bkenobi

You can have a volume setting for each game which is stored in the ini for each game. I don't think you can adjust the volume on the command line, but I haven't checked either (just never seen it).

I would get a used CRT monitor off CraigsList if it were me. If you made the cabinet specifically for an LCD, you probably want to go with another one. They are very low energy, so they will save some cash and they are a good mix of nice resolution to price. If you weren't used to such a high resolution, I would have suggested a TV, but others will certainly suggest an actual arcade monitor. Thing is, I've never compared the two side by side (for a reason), so the TV looks fine to me!

Just a suggestion... Maybe someone should make sure the emu works in GameEx prior to Flash making a background for it.

GameEx should be able to scale it automatically. I personally have GameEx set up to be 640x480 and I'm using a 1024x768 theme without any problems.

There's currently no way to pick and choose what games you play in Zinc or MAME. You can do one of a few things. 1) Play all games in MAME. 2) Play all Zinc compatible games in Zinc. 3) Set up a separate emulator for Zinc and don't run Zinc compatible games in MAME. 4) Set up MultiMAME to play any game you want exactly how you want it to be run. 5) Set up MAME_Loader to use Zinc for only specific games and disable GameEx's built-in Zinc support. There is no option available to select what game you want to play where on an individual basis through the configuration of GameEx. This will have to be a bit of a hack.

I don't know if any of the new themes are complete and submitted. From the sounds of it, this could be an easy contest to win since I haven't seen any submissions posted yet.

Well, you can turn off Zinc integration. That will make all Zinc games load through MAME.

Each game's unique theme would probably make the full set on the order of 2GB (based on the Extras set that's available for MAME). It would probably be much more than that once you add the videos and other stuff in there. BUT, if that's the experience you are after, then it doesn't really matter if you need to buy an extra drive or not. It's a sweet concept, so I really hope the interest doesn't die off.

That's so kind of you

Just looking at the code quickly, it looks like this processes all files in the input directory(ies). I haven't really followed this thread, but it sounds like the goal is to un-ECM and unzip everything so GameEx can use the files. I think that's what this will do, but I did not fully review the code.

Huh, didn't know that

Guilty Gear does look great! What kind of system specs are required to get effectively full speed (no noticeable slowdowns in game play)?

Be aware that if you do that, you will probably also need to do something to make the mouse show up. If you use the full feature set of Instant Sheller, it will replace the mouse with a 1px dot which is kinda impossible to use.

He means it looks ugly loading in GameEx. But, are there any Naomi games that work yet?

Sounds like you're not familiar with the purpose of Instant Sheller. If not, here's the basics... It will set up your computer to only boot one application but do it seamlessly. In this case, that means that you will see GameEx boot up without knowing there's a Windows computer running behind it (well, except for the bios screen). When you are done with GameEx, you need to use the shutdown menu item to turn the machine off. If you want to use Windows in addition to GameEx, you probably don't want to use Instant Sheller.

First, are the Naomi games released with the MAME roms? If not, then it becomes more difficult. If so, then probably. If the roms are released with MAME, then it's simply a matter of getting the game to load in a different emulator. You can use Multi-MAME which allows lots of freedom in configuring the way things load. Alternately, you can modify the MAME_Loader script that I put together. It's pretty basic, but it should work. If the roms are not included with the MAME set, then it means that MAME won't report info about them. If you want them to show up in your list, you will have to adjust filters in GameEx accordingly. Also, they won't display any information like other titles will (history, control panel info, number of players, etc.). I think the only solution in this case is Multi-MAME. It can set up the emulator to populate the info about the game as if it was included in MAME in the first place. This is very tedious looking to learn, but there is a good set of info at their home page. Although I think having all arcade games populated in a single list is ideal, I'm not sure it's feasible unless you are willing to invest a significant amount of time to learn Multi-MAME. It's possible the learning curve is steep so it won't take long to get going, but it looked pretty complicated. MultiMAME MAME_Loader

There isn't any way to dictate which you want it to load in. Since Zinc is always faster than MAME, it's assumed that if Zinc supports the game, you want to play it there. If it's not supported, then it's assumed you want it in MAME. Same goes for Model2 compatible games. There is no override other than turning off Zinc support.

The basics are pretty simple and there are a bunch of examples to learn from. I agree that the higher end stuff is a bit complex for the beginner. I mostly use a few commands that are obvious and then search for the rest in the help file. Also, they do have a very active forum that seems pretty helpful (although admittedly I have not asked anything yet). If you know any programming language, then you know how to build the structure for a program. If you know that, the rest is just syntax...

Link worked for me. Looks cool, but I don't use intro videos... Nice work though!

Did you check the zinc log file? It will give you the command that you used and the resulting error if it doesn't run. I think you have to turn the log file on before it will show up though. If not, you might get the same error message from simply running the same command from the command line that GameEx sends. Check the "Run Last Game.bat" file in the GameEx Start folder to get the exact command GameEx is using.

Like I said before, there's only 2 ways that I know of. If you don't like either of those methods, then I suggest you add your suggestion to the features request thread. I think it's a reasonable thing to want to do, so it's certainly worth posting the idea. Btw, nice cab. If you want, you could post any pictures in the cabinets thread in the sticky section. Have fun (looks like you already are)!

Bahhh, it looks like it's a little more complicated. You will need a wrapper afterall. Basically you need a script that will call the game extender process. Here's a useful link where they talk about building a basic screen saver in AHK. There's code supplied, so I think it's nearly plug and play. http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic12828.html http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic3140.html http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2668 http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1747 http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1940

I just read something interesting on the AHK forums. It sounds as though a screen saver (.scr) is really just an exe file that's been renamed. If that's true, then this should be pretty easy. I don't use game extender, so you will have to do the testing. 1) Set up the game extender viewer so that it works on the PC 2) Copy the executable and replace the .exe with a .scr 3) Point your windows screen saver to that file I can't say that that will work, but it certainly is worth a try!

I don't know of anyway to do it out of the box, but you could always fake it. A screen saver is really just an application that kicks in after a certain amount of time with inactivity and stops upon appropriate user input. You could have a script running in the background on your PC polling for inactivity or checking to see if the screen saver has kicked in (I don't know how to do the second one, that's just a thought to save cpu cycles). If the time limit is reached, the script would then launch the game extender process. It would then sit waiting for the appropriate input from the user (mouse movement, any or a specific key press, etc.). You could even set it up so that it was password protected. If you want to do it right, you would create a custom screen saver that would go into the control panel, but I assume that would require programming in some C variant. It's really just a question of how much effort you want to put in. ALTERNATELY: If you are willing to wait for this to reach the top of Tom's priority list, you could always add a feature request for it. However, my guess would be that this would take a while to reach the top. I could be wrong though...I often am

Just a little update. I think I have verified that using a command to force a shutdown should work. What I did was to put "shutdown.exe -f -s" in the "LaunchOnExit=" line. Then I enabled the GameEx Exit menu item (so it would normally just go back to windows). When I select Exit, it gives me the dialog stating that the pc will be shutdown in 30 seconds (since I didn't specify a time). Normally, GameEx instantiates the shutdown before the call of shutdown.exe and thus the warning dialog pops up. Once that dialog is up, the user must manually kill it. The solution would be for GameEx to use a forced shutdown switch when it calls for a shutdown. This should keep the dialog from preventing things from continuing. Thanks for looking into this Tom!