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Shadow Complex is a great game if you like Metroidvania style gameplay. I've played though it a few times on the XBox 360. It's available for free during the month of December. You do have to download the Epic Games front end, but it's worth it for a great game for free. As an added bonus you can download the new Unreal Tournament beta as well. www.shadowcomplex.com

First things first, try to keep as much code as you can out of the plugin itself. If you can access the class from your own namespace, do that and then call your methods from the plug-in instead. I create my datasets myself instead of using the toolbox. I'm not sure what you're after here, but the best way to manage datasets is through code so you have total control. That being said, you can write a class that manages the data in your dataset through properties or shared functions or whatever you prefer, and you can pass your data back and forth freely without doing anything special. /my 2c

I'm back to the emulators scene after a few years break, and I just got familiar with the software lists romset. Or what is also known as the mess romset. I think it's a great idea, but I find support to this list lacking in both GameEx and Hyperspin. With all the hash files we have, it would be nice to have support for the mess games list built into GameEx the same way MAME is done. I have seen this asked once or twice yesterday when I was looking on the forums for information about this. I happen to have downloaded the full 0.168 software list (still need the chds), wanted to see if I would like this, and I do. So I will likely be getting the chds as well, and replace all my roms with this. Is there any script or modification that could be done to GameEx that would configure the artwork downloader to fetch the correct artwork and name it after the mess romset? As it is now, I have ran the emumovies tool on the a2600 (atari 2600) list and it did get all the artwork for the one word titles. Like Airlock, Amidar, etc... and the tool name the downloaded file after the rom names, so it would require little work to make this happen.... the magic is already there in the map file I generated with a python script I found in these forums. I run the python script against the hash files, and I end up with a map file for GameEx. If the artwork downloader could detect the mess romset, and use the map files to download the artwork... I think it could be made to integrate in GameEx rather easily. At the moment, the only thing getting in the way of this romset to pick up popularity, is likely because of the artwork headaches that goes along with it. Since there is no artwork package yet for this... but if GameEx could download the artworks for this romset by itself with the help of the map files.. it would be quite an interesting feature. I hope that GameEx end up reading these hash files directly to use all the information contained inside. A fullly featured MESS games list like the MAME one, with all the systems automatically detected and sorted, with the ability to sort clones, enable/disable individually, etc... as it is, the merge option in advanced emu setup does nothing for these. I have setup the a2600 folder with the map file, and merge doesn't seem to work. If I can lend a hand, I sure would. I don't have much coding skill, but I do have some spare time.. let me know if I can be of any help making this happen.

Yeah I know right The whole mindset behind emulation is rather conservative. It is likely going to take a collaborated effort to help it take off. It would start to get serious consideration once the artwork problem will be solved I believe. GameEx could be a game changer, as it is already more flexible than Hyperspin and more suited to the task. Hyperspin only works well with a very strict naming scheme. It's artwork downloader download the full sets, regardless of the roms you have for example... But imagine if GameEx would have a MESS setup similar to the way MAME is setup... you would enter the root of your mess software list romset, and boom... all systems configured at once... with all artwork... how cool would it be? I believe this must get some serious thought put into. In the meantime, I have ran the python script I downloaded yesterday against all the hash xmls, and generated map files for each of the systems found in the 0.168 softlist romset. I wanted to create a topic about it, but I can't find any better place than general. If you wish to add it to the map downloads, feel free! edit: updated the rar... noticed that each map files had .xml. still to it... I removed them all. So if you set your system's name according to mame/mess, then the map file should load automatically now. mame168_hash_gameex_maps.rar

