bkenobi

Well there you go! So the only down side to reflashing is the slight delay during the actual write. Sounds like it's a good solution to me.

Those are all 4:3 by default. Is the issue that you want to display them as 4:3 on an HD output (meaning you need bars on the side)? I'm not familiar with PC -> HDTV output, so I'm asking as much to understand as anything else...

No, your favorites should not be affected. If you have put a lot of time into selecting favorites, you might want to make a backup just in case of a crash though.

I'm curious about reprogramming ipac controllers? Do these use an EEPROM chip to store the settings, or are they flash memory? The reason I ask is that I know flash has a limited number of writes before the memory "wears out". If you reprogram the chip every once in a while, no biggie, but if you are doing this for every game, the writes could start to add up quickly. Also, if it's on a EEPROM of some kind, is that also rewriting the ipac code every time, or is that located elsewhere? If you are writing the controllers main code each time, couldn't it get corrupted. ehhh, these are WAY off topic, but I figured I would throw these out these if anyone knows. Thanks!

Sorry, I didn't intend to leave this for so long, but I ran out of time before leaving town. I tested this for a few hours but didn't get a chance to post the results at the time. For whatever reason, the menus aren't updating the way they initially were when I accidentally/manually updated things. I don't have a clue why, but it's probably better for GameEx not to allow this accidental feature. I appreciate the help with the quick script Tempest! It worked great and did exactly what it was supposed to

Nice solution! It's not exactly on the same order as using an XBox controller since those don't cost nearly as much ($29.99 MSRP versus $149.99 MSRP), but a good solution none the less.

Anyone ever thought about having a GameEx plugin that would run on the second monitor to allow for sending media player commands? I don't use the audio or video stuff in GameEx, but it seems like it would be useful for those with 2 displays to be able to hit next/last/pause/volume up/volume down/etc. without exiting the game/movie. This could be part of CPWizard, couldn't it? Maybe a little add on that just sends the hook to GameEx? Just a thought.

VGA can support resolutions that are above the HD spec, so I don't see how there would be any benefit. The real benefit comes from the guts of the card. Higher memory on-board is only needed for games that use many large texture maps (read as hard core 3D games). More powerful GPU is typically only needed for games that do advanced lighting things (shader stuff etc) or for games that have super high polygon count (again, hard core 3D games on high resolutions). All of this stuff can look fine at HD resolutions with lesser cards AFAIK. When you step up to really large PC monitors, you are going to a much higher resolution than the HD spec, so you need more horsepower for your card. Now, I haven't bought a card in quite a while nor have I closely followed the market in recent months/years. However, technology and features change, but the reasons behind an upgrade don't. If you have a use for the new features, then it may be worth it to you. If you won't use the new features and/or you don't even know what they are (possibly marketing hype), it's only worth it if you are either flush with money or need to have a fancy sticker on your case.

I use a pair of Logitech Rumblepad 2's as well. No issues with them...other than they always want to be controllers 1 and 2. As a result, I had to remap my MAME stuff to joystick 3 for my GP-Wiz.

You will need to post your emulator config and advanced emulator config file. If you run the Advanced Configuration Utility, you can export your config and find the emulator config file you are using.

There are a lot of new options in the last year, so I wouldn't say that you will be problem free just by updating. The main thing is that the defaults for the new options might not match what you currently have. My tentative thought would be you should be ok, but your best bet is to copy your entire GameEx directory to a backup location. That way, if you do run into any issues, you can revert back or just look at what you had as a reference. Either way, if you do run into any issues, there are plenty of people here that are willing to step you through the fixes. I would definitely update just because of all the new options Tom has added in the last year if it were me though!

It shouldn't matter what order you perform this patch in. If the location in the source is different, the patcher will try an offset and will usually succeed. The patch hasn't changed in a long time. It will add hooks so that CPWizard can unpause mame and also creates an item in the TAB menu to display the CPWizard artwork. The pause thing is primarily why I installed it.

So are we saying that the problem in GameEx is that if you turn on attract mode but have nothing enabled to play, then the controls get AFU? Sounds like something that could be trapped by Tom pretty easily. Maybe even something that should be warned in the log file and then attract mode disabled automatically?

