bkenobi

I just wanted to note that my first start takes 1:49 and the second start only takes 0:28. My system isn't super fast by today's standards, but I don't understand the discrepancy between the two starts. Here's the things that take significant time and the times they take: CPWizard 8.8/0.0 <-----already running for the second launch Opening Database Connection 3.9/0.1 Using Device: Radeon X1300/X1550 Series 8.3/0.0 Creating Surfaces Backgrounds 26.5/0.4 Creating Game Font 1.3/0.5 Restoring Title Font From Cache 11.8/0.2 Creating Menu Font 2.3/0.1 Attempting to load game list 6.2/0.3 Initialising Bass Audio Library 2.6/0.2 Loading Start Page 1.2/0.5 Loading Sound Files 1.0/0.2 Restoring Cached ICONS from File 10.9/1.1 Initializing MCE Remote 10.6/19.9 <------Don't have one, can this be turned off? Hope this helps...

I've noticed this too. Normally when I boot up, it takes a while before the video starts, but this evening when I killed GameEx and restarted it, it only took a few seconds to play the intro video. I'll get a couple log files here in a second. log__normal_.txt log__second_start_.txt

If you want to emulate Saturn with SSF, make sure you have a SSE2 capable processor. I just found that my Athlon XP doesn't support that instruction set, so I can't use it (which is why I couldn't figure out how to use SSF btw). Anyway, I tried the other emus and found that nothing else really worked sufficiently IMO to put in my cab other than SSF. So, if/when I upgrade the CPU, I'll add Saturn.

Probably

Doesn't want to run on my system WinXP 32-bit SP3

If you like one of the higher resolution themes, you might be able to use the Theme Editor to scale it down. Most of the time GameEx will automatically scale themes to your resolution correctly, but it appears you may have found a bug in GameLauncher mode (you could also just call it an incompatible feature for that mode rather than a bug).

When there's a new version that doesn't have any info, it usually means it's small bug fixes/tweaks rather than new features. Tom will post an update thread here and a list at the main site when the update includes new features.

Guess that's why I couldn't see any controls. See, I'm not crazy! Well, maybe this doesn't prove anything...

Right, I only consider it a workable solution if it were automated. I was envisioning a script that ran through your MAME roms and for each one took the marquee and control panel (probably a snap too incase there's no video), added them to a black background of a certain size, then saved the composite image to a new directory. Then, you simply point GameEx to that directory. I'm not sure how well it would work though since I think GameEx is set up to rotate through your extra content in the second image for V4 themes. That would mean that the image might look right once in a while, but not the rest of the time. Also, you would lose one of your media types when you go to the game info screen. You could certainly turn off the other types of media, but I don't think that would be an improvement. Anyway, I just tossed you under the bus since your program can build composite images like this. I wasn't necessarily saying you should build the script since I don't know if this is feasible or even something anyone would use. Building software is educational, but if noone want's the app, then that's all it is...

2) You can't really customize the menus as much as you are asking. The best thing I can suggest is to try using flat menus. It won't give you submenus, but it will give you access to everything without searching. This will start to look cluttered if you have a TON of emulators though. 3) I don't believe there is any way to add more artwork. The only thing you can do is to make MAME an external emulator, but that's not a good idea since you will lose a ton of functionality for a couple extra images. The only real suggestion is to make a feature request to have some custom artwork. It's not a bad idea, so you might as well post it and see what happens!

Like lingpanda said, you need to rename your snaps to match the rom name. There are several tools that can help do this in a more automated fasion. The best thing would be if the snaps came with a dat file that you could run through CMP or RomCenter. Since that's probably not going to be available, read this thread: http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?sh...=artwork+rename I would try the link HK provided first. If that doesn't fix everything, you can try my method.

As things are now, I don't think you can have more than 2 pieces of media displayed at once (one is typically, but possibly not required to be a video). I do have one thought on a work around though. It might be possible to build a composite image of the control panel and the marquee and display that behind the video. To do this, I would think Tempest would be the best one to help since he's built a tool that does just this (Marquee Magician). Before you start anything, I suggest you find out if it's possible to have an image displayed behind a video in a GameEx theme. The easiest way to check would be to load up a v4 theme in the Theme Editor. Then, simply shift things so the media overlaps. If it looks ok, you should be good to go!

I don't, but then I've never looked. I can see how it would be cool to do this, but I don't know how many other people have thought about it. It's hard enough to take a good picture of a marquee so you get accurate color and no flash spotting, so taking an accurate picture of a backlit marquee (and having a set look consistent) might be a pretty big challenge. Sorry, I'm not really providing any help though

There was a distinct lack of sarcasm in this thread up until this point. If you want to continue posting, I suggest you step it up a bit

He want's a filter or lighting effect to modify the image on the computer. I don't know of one that anyone else has created, but you could play with different filters in Photoshop to see if a combination can do what you want. I would guess you would want to adjust the white balance and maybe apply an offset of some kind (depending on the color of light you would have had behind it). It may require some kind of a fuzzy boarder on lighter areas since you would have a bit of bleed through. Interesting idea, but you may find it easier to just D/L a set of marquees that are lit in the first place.

I figured the way I phrased my response, it might become obvious for pshayes that he needed the images too. I guess I didn't want to be too blatant. That's what we have you around for, right?!

Make sure you have the path set to point to your preview images. If an image is found for the game then it should automatically display it.

Isn't it more a measure of the number of users of a FE that use the BYOAC forums (or another forum that points to that thread) than it is of the actual popularity of a specific FE? There's lots of people who use GameEx (or any other FE) that never visit the forum. If they don't see the thread, then they won't vote. Either way, I think it's useful to know what people use since noobs need to have an idea of what to try.

Hmmm, that's an option. In fact, it could be done with a hard link so you don't take any time to copy the file. Interesting thought though! And no, I don't think this would work once GameEx has started. You would probably need a script that closed GameEx, switched the database, then started GameEx again. This would be possible, but could create maintainability problems. It's worth playing with if someone had interest in really doing this. NOTE: I think it would be better to have this incorporated into GameEx directly since this is a bit of an ugly, kludged solution.

I think it has something to do with where files are stored. I don't run Vista, but I recall HK mentioning something about it.

Try adding "DetectHiddenWindows, On" to the beginning of your script and "DetectHiddenWindows, Off" to the end. If there's no window associated with the process, AHK won't work sometimes...

Yes, check out the advanced configuration for your emulator. You can use multiple keys to exit. You will also need to turn off the setting to exit with escape.

You actually can't use any external application to map buttons for MAME unless you modify the source and recompile. MAME uses RAW inputs, so unless the program you are using to remap can do so at hardware/driver level (it can't), then you need to use MAME's built in mapping system.

I suggest you read the info on the shell extensions page I linked to find out all the technical details. In short, they are the same file. The file you see in file explorer is really the link to the actual file in the file system. The hard link will create another link to the file that's exactly like the original. If you delete the original, the second copy will still remain because you are just deleting the link. If you delete the second link (the hard link), you will delete the last pointer to the file. The file is still on the hard drive, but you have no way of knowing where it is, so it's effectively gone (without some work to recover the location). There are programs that will overwrite the data prior to deleting the link (sometimes called "wiping"), but that's not really that common. Basically the data is still on your drive until you overwrite it, but you won't be able to use it unless you have a link to it in the file system. Glad you got it going!

Nope, I'm logged in... Oh well, I'm sure I already voted anyway.