bkenobi

Thanks for the location Frequency!

Are you are looking for how many buttons you need to play MAME, other emulators, or just use GameEx? For GameEx, you need 1 4-way input device (joystick, gamepad D-pad, keyboard arrow keys) and at least 2 buttons (select and back). I recommend at least 1 more button for alpha paging or 2 if you also want to be able to control your volume. You can also opt to use a mouse to control the interface, but if you are planning on using this in a cab, I recommend against it (a mouse works better with an HTPC or desktop setup). For MAME it really depends on what games you want to play. There are countless threads discussing CP layouts over at the BYOAC forums, but here's the general consensus. - Most people want to be able to play SF games, so they opt for 6 buttons (2 rows of 3) - Some people only care about Neo Geo games, so they only opt for 4 buttons (in a line) - Another popular option is to merge the two and use a SF/Neo Geo 7 button layout (2 rows of 3 plus an extra thumb button) - Any of these will allow you to play 99% of the games out there since most games used 3 buttons or less. Now, it's important to remember that you need/want some other inputs as well. Here's the list (as covered by others already): - Start (1 for each player) - Coin (1 for each player) - Quit (can be a dedicated button or a combination of existing buttons) - Pause (not required, but very useful. dedicated/button combo) - Joystick (duh...) You can also add spinners and/or track balls, but these sorta fall into the novelty category with guns, steering wheels, etc. There are games that use these, but you need to decide if these games are important to you before you spend the money and time to incorporate them. For other emulators, it really depends. You need at least as many buttons as the console/handheld/computer/watch/etc. originally had. For anything but modern systems, you should be good with a joystick, 6 buttons, start, and select. In the end, you just need to decide what you want to be able to do with your system. GameEx isn't really a decision maker on this. Actually, there's the GameLauncher mode that you can use where it only needs 2 buttons. I haven't checked it out recently, but Tom did just go over it again. It's mainly designed for people who have older cabinets that only have 1 or 2 buttons per player.

So wait, I'm confused now. The problem you are having is that when you use InstantSheller your KeyWiz doesn't work and GameEx minimizes on load, right?

There is a setting to only cache the current system already? Why wasn't I told!? TEMPEST!!!

Do you have video snaps or an intro video? If so, do you use the FFDSHOW codec on the main page, an official release, or another codec pack entirely? This sounds like there is something else loading and is racing GameEx to see which will start first. Usually it's the other app, but sometimes it's GameEx. When GameEx wins, the other steals focus and you see GameEx minimized. The reason I ask about codecs is that there are some that use a system tray icon when initiated. As a result, when you view your first video for that codec GameEx will minimize.

I know exactly why it's minimizing! There is another program running that steels the focus from GameEx. Since GameEx is maximized in your setup, when it loses focus it will minimize (this is how Windows is designed to work). GameEx could probably check to see if it was minimized and restore itself automatically, but I don't want it to do that since I do sometimes minimize it to work on something behind the scenes. The solution here is to determine what's steeling focus, first. Then we can figure out how to either restore focus or get it to stop doing it in the first place. This is not really a GameEx problem so much as it is a problem with the way things are set up. But, the first step is figuring out what's causing the problem (the program that's steeling focus).

Yeah, there's really no standard for what keys emulators default to or even allow you to use. The only thing that comes close is that some use MAME default keys. To be fair though, it's possible that the other emulators used those keys first and MAME copied them. Either way, I agree that a single config would be easiest and just remap the emulators to use whatever the X-Arcade uses. My choice would be to decide on a setup for yourself and then remap to those keys within the emu or use AHK to remap if the emu isn't flexible. The only problem you could run across is if there are any emus other than MAME that use a RAW input scheme. Although I'm not aware of any, if you do come across such an emulator, you will have to use a different technique. AHK won't remap raw inputs, just higher level stuff. If it can't remap and requires RAW input, you will have to reprogram your X-Arcade (I think). That shouldn't be a problem though...

