shroud

I thought I heard RocketLauncher can provide that, but maybe that's not true...

Thanks! I think your suggestions pretty much cover what I would like to do i.e. simply fix wrong titles in the .map and add missing game descriptions and details (genre, year, publisher...) in the .db3 files.

I would be very interested in this too, albeit for systems other than portables devices. Most of my emulated systems use 4:3 aspect ratio, and when I run GameEx on a 16:9 screen, I get the empty area on both sides. It would be very nice if GameEx itself could support bezels, instead of relying on the individual emulators to do so.

I always have problems with databases mismatching some of my games titles & description. And then of course some databases are simply incomplete. What is the best practice to mix database information with custom information, with regards to games titles and description? Mainly I want to be able to achieve the following: 1) Have GameEx use database titles and games descriptions as a starting point 2) Overwrite titles & description with custom values when for some reason there is a mismatch 3) Add custom titles & description when the game is completely missing from the database I understand that GameEx uses .map files for titles. These are easy to modify manually, but will be re-generated every now and then (when exactly?), so if I fix any wrong title here, I have to do it again over and over. Is there a way to disable the re-generation of the map files, once I am confident that I won't change my set of games at least for a while? I understand less about how GameEx uses the database files... which files can I edit manually to add missing games descriptions? Is it possible to edit them with normal text editors, or what software is needed? Will those files be re-generated sometimes? Thanks for help!

And if you let me add what's up next for the near future... 5) New user interfaces will be the focus in the upcoming years, to open up totally new ways to play games. There have been already attempts in the past years, starting with the Wii and then Kinect, Oculus Rift etc... mixed results but the failures are due only to those technologies being still in their infancy. They will get better, and once they reach the right price/quality point, they will be massive, especially Augmented Reality.

I totally hear what you're saying... I actually like playing both retro and contemporary games. I have a small collection of the latter, and not because of the cost of the originals, but because they are indeed a longer-term effort to play. There is a huge gap between the short & immediate fun of old Coin-Ops vs the continuous advancement in modern games. But the differences come naturally from the media used to deliver the games: 1) Coin-Ops were designed as a pay-per-play entertainment. This meant that one play was supposed to last a short time, not too short (to avoid players feeling they were getting robbed) but short enough to require soon another coin or let the next player play. Remember the flyer saying "Q*Bert collects quarters!" ? Not much depth was needed in those games. 2) Early home computers & consoles games introduced more depth, because you were now spending more money to buy a title once and for all. The games variety was enormous however, so we can't judge them all as one. But unprecedented stuff like CRPG, championship sports games, strategy games and graphic adventures were born, which could have never been coin-ops. 3) As flat internet subscriptions (not charged by connection time) became the norm, online gaming exploded, and this caused another massive shift in game design. For many games, the idea became that the player should invest a lot of time training to get better and more competitive, focusing on a few favourite games instead of wasting time not getting much better in a lot of titles. Some companies decided to implement a subscription model for selling their games, which encourages this behaviour. 4) Smart phones got much better, and now the oldest way of gaming (the short, quick fun) became popular once again, with a lot of people playing while travelling or while waiting for something. But this time the shortquickfun has a twist, in the idea that on a smartphone you can always continue the game from where you left, and never have to start it over. Incremental puzzle games and simple skill-based games (e.g. Angry Birds) where it takes a minute to complete a level, but offer hundreds of levels and plenty of expansions, are the perfect kind of games, with small prices (and sometimes progressive micropayments) being the perfect kind of pricing. So it's not just that "the gamers have changed their tastes in how they want to play", it's that the available technology and associated pricing schemes have a lot of influence But as you say, the early arcade model just worked, and it definitely still works for a lot of people like me, who between work & family & life won't have time to sit down for hours to play through a complete adventure or skip sleep over a MMORPG (at least not until retirement), but can play only those 15 minutes every now and then.

