bkenobi

Just to follow up on my post... I did have AdvanceMAME turned on Also, I renamed my config files for zinc, added the rename lines to the mameemumap.ini, and adjusted the call in the emulator. Things seem to be working great now!

You can have GameEx send a key press and even have it wait a certain amount of time before sending it. Check your emulator config to find that setting. I think it's called "Send Keys" (go figure ).

It's not illegal to sell the albums as long as he gives all of the media with them or at least doesn't keep a copy for himself (if downloaded from iTunes or something) AFAIK. HOWEVER....... no one does that, so you are right.

I was just about to check on that myself. Maybe you have to set the emulator to "use in screen saver" for it to show up? Not sure. Actually, I had another attract mode question (not to derail your topic, but it's related so I don't want to post a whole new one). When I have a MAME game playing and I add coins, I can play the game. However, after ~3 minutes the game quits and goes to the next screen saver selection (video or game). I checked the runitgame.bat and see that GameEx doesn't tell MAME to quit after a time period, so GameEx must not be seeing my interaction with MAME. I'm using custom keyboard input in GameEx and a gamepad in MAME in case that helps. Any thoughts?

When you have audio but no video, you can usually adjust the "show desktop" setting to fix/debug things. If the emulator goes full screen, you should be good. If it's windowed, then GameEx is probably hiding it. The best way to see if the emu is working is to run the "runitgame.bat" file. That's the exact command that GameEx uses to launch the emu, so if it throws up an error, you will be able to investigate it.

I tried the rename section and it will work. The problem is that I have config files for each game that set the buttons up the way I want them. As such, I have to call the config with <rom name>.cfg and the rom number for zinc. If I went through and renamed the configs to numbers, I could definitely scrap the wrapper. Hmmm, maybe that's not a bad idea.

My cab isn't on right now so I can't post my mameemumap.ini. I've successfully set up Model2, Zinc, and rotary joystick games to work with their appropriate emulators. For Zinc, I use a small wrapper to convert the MAME rom name into a number Zinc needs. For Model2, I think I'm just using the emu itself without a wrapper. For the rotary stick games I use a wrapper and run MAME Analog+. I have a little tweaking to do, but so far so good! If you are still having issues tomorrow I'll post my mameemumap.ini file so you can see what I've done. Nothing special really, so don't expect miracles.

Somehow I knew this was a sausagefest in here, but this proves it

That's what I thought, but I'm pretty sure AdvanceMAME is turned off. I guess I'll have to verify, but I don't even have the AdvanceMAME stuff set up anymore...I don't think. Guess I need to check on it again

Wow, I didn't realize. Well, whatever the current version is. Also, I've been looking through the list and it looks like my attract mode is on the fritz. It says this in the log: 13:23:36.1 4/4/2009: Running: cmd.exe /c C: C:\Emu\MAME\MAME.exe blockout -input_idleexit 300 13:23:51.8 4/4/2009: Returning From Attract Mode Best I can figure, -input_idleexit is no longer an option in MAME? If I run the command on it's own (mame.exe -input_idleexit 300), I get "Error: unknown option: -input_idleexit". Does this need attention? I'm running 0.130 currently.

I've been playing around with the new features for this new version and may have found a bug. After using the cab for a while, I found that when I went back to the main screen I'm getting the update bar flashing on and off. This doesn't keep me from moving the selection, it just looks bad. I don't know what would cause this, so I thought I would just post and see if there's anything I can try on my end. I'm currently updating the list, but when I'm done with that I'll try resetting the system to see if I get the same issue.

You don't have to detect anything since Tom already provides you a way to launch the last played game from windows. Just have your script launch the "runitgame.bat" file in the GameEx directory. It contains all commands that were used in launching the script so you don't need to worry about things like running xpadder or whatnot. Anyway, yeah...just use a batch file, or AHK script, or whatever other language you want to launch this game and you should be good...or just put that batch file in the startup command for GameEx/Windows.

