djrobx

Regarding #1, what would be nice is if Tom included a small program (just something we can get to in the start menu) that we can run to restore the desktop and task bar if GameEx bombs out for some reason. The older way of hiding the desktop had similar issues with losing the task bar. The solution is to just run GameEx again and close it.

Try picking a different resolution in your SNES emulator.

Yes, media center extenders are using some sort of beefed up verson of remote desktop with extensions to handle streaming video and audio. Gaming is not something that you'd want to do through remote desktop.

When it fails to load the second time, can you post the log? (There's a shortcut to it in the start menu)

Z26 has the ability to set default options. It stores them in a file named z26.cli. If you go to a command prompt and type: z26.exe -v22 -iMSK -jar6 -jas7 -jad3 -P85 -r -u38 it will save those options in a z26.cli file. Now, if you run z26.exe Kaboom.bin all of the above options will apply. That way you don't have to keep specifying the options on the command line.

I got my snes screenshots here http://www.screenshotarchive.com/screenshots.htm

I don't think you're going to see "homebrew" programs like emulators run on the 360 for a very long time.

The way I pass the parameters in is using the z26.cli file. z26.cli goes wherever z26.exe is. Keeps the gameex config a bit neater. It should work on the command line too, though. [Emulator_5] Enabled=True StartPageName=Atari 2600 Games TitleText=Atari 2600 Games StartPageLogo=2600 RomFilter=*.bin RomsInFolders=False ROMPath=R:\Games\atari2600\roms SnapPath=R:\Games\atari2600\snaps WorkingPath=R:\Games\atari2600\z26 MapKeys=True WaitBeforeKeys= SendKeys= ReplaceDash=True ReplaceUnder=True Capitals=True RemoveBrackets=True AlsoLaunch= ShowDesktop=False Debug=False MapFile=R:\Games\atari2600\atari2600.map OLDatZip= Command=z26.exe "[ROMPath]\[RomFile]" TitlePath= BoxPath= LaunchBefore= LaunchAfter= CartPath= and the contents of my z26.cli: -v22 -iMSK -jar6 -jas7 -jad3 -P85 -r -u38

GameEx comes with an emulator section with a Visual Pinball entry already configured. You just have to update the paths to point to vpinmame and your tables. The only thing that was time consuming was naming the screenshots to match the tables. - Rob

The atari 2600 joystick only has one button. Teleport is joystick down, thrust is joystick up.

With this modified version, you can assign a joystick button to Reset (start), Select, and a difficulty toggle. To enable this on the command line, you can pass in -j[a|b][r|s|d][N] Where [a|b] is a for Joystick A or b for Joystick B, [rs|d|] is for Reset, Select, or Difficulty, and [N] is the DirectX button # to assign to it. So in my z26.cli I have: -jar6 â??jas7 â??jad4 Which assigns them to my Xbox controllerâ??s Start, Select and X buttons. You can also assign buttons to the 2nd joystickâ??s buttons as well (e.g. â??jar6 â??jbr6) so either player can do a reset if they want. Users can find the button numbers in the Control Panel, Game Controller section. z26.zip

Why not just use GameEx on the visual pinball tables directly?

The Atari doesn't have a "Player 1" and "Player 2" command. It has "Select" and "Reset". There are also two "difficulty" switches on the back of the Atari (one for each player). I modified my Z26 to allow me to assign all the necessary functions to joystick buttons (including a routine to make the difficulty switches a toggle) I submitted the changes to the author but got no response. If you're interested let me know and I'll attach my version.

It depends... You can try a keyboard like that, but in my livingroom, the basic, regular desktop wireless keyboard and mice from Logitech and Microsoft are totally insufficient for HTPC use. They have a specified effective range of only 6 feet. They are intended to talk to a nearby receiver, not across a room. I would really suggest splurging on something with a 30 foot range or better.

GameEx does not currently perform key-to-key mappings. If VP doesn't allow that setting, you're out of luck for now. -- Rob

The key mapping is in reference to assigning joystick buttons to simulate keypresses. Usually you use the configuration screens inside the emulators themselves if you want to re-map keys to other keys. -- Rob

It shouldn't prompt you after it's installed. I plug my XBox DDR pad and game pad in and out all the time. The only time it prompts again is if you plug it into a different USB port.

Me too. In my case the d-pad is a POV hat.-- Rob

mmmm yeah I can taste it already. Go Tom Go! If you run GameEx on a clean install of Windows, you hear classical music from the default Windows library. People who don't use WMP as their primary media player (or never use its library capability) may very well get confused and think the classical music was something you included with GameEx. It seems really backgroundy and almost intentional.

Rage 128 has hardware assist. ATI got into the MPEG-2 decoding thing very early on. Even the Rage Pro has it! Either way you only need around 500mhz to do soft decoding of DVD. -- Rob

The way I handled PC games was to rename the game executables to "rungame.exe". Then I could add "rungame.exe" to the advanced emulator config, so GameEx knows that rungame.exe needs to be killed when ESC is pressed.

Did you remove the -skip_disclaimer from the MAME command line options in the config?

The (U) [h1] etc naming convention comes from the "Good" naming utility (e.g., GoodNES, GoodSNES, GoodSMS). If you download the corresponding utility, the readme will explain to you what the codes mean. They're sometimes different for different systems. [hx] means it's a hack, sometimes to break copy protection. [bx] means it's a known bad dump [tx] means it has an added-on trainer (cheat mode) [ox] means you have a good dump but the file is bigger than it needs to be (overdump) [a] is alternate, e.g. there are a couple different but good copies of the same game. [!] means it's VERIFIED good. Roms without are probably not bad either but haven't been verified by other people.

I install a local copy of GameEx but have the config.ini point to resources on a shared drive. That way I can make certain customizations on a per machine basis. It is kind of a pain to update all of the config.ini's though. If you're trying to run the same image on multiple machines, one issue I can see is that you may need to tell the .NET framework to trust the copy of GameEx on the share. If you run GameEx from a foreign drive it will be treated as a less secure program and may run into problems. You can change that in the Control Panel, Administrative Tools, .NET configuration. There's a Runtime Security Policy, set it to full trust for the Local Intranet.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!