intro

Gorf is a joystick-based front-end interface for xmame.

xmame is the unix port of the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.

The philosophy behind Gorf is simple: a user-friendly interface that looks as cool as the games you play on it.

With Gorf you can easily launch your favorite games with a joystick. No fussing around with a keyboard or mouse. Just press fire to start, just like a console. (Keyboard is supported, if you need it).

You also get total freedom to customize the look, to get the most out of your display. Gorf looks great on VGA monitors, LCD screens, TVs, Projectors, Sony Glasstron, cortical stimulator, you name it.

Gorf is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

requirements

Gorf runs on Linux. I recommend Mepis Linux, a nicely tuned Debian Live-CD.

Minimum requirements for xmame are somewhere around:

500mhz CPU
128mb RAM
Graphics card with Xv support
5gb hard drive (Linux, Gorf, Mame, and not much else)

The original classics like Pacman and Frogger will run great on this hardware. So dust off that shabby old mobo and build yourself an arcade!

For top performance, recommended hardware is:

2.0Ghz or faster CPU (P4 Celeron is good)
512mb RAM
Graphics card with Xv support
20gb hard drive (Linux, Gorf, Mame, and all known working ROMs)

Xv is a feature of XFree86 that provides hardware-accelerated scaling. This lets you play your games fullscreen without suffering a performance hit. Most recent/decent hardware is supported, and skip-free 60fps is easily achievable.

install

Install Mepis Linux to the hard drive.

Use apt-get or kpackage to install xmame-x.

The default ROM folder is /usr/share/games/xmame/roms. Copy your ROM files here.

Download gorf-0.3-x86.tgz [source & binary tarball, 4.1 MB].

Unzip it wherever you want.

It's not all that difficult to find ROM files. Try searching for a game title with the keywords ROM and/or ZIP. Also try "index of", that's a handy keyphrase that finds file repositories.

usage

The xmame config file is /etc/xmame/xmamerc. Make sure xmame works before starting Gorf. To start xmame from an xterm type: xmame pacman (assuming you have pacman.zip in the roms folder)

The Gorf config file is gorf.cfg. You will need to edit this if your Mame executable is not called xmame. (Some distros or packages call it xmame.x11, or perhaps you prefer xmame.gl) You can also change the window size (default is 640x480) and enable or disable fullscreen (enabled by default). All other settings can be changed interactively in Gorf.

To start Gorf, double-click the gorf binary, or run it from an xterm.

Gorf was designed to be driven using any combination of these controls:

Keyboard
Joysticks thru Keyboard encoder
Joysticks thru /dev/js0 (all Linux supported joysticks including USB)

Here are the default controls for Gorf. You can change these and other settings from inside the pop-up menu.

Joystick Input Keyboard Input Function

Stick 1 Arrow-keys Move selection

Joystick button 1 [enter] or [control] Start game,
Choose menu selection

Joystick button 2 [tab] or [alt] Bring up menu,
Cancel selection

Here is a description of all the menu items inside Gorf.

About Gorf
Get All Rom Info - Preload metadata (like name, year, manufacturer)
Sort ROMs
Options
- Load Theme - color+font+background presets
- Colors
- Fonts - put TTF files in the "fonts" folder
- Background - put PCX files in the "backgrounds" folder
- Setup Keys
- Edit MOTD - change the scrolling message
Quit Gorf - enable this in gorf.cfg
Shutdown Machine - enable this in gorf.cfg

All menus can be driven with the keyboard or joystick.

fine tuning

This section got too big, it has its own page now.

pictures

	The GORFBOX
		Close-up of Gorf rev 0.1
	A look behind the controllers. I use the iPac keyboard encoder.
		Anybody wanna see me throw a fireball?
	Gorf rev 0.3, groundkontrol theme
		army theme
	molten-lava theme