Looks like this needs a newer version of DX than I have installed on the cabinet. Has anyone had any issues with DX10 of late? Should I find a version of DX9 that works and stick with that?

I was curious if you could post the new version of the loader. If possible, could you post the source too? It looks like you hard coded the exe name in, so if we use a different version of the emulator, we will be SOL...

Attract mode by default only works for MAME. You can turn on other things in the screen saver to get more content displayed (videos, other emulators, apps, etc). Perhaps you could try disabling everything and turning them back on one at a time. If it's the screen saver, you should see an entry in the log saying what it's displaying and then a huge amount of time before you kill GameEx (if that's even in the log). I realized just the other day that the reason my attract mode/screen saver would randomly kick off and return to the GameEx display was that some of the roms that I was asking it to display weren't working. It would try to load, crash, and return to GameEx. On the up side, whenever this happens I can just look at the log to see what game was the problem and fix/delete it from the list.

You might be able to make GameEx windowed. If you do that, then the mouse won't be locked. The only thing you would want to do is play with the location and size of the window to make the bar disappear. You might end up with a bar on the side too (on the side where the second monitor is displayed), so adjusting your over scan might help there.

That's one thing about RandyT's stuff that I really like. The screw down terminals cost a bit more, but they are definitely much nicer than pins. On the other hand, you can always connect the pins to terminal blocks and get the same effect for much less money. It's not nearly as slick, but it should work fine. If I didn't have a GP-Wiz32 sitting in a box, I would probably buy one of these for the next project. Actually, I wish he had these when I built my driving cab because the Joystick hack I used for the pedals was a bit of a pain. I could have just connected the steering wheels and the pedals all up to this one device and been golden. The cost is a bit more than what I spent, though (I only have 6 buttons, so most of the connections would have been wasted).

I know you already chose your stuff for your build, but I was curious if anyone reading this has played around with the U-HID from Ultimarc yet? I was eying it when it came out and noticed that the LED-Wiz plugin supports it. It looked affordable especially for how flexible it is, so I'm hoping it can do great things! http://www.u-hid.com

Did you have a different version of MAME running on your old config? Basically, is your version of MAME the same as your romset? If not, then you will probably have issues. Also, what version of GameEx were you running prior to registering? If it was an old version, new features could be set up incorrectly. Either way, if you want more help, please provide a log file so that we can see what's going on. It wouldn't hurt to post your gameex.ini either, but the log is needed.

Is there a list of properties that we can use for the "[MAPPROPERTIES]" section? Perhaps that's the only ones available, but I'm curious... Also, when I tried to set up zinc this way, I used: [MAPDRIVER] zn=101 This didn't work for me. Do parent bios not work? Do I just need to make zn1, zn2, psx, etc all point to 101? Same goes for Model2. Thanks!

Oh, I didn't see that you wanted to boot straight into the game, not be able to select it with a single click. Ummm, maybe you could put it in a login script or use the launch on start command in GameEx. I understand what you want to do, but I don't know that Tom will find this a widely used feature, so I'm guessing this won't be something that's built into the main program. I'm sure something could be done with a plugin, but you would probably see GameEx come up prior to launching the game. Yeah, I'd probably go with a startup script if it were me.

There's a last played game menu built into GameEx already. This will bring up a list of the last 10 or so games, not just launch right into the last game though. If you want to do that, I'd suggest creating an application in GameEx that points to the runitgame.bat file. Set that app so it doesn't display info and it should launch straight into the game on selection.

Could this be related to a network connection timing out? It looks like the last thing GameEx did before you shut it down was read the MAME hall of fame which is downloaded. Tom, if the network connection times out, do you trap for that? I would assume you do, but I don't see anything else in this file...

Nice! More speed is always welcome

Cool, that works! Just curious if Zinc got broken with this update? I haven't been using the built in Zinc support for a while, but now that the alternate versions of MAME are supported I'm moving back. I turned on Zinc support and it loads roms in MAME. If I can get confirmation that things still work, I'll continue to error check my config. Thanks!