bkenobi

It's cool. I didn't want to know how much I spend on SF anyway (too painful)

As I recall, WinAmp uses .pls for playlists.

For MAME, you can just do this inside the MAME interface. Hit tab and go to the administration menu and adjust the key combo to whatever you want.

That rule is intended to keep physical coin mechanisms out of the machine and operable. The transfer system is actually something that was pseudo-discussed earlier, but with a timer type setup. I still don't think that a statistic of how many times a button has been pushed is violating the rule or even the intent of the rule. In this case, we are simply speaking about a system that keeps track of the number of "coins" that have been put into the system and leaving it at that. If someone were to find a way to hook into that and somehow use that number for something, THEN there would be a violation of that rule. HOWEVER, I think you would be better off writing that code from scratch anyway since hacking into another compiled code (which isn't all that complex) would be more work than just writing it from scratch anyway! Oh, and physical coin mechs are in MANY MANY cabinets already (since a lot of people just use old converted cabs). Both of my machines have them! I don't know how many people hook up the coin switch (which is just 2 wires per mech), but that in itself would be a violation of that rule...

You probably need to check for the -mouse argument in the command line for MAME. You could also opt to put it in the MAME.ini instead which will be applicable for all MAME games. To check the command line, run a MAME game from GameEx, quit the game (and GameEx if necessary), then go to the start menu and look at the contents of the file "Run Last Game". This is a batch file that contains the launch command for that game and it will show what options you are asking MAME to use. My guess is that -mouse is not there.

Exactly my point. A statistic is just a statistic. Unless Tom were to add a hook for time or coin count, I don't think there is any reason for concern. If someone wanted to use GameEx in a commercial venture, they would be able to relatively easily via a plugin, which of course can be written by the end user. Anyway, I don't know that I would call it "heated", but I would say it is something that has been debated before and is again being rehashed. Not to overstate the point, but I think it would be an interesting statistic, that's all.

I doubt that would be a significant problem as long as the polling rate was sufficiently high. I think default is 125Hz which is enough for standard key presses. If you are using a spinner, you would probably want more. As I recall, USB has a polling rate of 250Hz, so it's much better.

Nope, times played will tell you how many times you launched a certain game. Coins inserted would tell you how many coins were put in for each game. I may only launch SF 1 time in a day but put 1000000 coins in it. Or I could launch Pacman 5 times in a day and only play a single game each time. If you look at the statistics, you would see Pacman as more popular whereas it was only played for 5 games vs 1000000.

I agree, but I'm still going to point out that just because the capability to keep the statistics of coins used is available, it doesn't mean that anything is there to allow for charging. If noone wants it, that's cool too, but don't jump to the conclusion that a coin counter STATISTIC is a coin CHARGING capability.

Come to think of it, there may not be a need to have any support for exiting afterall with a gamepad. Here's what I'm thinking... MAME: If the screensaver starts and someone decides to try the game, let them play without quiting on any button press. If the person doesn't want to play that game, they will try to hit the exit/quit button anyway, so just let MAME exit the way it normally does. Emulators: As long as you still can detect the exit key/key combo set up in the advanced config, there is no problem. Basically do the same thing as MAME so if they hit exit, do it. Otherwise let it play.

OH!!!

Now that the Auto Update goes smoothly, these updates don't bother me a bit. Actually, they get me a little excited about the new features!

you mean the smooth creamy fake stuff, or the hard-as-a-rock real stuff in a stick?

I'm thinking that the most obvious (especially for people who don't know GameEx) would be to have the game exit only on escape or a single button that is the standard CP exit button. I've had people come over and when a game they wanted to play popped up, they hit some buttons and it exited (then they turned to me and said "WTF!"). When they didn't want to play, they either asked "how do I quit this thing?" or just mashed on the quit button. If it was just a single key that exited, then it would be a single configuration item in the settings. Anyway, that's just my thoughts as to an easy way to get it set up in a logical way. Thanks!

That makes sense. But, if GameEx doesn't have any way of using the statistics for anything but that, what's the harm. Someone could always write a plugin to limit the use of GameEx anyway, so this wouldn't really change anything. I think it would be cool, but it's not worth fighting for or against IMO.

I hadn't thought about a plugin. That would work nicely for collecting the data. I really would like to see this implemented in the statistics page though. I don't know how that would work since I don't know where the data is drawn from.

Actually, the GP-Wiz has 4 direction inputs (basically a D-pad) and 32 button inputs. What they are used for is completely up to the end user. RandyT at GroovyGameGear.com just changed the board. I think the labels he put on there now are a bit confusing since the board doesn't send anything but direction and buttons 1-32. These need to be used with a 3rd party program to send keypresses (Joy2Key or XPadder). I ordered a new controller from him yesterday, so I will know better within a couple days. However, I can attest that the older controller design did work the way I described above and I don't get the impression from talking with him that anything has changed. EDIT: Actually, I think the reason those labels exist is that the same board is used for all of his controllers. So for the Key-Wiz, these labels are accurate.

Sure, why not. I'll add a request for this. Only question is how it would be implemented (just assume that the number of coins added were used I guess).

Yeah, there is no standard layout for the GP-Wiz. In my case, I have buttons 21 and 23 (as I recall) set for P1Coin and P2Coin. Other people might have a 4 player CP where button 6, 12, 18, and 24 are credit though. It's completely user configurable as the buttons are just that...buttons. Perhaps just making a setting where button 6 (the default control) could be changed to some other button(s). If not, I suppose just making an AHK script to send that button would be possible, but it requires a bit of overhead somewhat unnecessarily.

Possibly, but XArcade has had Playboy bunnies playing with their controllers on old 80's games, so unless they're nerds too...

Maybe that's why I'm having a problem! I use a GP-Wiz, so I'm not sending '5', I'm sending button 21. I suppose I could have an AHK script to help out, but is it possible to make this feature gamepad friendly?

I kinda wish this were integrated into the statistics page. A list of games that you've spent the most money on...

Also, perhaps an option to cancel if the download is taking way too long? If it's already installing, no cancel would be needed. And just for clarification, what does the blocking of buttons do? I'm not sure what it's intended to do. Thanks!

That's a good place for them. I haven't used them yet (I only have NES and SNES installed currently), but that's where I assumed they would go. If not, then it should probably be added to the feature request thread since that's a different request than I initially though.

This would be a good item to add to the Most Wanted Features thread!