MAME + Quartz Composer = ?

I normally don’t bring up MAME OS X releases here, as it has its own feed on its release page. However, the 0.114 release includes Quartz Composer integration, which I think is worth mentioning. Quartz Composer is one of my favorite OS X technologies, and I’m glad to (ab)use it where I can.

Each frame in MAME can optionally be rendered to a composition (using QCRenderer under the hood). This was surprisingly easy, since frames were already rendered to a Core Video OpenGL buffer. To be honest, I don’t think this is really useful, and the composition effects I’ve included are more “hey, look what you can do with Quartz Composer”. The biggest advantage is that end-users can now create visual effects without recompiling MAME. They can just pop open Quartz Composer and drop the file into ${HOME}/Library/Application Support/MAME OS X/Effects. Maybe someone can pull down cabinet models from the Internet and display the frame where the screen should be. Eh… even that’s pretty useless. Ah well, it’s fun to play with, at least.