bkenobi

When I had GameEx playing the audio, it seemed to hang. I also disabled a few of the other codecs (divx, xvid, etc.) through CCCP. Works great now!

The problem is definitely another program stealing focus as Brian said. The problem is that sometimes it's hard to tell where it is coming from. I'd suggest disabling everything that is running at start up and then re enabling just the things you need one at a time to see what's causing it.

I found the same thing right after the new graphics engine was introduced. I was VERY dissatisfied with the DDraw engine, so I switched to D3D and haven't looked back. As I understand, DDraw is supposed to be the better choice, but it looks terrible.

Possibly, but I would try it out before you cut it. I know some plexi still has stuff in it that blocks stuff. I'm just saying you might want to try a couple things out if you can. I bet swapping to a different glass or plexi would help, but I don't know if it would be enough to solve things.

So the slowdowns aren't emulation problems, they are problems with the actual game?

Out of curiosity, did you notice any difference in performance when you went from TinyXP to full XP? I'm wondering if the difference in system speed is even noticable when working with MAME and other emulators. I imagine that if you are severely resource limited, you could improve things by reducing services and the like. But, with a sufficiently powerful machine (which is needed for some emulators anyway), the difference should be minimal. Correct?

You might find that the glass you are using is a poor choice. Some glass contains extra additives that absorbs signal. The dorm I lived in at school had leaded windows or something that blocked satellite signals, so the only way to get reception was to open the window and put up a sheet of carboard covered with a garbage bag (or at least that was the cheapest way ). I don't know if that could cause the problem you are having or not, but it might be something worth asking a glass shop about (the types of glass available that is).

Maybe it's just me, but unless you are trying to play a game that MAME doesn't support yet, why would you use any of these (FBA, Nebula, WinKawaks, NeoRage, etc.)? The only times I've seen a problem with MAME is when playing Metal Slug and 50000 bombs and such are going off for the bosses here and there. I don't know if this is better with one of the stand alone emulators, so maybe someone could enliten me?

Well, I was doing some funny stuff with my cab yesterday trying to set up my new GP-Wiz and I managed to fork things up. Whatever I did, it caused the problem you have brought up to happen. I killed the task with ctl-alt-del and restarted GameEx and it worked fine. I don't remember what I did, but it's not typical, I can verify that!

You did what? Reinstalled .Net 1 and 2? Were you using a slim version of Windows or the full version?

I have a pair of Scorpion3 PS2 light guns. The TV in my cab is behind glass and it causes some small problems with accuracy around the edge of the screen, but it's not too bad. I would personally have recommended the lcd topguns based on user reports (I read a TON prior to getting my guns). I was cheap and got a pair of PS2 guns off some website. The were rated very highly for this purpose, so I gave them a shot. I wouldn't get them again primarily due to construction as they are almost all plastic. I had to open them up and fix the trigger on each one because they were assembled wrong. If you don't like the topguns, try another one of the PS2 GunCon2 lightguns out there. Many of them use a USB plug and some even have a power cube so you don't have to hack up a PS2 cable. My suspicion with your guns is that if you put the LCD strips on the outside of the glass, they will work fine!

That was going to be my suggestion. Glad you got it working!

EmuMovies is run by Circo who is a member here. He is in the process of creating a HUGE set of MAME videos to replace his first complete set. I beleive he is a little more than halfway done. I personally prefer his stuff over MAME Videos.

If there is a will to do it, then of course there is a way! The history.dat file contains formatted data that Tom is reading with GameEx. He tells it what he wants to keep and appends it to the correct field in the mdb file during an update. There are two ways to get what you want. 1) ask Tom to change it either here or in the features request thread (depending on whether this is considered a bug or a new feature); 2) Do something yourself to edit the mdb file to contain the info you want (asking for help if needed). I personally think (1) should be done at some point, but if you are impatient like many of us here then I suggest you consider (2). The database I'm refering to is in a subdirectory of c:\Program Files\GameEx, but I don't remember which one. As I recall, it's called data.mdb. When you open this file, you will se a list of all your MAME games with the pertinant information in subsequent fields. One option is to write an update query. This may proove to be a pain in the rear if you aren't good with access, though. But, if the history.dat file has changed at all, I think GameEx should be updated to deal with it correctly in the next version. I personally consider this a bug that can easily be fixed. Hey nologic, was that rambling enough?