Yep, that was definitely an interesting article, even tho I had some trouble "connecting" to some of its points because my own personal definition of "retrogames" implies at least about 20 years of age But I know that I started being a retrogamer out of pure nostalgia, when I was in my early 20s, which occurred in the late 90s. It was the time when the internet really took off in my country, and this meant that an unprecedented amount of "old stuff" became suddenly available. Three things mainly ignited my nostalgia: 80s pop radio hits, japanese anime, and Commodore 64 games, all of which had been major cultural items of my pre-teen years (80s movies too, but those were largely still aired on TV at the time). However... when I fire up my GameEx, I rarely play something just because of nostalgia. Maybe I am delusional about it, but I kind of feel like I pick the games which are really still fun to play. And I love discovering true jems which I missed back then. I always say that pure fun has little to do with technical quality, which generally is of course a good thing, but occasionally it even gets in the way of fun (the typical example is games which are so graphically "heavy" that they distract the player from the actual gameplay).

Thank you so much Evilforces to continue working on the SMS set!! I am sorry I haven't been able to work on my own proposed project. It's still on my mind to resume making C64 icons when I have more free time.

Ok, good to know! I have only 3 NES games with names starting with A or B. I looked into the database file (with Notepad...) and I actually found those games... so it's either wrong naming of my files, or some other config problem. So a couple of questions now: 1- If GameEx is correctly set to use the NES database, should the menus "Categories"/"Year"/"Manufacturer"/etc. show up in the UI even if NONE of my games is found in the database? Because I don't see those menus at all, and that's why I was thinking the problem is rather in the config than in not matching the files correctly. 2- For the purpose of renaming my files, when you say to use e.g. the NoIntro naming convention, do you mean simply to go to http://datomatic.no-intro.org/, find my games and use their names for them? (I know, supern00b question...)

Ok, so let's give up on C64 and DOS. At least the NES set however should be easy to make it work, but I don't know how to continue with that.

So do you suggest that for example I rename all my C64 files according to the names found here? https://archive.org/download/Commodore_C64_TOSEC_2012_04_23

This seems to be definitely caused by using database names. If I turn the feature off, I get no wrong/duplicate games.

I am not really aware of what "rom set" I am using. The Coleco games are however working fine with relation to database naming (in my INI file you can check the Coleco being setup as emulator #3). For 12 out of 15 systems there is no problem. It fails with NES, C64 and DOS games. I can actually imagine that there might be problems with DOS games because there is an extra layer between GameEx and the emulator, the DBGL launcher, but even with this extra layer I am for example capable of mapping video snaps and other artwork correctly. C64 games might have naming problems, as this is by far my oldest set of games, dating back almost 20 years. Files were often renamed, and if GameEx requires exact naming conventions (which ones?) to match the games with database information, then most of the games will be a miss. Anyway, I have just downloaded a new GameEx database for the C64, and now for the first time GameEx actually showed all the menus (genre, year...) for the C64 as well! So something's definitely improving a bit*, even tho only a few games apparently are recognized. So which file naming convention should be used for GameEx to be able to match files with games in the database? *Although it actually has screwed up the list... all those (few) games that were "recognized" (and so they were given a year, publisher and other metadata) are actually recognized wrong. They are all displayed with another game's title, so for example now I have two "Ghostbusters" in the game list, but the second is actually "The Goonies", and this is the one which is shown also under the lists by year or publisher. In addition, the UI now behaves erratically, if I minimize the window (starting from windowed mode) and then restore it, it now has a totally fucked up appearance (wrong aspect ratio, UI not filling the whole window). For the NES games on the other hand I have no idea why the database match is failing.

In the Setup Wizard I do have actually set all emulators to "Use Database Names" except for two of them: Spectrum (because there were errors in the official database resulting in some games being shown as others) and ScummVM (because I have games in different languages, so it seemed better to just use the emulator's naming). I have for example downloaded the NES database again, to make sure I didn't have a wrong one. The other two which are failing are DOS and C64, which might be very much incomplete databases given the sheer amount of existing games, but still this doesn't explain the complete failure (at least I'd expect that SOME games would be found, or that even if none are found then empty dbcache files would be created).

