dwight

OH YES!!! Thank you Headkaze, thank you Tom!! It's like Xmas, only better!!

Thanks, that works. The downside is I cam,t limit it to only show my favorites game list and I don't have a shutdown menu option, so the cab gets the power pulled when kids have had enough. These could be possible future enhancements for gamelayncher mode if anyone else is using this mode.

Hi, I'm using Gamelauncher mode with an ArcadeVGA card, and a CGA Arcade monitor. This limits what themes I can use, and with little kids around, gamelauncher is abou tht easiest for them to use. Is there any way of disabling the "remove from favourites" option on gamelists? I want to use a favourites list, I just don't want kids to be able to accidentally remove titles. Also - Is there any way of getting Gamelauncher theme and Gamelauncher mode to only display the favourites list? SO MAME, SNES, Laserdisc etc menus won't be displayed, only the favourites list. I've tried using a custom menu, but that doesn't affect gamelauncher mode, and if I use another theme, like ArcadeVGA_Lores, I get a bigger problem with kids being able to select "Change View" from the main menu, which then kills performance when they go into an emulator list. So, my solution was to take advantage of gamelauncher mode and try to make my cab kid-proof. Anyone wth kids will know how amazing they are as cab-testers, they find problems no one thinks of! Thanks for any tips. Dwight.

Hi, Is it possible to edit the menu that is displayed across the top of the screen (listed as menu in the theme editor I think)? I want to disable to Change View option because on my Lo-Res (640x288) setup I always use the text list because the snapshot views and video snapshot views just don't look right on this rig. When I go into Theme Editor I can see the menu bar, but it won't let me delete. When I open the "Default - ArcadeVGA_LoRes" option, Theme Editor displays a message indicating it is not a v2 or v4 theme and to start a new theme to edit it - just in case thats a clue to something not working for me? Failing this, I could always disable or modify left and right joystick movements using the Custom keyboard config I guess? Thanks, Dwight.

Thank you so much for adding spinner support to scroll through menus. This has made a major leap forward in the useability of my cabinet as scrolling with a spinner is significantly faster and more natural feeling than a joystick. It's a pleasure to use this feature.

Thank

Hi, I'm trying to find a vertical layout that I can use at low res (288x640) with an ArcadewVGA card that will also only use my custom menu (which includes my favourites and an exit option only). The GameLauncher layout seems to always use it's own menu, and refuses to use my custom menu - I have tried setting the "Use Gamelauncher" option to both Yes and NO without the results changing. I have tried the GameLauncher, Gamelauncher original, and gamelauncher original v1 without success. The gamelauncher original v1 profile crashes gameex. Also, when using gamelauncher, for some reason always starts up in the "SNES" emulator folder - I have to hit the third button to get back to the main menu, which still shows the gamelauncher menu, not my custom menu. I have also tried the ArcadeVGA-LoRes, MCE Glossy V3, Default and a few other profiles, but while these do use my custom menu, at this low resolution and in vertical orientation (288x640) then game selection lists fall off the edge of the screen and are unreadable. Gamelauncher is the only profile that seems to show the graphics and menu properly. I'm using an ArcadeVGA card with an arcade Monitor in vertical orientation on a Windows 7 OS. Windows 7 is set to portrait mode to make navigation easier. GameEx is set currently set to use an x resolution of 288 and a Y resolution of 640 on both the Display settings config screen, and the arcade VGA screen and does not have any rotation options turned on. I'd prefer to keep windows in portrait mode, but If I have to change, happy to do so as GameEx is all that will run on this rig once its configured. A problem with portrait mode is that most layouts try to change the resolution to 640x288 or 640x480 and fail (shows up in the gameex log) probably because they don't have a vertical mode hence don't recognise 288x640 as a portrait mode. Can anyone offer advice on a profile I should use for lo-res vertical setup? Or how to use gamelauncher mode with my custom menu? Is there somewhere I should look for how to setup vertical mode with windows and gameex properly? Thank for any advice, Dwight.

Question 1 - Each of your buttons will have to be on a single board as LCDPlugin assumes a given button will be on the same ID. On the "LED Input" tab of LCDPlugin, you'll set your device the LEDWiz, type to RGB, ID to the ID of the LEDwiz board you are configuring (e.g. 1 for the first board, 2 for the second etc), and finally set RGB to the input numbers you have wired the LED to the LEDWiz board (e.g. R=1, G=2, B=3 would mean the current button you are configring is wired to inputs 1, 2, and 3 on the LEDWiz board, or R=30, G=29, B=28 would mean the LED is connected to inputs 30, 29, and 28 on the LEDWiz board). And herein lies your challenge - there is currently no setting to allow you to use two or more LEDWiz boards for a single button. You can have different buttons on different boards, just not the same button connected to inputs on different boards. Question 2 - "Always On" on the "Profile Editor" Tab ("Always Active") means that the button you are looking at will always be lit up, it won't turn off when you start an emulator or change menus. Before setting this you will first need to setup the correct ID and input number in the LCDPlugin, then when you select "State" and "Always Active" the button will light up. "Always Acrive" is useful for a start button, or perhaps an "Insert Coin" button, or maybe an "Exit" button. BTW - "State" is the option to tick that means turn the LED on for the specific profile you are configuring. Not ticking state means the LED remains OFF when the the profile you are working with is selected. Question 2 - "...I want to set the buttons up so player #1 is red and #2 is blue and so-on" - You don't need RGB LEDs and three inputs if you want buttons to be just one colour. Just hook up the Blue or Red wire from the LED to only one of the inputs on the LEDWiz and when activated, it will always come up in just that colour. The only reason you hook up 3 wires is to be able to change colours using RGB LEDs. Question 3 - Keycode is the MAME key assigned to that button. When this is set, and if you are using controls.ini, then as you scroll through the MAME games, the correct buttons will light up in the correct colours. Without this set, GameEx won't know which buttons belong to what, and therefore can't light up the right buttons for each game - it will rely instead on what you have configured in the "Profile Editor" tab.

