bkenobi

Did you search for CPWizard on the forum? There's TONS of info about setting it up. I don't think there's a single comprehensive guide available. Also, check out HK's CPWizard homepage. It's got a lot of info there.

Gyration isn't cheap, but you can get cheaper versions than $300. It depends on what features you need.

Cool! I'll check that program out next time I have a problem with an avi.

The XArcade uses an IPAC inside. This is a keyboard emulator, so it will send keyboard keystrokes. The controls are mapped to MAME defaults for player 1 and 2. So, for controlling GameEx, you should be good out of the box. If you remap keys on the XArcade, you will need to use custom inputs for GameEx (search the forum and there are a bunch of threads detailing how to do it). Have fun!

A dat file contains info about the rom set and the related files. I haven't spent much time with them as most of my files are acceptable as is. If you do goodmerge sets, you end up using dat files quite a bit. Nointro sets don't seem to need them as much. It's just a preference...

That's pretty slick. I suggest using this in combination with Beyond Compare (or something similar) to do a diff on the contents of the directories. That way, you would see what files weren't matched. I think the best way to do that would be using: dir /b *.7z > roms.txtand dir /b *.png > snaps.txton both the snaps dir and the roms dir. Then, using whatever app you want, do a replace of '.7z' in the roms and '.png' for the snaps with '' (that's nothing, null, blank...). This will give you two text files with just the base file name that *should* match. Anyway, it might be easier to find mismatches/missing stuff that way.

Lots of people prefer the Gyration equipment. I've played with it at one of the local stores (it wasn't hooked up to a pc though), and it seemed ok as far as feel goes.

Sounds like you spent a LOT of time figuring out how to make that tool work. Good job!!!

Hmmm, haven't heard of Matroska before. Looks like a newer/nicer version of AVI. The only thing that I HATE about AVI is that I don't know how to figure out what codec the file requires. Hopefully Matroska gives a way to figure it out.

Thanks for the explanation! I wouldn't have guessed there were 32- and 64-bit codecs.

Launching the exe will work, but I assume what TalkingBull wants to do is keep all the links in a single folder. Do the links launch outside of GameEx?

Open the Setup Wizard and select 'search'. Enter 'startup video'. It should only provide one page.

Wouldn't it be better to provide a .dat file for the renaming process? Seems like you could get everything you need with a 5k text file rather than needing to transfer hundreds of megs of video files. What program did you use to do the name conversion? You said a regex renamer, but I haven't been able to locate such a program yet. Please share!

Tom was suggesting in the new database thread that FAQ data could be added in there. It sounds like Tom is onboard with adding in a text FAQ reader of some kind, but he wants to do it a little different than the manuals.

I would like to suggest again that it would be REALLY nice if there were a way to have the databases set up online such that when you load GameEx (or perhaps only when you update), it will automatically do a hash/version check and update as appropriate. This would avoid the problem with revision control that I can already see coming. Although I'm sure it's possible to have a perfect DB, I'm not sure how practical it is to expect that any of them will ever be "done". It just seems like a good idea to have a way to submit suggested fixes/inclusions so they can be maintained without the need to continually redo the entire thing. The alternative is to have one location be the authority. If the person working on the DB is the authority, then what Tom has is just the current released version. Anyway, I'm always cautious about revision control in large distributed projects. I don't have an actual solution, I'm just hoping my input will keep people on their toes to avoid the problem. Great work guys!

GameEx works with codecs you have installed on your computer. If they don't play in Windows, they will NEVER play in GameEx. The first step is to get things working in Windows. NOTE: The general rule is that you MUST have things working in Windows on its own before you try to use it in GameEx. GameEx is a fancy loader, so if it doesn't work on it's own, it won't ever work at all!

<Nelson> HA ha </Nelson>

I think this is a known bug that hasn't been tracked down yet. It's been reported before and Tom has tried to fix it, but it doesn't look like it's been taken care of yet.

Sometimes making files read only keeps the emu from breaking your setup. I don't know if that would work in this case though.

I use nointro sets. I don't have any desire to play Super Mario with Japanese language and hacked to have Barney instead of Bowser There are a lot of people who do use goodmerge sets, so the feature to play games from a zip file has been recently added. The alternative (which has been mentioned) would be renaming your files to exactly match the goodmerge archive name. If you want to do it that way, you can keep the same file structure you currently have and create hard links to the files (symlinks, symbolic links, etc.). This also avoids the increase in hard drive requirements.

You could have a script that waits for a button combo and then displays the text file when appropriate. I don't know how you would control viewing or closing (probably part of the script). I wonder if this would be something that could be included in CPWizard? It can do other in game stuff, so perhaps.

Looks like, for this script, the two commands are identical. I don't use mouse buttons on my setup, so either would work. BlockInput documentation

You can have a manual display like you are talking about, but a text file....? I think someone asked about a way to launch FAQ like this a while back, but I don't think anything came from it. The only thing I can think of is converting the FAQ to a pdf file and using the built-in manual viewer.

Zinc is built in so that as long as you have the paths correct (and everything set up so it works outside of GameEx) it will work. Daphne requires that you have all the framefiles and such set up correctly as well as using the correct command line for each game. You can use the Daphne Loader to figure out what the command line needs to be and then use that in GameEx.

Although it sounds like you've already deleted your old setup, my suggestion would have been to backup what you have and start from scratch. You can always import your old config into a new one, but if it's gone at this point, that would be tougher...