I only have ~10 emulators set up and it takes ~1 minute to load the Game Info screen the first time I start up GameEx. It is much quicker than that every other time I go to the Game Info screen, but the first time it does take a LONG time. Is there any way that you could have it cache the current system first, then load the screen so that we can continue working, then (in the background) cache the other systems? It may result in a performance hit, but at least we wouldn't have to wait quite as long. Just a thought.

Isn't emulation great! Yeah, number keys, function keys, and special keys (tab, shift, control, alt, enter, backspace, etc) would be good to avoid if possible. Most emulators will let you remap keys either with a gui or in an ini file. There are some that are hard coded and cannot be changed at all (I think one of the DC emus is like that for example). You are running a keyboard emulator (ipac, keywiz) as I recall, correct? If so, you can always have a universal mapping that works for basically everything and then run a script to remap the problem children. For instance, you have everything set up to use 5 and 6 as coin buttons I presume. Then along comes visual pinball where 4 is coin. You could just have a AHK script that launches on start for that one emulator that remaps 5 to 4. The script is simply: 5::4 You can make it more complicated by having it wait for the emulator to close and then automatically stop, or you can kill the task in launch after: taskkill ButtonRemapassuming your script was compiled to ButtonRemap. Anyway, there are endless possibilities of how to get around this, but the easiest thing is to just map everything to things other than those I listed above.

I would recommend checking out AHK (AutoHotKey). The script that you write can be compiled into an EXE so that you don't need to install anything on a system that the code is deployed on. The forum is very active and easily searchable. And, since several people here are users, you can ask for help and might get a solution! Anyway, it's a really easy language that's about as human readable as it gets. But, that doesn't take away from it's capabilities. You can remap buttons, launch programs, simulate user inputs, perform complex logic, etc. If you need help crafting a specific script, someone here can get you started (or maybe even write it for you if you ask nice enough ).

The best way is to use a logon script that loads what you need in the order you need it. The script can be in pretty much any language you want (I personally use AHK). Basically, you just go through each program in the right order calling them and then put GameEx at the end of the list. It's probably best (if you use AHK) to put a "WinActivate" at the end to make sure nothing steels GameEx's focus.

Sweet! I don't know what format my Saturn games are in, but is it possible that the ISO format support will be expanded if needed? I don't know how hard it would be to expand, so I'm just curious.

Hmmm, good point. I guess that would make you more of a slut.

Tempest = Credit Whore?!

Damn! Now I bet I'll have to start all over. I totally wasted that 5 minutes.

Cool, I'll give it a try at some point. I tried to get SSF beta 10 going, but I couldn't figure it out in the 5 minutes I put in to it.

I do...

The only thing that could steel focus is the i_view32.exe commands from what I see. I haven't messed with i_view32, so I don't know if that's a problem or not. Run the script with those two commented out and see if it's still a problem. Even if this fixes it, i_vew32 may not be directly the cause. It's possible that by launching that app, something else *could* be spawned in the background. Like I said though, I'm not familiar with this program.

GameEx can be set up to exit any emulator when you press escape. You can also map other keys to send escape via a script if you want (like joystick combinations). However, joystick mapping like this is typically unnecessary since GameEx can do this internally (if you don't have too many buttons anyway).

Tempest got called out! OOOOOHHHHHH

What is "high end" for these emulators. I'm running a Athlon XP 3000 in my arcade. Is that sufficient to power any of the Saturn emu's? I have the full USA set, so I was planning on getting it going at some point here. Thanks!

I thought 73313 was the way the kiddies were saying "LEETE" these days? Turns out, I suck! http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=31337

Yup, I think another FE might be a better choice if he/she just wants the pictures. Making that exact configuration work in GameEx is not really possible.

You can get old versions of MAME from here. The other option is to use a current version and rebuild your rom set to match the current version of MAME. This will basically remove roms that are not compatible with the version of MAME that you want to use. You can use CLRMAMEPro or RomCenter. I haven't used either recently, but there are people here who have and can help.

Sounds like a lot of saw dust!