djrobx

You're welcome. Thank you for hard work and dedication to this fine program! It has been an absolute joy to use (especially now that the '20 rom' slowdown is fixed). It's worth every penny of my donation. I encourage others who enjoy it to donate. Gotta support people like Tom offering great software for free! -- Rob

Why do you need joytokey? Mame supports it directly. I am also using an xbox controller. Put quite a bit of work into perfecting various emulator's usage of it, particularly with regards to the analog and digital pads.

Here's what I'm using. There's nothing special about it. I have Show Desktop set to true incase I want to mess with the GUI mode but it also works with it set to false. Enabled=True StartPageName=Nintendo SNES Games TitleText=SNES StartPageLogo=snes RomFilter=*.smc;*.zip RomsInFolders=False ROMPath=D:\emu\ZSNES\Roms SnapPath=D:\emu\ZSNES\Snaps WorkingPath=D:\emu\ZSNES MapKeys=True WaitBeforeKeys= SendKeys= ReplaceDash=True ReplaceUnder=True Capitals=True RemoveBrackets=True AlsoLaunch= ShowDesktop=True Debug=False MapFile= OLDatZip=C:\Program Files\OfflineList0.7\datas\snes_OL.zip Command=Zsnesw.exe "[ROMPath]\[RomFile]"

Does not fix it here. I changed an emulator setting, clicked save and it took 40 seconds or so.

Why not just install a NES emulator like FCEU and run the real games? It just seems silly to fight with the time limits and a crude game selection interface when you're playing for free. The real PlayChoice had a dual monitor setup, so you will be stuck with a split display on a single monitor. I tried the PlayChoice games and they didn't work well at all. The default key mappings were weird, I had to change them in order to be able to select and start a game. Once it did work there was no sound, at least not in Balloon Fight.

That sounds like a very cool product, Cupid. Not to hijack Tom's thread, but why do you need to simulate a mouse? z26, for example, allows you to control the paddle via an analog joystick input. X axis becomes paddle 1, Y axis becomes paddle 2. To answer Tom's questions... I've been following Mame and other emulator development for many years. I've tinkered with many projects for my own purposes but never released anything noteworthy. The first emulator I used was Massage for the SMS, I think it was in 1996. Wanting to improve on its AdLib sound, I found MasterGear and its source code, but the DOS code was missing in the source package. When I explained what I wanted to do, Marat provided me with the missing code. I added PCM sound and parallel port SNES pad support to it, so I could play on my laptop. It was never released officially per Marat's request (he charges for it). Today I've come full circle and am making contributions towards improving the video and sound support in Meka. Omar is receptive to the contributions so bits of my code may actually end up in an official release. I've made small changes to almost all the emulators I run on my HTPC to try and get everything working consistently in that environment: Mame: Removed disclaimers. Added relative analog support for joysticks. This makes many trackball games playable with a PS2 controller's analog stick. MAME Developers seem uninterested in adding this for some reason, it wasn't difficult to do. May add hq2x at some point (this is in advmame already). Z26: Added assignable buttons for reset and difficulty so you don't have to grab the keyboard. Added POV hat support so the digital stick on a PS2 controller controls it. Gens: Added HQ2X video and fixed POV hat support Meka: Fixed sound distortions, added HQ2X, added tripple buffering support As you can see, I make use of sources when they're available. So of course I'd love to have the GameEx code. Mostly because I'd rather just go in and fix/add things than bother you with feature requests or bug reports. The config save problem for example, I'd much rather go into the code and debug it myself, and just email you the fix, than get on a forum and try to describe the issue. Its difficult to say what I'd contribute. I think I could be helpful in many ways but you seem to be developing this thing at warp speed. If nothing else I could probably help with some of the smaller feature requests and additions while you focus on some of the bigger plans you have. Given that you are keeping GameEx free, I think it would benefit from going open source. It just seems like the sort of thing where many might contribute in small ways to make the whole better. But, I respect your decision if you want to keep the source private. I was one of the core developers of the first version of a very ambitious HTPC project called Pluto. The UI design tools were done in .NET, the controllers in CE, and the actual media functions running on Linux. http://plutohome.com/index.php? I worked on it for a couple years. For financial reasons I quit the company before they started working on this second (now open-source and alpha) version.

GIFs use a colorkey. PNG supports varying degrees of opacity based on the value of the alpha channel. That allows you to create say, a blurred drop shadow without concern for the color it's going to be used ontop of. It's hard for me to talk intelligently about how it would be applied to the way you're using it in DirectDraw since I have not seen your code.

GPL does not allow .so (linux equivalent of DLL) linking with non GPL code. You can with LGPL. That's why we had to build a TCP/IP bridge. We actually hired one of the developers from Xine to help us with it. I don't know how this comes to play with other forms of RPC like Windows COM DLLs, which are more or less standalone applications. It was made pretty clear to us that we could not do a direct code link, though. I've seen some Windows programs get away with it - for example, Kega Fusion allows for video plugins, and someone compiled a GPL'd HQ2X plugin for it. I think that's technically not legal, but I doubt anyone will ever challenge it.

