bkenobi

Yeah... I looked at AnandTech CPU comparison just now. They don't list my CPU anymore, so I used an AMD Athlon 2650e and compared it to a I3-540. Well, that makes my system look appropriately inadequate. I suspect that running Zinc will be my only option unless I decide to upgrade. But, since I've got other priorities, I guess that's not likely to happen any time in the foreseeable future. Oh well...

What are your system specs? I'm running an older AthlonXP 3200+ 32-bit processor. If you have something significantly more powerful, it would be nice to know since that will assuredly affect my systems 100% speed likelihood.

I think you'll max out a single U-HID with all of that. Those encoders aren't the cheapest you'll find, so you may consider a combination of multiple. If you are going ultimarc, you might want to go with a mini U-HID and a IPAC to get the needed inputs and cut some cost. If you can afford the dual UHID, that'll be a pretty nice setup.

I've been using a GP-Wiz forever. I started with the GP-Wiz32 and liked it well enough. GGG released the GP-Wiz32-RX, so I upgraded to that since I have mechanical rotary joysticks. The only thing I'd say I would rather have is the 40 input version of the same controller. I had to map 2 of my functions to combinations since I ran out of inputs. I don't think I have ever had an issue with either controller. Oh, the only thing I would have liked to see included with this controller is a way to map player 2 inputs directly to a second HID. If that were possible, games that don't like sharing inputs for multiple players would be easier to set up. Instead, I have to set both players to keyboard input and use XPadder to remap joystick to keyboard. Not a big deal, but would be a little easier. If you want to do that and don't have a rotary joystick, take a good look at the Ultimark UHID controller. It can handle digital, optical, and analog inputs at the same time and can output digital, analog, and keyboard inputs for multiple HID's as I recall. It's pretty sweat, but a bit pricey as I recall.

I've seen a LOT of frankenpanels that include 3 buttons near the spinner/trackball for use as mouse buttons. The reason these people may not have an issue with emulators is that they use the mouse buttons for those setups. XPadder is one product that is used to overcome just this issue. I've also used AHK (AutoHotKey) to resolve similar issues such as dual inputs mapped to a single function (P2 up + down = exit for instance).

These are more or less some ramblings on the topic that might help in some way. If you create a custom game list, this is simply a MAME32 formatted folders file. GameEx will create a set of lists according to these custom game list files, but it will not allow you to pass any parameters based on it AFAIK. You may be able to use the plugin system, but I don't know that it will improve things. If you want to load different MAME games with different settings, one way to do that is to set them up in different emulators (still MAME though). In doing so, you will have different command lines and paths that MAY make what you are trying to do easier. If you want to combine these back into a single list, you can use the mameemulist.ini (and associated tool used to generate it).

Glad I could help. Enjoy!

You shouldn't need to go through that much effort. That would be one way to do it, but I think you should be able to find the info on how to set this up on the CPWizard web site. HK has a lot of details on how to set things up, so you should be good. If not, you can either ask HK there (if he has a way to do that) or right here. Review the docs then post specific questions so that help can be given efficiently. http://headsoft.com.au/index.php?category=cpwizard

It looks like this is already resolved, but I'd like to throw out another option that may suit you or the next person who reads the thread. It appears that you want to close XPadder primarily since you won't be using it and not because you are concerned about the processing overhead. If that's the case, then you can simply create a blank profile and load that when GameEx loads rather than killing XPadder. This will result in quicker startup and shutdown of GameEx and give you exactly the same functionality as you are expecting. The only down side is that you will have a small amount of resources used up on an application that isn't doing anything. HOWEVER, if at some point you install an emulator that requires XPadder, you will have an extremely easy process for getting it up and running. All you will have to do is load a profile for that emulator on startup and the blank one on exit. Enjoy!

You mean you want GameEx to send CPWizard a parameter to tell it what's connected at the time? Or, you want to have CPWizard display a control scheme based on what SHOULD be connected? If you want the former...that won't happen. GameEx doesn't know what you have hooked up. If you were to build a script to check for certain HID ID's, it might be possible to change the scheme on the fly, but that would be tricky. If you want the latter, that's exactly what I was describing. You can set up CPWizard so that it has a different layout for different filters. It's been a while since I set it up, but I know there are lots of options available to make this work the way you want!

As an example, if you have light guns set up, you can have CPWizard show what the controls are with a picture of the gun you use. It is possible to do the same thing with swappable panels, you just have to get it set up. Now, there is nothing that mandates that CP be installed. So, if the user is using a different CP, CPWizard will happily display the wrong settings for the current panel.

You can certainly make CPWizard work that way. If you want to have a different CP for specific games, you'll need to review it's guide. I know it shouldn't be a problem since HK specifically took that stuff into account.

