Arcade Cabinet – Setup Hyperspin & Controllers

• Windows 10 installed & fully updated
• USB Mouse & Keyboard
• USB HUB and All USB controllers connected
• Register an account @ http://hyperspin-fe.com/

As we will be using a dedicated computer I would recommend using the computer only for Hyperspin so the best way to start is with a clean windows 10 installation, I went with windows 10 and so far no issues at all.

Install windows Required programs:

• Winrar or 7zip
• .Net & C++ frameworks 2005/2008/2011/… runtimes Download

I will be to using windows 10 for my build, I recommend keeping the software on this computer as minimal as possible.

Disable windows UAC

• Windows 10: Control Panel -> User Accounts -> Settings for UAC -> drag the slider down and apply

Updates

I recommend updating to the latest version, then install all your software and turn off windows update completely. You don’t want windows to update to randomly ruin your setup with no clue to start looking. I also advise staying away from updates as long as you are not having troubles with your current version. A few solutions to disable windows 10 updates are described on This website.

Remember the “October 2018” update which randomly deleted important files for no reason. it eventually took Microsoft over 5 months for this update to be re-released. gotta love Microsoft! but since the software only works on windows, no use for Mac or Linux here

Empty desktop

I recommend using a black wallpaper without any icons on your desktop and autohiding the start menu. This will make the machine look more professional during startup.

 Anti Virus

I don’t recommend using an antivirus, I used AVG in my first setup which managed to destroy my complete setup due to removing false positive files. The preinstalled windows defender seems to have less of a problem with these programs but I still disabled the “real-time scanning/protection” option. The last thing you want is it to delete necessary files corrupting your setup.

Backups

I also recommend creating regular backups of your setup. You could create a zip of your hyperspin installation folder but I recommend creating a full disk image of your C drive when you are completely done. This way you can restore the complete drive including the windows installation and all it’s settings.

Your Hyperspin installation folder should be as short as possible, preferably C:/Hyperspin/HyperSpin.exe, this will prevent problems with file paths longer than 255 characters. just extract the 1.4 archives in your folder.

This will be a basic Hyperspin package containing some basic systems but without any roms or media.

This may seem overwhelming at first but you get familiar very quickly as Hyperspin is very logical.

• Root Folder: Keep the path to this folder as short as possible
  • Databases: Contains a database with all games per system
    • %System%:
      • %System%.xml: List of all available roms, the exact ROM filename is required
      • favorites.txt: List of games that were favorited
    • Main Menu
      • Main Menu.xml: Contains systems, edit to add or change systems order
  • Emulators: Folder with al emulator software
    • %System%: The emulator for %SYSTEM%
  • LEDBlinky: The root folder for LEDBlink.exe
  • Media: Game-wheel media files per system
    • %System%
      • Images: Backgrounds, Wheel image, Artwork…
      • Sound: Background Music, Wheel sounds, System Start/exit sounds
      • Themes: The main UI for the selected system
      • Video: Preview Video’s for each game
  • Roms: Roms folder, I recommend moving this to a large external drive
    • %System%
      • Roms
  • Modules:
    • %System%
      • %System%.ahk: Script for launching a specific emulator
  • Settings: The HyperHQ settings file per machine
    • %System%.ini: Configuration for system

Optionally you can have your Roms and video’s stored on a different folder/partition/drive, these folders are not obligatory but are recommended for these guides

** HyperHQ.exe: on windows 10 you need to run as administrator and run in Windows XP compatibility mode, this will prevent browse file windows from crashing (may still happen sometimes). If HyperHQ still won’t start, check windows task manager if it’s not still running due to an error in the closing process.

To configure our IPAC controllers we need the configuration utility from the Ultimark website.

When installed, launch the tool. If you have more than 1 controllar attached, the utilitty will presumably randomly choose one of the devices. If you want to configure the second controller unplug the first and restart the applicaiton. It should automatically select the second controller now.

In here you can assign a keyboard key to each of the inputs. It also has a “shift” option which in combination which the shift key, it can have a secondary key assigned although I did not use the shift function and instead cleared all the shift assignments. Below is my personal mapping table for my control panel. This will be different for your setup so don’t just blindly copy these keys.