I'm back to the emulators scene after a few years break, and I just got familiar with the software lists romset. Or what is also known as the mess romset. I think it's a great idea, but I find support to this list lacking in both GameEx and Hyperspin. With all the hash files we have, it would be nice to have support for the mess games list built into GameEx the same way MAME is done. I have seen this asked once or twice yesterday when I was looking on the forums for information about this. I happen to have downloaded the full 0.168 software list (still need the chds), wanted to see if I would like this, and I do. So I will likely be getting the chds as well, and replace all my roms with this. Is there any script or modification that could be done to GameEx that would configure the artwork downloader to fetch the correct artwork and name it after the mess romset? As it is now, I have ran the emumovies tool on the a2600 (atari 2600) list and it did get all the artwork for the one word titles. Like Airlock, Amidar, etc... and the tool name the downloaded file after the rom names, so it would require little work to make this happen.... the magic is already there in the map file I generated with a python script I found in these forums. I run the python script against the hash files, and I end up with a map file for GameEx. If the artwork downloader could detect the mess romset, and use the map files to download the artwork... I think it could be made to integrate in GameEx rather easily. At the moment, the only thing getting in the way of this romset to pick up popularity, is likely because of the artwork headaches that goes along with it. Since there is no artwork package yet for this... but if GameEx could download the artworks for this romset by itself with the help of the map files.. it would be quite an interesting feature. I hope that GameEx end up reading these hash files directly to use all the information contained inside. A fullly featured MESS games list like the MAME one, with all the systems automatically detected and sorted, with the ability to sort clones, enable/disable individually, etc... as it is, the merge option in advanced emu setup does nothing for these. I have setup the a2600 folder with the map file, and merge doesn't seem to work. If I can lend a hand, I sure would. I don't have much coding skill, but I do have some spare time.. let me know if I can be of any help making this happen.

I would actually contend that this is not the best method for doing this. There are ROM auditor tools available for this express purpose, and while they won't tell you the version of a particular ROM, they will tell you whether your ROM set is simpatico with your version of MAME. They'll even try to "fix" your ROM set for you so that it is compatible with your version of MAME if you let them.* *This is probably more advanced than you want to get on your first go around, but once you become familiar with the tools can become an invaluable resource. It would probably be a good idea to start with a backed up subset of ROMs, while you're learning the ropes of these tools. For new(ish) users I tend to recommend ROMCenter for the purposes of ROM auditing. It’s a great tool to have in your arsenal. Here are a couple of tutorials to help get you started with ROMCenter: Romcenter 3 tutorial ROMCenter Wiki Another great tool to be aware of is the venerable ClrMamePro. ClrMamePro is not nearly as user friendly as ROMCenter, but it’s got a lot more history behind it, and occasionally you’ll see the grizzled old emulation veterans using CMP over ROMCenter. Here’s the complete guide to using ClrMamePro. YMMV with these tools, but I feel like they really take some of the guesswork out of matching the ROM version with the MAME version.

Yes, assuming their all from one particular set, if you can discover that info, that would be ideal. A real Captain Obvious suggestion here, but you may want to check the folder for a readme that contains this information. Personally if it where me, once had obtained the release the set is based upon, I would grab the corresponding mame source release, then headkaze's mame compiler, and compile my own vanilla mame, adding hi score. Hunt down the appropriate support files, history.dat, catver.ini, etc... move everything into the appropriate directories, launch gameex, go into mame, update, enjoy.

Cool beans, I'll grab them both over the weekend. Thanks for the heads up!

I'm pretty sure that this is your issue: ePSXecutor requires the use of an advanced config file. Since ePSXecutor only acts as a launcher for ePSXe it doesn't stay resident in memory after the game has been launched. The trouble is that GameEx is watching the ePSXecutor process as an indicator of when to come back into focus. So when ePSXecutor goes out of memory, GameEx responds exactly as it would when close any other emulator, it takes back focus. I know you reviewed the old thread, but pay special attention to this part (just for fun, I'd recommend reviewing that whole post again): Put that file in the following directory: ...\GameEx\CONFIG\EMULATORS Now open up the Setup Wizard again and navigate to the Advanced Emulator Setup screen for your ePSXecutor config. On that screen you'll see a field called Advanced Config. Your new advanced emulator config should appear in that dropdown list. Select your new config and exit the Setup Wizard. Give that a shot and see if it works for you.