bkenobi

The files you downloaded should have a name like "theme name - DEFAULT" or something similar. Just take each of those directories and put them in the "C:\Program Files\GameEx\Themes\" directory.

There is a bit of irony in it, but it's as much because of licensing as anything. Since the roms are owned by someone (though in some/many cases, it could be considered abandonware at this point), any programmer could get in serious shit if he allowed his work to be associated directly with illegal rom distributions. On the other hand, very few people actually own the boards for the roms they possess, so the software is typically used for running roms that are not legally owned. However, GameEx is a front end. It is not designed to run any rom directly, so there is no gray area with it. It is designed to run any program that has a command line interface, but with special features to make MAME work great. Either way, if you limit your efforts to putting GameEx on it's own disc, you shouldn't be violating Tom's request as far as I can see.

I think that's supposed to be possible in V3 themes. So, that counts as another vote for V3 themes.

Make the FAQ a SUPER STICKY! Hmmm, no super hero smiley, so I went with a masked man.

The 3rd monitor would be a bit difficult I think since you would have to add a 2nd or 3rd video card to your system. I've seen a few CP's that have an LED display with that kind of info. I'm sure there would be a pretty easy way to get that up and going, but a 3rd monitor could be tricky (but VERY cool potentially).

It is odd that we seem to get the same question 2 or 3 times in as many days and typically each in their own thread. The part I find funny is that half the time, they start off by saying "I searched but couldn't find an answer" when it's only 10-15 threads down

Actually, I think if you read the license for MAME (and probably other emulators as well), you will see that they strictly forbid distribution of MAME with any ROM on it. Now, I understand that this is "personal use" that you are trying to describe, but it's still putting MAME on a disc that is essentially distributable. I'm not linked to the MAMEdevs in any way, so I can't speak for them, but I think they would be pretty disappointed by this type of endeavor also. I do think it's a cool idea though.

Damn, I guess Brian beat me to the submit button. Anyway, I usually check pricewatch and pricegrabber to see what price things should cost. Then I typically check out a few of the deal forums to see if there's a decent price on anything. Finally, I see what Newegg has for competitive prices. I usually find that I can get a couple things at Newegg and save on shipping. Whatever else is worth the expense of shipping from elsewhere, I do that. Oh, and if you are looking to get good reviews on hardware (like motherboards and video cards), I find Newegg particularly useful!

Well, that statement is true...and false. For MAME, the goal is to emulate the hardware accurately to run the original roms as true to the original as possible. This means that there is no changing of the rom to allow for enhanced hardware that could run much faster. However, that doesn't mean that other emulators follow suit. As far as console emulation, many systems are just done with bruit force these days. I don't think there's any need to worry about writing drivers to use the advanced graphics capabilities of the newest NVidia or ATI cards to play Pitfall. On the other hand, there are some fancy drivers for more modern systems that do help. Look at Dreamcast or PSX emulation for example. Those both have pretty impressive graphics and I believe they both have drivers that work with your video card. In general though, I personally wouldn't worry about getting anything fancy for a graphics card for an arcade cabinet. I personally would spend the money on a hefty CPU and enough memory. BUT (there's always a but), it depends on what you want to play. If you only want to play 1970's arcade games, don't worry about it. You probably already have a good enough system. If you want to play modern consoles emulated on your PC, then you need to spend more money.

It depends on your BIOS what you can or can't set. Typically, you should be able to set 3 things that adjust the CPU speed: FSB, multiplier, voltage. For non overclocking setups, you would set the FSB and multiplier according to what the CPU was designed for. In some cases, the voltage is adjusted slightly to improve performance and/or stability. If your CPU was designed to run with a faster bus speed than your BIOS allow, you will either need to accept it, get a new motherboard, or find a hacked BIOS for your system. However, I thought you checked that the MB supported that CPU prior to buying, so I assume it's just a setting you need to change. What motherboard and CPU are you using? EDIT: After checking the first couple posts, I think I see the problem. It looks like your motherboard supports up to a 400 MHz FSB, but the CPU you purchased sounds like it needs an 800 MHz FSB. Unless that board offers some SICK overclocking, you won't be able to use it at full speed. In fact, it will only run at half speed! I hope I'm wrong, but it doesn't look good...

