMame project is now online at http://www.nightlase.com.au/lasermame/. There, you can download the LaserMAME patches. You'll need to download the MAME source code and a few other files as well, then go through a complicated how-to setup process to mash them all together into a working LaserMAME-enabled program. But that's a walk in the park compared to what you do next .

Before you can go on with this hack, you'll need a lot of money. The Laser-MAME site states that if you want the cheapest possible setupa monochrome display with a laser just powerful enough to display well on a moderately- sized white wall in a dark roomyou'll be paying about four to five thousand dollars. For full-color output that can power a display on a giant screen or the side of a building, you're looking at between twenty and thirty thousand.

Where's all that money going? Here's a list of equipment you'll need. No, I didn't write this off the top of my headyou should definitely check out, like I did, the Laser Show Resource Guide at http://www.pangolin.com/resguide00.htm. Included in the guide are links to companies that sell all the products you need.

A laser

Duh. If you're going for the cheapest possible LaserMAME setup, your best bet is a low- powered helium-neon (or HeNe) laser. These are red in color, start at about $200, and display well in smaller areas, like your house. (The author of the open-source version of LaserMAME is using a 5mw HeNe in his sample pictures, for example: http://www.nightlase.com.au/lasermame/images/27012004_1.jpg.)

If you want the full-color setup, the original LaserMAME creators used a 29 mw HeNe for their red color and a 130mw Argon (which displays in blue and green, thus completing the range of colors needed for Tempest, et al). This will cost you considerably more.

A laser projector

This is the hardware that focuses the raw, destructive energy of your new laser beam and makes it do useful things. Laser projectors are actually made up of a few different parts : you need scanners , amplifiers , and possibly a blanking device. In general, you should be able to buy a complete projector that includes all of these things already assembled from the companies listed in the pangolin.com Resource Guide.

Scanners control two tiny (3 x 5 mm) mirrors that redirect the laser beam. You need two: one for X axis movement, one for Y. For the accurate projection that MAME demands, you'll want to use what are called closed-loop galvanometer scanners , a.k.a. galvo scanners , a.k.a. positiondetecting scanners . Both LaserMAME crews use Cambridge Technologies (http://www.camtech.com) 6800GP scanners, which cost about $495 each.

Galvo scanners require matching amplifiers that, true to their name , amplify the signal coming from the computer program generating the graphics (in this case, LaserMAME). Cambridge Technologies offers matching amplifiers for their 6800GP scanners for $295.

Finally, for the most accurate picture possible, you may want a blanking device. This optional device turns off the laser's beam when it is moving on areas of the screen where you don't want lines drawn. Without it, you'll see ghostly images on the screen muddying up your game of Asteroids (as seen in the images on the open source LaserMame page, taken without a blanker). There are many different types of blanking systems, so you'll want to check with your scanner provider.

A projector controller board for your PC

You're going to need to send commands to that projector somehow. Pangolinthe outfit that wrote the helpful Laser Show Resource Guide, don't you rememberproduces the one used by both LaserMAME teams , called the QM2000 (http://www.pangolin.com/LD2000/qm2000board.htm). The board is sold only with Pangolin's Lasershow Designer 2000 software; the basic version is $1995.

A MAME joystick

This is the easy part. Read [Hack #27] for more on this less-than -taxing job, and how to save some money doing it.

A blank wall near your computer

You might have to move the couch .

Now that you've got everything you need (plus a couple more mortgages on the house), just toss it all into a box, shake it up, and magically a LaserMAME system should fall right out. Actually, you're probably in for a long session (or ten) of assembly, configuration, and testing. Nobody ever said this was going to be easy!

3.13.3. Hacking the Hack

As an aside, the LaserMAME pagelast updated, let's remember, in the year 2000ruminates on the possibility of using the technology to output MAME graphics to a traditional vector monitor. In the intervening years, a company called Zektor actually pulled it off, designing VectorMAME (http://www.zektor.com/zvg/zvg_vmame.htm) to work with a vector graphics PC display card crafted by the company.

Unfortunately, the web site seems to have fallen into near-total disrepair. The download links are no longer active (and mirrors of the software are nowhere to be found), and most of the other links on the page just lead to 404's. But in an ironic and tantalizing twist, the links to the picture pages still work, showing you the results they achieved. They even hooked up the whole thing to a Vectrex monitor! Now that's a retro gaming hack.