bkenobi

Are you asking if you are allowed to install GameEx on two machines? If so, then I assume the question is related to the registration. This question comes up 3 or 4 times a year, so I'll be brief (search the forum if you want more details). * Yes, you can install the registration on more than one machine * No, you should not share the registration with a friend * Yes, you can donate again if you want to. You won't be required to, but if you appreciate the work that's gone into the software, you can certainly show your appreciation through Paypal. * No, you don't have to donate again. It all depends on you. AND... * No, there is no check to make sure you aren't using the password on multiple machines. If you think you are taking advantage of the system, you can certainly donate again. This is not required, but Tom would never turn down a beer that someone bought for him Hope that helps

You can get rid of "GameEx Homepage"...I don't have it on my system. I believe all the options you had difficulty removing are located in the Web options (or whatever Tom called them...HTML applications?). Anyway, the weather, news, radio, etc are all in that section. You might need to use the Advanced Configuration Utility instead of the Setup Wizard.

This won't work if you have hibernate disabled AFAIK.

Yup, that would work too. Depends on what games you are doing this for though. If it's for everything (including emulators), then it might be nice to have a script so you don't have to create a batch file for every rom. If it's just for PC games, then it doesn't make much difference, so whatever you know better!

You could use an AHK script to watch for certain processes (your games) and then when it sees them (or sees them end) it could call XPadder with the appropriate profile. The other option is Pinnacle Profiler. I haven't used it, but it does change the mappings based on the game that it detects running. These two methods are basically the same. The only difference is that XPadder requires a script and PP is already set up to do this. I personally would go with the script just because I think it would use less resources, but I can't be sure about that.

Yup. Just create a new external app in GameEx and use the command line above. You can play with how it shows up in the list so it doesn't display details so when you select the app, it just hybernates the machine. I haven't played with it at all in relation to GameEx, but I did run the command on my XP laptop and it worked fine.

I think if you make the paypal donation, Tom will email you the registration file to the paypal registered email. Email Tom directly if you have questions about the registration process. Btw, I used to use AdvanceMAME and really liked it. I ran into problems at one point and stopped using it (can't remember why ATM). As long as you don't want to add new games or you need some other kind of an update/fix, AdvanceMAME should be fine. Have fun.

Perhaps you could do this with an application? I believe shutdown.exe can call the hibernate process, so perhaps you could use that? EDIT: BAH, I found an easier way. Add this command as your application. %windir%\system32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState HibernateNOTE: This command will work with XP, but it will probably need to be different for other systems. This would be nice to have in GameEx, so perhaps it should be added as a feature request. I can't remember though if there were issues with coming out of a suspended state with controls working in GameEx. I suppose you will find out shortly!

The reason your changes didn't do anything is because you still have AdvanceMAME set up to run in GameEx and we were trying to help you get standard MAME going. I didn't realize that was the case. If you turn off AdvanceMAME, it should work. It's possible to do the same thing in AdvanceMAME as with standard MAME, it's just that I wasn't aware that's what we were doing. So, if you want to use AdvanceMAME, find the cfg directory for that installation and repeat the same procedure we did with the standard MAME default.cfg file. The syntax for your mouse code might be slightly different, but you should be able to follow the same model and get it going. FWIW, there have been a lot of discussions about this same problem at BYOAC forums in the past (and they probably continue to this day) about how when you unplug your mouse, MAME breaks. Most people seem to just hide the mouse in the cabinet somewhere and move on, but I personally think what we are doing here is more robust in the long run.

Right, I suggested turning off AdvanceMAME unless you find you really need it. If you have it enabled, all games will be played through that version of MAME and the standard build (be it MAME or MAMEUI/MAME32) will only be used to build your game list. I can't help with AdvanceMAME since I haven't used it in years. If you turn off that feature, you should be good to go.

You have 7zip support turned on for emulator 7. 7zip support is a registered user feature. If you want to use this feature you need to be registered. If you are registered, email Tom to get a new registration file. If you are not registered, turn off 7zip support. If your games are 7zipped, you will need to extract them (or re-archive them to zip format).

