Forum Discussion
3D Arcade Emulation
I know everyone has their own ideas for what VR can do....so here's another :)
After reading Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, I got excited about the idea of walking around a virtual arcade and stepping up to play a game. I've spent a lot of time fixing playing arcade cabinets, building arcade sticks for consoles, and configuring emulators such as Hyperspin. There are already a lot of very determined enthusiasts who have compiled arcade cabinet sideart, bezels, and control panel artwork along with preview videos.
What if all that could be combined with an existing emulator such as Mame so that you could enter an arcade, walk past the games, select one, then use your own arcade stick to play the game?
I'm just getting started with Unity, as I'm primarily a UI designer, and I think I might be able to put together the arcade simulation, but building Oculus support into an existing emulator and/or porting that emulator into Unity is beyond me.
Just Added* https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/7h1tobo06xsi41p/ArcadeDemo.zip?token_hash=AAEi54McDLUD3lBwpSL_Zqosy_rvs_53YX-9E-w5fGk2lw&dl=1
What do you guys think?
After reading Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, I got excited about the idea of walking around a virtual arcade and stepping up to play a game. I've spent a lot of time fixing playing arcade cabinets, building arcade sticks for consoles, and configuring emulators such as Hyperspin. There are already a lot of very determined enthusiasts who have compiled arcade cabinet sideart, bezels, and control panel artwork along with preview videos.
What if all that could be combined with an existing emulator such as Mame so that you could enter an arcade, walk past the games, select one, then use your own arcade stick to play the game?
I'm just getting started with Unity, as I'm primarily a UI designer, and I think I might be able to put together the arcade simulation, but building Oculus support into an existing emulator and/or porting that emulator into Unity is beyond me.
Just Added* https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/7h1tobo06xsi41p/ArcadeDemo.zip?token_hash=AAEi54McDLUD3lBwpSL_Zqosy_rvs_53YX-9E-w5fGk2lw&dl=1
What do you guys think?
15 Replies
- There are some MAME frontends which do something similar - you could definitely tie into the 'walking into an arcade' thing.
3darcade
It might get a little strange when you walk up to a screen in VR and then have to fumble around for the proper controls for the game you picked. If you were *really* ambitious, you could detect which game you were in front of and set up a gizmo like this. That would be pretty neat actually. - I hadn't heard of the 3darcade frontend before, but that is the overall effect I was thinking of. As for controllers, I would probably keep my standard 8 button layout, http://www.slagcoin.com/joystick/layout/cluster36_s.png, stick on my desk and have the emulator input preconfigured for each game.
"nsb" wrote:
There are some MAME frontends which do something similar - you could definitely tie into the 'walking into an arcade' thing.
3darcade
Wow. Haven't used MAME in years but that vid was like instantly stepping back in time. That front end combined with the Rift (assuming a nice transition to the actual gameplay) Is a match made in 80s geezer heaven.
Who knew when VR first debuted that development would take so long we'd be using it to go back to that time? :)
Peejle- This is something I want to do as well.
There is also this: http://www.smarcade.net/, which since it is already tied into the Source engine may be more capable to work with using the Vireio drivers.
Though, the part I am caught up in is either getting MAME to render to a virtual target (window/texture) to then be displayed in the game. I have never done that, but it seems like I would need to set up some sort of virtual display as a target to point mame at. I'm thinking it is something like capturing the framebuffer. - It's surprising how much nostalgia comes up just from the ambient sound on that clip. Definitely needs a skeeball redemption area with a 3" B&W CRT TV for 40,000 tickets. ;)
- I was joking around with some people yesterday and we started talking about how cool it would be to make volumetric VR ports of some early-80's era games. The one that really stuck out was volumetric Missile Command where the player could sit down like playing a board game with rocks coming down from the ceiling and reach in with your hand to place missile targets. There are a whole generation of Atari games that could be "re-imagined" from a board game perspective.
- I put a static demo together for you guys.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/7h1tobo06xsi41p/ArcadeDemo.zip?token_hash=AAEi54McDLUD3lBwpSL_Zqosy_rvs_53YX-9E-w5fGk2lw&dl=1
Not sure if you can tell, but this is my first attempt at creating something in Unity. There isn't any functionality here, but it does bring back some memories. - Thanks for that little taste.
Also thanks for not repeating the games to fill up the space.
I feel like this MAME / Rift arcade rebirth is not a long ways off.
Funny. Normaly I would promote a simplified interface (List of MAME games, click to play, etc.), then I see this and I'm drawn into the whole 80's arcade expeience. I guess we're all slaves to nostalgia....
Peejle - sayitaintjonas, thanks for the download. :) I have nothing new to add - despite not having a Rift yet, I also feel like this was a cool glimpse into something that could be pretty awesome.
And I feel like I wanna rip those arcade models apart and remove the redundant/coplanar faces all over the place! :p - the demo looks promising
