bkenobi

Nope, actually compiling MAME will make things run smoother no matter what FE you are using (GameEx or otherwise). There is no reason to use MAME32 or MAMEUI if you are running a FE because it's redundant (you are using the front end's features to pick the game so there's no need to have MAME include that capability too). Compiling MAME is straight forward if you use the MAMEdev's instructions, but it's easy/simple if you use HK's compiler. I suggest you read up on it in the compiler thread in the stickies section. HK has put a step by step process in it (including links to where the files are located). If you have any questions about compiling, we can help with that too!

IMO, I would dump AdvanceMAME. It's really old and uses a different set of commands to run. I would also recommend moving away from MAME32/MAMEUI. GameEx should be able to work with these just fine, but there have been an number of threads that the resolution was moving to the command line version of MAME. I can't say exactly what is causing your problems, but I can point out the obvious...things are very complicated when you have too many versions going at once (which you've already seen). My suggested path forward would be for you to start from scratch with MAME using HK's MAME compiler to build a custom version (which includes patches to skip disclaimers, adds hi-score support, etc). This *should* work with your monitor and video card just fine, so why complicate things unnecessarily. Just my 2 cents though.

In this case, it's because of what Frequency said. If you don't have those set to "do not filter" then they won't show up. Pacman is a clone of Puckman, so without this setting it wouldn't show up. I'm not familiar with splatterhouse, but I know that's what's up with pacman.

You will have to provide more info. Post the log file for starters.

Remapping the mouse is a registered user feature AFAIK.

Maybe I'm confused, but if you have 5 or 6 versions of your romset set up in different emulators, then what's the problem? In the example you list, you have 5 sets for Genesis. You can set each up as an emulator and point each to the same Genesis database. The main down side to this is that you have to set up 5 emulators for this system (not much that you can do about that though). If you want to shrink your list (which would be pointless in this case), you could group the emulators together. There would be no way to tell which set it came out of AFAIK though. There is another option you might want explore, though. Tom recently added the "Roms in sub-directories" option. I haven't played with it yet, but it might help you create a single emulator setup for what you are trying to do. I don't know if it lists each game in a single list or if it keeps some reference to the folder it came from though. When I originally suggested multiple versions of GameEx, I misunderstood thinking you were asking about MAME. For what you are trying to do, you don't need to do that. You will have to put some effort into setting things up since your desired setup is not exactly standard. Your system does look nicely organized though.

It might help to go to the control panel and check out the game controller to see what buttons on the controller are mapped to button numbers in windows.

Post a log file that shows you accessing a manual. Perhaps we can see what's going on.

I don't know if Tom gave it a new background or not. It's possible it uses the same one as MAME (which is what the main background is too AFAIK).

Yeah, multiple discs has been discussed in the past. HK was working on a universal wrapper that would help with these types of situations, but I don't know the status on it. He's got so many other projects going that it might be further back on his list right now...

Wow, 5TB on the arcade machine without any backups? That's pretty brave! I have all of my stuff on a RAID file server and copy the stuff I use to the arcade. Hopefully I won't lose either system, but if I do I'll at least have a partial backup!

The forum doesn't like some extensions. You don't have to zip the file, you can just rename it to have a .txt extension (.ini is no good for whatever reason). Also, when you enter an emulator for the first time, GameEx generates a bunch of data. It can take a few seconds to a few minutes depending on the system performance. It may appear frozen, but it's probably just busy. If you have a background audio track playing then you will still hear it if things are still progressing. If it's frozen then that will stop as well. Of course, I don't know what will happen if you are running a really old machine (386SX? ).

You only need a different database/installation of GameEx if you want this for MAME though. GameEx treats MAME differently than all other emulators...

On the up side, the only problem the error causes is that the user has to click ok. It doesn't have any side affects fortunately. I am pretty sure HK knows about this as I've mentioned it in the past, but if he sees this thread then maybe he'll take another look.