Thanks for the tip. Maybe this should be put in the FAQ or on the tutorial page so we don't lose this knowledge.

Are you running AdvanceMAME for your trackball games? I'm not sure, but it's possible it might use a different path to the cfg files. If you use the cfg file above in AdvanceMAME, I don't think anything will work. I'm pretty sure the control names have changed since the last release, so it would likely delete the default.cfg file and give you a blank one if it did try to use this version. That's what I've had happen when I tried to run a really old version of MAME for my rotary joystick games (MAME Analog+). In that version of MAME, the cfg file is not ascii, so it's not editable.

Yes, that is correct. Thanks Tempest. So use that same technique for YAXIS and any mouse buttons you have assigned.

Are you running Vista? Are you an admin on that machine? I think in Vista there may be a problem with file access according to some of the older posts. I don't know if that's still true though...

I think you should definitely compile MAME on principal if nothing else . I was saying that you might have luck also modifying the RAW code, but I don't know if anyone has tested it enough to say it's safe to do for general usage (safe meaning it won't cause problems running other games, not safe like it will destroy your machine...). The default.cfg file is located in mame/cfg. This is the config file that contains the information from when you hit tab and modify any general controls. If you modify any controls for a specific game, you will find those located in the mame/cfg/<rom>.cfg file. The files are basically xml (I think they are bastardized xml, but...), so you can edit them with any text editor. If you modify the controls in mame and then edit this file, you can see how mame needs them to be written. I don't remember the syntax off the top of my head, but if you put in "MOUSE_1_XAXIS AND MOUSE_2_XAXIS AND MOUSE_3_XAXIS" for your analog trackball axis, you will be able to use any of the first 3 mouse devices. Repeat this for all mouse controls and you *should* be good to go. Oh, the cabinets are an Atari Area 51 and an Atari Championship Sprint. I ended up with both for free, so my total cost for them was just transportation! I can give more details about anything you like...just let me know what interests you. FWIW, Tempest also built a driving cab a while back, so he has some good insight especially on the software side of things. I think he's actually put more time into the software on his than I have. There are some tricks that took me a while to figure out, so if you decide to build one, I/we can hopefully help you avoid pit falls!

Don't worry about it. Tempest is used to being shat on! Seriously though, I think some of Tempest's code is getting really great! I haven't put nearly enough time into AHK to do some of the things he's doing with his CFG Magician. Impressive!

Yes, the delay in opening the manual is caused by the conversion of the pdf into whatever format GameEx needs. There is currently no way to preprocess all manuals, but perhaps that could be a feature request?

Ok, so this may be a problem with your controls then rather than GameEx or MAME. Is it possible that you have more than one mouse connected to your system? Windows doesn't handle controller numbering very well IMO. If you start your system up and Windows assigns your trackball as mouse device 1, then you go into MAME and configure everything, things should work fine. If you then reboot the machine and Windows decides this time that the trackball is now mouse 2 (assuming you have at least one other mouse hooked up), then MAME will still be waiting for you to move mouse 1 for it to do anything. If you then remap your controls in MAME, it should work for as long as the computer is on. In order to see if that's what's going on, the easiest thing to check is going into MAME and mapping the controls. If the mouse number changes, then you have the problem figured out. The solution is a bit more difficult. I can't remember if there is a setting in MAME to treat all mice as if they are the same mouse or not. That's what used to happen before they went to the raw input system. If that's your problem, you can do one of a couple things. First, you can manually edit the default.cfg file to set up the trackball. You will want to manually edit the line so that it accepts inputs from mouse1, mouse2, mouse3, etc (as many mice as you might have, more doesn't hurt anything). The other choice is to compile MAME and remove the references to the RAW input system. This will default everything back to the way things were a while back. I wouldn't try this method first though...I don't know if anyone has complied this correctly yet (Brian Hoffman was using a version like this, but I didn't hear whether he ran into any problems or not).

Actually, I would guess that Tempest has written more lines of AHK than I have at this point.

Interesting. Thanks for the heads up!

Ehhh, oh well. Glad you got it working!

I'm just guessing here, but you needed to update a path or two?

No problem. I'll take the assist

Thanks frequency!