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Multi-screen Fun
After pulling on a thread that ultimately led to me rewriting how the command
line and INI files are parsed (don't worry, it should all work just like
before once all the bugs are sorted), I managed to get the multi-targeting
drawing code working with the new renderer. This first shot is of Cyberball
running two windows. Right now, cyberbal is the only driver in MAME that
properly exposes multiple screens. Each window shows the contents of a
single screen on my dual-monitor system. If you flip into full screen mode
you'll get one screen on each monitor:
Through the UI, or on the command line, you can specify a layout view for each screen independently. By default, the game comes up with screen 0 in the first window, and screen 1 in the second window.
This second shot is just for fun. It shows me running pacman with 4 windows.
Each window can have a different view, selected from all the loaded layouts.
Currently there are only three different views, so screens 0 and 3 are
showing the same view. I don't know any practical use for this, but if
you had 4 monitors and wanted to splatter Pac-Man over all 4, you
could, I guess.
I've gotten little feedback on the new system so far, but then again, there are a couple of crashes plaguing the first version. I've fixed those, and should have a new update in the next day or two. The next release should have the new renderer enabled by default, some more options implemented, plus a bunch of fixes and improvements. I'm looking more for compatibility reports than performance reports at this point. I fully expect that things will be slower for a bit until things get sorted.