I'm going to give this a try. Btw, the path is c:\program files\gameex\config\custommenu.ini.

I don't know if this will help or not... I noticed the other day (when I had this problem) that there is an autoupdate directory where GameEx downloads the new version to. It also keeps a file (C:\Program Files\GameEx\DATA\AutoUpdate\Config.ini) that should tell GameEx what to do. Here's the contents of an example: [SETTINGS] Update=False NoThemes=True Version= Perhaps there is an issue with this file on your system. I noticed that the version was 10.04 the other day, but now it's blank. I don't know what it should be, but if you delete the file, it might force GameEx to recreate it. Like I said, I don't know if this will screw anything up, so BBW!

Ok, I don't know how to implement this, but here's a thought. The window you are trying to put in front is probably being launched as a different process from the command you are sending. As a result, the PID you are trying to use isn't working. One thing that might work is finding all of the instances of the window and having the script put the PID with the larges number in the front and active. PIDs increase as your session goes along, so this should work. If you run for a very long time and launch a very large number of processes, I suppose the PID could loop, but I'm not sure about that. Anyway, that's all I got

If you decide to only backup specific files, you would want to install GameEx 2x for a full restore from nothing. 1) install GameEx 2) copy files into GameEx directory 3) install GameEx That way you are sure you haven't jacked up your install and you should have all your files you need. Alternately, just keep the files you back up in the same directory structure as what GameEx uses. Then you can put your backups in C:\Program Files\GameEx\... and then install over top of them. I hope that makes sense.

The thread is dead for my purposes (I must have had a key held down). As for the script, that would be cool. Only problem is that I'm not likely to get a chance to test it now. I'm on vacation for the next couple weeks and probably won't have time to do much before I leave. If you do put something together, go ahead and post it. I'll try it out if I get a chance. If not, perhaps someone else will read the thread and give it a try.

Another option is to hide the other process(es) when the new one starts. You can hide all old ones by name and then set the new one to be on top.

You can backup the gameex.ini and that will save most things. Depending on what else you have changed, there are some other files that need backing up too: custom menus (CONFIG\CustomMenu.ini), alternate emulators for MAME (CONFIG\mameemumap.ini), custom emulator advanced configs (CONFIG\emulators\???), custom themes, etc. The easiest thing to do is just back up the entire GameEx directory, but that's not necessary...just a bit easier.

You know, that's a definite possibility! I'm not sure how that would be implemented, but it could be done I suppose. What I was doing was editing the CustomMenu.ini file on my main system and then going back to the cab and hitting back. It would reload to the top of the menu automatically. If you had a script that was set up as an application, you could have a dialog show that took CP inputs and gave you a pass/fail indication. If it passed, you could copy a different file to CustomMenu.ini. When the app exits, GameEx should reload the new one. A definite possibility!!! You've already been playing with this type of stuff anyway with Cfg Magician, so maybe you can throw something together to give it a try?

I don't know... I just reenabled the custom menu with the screen saver component disabled and it seems to work. Then, I changed the custom menu to only have 2 items (screen saver and shut down). Everything seems to work. I then changed the menu back to the original one and still working. So, I'm not sure what the problem was at this point. I suppose the only thing that makes sense is that something might have fallen on the wireless keyboard and was pushing an unused button. Weird problem anyway... I did learn something I wasn't expecting with this testing though. Apparently, GameEx reads the custom menu file more than just at load time. So, if you change the file while GameEx is running, the interface will update on the fly. I think that's a good thing, but either way it's a known thing.

Ok, so I'm pretty sure this is custom menu related. I disabled the custom menus and restarted the computer. When it came back up, I was able to run the screen saver/attract mode without problem. log.txt

If I have some time, I'm going to go through and disable everything to see what the problem is. I'm using XPadder, but that shouldn't be an issue since I've been using that for a couple years now. Odd that it just started. I figured Tom might have been playing with the attract mode, so he might know what to check right off the bat.

Just an update. The log file I posted before was for 10.04. This one is for 10.05. Same results though... log.txt