djrobx

I have a "classic PC" section where I have games like Doom, Quake, Descent, etc. I have a dir with .BAT files that launch each game. For the command line I use cmd .exe /c [RomPath]\[RomFile]. GameEx treats the BAT files like ROMs and launches them. The trickier part is getting them to exit when you hit the back/esc button. I wrote my own app to handle it, but Tom has mentioned he might work on a feature that could help with this soon. DOSBox is very helpful with the older PC games like Wolf3D, Prince of Persia, etc. -- Rob

Ahhh, I get it now. ePSXeCutor launches ePSXe and then exits, which is why GameEx keeps dumping you back to the menu. I updated my app monitoring utility to provide a workaround for you. It will launch ePSXeCutor and then wait for ePSXe to exit. Unzip Keymonitor.zip to where epsxecutor is. Change the batch file to look like: KeyMonitor ePSXeCutor.exe "Profile Name" (Note: ePSXeCutor.exe is case sensitive. It can either be ePSXeCutor or epsxecutor but no other combinations) Tom: We *really* need the ability to specify what executable (or, executableS, preferrably) GamEx should wait for and/or kill when esc is pressed. I think this would solve the vast majority of issues running batch files or other pre-launch logic like this case. The way I handle this in my app is I give the application a couple seconds to spawn its children, then I monitor for one or more apps. There are some games like Wing Commander that hand-off to different modules during the game, or I might have batch files that might run one of several different executables, so the ability to specify multiple possibilities would be a plus. So having say, a comma delimited list of exes to watch for would be good. KeyMonitor.zip

Put it before you launch the second one. In other words, Step 1: Close any existing epsxe's Step 2: Open a new epsxe But we really need to figure out why GameEx is going back to the menu on the first try. Are you running XP? Do you have the very latest gameex? There was one version released last week which had trouble with batch files. I'm going to download a copy of epsxe to see if I can duplicate your problem.

Hmm, very strange. Maybe try: start /wait cmd.exe /c "[ROMPath]\[ROMfile]" If you want to be sure old instances are killed, add: killall /im espxe.exe to the bat file. -- Rob

cmd .exe doesn't understand /wait, you don't need that parameter. /wait is used with start, which isn't needed here. Are you using MapKeys and Esc to exit? MapKeys won't work with batch files unfortunately. It doesn't know what it's supposed to quit. You will need to disable the MapKeys setting in GameEx and exit ePSXeCutor from its own user interface. Clear out all of the old cmd.exes and ePSXecutor.exes from task manager and try again after doing that. All of the other copies of it running were probably from your previous attempts to get it to work.

Did you put cmd dot exe /c "[ROMPath]\[RomFile]" as the command line? (This forum will not accept "cmd .exe" as one word from me for some reason). What are the contents of the .BAT file? -- Rob

Are you trying to get GameEx to run .lnk files? I don't think that's possible, because START /WAIT [lnkfile] does not wait for the shortcut to finish, so GameEx will always return immediately after launch. Instead you will probably need to look at the command line that the shortcut creates (right click on it and look at the properties), and put it into a .BAT file. You can then do cmd .exe /c "[ROMFile]" to run the individual BATs. If they're something other than shortcuts (different extension), try doing start "PSX" /wait "[ROMPath]\[ROMFile]" -- Rob

Very high quality stuff there. Thanks for the link!

Try adding -nonewui to the command line. It behaves more like MAME in this mode (tab brings up menu, ScrlLock toggles the keyboard) -- Rob

Emulators. There's 5 batch files for each of the cams that run realplay.exe. I then SendKeys in a Ctrl-3 to full-screen it. It works beautifully.

Install or upgrade Windows Media Player first. That DLL is part of Media Player. -- Rob

Great idea. I recently disabled my info page and miss being able to add things to my favorites. Maybe you should just add an "Info" shortcut/hotkey (e.g. button 0+button 1) that takes you to the Info page if you've otherwise disabled it? That way it's clear to see whether you've already added something to favorites, and sometimes its fun to see how many times I've run a certain game. I needed to disable the info page because I set up the Big Brother RealVideo feeds as a submenu in GameEx, and each menu item is the one of the four cams. With those you are frequently switching cams, and having to back out of the info page all the time was cumbersome. It's been a great way to get the other half used to GameEx. -- Rob

If you want to use black, use super-dark-gray instead. The eye can't really tell the difference between #000000 and #010101, but the transparency engine will know the difference. Most paint programs have a brightness control, just bump it up a notch. We already had a discussion about utilizing PNG's more extended transparency/gradient effects for drop shadows and halo type effects over the existing background. The bottom line is that GameEx is using DirectDraw, and DirectDraw doesn't support it. The only way to get it wold be to hand-implement a custom blitter, which would likely be slow on anything but high end computers. That's not necessarily a big issue - I imagine a good number of people are running on fast systems, since they want to run some of Mame's more modern additions, or perhaps Dreamcast or N64 emulation. Still Tom has a lot on his plate and I imagine sees this as a lot of work for something that's a fairly low priority. -- Rob