That depends. If you have GameEx set to not change resolutions, you won't need to do anything with GameEx. I don't use vpinmame, so I don't know anything about it. However, every emulator I have played with has a resolution setting of some kind as well as a full screen/windowed mode. I would check the emulator setup first. If GameEx runs, it isn't a problem with GameEx. If you have it changing resolutions though, it can crash when emulators start and exit. Just FYI.

Probably just a resolution setting since you are probably going from 4:3 to 16:9 and are certainly using different resolutions either way.

There's currently no way to do that natively with GameEx, however that doesn't mean it can't be done. Multiple displays could be just set up to run a program that displays an image. That image could be updated when the file in a directory changes. Then, when you launch a game, you could have a command launch prior to running that copies the appropriate image to the right directories. In fact, maybe you could just make a web page that displays an image in full screen. Set that browser to the appropriate display. Put a timer on the web page to automatically update (or use AHK/AI scripts to trigger it) and then just replace the image with the one you want to display. You can create the image you are talking about in batch, but I'm not sure of the procedure. Basically, you would use CP Wizard to generate the controls png and then combine that with the marquee. It may be trivial, I just don't know what program to use to batch create the images. Just my quick thoughts though...

You will need to post your log if you want someone to help.

That's another way to do it. If you have that option on your computer, that works great. If you don't, I suggest buying a smartstrip (or equivalent) or building your own. DIY is quick, cheap, and easy.

Yeah, it really looks to me like you were trying to customize the theme (which isn't a problem). When I tried the Alpha themes, they all looked correct, so I would definitely try one of the default themes and make sure it's not just related to that one. It could also be related to telling GameEx to use a larger font size. I think I've seen that happen before when someone was running at a high resolution and told GameEx to use the extra large font size. When he switched to using a lower resolution (like 800x600), the fonts automatically were larger and looked correct without adjusting font size.

I can't see enough detail to see what you are talking about. Try attaching the image directly to the post. It will show up if it's a jpg for sure.

I don't think there's any kind of volume control in the FFDShow codec, is there?

That's correct. You need to set the FSB speed to the appropriate value for you processor. I had an Athlon XP that was supposed to be a 3200, but was only running at 2000 out of the box. Turns out it was running at 200MHz instead of 333MHz. Not a big deal, just go to BIOS and set it manually.

Thanks for the link to the documentation! I didn't realize that GameEx resized vertical games to the correct resolution. That would explain why they get smashed when I preview them (I just downloaded the horizontal and artowork/full directories, so I guess I need the vertical too. Thanks for the hard work Circo!

You can adjust the volume in GameEx by holding down the volume button and pressing up/down. I don't know what button that is by default off the top of my head, so you will want to check the documentation for that. I set mine up to be button 3...

I should mention that I haven't payed attention to the distorted video lately, so Tom may have addressed it. But, from what sofakng is saying, it doesn't appear so.

I noticed the distorted video problem, but couldn't figure why it was doing it. It being a vertical game probably explains it though. I don't think you need to use the zip file at this point. As far as I know, there was an update to fix these issues released a couple weeks back, so this file shouldn't be needed.

I think he avoided putting this in that thread because this one is an actual arcade machine and the sticky is for machines running GameEx. I guess the sticky could be changed to include other arcade related projects though. Course, then we might end up with people showing off pinball machines and jukeboxes as well...and who wants that!

Cero21 didn't give a lot of details in his query, so I can't be sure about what he really wants. However, it sounds to me like he has a set of roms where each game has multiple files and in order to keep things organized, he put each game in its own subdirectory. If it were MAME, he could simply add all the directories to the MAME.ini file and be good to go. I have not done this, so I can't say exactly how to do it, but if you name each subdirectory exactly the same as the rom name you will be launching, there is a workaround that will work. Brian has helped out setting this up several times, so let us know if I am probing in the right direction.