After completing your mapping, I recommend Saving (File-Save As) the mapping to your HDD in case the controller loses its settings or you accidentally reset the board from within the utility.

The PACLED64 itself does not need many configurations. The only thing you should configure is the “Power on Status”. This is just what LEDs should turn on if the board is powered but not controlled over the USB cable. You want all the LEDs to turn on even when your computer is off. This can be done by downloading and opening the PACLED64 configuration utility and selecting “Start recording script to Flash”

Then Open the “Brightness” Tab, set LED number to 0 and slide the Brightness slider to the right. Then click Apply.

Now go back to the settings tab and “Stop recording Script to Flash”. Then hit RunScript to check if all the LEDS turn on. This is the script that will run whenever the PACLED64 is powered.

When your power on script is recorded and working correctly (turn off and on the main power). Then Download and install LEDBLinky by copying the LEDBlinky folder to the root of your Hyperspin Folder, LEDBlinky is not free but I highly recommend purchasing the software as it’s the by far the best tool out there for controlling your LEDs

Before we can use LEDBlinky to create animations, we need to generate an input map. This input map defines the relationship between each wired port on your led controllers and the keyboard input code for that button. Open the LEDBLinky folder and run the “GenerateInputMap.exe” utility. Then for each port on the PACLED64, assign a port label and input code. The LED type should be ‘single’ unless you are using RGB button LED’s.

When all button LEDs and Input codes are set, hit Save in the top left corner. Then close the app and launch “LEDBlinkyConfig.exe”. Then Create your first “startup” animation. This animation will be run whenever Hyperspin is started. This process may be confusing at first so I found this video from Laverick’s Arcade explaining all steps in detail. For my start-up animation, I deviced my control panel in 6 horizontal rows which will slowly turn on during the Front-End startup video.

When you created your first animation, open the LEDBlinky configuration utility and open the “FE Options” tab. Then for the “FE Startup animation” select your newly created animation from the dropdown list. You can hit Test to comfirm it’s the correct animation.

After you created a “startup” animation you need to create a “Full On” animation which will make control panel light up permanently while browsing your games in Hyperspin. Follow the same process as your startup animation but this time, create only 1 frame with all the LEDs on.

Now open the “Settings” utility and select your script on the following tabs, also make sure LEDBlinky runs on boot.

(Image Soon)

Hyperspin can use AutoHotkey to launch emulators which I highly recommend. This way you have more control over how your emulator should start (fullscreen, autoload, skip boot…). Autohotkey can be Downloaded from their Website. I recommend downloading the current version.

There is no configuration required, the AutoHotkey installation is now done

This is my personal controller mapping, I recommend creating a table for your own control panel. The mapping will be different for each cabinet so don’t just blindly copy my configuration.

For initial setup, launch HyperHQ.exe, this is the settings tool for HyperSpin. I posted my personal settings below, but I recommend trying some settings to tweak hyperspin to your liking.

(Images will be updated soon)

MAME is the main emulator used in Hyperspin setups because it emulates over 200+ systems. MAME is free to use and can be downloaded Here. Install MAME in C:/Hyperspin/Emulators/MAME.

After the installation is complete, navigate to your install directory and run “MAME64.exe”. When the UI has loaded, click “Configure Options”

Then select “General Inputs”

In here you can set the controls for each player, make sure to hit delete first to remove any of the previous values. MAME has a huge list of controls, probably more than there are buttons on your control panel so delete any mapped controls you will not use.

Do this for all players. If you have a ultimark aimtrak gun, the following video by Maverick’s Arcade will show how to setup your lightgun to work in MAME.

There are a lot of useful tools created by individual developers to extend Hyperspin Functionality. These tools will save you a lot of time having to manually edit databases or filenames.

Hypert00ls – This is a fully-featured configuration tool for your game libraries, this tool allows for batch renaming of roms or database entries, auto-match artwork, backups as well as an audit tool to search and find missing roms/media…

Dir2XML (by fata1err0r) – Will create a Database from a given folder, This is useful when having a list of roms and you don’t want to create a database manually for each of the files.