Riffman81

Welcome Adam! I told myself the same thing... just a handfull of old console games would be enough... Now, I think I have just about everything under the sun on my setup!

I have a question that releates to this topic so I didn't see the point in starting a new thread. Let's say I delete a game with the delete key in GE. Is it possible to later restore said game?

Thanks for the info guys! Now does GameEX have all current database files hosted somewhere or do I just pull them from my install?

First off, I know asking where to obtain ROM sets is against the forum rules, so I'll choose my words carefully. I'm trying to compile my sets based on the following criteria: - All official North American releases - All European releases that do NOT have a USA counterpart - No demos, betas, hacks, prototypes, or unfinished/incomplete games - 1 ROM per title (no duplicates) I have been using full No-Intro compiled sets for awhile and have slowly began to "filter" through them to obtain what I need. A few systems I'm having trouble with, one being the Atari 2600. There is no No-Intro set for this console and I'm unclear as to how many official releases that console had in the USA and how many PAL releases that never saw a US release. Does any one here have an idea how I could go about finding out this information? I've tried various sources on the net and got a range from 418 to 7000... I'm only looking for lists, not actual ROM sets. I'm also looking for info on the Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Adavance. Official North America and European exclusives. I have full sets for these systems so filtering out what I need isn't the issue, it's getting exact number of releases and learning what games are exclusive to Europe. Also, does GameEx have a specific program used for editing databases or creating custom databases? I noticed many of the NES and SNES titles don't have any database info... at least it doesn't show in my setup... I'd like to fix all that if possible. HyperSpin has HyperList for this sort of thing but most of the databases files over there are in serious need of a rework.

This theme will look great on the new HTPC setup I'm working on at the moment. Pure joy! HyperSpin who?

Really diggin' this theme! Nice work! Super Nintendo???

IMO, getting a license is a no-brainer. Go for it!

Thanks for the feedback guys. Yes, keeping the No-Intro sets up to date is quite the PITA But I guess it's the fact that I'm OCD that fuels me to do it. So it's a pain I can stand. I update Mame maybe 2x a year, just depends on if there is really a need to update more often or if a new release is made. Having a "universal" naming convention for roms is an Idea I've given some thought to for quite a few years, as to try and eliminate some of the confusion or misunderstandings about rom sets in general. I got into emulation years ago and I remember being confused by all the different sets out there, wondering why some sets were tagged differently than others. I mean really, how many different tags do you need for Super Mario World? Then as I got into rom hacking, I realized the usefulness of some of the different naming schemes out there. trying to determin if a rom might be headered or unheadered, regions, etc. No-Intro seems to do a great job of keeping things up to date, but it really is alot of work. Despite that many of the systems being maintained are 20+ years old, new rom dumps appear all the time for them and there are still many "beta" and un-released games just waiting to be dumped. I was on a thread the other day and read that the Castlevania Bloodlines 0.5 beta just sold on eBay for close to $2000! http://www.vgmuseum.com/mrp/2/bl-beta.htm I wish whoever bought the game would dump the rom image, as that beta is quite different from the actual final release... it's almost a different game in terms of level design. Looks like it'll be held in private collection for years to come with a price tag like that. Another one being held that I'd like to get my hands on is the beta for Mega Man X, again it's got a hefty price tag, and I believe only 3 carts were made. One was sent to Nintendo of course, the other two to GamePro Magazine for review, and EGM, based on the photos I've seen of the actual cart. Now, all 3 are being held in private collection. EDIT: The page I linked to is quite old, the game has infact been sold.

So here's my rant... I use "No-Intro" ROM sets and haven't updated them in several months. So today I finally decide to go get all the new dats and do a clean sweep of all 52 sets I currently maintain on my HTPC and home arcade cab. Luckily, not every set had to be updated, but quite a few of them did. The problem wasn't so much in locating the ROMs as it was in actually slipping them into my ROM sets. What I began to realize is that some of the ROMs I thought I needed, I didn't need at all, they were actually just renamed by the good folks over at No-Intro. Turns out I had several copies of the same ROM(s) just with various naming changes. I should point out that the ROM files I'm refering too were already using the No-Intro naming convention to start, and I know No-Intro uses one ROM for each region, I'm talking about the actual name of the ROM/Game... apparently the ROM name had changed for whatever reason. Running the sets through CLRMamePro fixed all of this but my rant is more about having one proper naming convention for the emulation community as a whole when it comes to ROM sets. There are many sets out there to pick from. GoodSets, TOSEC, No-Intro, Scene, HyperList, etc. You would think that someone would step up and realize that the entire community would benefit by having ONE proper naming scheme. This would help front-end devs greatly in creating database files, hosting media/video/art, ect. and cut down on much of the confusion for newbies getting into emulation. I can't tell you how many times I've been on the forums over at EmuMovies and answered questions like, "Why Doesn't my ROMs match the video files" or "How do I rename my ROM set"? "What makes one set, better than the other"? No-Intro removes headers from ROMs and I believe the iNES header is required for most NES ROMs to play on real hardware, as well as emulators. Therefore, you have to source out other NES ROM sets. GoodSets bundle tons of "garbage" in with their sets, and Scene releases are often recoded with "Intro" garbage with ROM hackers saying hello to all their friends and telling you not to sell the game on ebay, thus altering the original ROM dump. HyperList base their ROMs from the No-Intro standard, but alter the naming by removing language tags, or in some cases, they change/shorten the ROM name. Again, why alter something if it's fine the way it is? I maintain full No-Intro sets, but mostly use custom sets consisting of all USA games and European titles (if there was no USA counterpart). For Japanese titles, I only use complete translations and games that are playable without having to read Japanese. I achived this by running HyperList .xml's through CLRMamePro and just renaming all the ROM info in the .xml back to use No-Intro naming based on what was in the No-Intro .dat. Inshort, they are "filtered" No-Intro ROM sets. Nothing Altered as far as naming. Makes for a nice, clean set, without having to house a bunch of games I wont play (or are un-playable) on my PC's HDD. But it is nice having full ROM sets on backup, just incase I want/need a certain ROM. I've noticed alot of "sources" where you can obtain ROM files switching over to hosting No-Intro sets as well. Is No-Intro now the standard? If so, will there ever be a "Final" version of the .dat files they host? I know new ROM dumps pop up from time to time, and those must be added in, but why the constant renaming/altering of ROM titles already accounted for? I've been pretty vocal about my opinion on having one naming convention, I think it would also be good in preserving classic games for years to come. I highly doubt it'll ever happen, and it may not be a huge deal for most of us, but I thought I'd give you guys something to think about Having one standard in this area of emulation would help on so many different levels. Gone would be the days of having to constantly rename ROM sets, video/media.... etc. Ok, that's the end of my rant, but I would like to know what ROM sets you guys are using, and how often you find yourself updating them. I'm doing an article on this subject soon, so I figured I'd do some "homework" before I go posting on the sites I write for.

