bkenobi

Wow, I wasn't aware that you could specify a process to wait for. Good tip!

The info is extracted from the history.dat file. You need to update it to your MAME rom version if you haven't already. If there's something you want to add, it will have to be added to that file. Alternately, you could update the data.mdb file. If you do that though, every time you update your MAME list, it will be deleted...

1) This question was brought up a couple days ago and answered in another post. The short answer is that GameEx keeps MAME previews in the same aspect ratio as the game. So, if you have a vertical game (3:4), the preview needs to be in a vertical aspect ratio (3:4) as well. If you have the Emumovies collection, then you need to get the "Vertical" set so that these games show up correctly. 2) Run the Setup Wizard and in the search field enter "panel". Select "Enable/Disable Features (2)" and set "Enable Panel Viewer" to 'Yes'.

Q: I launch XXXX using YYYY as a loader. When the game starts, the screen goes black I can hear the audio in the background but GameEx pops back up. What's going on? A: When GameEx launches a game (Arcade/Console ROM, PC Game/Application, etc.), it keeps track of the process that was spawned. When that process ends, GameEx assumes that the you are done playing that game and it's time to return to the front end. The problem is that if a loader is used to launch a game (Daphne Loader is a classic example), that process launches the actual game in a new process and closes. The expected result is that the game is playable. However, GameEx doesn't know anything about the new process. The solution is to either launch the game directly without the loader or modify the loader, if possible, to stay active until the game has closed.

I found that when registering at BYOAC it took a couple days and it ended up in the junk mail box when it did arrive. I think they validate members manually to keep bots out.

If you have to finish the surface anyway, there are easy ways to fill those holes. The best way I can think of is taking a circle cutter drill bit and cut it to as close to the right size as possible (preferably a bit small). Then, use wood glue, a backer strip, and brads or staples to attach the piece. Finally, use wood putty to fill the hole between the two pieces. After a bit of sanding (and perhaps a second coat of putty depending on the gap), just apply primer and paint. I personally have done this twice and find it easy and fun. If you want a laminate finish, then you already have your answer. Laminate does make for a more durable and easier to clean surface, but it's a royal pain in the ass to install IMO. Keep in mind that I haven't installed laminate before, but I have worked with contact cement and relatively large material...it's not fun.

Actually, the "do not filter" items should be excluded from all filters no matter what. Pacman is one clone of Puckman, so that is correct that it would be filtered by "clones unless better", but it should still show up if you explicitly override it. I'm not sure why it isn't there unless GameEx has decided it's not a valid rom. On way to check that would be to turn off the "verify roms" filter and update your list.

We should have something in the FAQ about how GameEx knows when a game is finished. There have been a bunch of threads dealing with loaders and the fact that when it launches the game to a new process and quits, GameEx takes back focus thinking the game is over.

Try running pacman from the command line to verify that it's not considered a broken game and that it's the correct version of the rom for your version of MAME. You can just go to the mame directory and run: mame.exe pacman If you have your roms in another location than mame\roms and you don't have the location called out in the MAME.ini file, you will need to add the -romdir switch with your location.

Nice work. Btw, although you put text at the bottom of at least one of these, the file should still work fine. The only problem with this is that the loader looks for the passed rom name that is supplied by the GameEx [ROM] argument. Basically, it sends the name of the rom sans the extension. So instead of "outrun.zip", GameEx will send "outrun". I programmed the loader so that it accepts that naming and thus it will fail to load these alternate versions. Essentially what I'm saying in a very long winded way is that these files need to be just the rom name without the extension.

Interesting. I hadn't considered that the whole emu could be set up as vertical or horizontal. That would work I suppose.

The reason you lose focus of MAME is because something else is taking it. I suggested a program being launched at runtime and anti-virus because those are the two I consider most likely. It's possible that the resolution change from GameEx to MAME could cause this if the drivers take focus momentarily I suppose. One thought is make sure you have GameEx set to NOT change the resolution.

I think he said something about using his laptop for the system in his cabinet a while back (as in, instead of having a PC in there all the time, he plugs it in when he wants to use the cab...from another thread). In any case, it sounds to me like you may be launching a program via launch before or something that's not playing nice. The other thing that could be going on is anti-virus. Perhaps this only happens each time you play a game for the first time? If so, then maybe the anti-virus program scans the archive prior to letting you access its contents (it is a zip file afterall).