Do you mean the db3 files? The GameEx\DATA\EMULATORS folder is full of them already, and I downloaded some more recent versions from this website just in case.

GameEx.ini

I have all my emulators in GameEx set in the configuration Wizard to use databases, but for some of them I am not getting the game description and various metadata (so I cannot sort games of those systems by year, genre, manufacturer...). In the GameEx log those emulators constantly show "No database data" (see emus 5, 10 and 14 in the attached log). I have noticed that those failing systems are missing all the necessary "dbcache" files in the DATA folder. I think these files are autogenerated, right? What can I do to trigger the autogeneration? Clicking "update list" in GameEx merely updates the EMU_n.map files, but not the .dbcache files. Thanks! log.txt

Can I ask you what screen size and aspect ratio? I am kind of gravitating for a 100" screen but I wonder if the sheer size would be too much for MAME and 8bits games... I would guess that nearly everyone gets a 16:9 screen for movies, but then most retro games systems use 4:3 so there'll be black bars. I don't remember if GameEx supports bezels for systems other than MAME.

Has anybody tried running GameEx on a projector screen? We're thinking about setting up a projector and screen in the living room, and I am wondering what are people experiences with using GameEx for gaming with a projector. If you do have a projector at home, and you have used it with GameEx and retrogames in general, please share your opinions It would be useful to know also what kind of projector you have, what is your screen size, and other useful arrangements (projector-screen distance, room light conditions...). There are apparently lots of variables involved in setting up a projector at home, so we're trying to sort out if it's a good idea at all, but then it would be nice if we could use it for gaming in addition to using it for movies.

Very slowly, I've created about 50 more icons, and I'll keep making more. I've been thinking about making something like ~50 icons per system (trying to pick popular games), at least for a dozen systems, to see if it sparks some interest in other people, but until actual support for them is implemented/enabled in GameEx then it makes sense that nobody is interested yet...

Thanks a lot! - I think that it would be a good idea to agree on making all icons 64x64. Probably this is the best compromise because it allows easy creation of icons for most systems, and the files are still reasonably small (<20k). - I am not actually sure what is the most common naming convention for non-MAME systems, probably TOSEC? - At the moment, since we're only 2 people, coordination is not an issue. If more people are interested in contributing, at the beginning we can just "adopt" one different system per contributor at a time, so that we don't have collisions. If 2 people want to work on the same system, then I suggest they "reserve" games in batches of e.g. 100 at a time. - Do we actually have an FTP service at GameEx, for uploading community projects media files? If not, we could easily ask over at EmuMovies if they are interested in our project. I think GSM is probably a good idea, but is there a version of it that doesn't require installation? I have troubles with installing 3rd-party software on my *coff coff...* office *coff coff...* computer.

