Installation

What you need

• Windows.
• Python 3.12 or newer. If it is missing, install.bat offers to install Python 3.13 from python.org.
• For MAME games, MAME 0.227 or newer. The installer shows your version.
• For RetroArch games, RetroArch 1.19 or newer (see RetroArch).
• A display for the marquee. An LCD screen that Windows sees as a display (see HD Marquee), a Pixelcade LED or a ZeDMD panel (see ZeDMD and Hardware).

Install

1. Download the zip of the latest version from the Releases page.
2. Before extracting it, right-click the zip, choose Properties, tick "Unblock", then OK. Windows will then stop asking for confirmation on every .bat file.
3. Extract the ArcadeDMD folder to a path with no accented characters, ideally C:\ArcadeDMD. MAME cannot open folders with accented characters.
4. Run install.bat. It installs Pillow, pyserial and pygame-ce, copies the plugin into MAME, sets up the Pixelcade and offers to start ArcadeDMD automatically with Windows. It only downloads libzedmd (the ZeDMD driver) if you say you have a ZeDMD panel. If you only use RetroArch, press Enter at the MAME question.
5. With an LCD marquee, run screen_setup.bat (the installer offers it too). It finds the marquee screen and sets everything in config.json.

What the installation changes

• The C:\ArcadeDMD folder. Settings, the log and the captures stay inside it.
• In MAME, a new plugins\arcadedmd folder with three small files. Nothing else in MAME. mame.ini and plugin.ini are not modified, since MAME loads the plugins of its plugins folder by itself.
• An ArcadeDMD.bat file in the Windows Startup folder, only if you accept the automatic start.
• Three libraries added to Python (Pillow, pyserial, pygame-ce).
• With a Pixelcade, during games that have a file in games\, ArcadeDMD stops pixelweb and restarts it when the game ends. For other games, nothing changes.

The plugin only reads the game memory. It changes neither the game, nor the controls, nor MAME's settings.

First try without a game

The demos show the scenes with simulated values, on the marquee screen or the panel, without MAME or RetroArch.

File	What it shows
demo_fight.bat	The King of Fighters '98, from the coin screen to the fight
demo_neogeo.bat	a Neo Geo game done one by one, to choose in a list
demo_capcom.bat	a Capcom CPS1, CPS2 or CPS3 game
demo_cave.bat	a Cave game (DoDonPachi, Ketsui, Espgaluda, Mushihime-sama, Deathsmiles...)
demo_afterburner.bat, demo_sonic.bat	After Burner II, Sonic

Updating

Extract the new version over the old one. config.json is never overwritten, it was created from config.default.json at the first install. The addresses found with learn.bat are kept in learned\ and put back at startup. Your own pictures in sprites\ stay.

Uninstalling

Delete the plugins\arcadedmd folder from MAME, the ArcadeDMD.bat file from the Startup folder (type shell:startup in Win+R to open it), then the C:\ArcadeDMD folder. To only turn the plugin off, add the line arcadedmd 0 to MAME's plugin.ini.

Next, Usage.