They're referring to the alpha/opacity channel. It certainly is possible to implement the png alpha "blending" with the surface it's being drawn on in DirectDraw, although I did it "manually" by including libpng in my project. You implement a function to get the current surface bits and it will perform the alpha blend for you. -- Rob

Fantastic idea. If you want to bring DVD and media functions into it, I might be able to help integrate Xine into the project. My last job was for a company who produced a Linux based HT frontend system. We wrote a GPL'd stub and communicated with it over TCP/IP to avoid licensing issues. I'm also a .NET developer, although I have primarily used .NET for IIS/web apps. -- Rob

Here you go! config.zip

Have you tried older video drivers? I had all sorts of problems on my MCE box (not just with GameEx) with the newer 7 series NVidia drivers. Everything went back to being solid as a rock with 6703. I am definitely not having these problems. I launch MAME and other emulators with all sorts of different resolutions without a hitch.

My machine has a gig of ram. I'm running MCE 2k5 so I have .NET framework 1.1. There's a "security update" for it so I'll try installing it. Maybe I should send you my config dir to see if it has something to do with the way my config files are set up? When you save the config, is it checking any paths? Your default configurations contain a ton of wild drive letters (I'm assuming from your setup). If one of those drive letters happens to be a disconnected network share or DVD drive or something maybe it's timing out looking for something? I don't have the code so I have no clue what it's doing during that time. -- Rob

Project64 works great on my GameEx setup. Here's what's in my config. Enabled=True StartPageName=Nintendo 64 Games TitleText=N64 StartPageLogo=n64 RomFilter=*.v64;*.zip;*.z64;*.rom RomsInFolders=False ROMPath=D:\emu\n64\roms SnapPath=D:\emu\n64\snaps WorkingPath=D:\emu\n64\Project64 MapKeys=True WaitBeforeKeys= SendKeys= ReplaceDash=True ReplaceUnder=True Capitals=True RemoveBrackets=True AlsoLaunch= ShowDesktop=True Debug=False MapFile= OLDatZip= Command=Project64.exe [ROMPath]\[RomFile] TitlePath= BoxPath= LaunchBefore= LaunchAfter= CartPath=

Tom, have you considered going with a modular (plugin) design? While I like the idea that I can use FFDSHOW to play MCE videos and DVDs, for now I just want it to be a gaming frontend. If you break your interface up with sort of plugin system, then the gaming front-end won't suffer from "bloat" because you've added lots other major features that not everyone wants. It also would allow you to offer more experimental pieces and perhaps have other developers working on modules without having to release source code.

How fast is your computer? It takes almost 60 seconds to save the config on my P4 3.0ghz. I didn't realize it was going that slow, but I just timed it... Tom, any idea what's taking so long? It wasn't this slow initially...

Version 4.01 is working perfectly. Life is good ... very good. Thanks for the fast fix, Tom!

Yeah, I have this problem too. Its only annoying because I don't otherwise need a keyboard. I was planning on just hacking it out from the MAME sources, but maybe there's a command line switch?

I'd be willing to pay as much as $50, if the source code was included with my registration. Without the source I can't fully customize it (or in my case right now, I can't fix my deteriorating speed problem ). And before you ask, yes, I do make use of sources. I've made modified versions of the following emulators for use in my HTPC environment: Z26: Added ability to assign joypad buttons to Reset, difficulty toggle, and POV HAT support for digital pad support on PS2 controller. Fixed paddle centering issues with analog stick. Meka: Added HQ2X scaling, fixed choppy sound Mame: Added relative analog joypad support so PS2 stck works for trackball games Gens: Fived POV hat support, added HQ2X. If I had the sources to GameEx, aside from trying to fix the bug I'm running into, I'd look into adding the ability to map remote control butons to emulator keys (or, map keys to keys). Specifically I want a unified way to be able to save and load states from a Media Center remote. I can probably do this by modifying every emulator, but it would be better done in GameEx. It already has the plumbing for this. I wish there was more open-source programs for Windows, in general.

Hi, firstly, I love GameEx! It runs great at first. The problem is after loading about 30 games, the UI absolutely CRAWLS. I can hit alt-enter twice to go to windowed mode and back to full screen mode and it immediately becomes responsive again. The emulators themselves will run fast when I launch them, but GameEx gets slower and slower. Things seem just fine for the first 20 roms or so, but it quickly deteriorates past a certain point. GameEx does *not* get slower when it's been running random MAME games all day long. It's only when I pick things (especially emulators) in the UI. It is not tied to a specific emulator. The same thing happens regardless of whether I'm going through Sega, Nintendo or Atari games. I have tried disabling vsync, it does not help. I am using the default media-center-esque theme. I just updated it to the latest version (3.70 I think?). It seems to take longer than it used to with the older version I had, but it definitely still happens. I am running a P4 3.0ghz, 1GB ram, with a NVidia fx5700.