Thanks heaps! Custom Menus has provided a great solution for me.

Hi, Is it possible in GameEx to have it default to my Favourites list, and then to only allow scrolling through my Favourites list? i.e. all the other emulator and MAME menus would not be available? I want to use my favourites list rather than just MAME as I have added games from other systems (Daphne, ZSnes and Fusion) into it, but now I want to lock my cabinet sown to just my favourites list. Thanks, Dwight.

Hi, I've recently spent many hours configuring GameEx, MAME, and Daphne to play nicely on my vertical oriented arcade monitor and thought other people might be interested in how to configure their vertical setups. I'm using an ArcadeVGA card, J-PAC, CGA arcade monitor, and an Intel core2duo 2.8GHz system. In my case, the screen must be vertically oriented to fit in a cocktail cabinet and to be far enough away from the CPU etc to not zap them with static. While MAME and GameEx can rotate the display, Daphne doesn't like video modes it doesn't recognize, and depending on the GameEx Theme you are using, you might find GameEx ignores your instruction to rotate 90 degrees or -90 degrees. My solution was to rotate the display in Windows using the ATI Catalyst drivers (CCC) that come with the ArcadeVGA. To begin, I set my resolution to 640x480. Rotating the screen only seems to work with resolutions between 640x480 and 800x600 - outside of this, I don't even get an option to rotate the screen. I right click the red ATI icon in the bottom right hand corner of the screen (the notification icons). Choose the "1. Ultimarc ArcadeVGA2", "Rotate display", and choose either Right (90 deg/CW) or Left (-90deg/CCW). This should rotate the screen if it doesn't - check you are running SP2 and not SP3 for Windows XP. Only the latest ATI drivers work with Windows XP SP3, and the Ultimarc drivers will need an update. I don't know how Vista or Win7 users will go with this. You can downgrade to SP2 if you need to - do a search on the net/Microsoft's help site and you'll find what you need. With Windows in Portrait mode, now you can start setting up your front end and emulators. Open the Advanced config for GameEx, go to displays, and ensure "Rotate" is set to "No" - You don't need to rotate because you've already done that in Windows. If you're only going to run MAME, you could skip rotating Windows and let GameEx and MAME do the work - but thats another story. Next, open and edit MAME.INI (in the root of your mame dir) and change either AutoROR or AutoROL from 0 to 1 (don't change both at the same time) - just try them one at a time and keep the one that displays the image the correct way up for your config. This will mean Vertical games play at the full resolution, and horizontal games will play with big black borders top and bottom and a smaller screen - but won't be stretched. All the other rotate options here should be "0" (ROTATE/ROR/ROL/FlipX etc). If you really want horizontal games to look right you'll have to make achoice to either mount your screen horizontally, and play horizontal games right, or mount your screen vertically and play vertical games right. Or get fancy have a screen that rotates mechanically. If you are using an ArcadeVGA card, you are probably also using tooIs to set proper resolution for all your mame games. I use ArcadeVGARes by Gavin Benson. Set this to "Horizontal" because Windows and the AutoROL/AutoROR setting in MAME.INI will look after the proper rotation for you. If you set "Vertical" in this tool, you'll find the screen rotates too far or the wrong way. Next I open GameEx Advanced Config again, go to my Daphne settings, and set my command line in daphne to -x 480 -y 640. This tells Daphne to rotate the image, but I've found it will only work if I've first set Windows to 480x640 (Portrait) mode (otherwise it complains about not being able to find a compatible resolution). If you're using a higher Res, you'll need to change this as appropriate e.g. -x 600 -y 800. For those interested, this is the Daphne Command Line Options setting I use: vldp -blank_searches -min_seek_delay 1000 -seek_frames_per_ms 20 -homedir C:\daphne -sound_buffer 2048 -volume_vldp 42 -volume_nonvldp 42 -fullscreen -x 480 -y 640 I don't know if that's great, but it works for me. So that's it, happy gaming! if anyone has any better ideas/configs, please post them. Regards, Dwight.

