[Feature Request] An option to adjust difficulty levels in games by setting a custom predefined hard-limit for Coins

[Gagert]

In the Sega Genesis era of gaming it was quite common for Sega to port many of their existing arcade games to this home console, and thereby a couple of adjustments had to be made.

Since a home console like the Sega Genesis consisted of the user (or friends or family of the user) having to buy the console- and games themselves instead of feeding an arcade cabinet with quarters, the arcade-converted games often came with various difficulty settings which basically was a hard-limit of how many "quarters" or continues the game gave the user.

Although Mame allows for both a free-play mode and the standard "insert coin" mode for most of the games (with unlimited virtual quarters for the "insert coin" mode), it would be cool to have the option via emulation to create a hard-limit for how many credits you should be allowed for this and that game.

After the predefined hard-limits for coins are reached in a game (let's say the limit is set to 3 coins), and the user fails yet again, have the game start over by an automated reset to the title screen. Having a text overlay that says "Game Over" a couple of seconds before resetting the game would also be a nice addition. In the mode with a predefined hard-limit for coins, it could be beneficial if the coin slots also was disabled (if not, it's not super hard for the end-user to unbind the "insert coin" button on the gamepad in RetroArch).

[mahoneyt944]

It sounds like you want to auto load so many coins and disable the ability to add more coins so people can't continue their way to a high score? Why not just disable continues so the coin count is irrelevant? This would still require custom codes for games that don't natively allow you to disable continues in the dip switch menu. A simple solution would be to modify the continue count down for each rom to start at 0 instead so it skips the continue screen. "A one liner code".

If this is what you're requesting I would close this and start a new request for cheat codes to "disable continues" for the specific games you want and maybe someone will mod those games to do so.

[Gagert]

My original thought was that by having the coin-limit approach, there would maybe not be a need to add custom coding for each individual game in the arcade-romset to make those games act more like a home console port experience.

Let's say that choosing 6 coins for player 1 and 6 coins for player 2 in the options menu in this libretro-core in RetroArch for a game, and saving this game config as an opt-file, playing a game like say Golden Axe with 2 players results in the coin button for each controller now only works 6 times, and pressing that button a 7th time maybe a message could be displayed with the RetroArch overlay itself that says "Player 1 out of credits" or something like that.

Maybe even having it so that only a single press of the coin button on the controller inserts all 6 coins, by inserting 1 and 1 coin with maybe 1 second intervals. Then pressing that button again later in the same game-session resulting in the message "Player 1 out of credits" like in the example above.

Wouldn't the disable continue approach require a per game cheat code or something like that? The "coin trick" I assume could be a more general approach not requiring doing anything with the games themselves, but working in a more "realistic way" of simulating being a poor kid back in the day with only a few quarters in his/her pockets to use on the arcade machine after school.

Maybe the Options menu for this libretro core could have a few new selections, namely something like this:

Predefined Coin-limit = On / Off

If the predefined coin limit if enabled, have a new sub-menu approaching with these options:

Number of Players = 1
Player 1 Coin-limit = 1-99

If there's more than 1 Player, say 3 players, have the sub-menu look like this:

Number of Players = 3
Player 1 Coin-limit = 1-99
Player 2 Coin-limit = 1-99
Player 3 Coin-limit = 1-99

I'll guess having the games restarting after you fail after the last continue are used would require individual coding for each game, but I'll guess we can do without that.

[mahoneyt944]

I suppose you could add a handler to disable the coin button after so many presses of it are made. The issue is when you'd reach that limit, you wouldn't be able to add coins anymore so you'd have to exit the game and re-enter to reset the counter limit.

If you don't disable the coin button then the player could just keep replenishing their coins as they use them defeating the point. So you'd have to limit the max number of coins, then disable the coin button, and somehow decide when it's ok to let the user refill the coins again so no reset is required.

I'm not quite sure how the 3rd condition could be met easily. But there maybe a way to do this.

[Gagert]

That's about it.

So you'd have to limit the max number of coins, then disable the coin button, and somehow decide when it's ok to let the user refill the coins again so no reset is required.

Well, the idea is that once you have set a limit for how many coins you are allowed to use for a specific game, and after you start to play that game with a set coin limit, you're now on your own. Now there's no going back; even if you have played for maybe hours straight and fail after you're out of coins, you have to start the game all over again (restarting the game via RetroArch or exiting to desktop and start the game again to gain new coins).

If such a feature got implemented, one could then start to discuss how many coins are recommended to use in each and every game to be able to beat it; maybe one game's difficulty subjectively can be translated into 15 coins = easy, 10 coins = normal, 5 coins = hard and 1 coin = nightmare or something.

When playing games on Mame is currently, it can be quite tempting to just endlessly insert a limitless amount of coins while you play (or just play in freeplay mode if that is available), thereby removing the element of challenge thus the game may end up becoming boring because of that (my personal opinion).

[ghost]

When playing games on Mame is currently, it can be quite tempting to just endlessly insert a limitless amount of coins while you play (or just play in freeplay mode if that is available), thereby removing the element of challenge thus the game may end up becoming boring because of that (my personal opinion).

But that's also what you can do on a real arcade machine. You can put as many coins in as you like. Maybe you could put together a real coin mechanism to start your MAME games (if you have a cabinet set up). Or just play for real money every time you use a credit. A good savings account !