AdvanceMAME is useful for people running arcade monitors and TV's. The problem is that the source hasn't been updated in FOREVER. At this point, I would not recommend using it unless you found the vanilla build of MAME was unacceptable for some reason. If you have AdvanceMAME set up and enabled, you will not be running MAME/MAME32 to launch your roms. As a result, some games might not work if they are not compatible with that release. As far as the mouse goes, there are 2 things that you need to check. First, if you are using a MAME.ini/MAME32.ini file, then get those set up to use mouse 1 (which it sounds like you've already checked). GameEx also can apply arguments when it launches. There are a couple that are set by default that you can find in either GameEx config tool. I personally recommend removing all options from GameEx and setting them in the ini. That way if things launch outside of GameEx, then you know they will also launch with the same options from inside GameEx. The 3rd thing that you need to do (beyond the ini and GameEx options) is to make sure the controls for the game are set to use the mouse. Once in the game, hit TAB and go to P1 controls (either global or game specific) and change the analog controls to use the mouse axis and set inc/dec to NONE. Also, when you are trying to figure out what's going on, it can be very useful to check out the "runitgame.bat" file. This file contains the commands that GameEx used to launch the last game. So, if you run a game in GameEx that has an issue, you can drop to windows and view the batch file to see what command it used to run the game. Just looking there should get you the problem, but if it doesn't let us know. If you want someone to help, post your runitgame.bat and log.txt files. With those two files, we should be able to get you going if you can't find the problem on your own. Good luck!

First, make sure you have the database selected for the emulator. Second, it's best if the games in the database match exactly with the title of the game in your map file (if you use one) or the file name. I think it will work if you have the same title with bracketed text in your file name, but it's best to have it match exactly. So, either rename your batch files to match what's in the database or create a map file that converts the name for you. Btw, map files are becoming less needed now with the database support that's been added (the new databases have multiple game name columns, so they should match your files). I'm not sure if Tom is planning on eliminating map files altogether or not. My recommendation is to rename the files.

Thanks for the update Tom!

I've seen this in the past as well. I don't recall ever figuring out what was causing it, but I haven't seen it in a while. Perhaps you are running an older version of CPWizard?

Not currently. That's a bit more complicated than just displaying an image though since the bezel file is actually 2+ files in a zip archive. One is the image and the other is the mask that MAME uses. If you want this feature, add a request to the features request thread.

Great minds think alike. On the other hand, the same can be said about sick ones

Naw, it should be fine (X-Arcade stuff is pretty solid from what I've read). Those CP's use keyboard encoders, so you can test it by using a key capture program (check the main GameEx site under downloads for one such app). The default keymap is the standard MAME layout AFAIK. GameEx might not use those same buttons, so you will either want to remap the stick or remap GameEx with custom keyboard inputs if that's the case.

Wow, sweet! I just grabbed some new artwork from Emumovies the other day, so I'll be giving this a try shortly. Nice timing.

I think the biggest thing that would help in large sets would be a color highlighting of some kind (like Circo suggested). All of the lines tend to blur together when you are looking through 1000s of files!

From the looks of the script, you will probably have to change it in the menu. This can be added to the script, but you would need to know the command and check for applicable games. I would suggest adding it after line 31 or 32 of the script. Just use something like: Sendplay,^v; sends rompath romfile from clipboard Send, {enter}; loads roms by pressing enter if (rom == "ikaruga") { ;send whatever command(s) are needed to switch to vertical here } Gui Destroy ; Remove blinds from desktop I haven't played with this at all, so it may need some tweaking to get it in the right place. Brian could probably whip this up in 2 minutes since he has it set up already. Actually, now that I look at the rest of the code, it looks like this may be available in the nulldc.cfg. If so, then it could be as simple as adding an IniWrite statement...

Just to make sure the program is working right in the first place, try starting with a fresh MAME source and compiling without any patches.