In order to figure this out, there's a couple things you need to do. First, if you want help from this forum, you must pretty much always post you log containing the problem (the whole log file). Second, since this is a problem with a game launching and is unlikely a problem with GameEx, you will want to run the "Run Last Game.bat" file in the GameEx Start menu folder. When you run it, it will not work (presumably), but that's ok. What you need to do is edit this file and add "PAUSE" as a new line. Run it again and see what the error is. If you figure out the error (which is 99% chance a command line argument problem), we can get it going. Btw, if you are using GameEx, you really don't need the MAME32 front end, so I suggest using vanilla MAME instead. MAME32 will work, but most people use the standard version which is a little easier to work with from the command line.

In order to do that, I suspect Tom would have to poll the metadata from the video to determine the aspect ratio prior to displaying it. Maybe it's simpler than that and he can just take the video size and shrink it so that it fits in the 4:3 region of the theme. I don't know, but I agree that displaying the video in it's original ratio would be good.

Just a thought about your aspect ratio problem. Have you considered re encoding the videos to include vertical letterboxes? I consider this a temporary fix and it might be a bit of work, but it could make things look better in the short term (until Tom fixes it). This thread talks about a way to go the opposite direction, but I bet it would work for you. I don't know how many Vectrex games there are, so this might be daunting to accomplish...

I guess I don't see the problem here. From my inspection of the pictures, I see a couple things. First, this is an Intel chipset P4 board. It probably has an Intel onboard video, but that really doesn't matter since you have an open AGP slot. That's very good! There are plenty of low profile AGP cards out there if you have a short case. If your case is tall enough to support a full sized card, you are golden! Even if Dell limited certain things, I don't see how they could disable the AGP slot from accepting a video card. I personally would look into a NVidia GeForce or perhaps a TNT of the low profile variety. There are some decent ATI cards out there from the AGP era, but I'm not as familiar with them, so I can't suggest anything. EDIT: Btw, it depends on what you have for onboard video what card to buy. If your system is actually a bit newer, you would probably be better off with at least a Geforce 4800 and maybe even something more on the lines of the ATI 1300 series cards. I wouldn't go much higher than that unless you plan on putting your purchase in a new machine in the near term (unlikely since new machines use PCIe, not AGP).

I suspect this is a rather old machine, so it's probably out of warranty. I suspect they will blow you off and tell you to search Dell.com under the support forum. It's worth a shot though. I personally would look at the board specs and just buy something that fits within them and assume it will work. If you really have to spend that much time on an old machine, it's not always worth the effort. If you really can't figure it out (and don't want to spend that much time on an old machine), one option is putting it in the closet for the next project and just building a new one...

Is that darkened white noise in the background? I'm surprised that it actually looks pretty good. Ummm, to be clear...I didn't expect that style of background would look nice. Your theme looks good though. Damn it...I don't think my attempted compliment is coming out right

That doesn't work exactly... There are some special settings that MAME32 uses that vanilla MAME doesn't use. You could try that, but I don't know if it would work. I know for sure it wouldn't work the other way, but it's more likely to work this way (MAMEUI.ini -> MAME.ini). Minimally, you could compare the contents of the files and see what the differences are. Perhaps you will be surprised and find the setting that's different by comparing the two!

This is the first request for correcting the ratio of video snaps, so really this belongs in the main features request thread...

See, you didn't really need Tom's help after all! You were just wasting his time...

Yeah, I really think "GameEx.exe -getmybeer" needs work. It keeps crashing when I try it, just like my wife (well, that's more of a verbal failure message actually).

I know that you can adjust this setting inside MAME for each game by hitting 'TAB' and going to 'Video Options'. There's a rotation setting there. I know there's a way to set your monitor as vertical or horizontal, but I don't know what it is at the moment. My first thought is that it should work the way you want by default, so if it isn't I suspect you have edited the MAME.ini. If you can't find the setting to change, just rename the file and start from scratch. It doesn't take that long and will probably get you where you want faster. You can use your current one as a reference for what you want to change.

Ahhhh, I see the problem. There is at least one console that WAS vertical!