Any chance of a Core i7 "compile option" version of mame compiler coming out? Today I just use Intel Core 2, Quad Core, 64-bit settings, but there might be another 1% that can be dragged out of an i7 option. Thanks, Dwight.

Well, Installed the Vista Codec 4.6.6 pack anyway - in Windows XP, and it fixed the problem! Preview videos play fine again. I ran the install for 4.6.6, it didnt complain that it wasn't vista, then uninstalled FFDshow (yeah, I know should have done that first), restarted GameEX, and tada - all is good! I'm not running videos as a background by the way. Thanks! Dwight.

Hi, I'm now running WinXP rather than Vista again, I'm using GameEX 9.30 and FFDShow from the GameEX site (the recommended version). The preview videos seem to stuttering and pausing on playback. They playback fine in Windows - it's like the old problem when I first went to Vista and the previews would do the same thing - this was fixed a while ago, and was working fine up until about 9.27, then the stuttering started to happen again under Vista. I didn't worry too much at the time because I was planning to go back to XP, but now Im back on XP with the same issue. I havn't attached my log files, but can - the only warnings in the log are that GameEX can't find instruction folders for some of my emulators. Thanks for any help. Regards, Dwight.

Perfect! All works again, thx! Damn fast turnaround too!

Hi, For some reason my LEDWiz buttons no longer change color when I scroll through my mame list or enter a game. The correct buttons light up and change, but they are always white. It was working a around GameEX 9.1x last I noticed, I have since re-installed pluginLCD, GameEX and copied a new colors.ini into gameex\plugins\pluginLCD, but no joy yet. I have also moved from Vista back to XP with no luck in fixing this. Any tips on how to fix this appreciated. I have attached my pluginLCD ini and log file here - but there are no obvious errors. Vista = pig with lipstick. Thanks, Dwight. PluginLCD.zip

Hi, I noticed Vista getting slower after the last service pack updates. Im not sure it's GameEX. Anyway, I have given up on that pig with lipstick (Vista) and have gone back to XP and can confirm, on the same hardware, GameEX loads faster, and mame runs faster. Regards, Dwight.

I was suffering a morning of severe mental instability, and complete insanity, sorry about the hitting a button note and posting in the wrong thread. Yes, hitting a button does skip the video for me. I think my X-Arcade sometimes plays up - maybe when the poota side of things gets too hot.

Thanks, that did fix it - weird because the latest FFDSHOW codec was working fine with everything else in GameEx. Any chance of having the more options in the vid directories, so that GameEx checks an video_artwork folder and then a horizontal and then a vertical folder for the preview snapshots? This would work well with Circo's torrent download. And an option toquit the startup video after hitting a button? Thx Dwight

Thanks Tom! Unfortunately, on my system, the startup videos still don't work The GameEx loading screen comes up, then the screen goes black and I can hear the movie play, but the screen stays black and never returns to the menu screen. I still need to go to start manager to quit. INI and log file attached. Regards, Dwight. CONFIG.zip

Log and GameEx.INI as requested. As before, I can hear a random video being played, but all I see on the screen is the GameEx loading screen. when the video finishes playing, it just sits on the GameEx Loading screen, I have to use task manager to quit. If I don't use a startup video, GameEx starts without a problem. Thanks, Dwight. CONFIG.zip

Hey, thanks for another brilliant update! This might be just my system, but any pointers appreciated. I'm trying to use the startup videos, but when I put in a folder or video for GameEx to play at startup, I hear the sounds but don't see any video - the "GameEx Loading" graphic is the only thing on the screen. There are no errors in the log from what I can see, but once the video stops playing (the sounds stop), I have to use task manager to quit as the menu never comes up. Its like it's trying to play them on a secondary monitor or something. The videos do work outside of gameex, they are .MPGs - but is there a format I should check for in here? And if I don't use startup videos, GameEx runs perfectly. Finally - a feature request to enhance startup videos - is it possible to add the ability to quit the video playing if a button pressed? One of my videos is quite long, and while entertaining for other people, if I just want to get into GameEx because Im testing or trying something new out, I just want to jump in quickly. Thanks, Dwight.

This a SAMBA NAS drive? If so, just map a network drive to the SAMBA share and tick the box to remap on restart. Then in GameEX just use the network drive letter like a regular path instead of any // (or in windows it should be \\). Last time I used a SAMBA based NAS drive it was quick to write but really struggled to read directories/folders with lots of files in them - It was really really sllooooooowww. Regards, Dwight.

All your custom settings are controlled in the MAME.INI file - edit that to get mame running the way you want (full screen, using artwork, cheats etc). The commadn line can then jsut say "mame.exe" Regards, Dwight.

Hi, I have a 3GHz Core2Duo, 4GB RAM, Vista 64 Home Premium, running 64bit MAME 0.124. KI runs no problem, Gauntlet Legends runs the intro OK, but gameplay is still suffers choppy gameplay and runs a little slow (20-25 frames a second maybe?). Close, but no cigar yet. Regards, Dwight.