That should work. You just need to put your MAME32 formatted lists in the d:\Mame\folders directory, too. Then, verify that GameEx is pointing to that directory and you should be good to go! Just for kicks, have you tried a standard 32 bit version of MAME (either vanilla MAME or MAME32)? I don't think that's the problem, but it wouldn't hurt to eliminate your build as the problem.

There's a plugin for the U360 available for GameEx. I don't have the U360, so I don't really know what it can do (perhaps nothing wrt Zinc), but I suggest checking it out!

That's what I was leaning towards. I found the package and they are 4148's, so I'm gonna give them a try. It would cost more in gas to go buy new ones than these cost, so I figure they are worth a try anyway.

Genre and version won't show up because GameEx can't find CatVer.ini. It also can't locate nplayer.ini, so you won't have info about the number of players for your games. Here's a section of my log file where I ran update. You can see that it's detecting catver and such just fine. 19:23:01.7 10/19/2007: Adding Catver.ini info to gamelist 19:23:17.5 10/19/2007: Writing MAME Game List To File 19:23:18.4 10/19/2007: Adding History.dat info to gamelist 19:23:39.0 10/19/2007: Adding Nplayers.ini info to gamelist 19:23:47.4 10/19/2007: Adding History.dat Series info to gamelist 19:28:27.2 10/19/2007: Adding MAMEInfo.dat info to gamelist 19:31:13.3 10/19/2007: Writing MAME Game List To File 19:31:22.5 10/19/2007: Updating Year List 19:31:22.5 10/19/2007: Updating Manufacturer List 19:31:22.7 10/19/2007: Updating Category List 19:31:22.7 10/19/2007: Updating Custom Folders 19:31:22.7 10/19/2007: Writing Year List To File 19:31:22.7 10/19/2007: Writing Manufacturer List To File 19:31:22.7 10/19/2007: Writing Category List To File 19:31:22.7 10/19/2007: Loading Game List 19:31:23.2 10/19/2007: Importing MAME32 Favorites 19:31:23.2 10/19/2007: Recreating ICONS I wonder if it will process the custom folders if the prerequisites are missing? Also, did you try updating your list? I don't see that in this log, so I can't be sure.

The first thing I notice is that GameEx is detecting you are running "Operating System Platform: Win32NT". I suspect this is just because GameEx doesn't take advantage of the 64bit stuff, so it doesn't worry about it. This shouldn't affect MAME though.

Interesting! Hey, I had another question that's related to this, but on the hardware side. I know I need a diode between the signal and switch to keep the signal lines from actually touching, but I can't find any docs that say what type of diode is needed. I'll be using something from Radio Shack or out of my stockpile. Any recommendations? Does it matter that much? I have one that says fast switching, and the other says something about high current. I don't have the two in front of me, but I'm thinking that signal wires from the GP-Wiz shouldn't carry a significant current (that would be bad) and they need to respond quickly, so I'm leaning towards the faster one. Any EE's out there that can offer any advice?

If you updated MAME and not the ROMS or vice versa, you might have games that MAME says are not verified and thus will be filtered out. Make sure you are running the same version of MAME as the ROMS you have and everything should be good.

Odd...

I was going to jump as well...until I found out it was half way around the world

What system are you running? I think that happened prior to WinXP, so if you are running anything Win95 through Win2000, you might experience this. With WinXP Pro SP2 it does work for sure.

Hey Brian, think this is cause the batch file is creating a new Process that GameEx isn't watching? I haven't followed this topic really, but that sounds like what's going on...