I haven't been able to go beyond the 67.03 driver with my FX5700. Newer versions lock up when playing video in MCE (especially over the network). The computer continues to function, but the card itself remains frozen on the video image until I restart the machine. Its funny because I started using NVidia to get away from ATI driver problems, and now it's the same thing all over again. -- Rob

Why not create a startup.bat file, and put your commands in there? -- Rob

Now that you've got code to deal with multiple controllers, would it be possible to make it so GameEx accepts input from ANY controller if one isn't selected? We have an arcade stick and gamepad, both set up as player 1 in MAME. Would be nice if either one could be used to move around in GameEx's menus. -- Rob

Yeah, with GameEx taking on HTPC functions, I think getting more customization over the menuing is becoming more important.If I were using it as my primary HTPC app, I'd probably want my main menu to look something like: [ Watch TV ] [ Watch a recording ] [ Set up recordings ] [ Play a game ] --- [ Arcade Games ] --- [ SNES Games ] --- [ ... etc ... ] [ Control the lights ] [ Change the thermostat ] [ News ] [ Browse the web ] I don't like having to break off my frequently used tasks into a "more programs" type of category. Media Center is guilty of this too. Lots of crap on the main menu that I don't want, and I want GameEx to be "My Games" right on the main list, not some minor feature under "More programs".

I would *love* for that to be added to GameEx. I'm very spoiled by Windows Explorer, and I'm always typing "MSP" to find Ms. Pacman and getting the 'P''s instead. -- Rob

Wow! I go camping for a couple days and Tom is still busy! The exit-on-home stuff is working great so far! -- Rob

LOL! Here I was all excited because Tom got "The green button" to work smoothly from within GameEx. What did the other half do last night? Pressed the green button while MAME was in a random game in attract mode!! Argh! So yeah, if Tom can add some additional checks to see if ehshell.exe starts while waiting for an emulator to exit, kill it off, then exit gracefully, that would be great. If you do implement this, can you make it optional when running emulators? I have some pretty complex "kill the running app" rules in my own "key monitor" program, so it'd probably be better if I handled that situation myself when using my own monitor program.

Most likely, fixes of bug fixes. See the 4.55 thread. http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?showtopic=396 Yes, Tom's been very busy. Does he sleep? -- Rob

I'm not sure I understand why the old behavior was a bug, cmd is a running process, and stays there until the application exits, so why doesn't GameEx "see" it? The ROMFile in this case is a .BAT file. It took me a bit to figure out how to get START to work right for program names with spaces. If you try and START a program with quotes, e.g. start /WAIT "Test me.bat" it would just open a command prompt. If you tried it without the quotes: start /WAIT test me.bat You got an error because it couldn't fnd the "test" file. Apparently if you have quotes it thinks you're titling the window, so you have to do: start "Blah" /WAIT "[RomFile]" Of course, the end result was it didn't matter, it behaves exactly like cmd dot exe slash c [RomFile]. It won't even work if I launch a bat file in my custom executable. My executable continues to run but GameEx comes back to the menu. I just did a test. It seems that GameEx returns to the menu if cmd exe is loaded *anywhere*. For instance, I set my command line to notepad.exe. Notepad opens up as expected. All is good. Now I start->run and type "cmd" ... BAM! I'm back in GameEx, and Notepad is still running. The good news is the focus is returned to MCE beautifully in 4.56!! Thanks for the great work. - Rob

Oops, problem with the fix Now one of my working configs (cmd.exe /c [Romfile]) starts the app, but GameEx comes back without waiting for it to finish.

The hanging when immediately returning bug is fixed. Still have that focus issue though. MCE comes up and focuses itself, but then seems to go into the background once GameEx finishes closing. The problem has something to do with HideOS. If I copy notepad.exe to hideos.exe, MCE comes back and stays focused without a problem.

Do you have anything set in the SendKeys parameter? It almost sounds like you were using the Nestopia config (presses esc after a couple seconds), which under FCEU will cause the menu to appear. This should be a working FCEU config Enabled=True StartPageName=Nintendo NES Games TitleText=Nintendo NES Games StartPageLogo=nes RomFilter=*.nes;*.zip RomsInFolders=False ROMPath=D:\EMU\nes\roms SnapPath=D:\EMU\nes\snaps WorkingPath=D:\EMU\nes MapKeys=True WaitBeforeKeys=1000 SendKeys= ReplaceDash=True ReplaceUnder=True Capitals=True RemoveBrackets=True AlsoLaunch= ShowDesktop=False Debug=False MapFile=D:\EMU\nes\nes.map OLDatZip= Command=fceu.exe "[ROMPath]\[RomFile]" TitlePath= BoxPath= LaunchBefore= LaunchAfter= CartPath=