There is no way to automatically have GameEx display a different set of game lists depending on the controls that you have configured. It is possible that something could be implemented using the multiple user add-on that HK developed. You would have to select what user (configuration) the control panel is in and you would then be shown lists that are appropriate (assuming you did the legwork to make them appropriate).

The only work around that is available is to have multiple users for GameEx. There's an app that HK put together that allows a user to switch to a different user through the GameEx interface nicely. I haven't used it, but I recall that when it was released, several people commented on how well it worked. You might want to check that out in the mean time while waiting for the full feature you've described. No, it doesn't do exactly what you want, but it does allow for multiple favorites lists in a different way.

There are ratings for games in MAME that GameEx displays during the screen saver. I don't know if there's a rating for any other systems' games, but it would be nice to have. Then, you'd just need a threshold to determine whether a game is worth keeping in your active set. If you are planning on testing all games on your system before including them, this rating could provide you a place to start anyway.

I was thinking about that after posting. Zinc uses some shortcuts to get the graphics all nice, smooth, and pretty. MAME is not going to do that since that's pseudo-emulation. So, unless they figured out some cool ways to make accurate emulation run faster, I'd probably need a faster machine than I've got running now. I'll check it out on my dual-core box to see if that can even push it!

My GameEx profile is actually used to map both players to the same keyboard inputs so either player can pick games. If I remember correctly, I primarily use the blank profiles for the game pads when they aren't used and a blank profile for the CP when they are used.

I guess the real question about the Zinc games is whether they incorporated the Zinc engine or if they improved the zn.c etc library right in MAME. If they incorporated what Zinc was already doing, then it should play approximately the same as it did in Zinc. If it's new code, then yeah, I'll have to test. I'll have to check out the whatsnew.txt to figure that out. Anyone know what version these games became playable?

I know this is already resolved, but I wanted to point out my approach for XPadder. I have a blank profile and one for each system I want to use XPadder with. For each system, I use the launch before to change the profile to the appropriate one (sometimes just my blank one for completeness). I also use a launch on close command that switches back to the GameEx profile. I've found that XPadder doesn't always do exactly what I want when I want with the command line stuff. As a result, the easiest thing to do is simply load it at startup and switch profiles on the fly. This also works really nicely with my system since I have the CP and 2 Logitech rumblepads. If I were to use the CL to launch XPadder, I've found that things get out of order for some reason. As a result, the CP sometimes would be assigned the rumblepad layout. Obviously, that won't work right. I would prefer to have XPadder only loaded when needed since I hate extraneous overhead, but this works correctly and reliably, so it's what I do.

You don't need to get a bigger hard drive if you are just running MAME and opt to at least prune the list of CHD games. If you want a full set, then you will certainly need a bigger drive. IMO though, most of the CHD games are only needed if you really want to play the rhythm games (DDR and such). If you have a fast enough system (which I don't think applies to your specs), you can also play some of the seattle based games (San Francisco Rush, NFL Blitz, etc). Since you have a small drive (by today's standards), you should either upgrade or simply not use a full CHD set. If it were me, I'd opt for the latter option for reasons I've already stated.

NonMAME only lists Cool Boarders under Zinc now. Does that mean that the main MAME code is sufficient to actually play the rest of these games reliably now? If so, can anyone comment on the brawn the system needs to have in order to fire up these games? I can play these pretty perfectly in Zinc, so switching over to MAME is fine as long as they don't require tons more power. Also, I didn't realize there was a Model3 emulator available. Is that pretty playable? I suspect it's probably up there with PS2 and Wii emulation since they all used pretty high polygon count. On the other hand, Dreamcast emulation isn't that tough apparently...

I think the all games list is all games in all systems UNLESS the system is marked as not included in the screen saver. I don't let GameEx use any emulator except MAME for my screen saver, but AFAIK it's set to all games.

My first thought would be that something in the "T" section is broken and so GameEx skipped the rest for some reason. Are ANY games processed after "T", or is it really just that one game category?

I was pretty sure there was a setting for this. I know you can tell it to just play the favorites, but I thought it could also be set to only use available roms. I haven't checked in a while, but I know that, by default, GameEx will perform as you describe. On my driving machine I physically deleted all roms I didn't want played so it wouldn't take up HDD space, which solved the screen saver issue.

If you have a different rom set than the version of MAME, you may be ok...or you could have problems. The issue would be whether you are trying to use a rom that's been changed. In general, if you are using a rom set that's relatively current, you should be ok for the most part. Any rom that has been added/changed/removed/etc will no longer work. All other roms should work find. Your best bet is to use the same rom set as the version of MAME, though. One way to get that is to use clrmamepro to create a clean rom set.