Sorry for the delay guys in getting back to this topic, pulled a double shift the past two days, good times... :/ So doing a guide for each emulator I have setup would be my contribution to help others. There are some emus I still don't have up and running, so maybe someone else could shed some light on those as we/I move forward with this idea, or I will get to them at a later date. Either way, I'll get to work on getting these ready with the template suggested. Once I get some of these done, who would I notify for proof reading and such to get them finalized?

I have a full set of GameCube iso's and I manually renamed all of them... over 600 titles took me a few hours. Do you have an emumoives account? I downloaded the full GameCube video snap set from there and renamed all my iso files based on the naming of the video files. It was a matter of copy, rename, paste, etc. Until the entire set was renamed. Provided that you know what games are in what folder... I know there are utilities that help with PSX games, not sure if those same utilities work with GC since most GC files are in .iso or .gcm (.gcm is simply a GameCube .iso file with a different file extention and can be renamed to .iso) and PSX games are in .bin .cue I'll do some digging around and see whatelse I can find to help you out.

Thanks for that link Dazz! I guess I did in fact miss that post I downloaded the .doc template and will get to work on getting this thing put together over the next few days! Will post back when I have something together. EDIT: I was just thinking... would it be better to do a seperate gudie for each individual emulator or would one guide for all be the way to go? I know I was once a "noob" (and am some ways still am) and it might be a bit overwhelming to read through one big guide... just a thought. What do you guys think?

Adultery is right. You can checkout redump.org to obtain a GameCube .dat file. I'm not sure what renaming utility is used for GameCube iso's but I'm sure a quick Google search would put you on the right track. I use CLRMamePro for ROM sets, I'm not sure if it'll work with Disc based games... Basically you'll "plugin" your .dat file into your ROM manager/renaming utility, it'll scan your "ROMs" folder and rename accordingly based on the ROM/Game names contained in the .dat file..

I could be wrong, but I believe you'll have to end up renaming your GameCube.iso's to a more proper naming convention. Example: Let's say GAME012345 is "Animal Crossing" then you would simply rename too something like Animal Crossing (USA)

So I was shifting through some old folders today and found all my setup notes I kept for various emulators while setting up GameEx for the first time. I remember having a hard time with nullDC and it was just a matter of changing a few things in my nullDC config file to get it up and running. (Thanks nullPointer) So I'd like to compile all of these notes into one big "guide" kind of like what stryker did with his first-time setup guide. Right now I have setup notes on some of the more difficult emulators but I'd like to cover all of them in one, easy to follow overview. Would any of you be interested in seeing something like this? Just an idea, and might save some time for others looking to get things going.

Maybe someone with a little more knowledge (KRC, Tempest, nullPointer) can chime in and help you out. Yeah, I've accepted the "BG Glitch" for what it is, it doesn't happen to often on my rig and will probably be non-existant when the "Evolution" arrives Have you tried comparing your GameEx.ini from your first install to the one from your 2nd install? Might shine some light on what the problem is.

I might be the minority here, but I'd like a version of the original with the grey look so I can use it with the custom BG's I did. Or, if you could just post the new PSD file, I can add them in myself. As for the changes you did in the post above, me likey!

Looks great Crylen!

While I was working on the alternate BG's I did for this, I was toying around with black and it looked really nice! Just throwing that out there to ya!

So guys, I'm guessing the HideOS.exe is the problem here? If so, since there is already another thread addressing this issue, can I get this one closed?

yes, pressing the ALT+TAB does give me the option to go back to the emulator screen. Is there a "work around" or something I could change to get it working properly? Thanks for the help guys!

Haven't tried that. I'm away from my setup at the moment but once I get off work I'll check and report back.

Running a game in PCSX2 in ISO format rather than the actual game disc doesn't really give any big speedups other than loading times. I've brought this up over at the pcsx2 forums some time ago and this was the answer I was given, although I was told the game your running could be a factor as well. I've noticed as the emulator improves, so do the speeds... some games i couldn't run in previous versions of pcsx2 now run much better in 1.0 and 1.1beta. I hear 1.2 is coming soon...

So, when I press the F10 key to go to the in-game menu within GameEx all is well, but returning back to the emulator and the game I'm running doesn't work, I just get a black screen...? Can still hear game sounds but no visual. I'm not sure why, but this happens with all my emulators... I'm sure it's a simple fix but I'm not sure what setting I have configured wrong. Any ideas? GameEx.ini

Thanks for the compliment nullPointer. And thank you Tempest for the clarification. Looking forward to the "Evolution"!!