And here's the link to our official community project thread

Here we start a community project for creating GAME ICONS that can be eventually used by GameEx in a variety of places. SITUATION GameEx already uses game icons for MAME only, and a complete set of icons for all MAME games already exist and can be downloaded from here: http://www.progettosnaps.net/icons/ In GameEx, you can enable MAME icons from the SetupWizard by simply going to the MAME Settings page and define a value for ICON path, that matches to your local folder containing MAME icons. These icons will then automatically be shown in the GameEx MAME menus along with the game title. There is currently no support yet in GameEx for game icons for emulators other than MAME, but a feature request has been created. So in a sense this community project is a bit looking into the future PURPOSE The objective of this community project is to create as many non-MAME game icons as possible for a variety of retrogaming systems. The ultimate target would be one day to have an icon for each game, but given the unbearable number of games in every possible systems, this is not a target achievable in a reasonable time, and therefore it is not really on the table. More modestly, the general purpose will be broken down in smaller targets, which can be undertaken by project participants on a voluntary basis. A reasonable target might be for example the complete set of game icons for a single system of choice. REQUIREMENTS These are the project requirements in a nutshell: 1) One icon per game. If the game exists in multiple variants, one icon per variant would be best (this is the approach chosen by the MAME icons project), but this can be deferred to a later time. 2) Icon files must be of the appropriate .ico type. 3) Icons must be of a resolution supported by Windows. The MAME icons project uses only 32x32 icons, but for many game systems this is too small to get a nice-looking icon. Conversely, larger resolutions are useless for the oldest game systems. In addition, the largest format 256x256 results in excessively large files. We can discuss together if we should stick to one default size for all icons or if we can allow ourselves some flexibility, but my personal preference would be to always create either 32x32 or 64x64 icons (maybe even 48x48 can be allowed). 4) The image used for the icon must come from the actual game graphics. It can be a screenshot of the player's character, or any other sprite or part of the screen that looks very recognizable (or should I say "iconic"?) with relation to the game in question. 5) Icons look best when transparency is used, although not all MAME icons used it. This is mostly up to you to decide, depending on the result. SUGGESTED PROCEDURE Making an icon shouldn't take more than a bunch of minutes, but sometimes it can of course take much longer if you want to do some fine-tuning in order to get a perfect result. Nevertheless the core procedure is truly simple. Here is a breakdown list of how I created the first few sample icons: 1) Start the game in your emulator of choice, pause it at a good point to capture the sprite or image you intend to. Take a screenshot. 2) In basic MS Paint or any other image processor, paste the screenshot, and crop/resize* down to the wanted size. Delete the background around your wanted sprite (for best transparency results, make the whole background a funky color that is not already used by any of the pixels in the sprite). Save as .png. 3) If your image processor doesn't itself support transparencies, there are many online tools to make the background transparent in a matter of second. For instance I have been using http://www190.lunapic.com/editor/ which allows you to "pick" a color by clicking on the background area, and will automatically turn all pixels of that color into transparent. 4) Convert the .png file into a valid .ico file. Again this can easily be done with online tools such as http://www.aconvert.com/icon/ * WARNING: resizing usually distorts the image. So rather than resize, I suggest you only ever crop, see how large is your cropped picture, and based on that decide what icon size to use. If it's still smaller than 32x32, try retaking the screenshot while running the emulator in windowed mode; if larger than 64x64, then try taking the screenshot in fullscreen mode. Here attached are a few samples for games from different systems. defender_of_the_crown64.ico ik+64.ico rick_dangerous48.ico space_taxi.ico spy_vs_spy.ico agent_usa.ico bc's_quest_for_tires.ico boulderdash.ico bruce_lee.ico keen4_64.ico gobliiins64.ico

Awesome I am myself in troubled times due to changes in my work and family (nothing bad, just stuff that requires a lot of attention), and I am also promised to resume delivering lots of new video snaps to emuMovies, so I won't be able to create icons at a nice speed. Nevertheless, I'll do whatever I can!

Yes I think they are! I think you can basically test your icons by: 1) Open the folder containing your icon files, and loop over different folder views ("large icons", "small icons" etc.). If your icon files are ok, then Windows should show them in all views, automatically adjusting the size. 2) Copy your icon files to the Desktop. You will immediately see if your icons transparency is working properly. 3) Finally you can also test that they work in GameEx, by replacing some MAME icons with your own custom icons (their names must match the official rom names of some MAME games existing in your collection). If you aren't using any MAME icon yet, define in GameEx Setup Wizard a path to MAME Icons, and make it point to the location of your custom icons. Then start GameEx, do the Update List, and see if your icons show up correctly in the MAME games list. But IMHO if your test steps 1) and 2) worked fine, then your icons will work in GameEx already, no need for step 3). I will try to create the Community Project thread tonight, so that we'll have a place for more official discussions