SpyDIRmaN

Hey HK, haven't been on in awhile (so many other pressing matters in my life to deal with that the EMU project went on hold for a bit. lol).. So did the magnets do the trick? or are you still having the distortion?

Thanks for all the advice fellas. It's really appreciated. I'm trying to get a nice clean list of worthwhile games and clear up some HD space for Movies and other large files. I managed to clear almost 40GB of HDD space just by clearing out those lame (imho) dance dance revolution, beatmania, etc roms and CHDs... What a waste of space! I then turned on selected filtering, validate roms, working roms only, no clones, etc, in gameEx and I think i've got pretty close to what I'm after... I will be checking out RomCenter in the long run for better organization, but I'm fairly happy with the results atm... I seem to recall reading that the Mame Data used in GameEx to build the list (info,history,catver,etc) was running a little behind the times... Would this (in conjunction with the "working roms only") end up removing roms from the list that work well in the latest version of mame? I'm not too concerned, as I think I can just add roms to the "do not filter section" as needed, but I'm just curious.

I will have to check out the MCM thing for sure... I've been reluctant to tackle clrmame, just because I have so many other things I'm working on and it seems a tad cryptic. Also I was under the impression that it's mostly just a set validator/tweaker like goodtools (renaming, merging, and the like)... I'm not sure it would be much help with what I want to do... What I really need is something that will behave like mame32's gui interface, and allow me to actually move the actual files associated... I have a lot of roms and, while I plan on backing up all of them, I'm only interested in having the english, working, fairly modern (post 1988) games running on my system... It's looking to be a nightmare, going through each and every game, marking down the filenames of the games I want to remove, closing mame and then going down the list and removing all the while hoping not to break anything. Hopefully that MCM thing will help.

I'm trying to figure out the easiest way to sort through my mame roms. I'd like to trim down the ROM list (and hard drive space) by removing unworking, and old games to another folder... It would be great if I could do this from Mame32 by just clicking the "not working" tab and then dragging all the files to a folder... Or by sorting by year, and then removing everything prior to 1985... Does anyone know an easy way to organize mame's roms, based on defined criteria, that doesn't involve hunting for each file individually?

That looks awesome... I'm a big fan of the Kenshin (Samurai X) anime series, and was so disappointed when the PSX fighting game for it sucked... Do you know if the torrent included information on how to create your own characters? I'll have to look into this for sure...

I spent a great deal of time setting up snaps in GameEx... There is a feature in the advanced config to turn on "best match" which has gameEx fuzzy match your snap image with the rom file... Without this on, you need to have your snap images match your rom name perfectly... When using the "create snap" feature, GameEx will try to create a snap for every game that doesn't already have a (name matched) snap. This can become a fair bit of work (renaming and all) but there are a number of tools that can help... Check out http://www.localarcade.com/screenshotarchi...nloads_apps.htm I used the image renamer, and it was a big help...

Correct me if I'm worng (I've not yet checked out no-intro), but as far as naming conventions go: just because good-tools supports naming homebrews and hacks, etc, there shouldn't be any reason you could not have a good-named "clean" set without these included... Options are our friend

Like I said, I bought this online from someone who was obviously building it themselves. It's got a decent, non stock, heatsink (cooler master I think, but can't tell while it's spinning lol), and the case itself isn't low-end (a rather nice looking HTPC case). The problem just seems to be the choice of motherboard (position of cpu in the case) and size of heatsink to go with the case (as it goes all the way to the top of the case and has almost zero ventilation, hence the reason to put a hole in there)... Actually I've got something a little cleaner planned out than just cutting a large, ugly, hole in it. I'm going to drill small, symetrical holes using the removable wall from my desktop pc as a blank... Now the only thing will be worrying about someone spilling a drink on the case.. haha

Well all I can say is: Holy crap! I downloaded a very small program called "Core Temp" which more acurately logs CPU temps for AMD64s (k8 and above) and CoreDuos, and saw that my CPU temp was hovering around the 60-62c mark... Then I took off the PC case cover (as I said it doesn't leave any space to properly vent the Heatsink) and watched. In less than a minute the heat droped down to 40 degrees! Fired up mame, with all the settings the same, and MK2 runs smooth as silk now... Even gave Killer Instinct a whirl and that too runs near perfect... Was afraid I was going to have to use that ugly old u_64 app to run KI goodness, but now I am a very happy camper indeed I will be cutting a big fat hole in the top for sure now Apparently the CPU was throttling down the speed because it was running so hot... Cooling it down has made a HUGE difference. I compiled another copy of mame (using HKs sweet Mame Compiler) and it took 20 minutes this time instead of 45... Anyway, Thanks for the help fellas... -Brian L. (SpyDIRmaN)

I will definately look into this stuff and see what I can do. I've got similar settings on my p4 machine (same mame.ini) and it works fine, so my first guess was a hardware, or driver issue (god I hate them). I also just read about AMD64s auto throttling the CPU when it gets too hot. Right now I'm trying to find a good tool to monitor this, and tell me if it's happening when I run mame. I got this pc pre-configured by someone else off ebay. it's in a really spiffy, but tight HTPC case, and the CPU fan goes all the way up to the top of the lid (it's laid flat like a stereo) with no ventalation. I'm considering drilling small hole in the top of the case where the heatsink is to let some air flow out, but anyway, it's THIS that leads me to think HEAT may be a factor in my slowdown as well... I dunno... I guess i'll just have to roll up my sleves and check everything... *sigh*

Forgive my chiming in, as I have little experience with this stuff and I'm likely stating the obvious, but as you said it seems like there is a problem with them droping the last digit when pulling up the page. ie pages 100-109 bring up page 10, and pages 111-119 bring up page 11... I'd assume this was just an oversight on their part as most of their systems don't go above 99 pages. If i'm not wrong, as long as the requsted page is only being called on by their system to be displayed, there'd be no way (for anyone) to get at the data that didn't have direct access to their system... I seem to recall you said you wrote to them to point this out and they still haven't fixed it (can't be that hard, but what do I know). Maybe we should all send them messages regarding this (not saying what are motive is of course) and perhaps then they will address it... Seems a waste for them to have all that info (pages 100 - 163) that no one can access.

It's a winfast PX7100 GS (Nvidia) 128MB I had read somewhere that someone who was experiencing slowdown on their AMD64 found out in the end it was just a problem with the video drivers in conjunction with his plasma display. I've got the latest drivers from nvidia (I think, but i will check again). I'm runing mame through game ex with the default settings -triplebuffer -nowindow -joy -video d3d I just tried removing -triplebuffering and that only slightly seemed to improve things. the sound problem and slowdown still was there. I aslo tried switching to DD but that didn't help at all.. As a side question. what is the switch to show FPS in mame?

I'm trying to get Mame working well on my AMD64 3400+ I'm running winxp pro (32bit) 1GB ram and default mame settings, through gameex. Mame is the newest 119u3 with the hiscore and nags removed, and optimized for Athalon64 I've noticed that certain games seem to run considerably slower than on my P4 machine. Namely Mortal Kombat 2 (though I haven't tested very many others)... The sound is choppy and the framerate terrible. I'm not exactly sure where (or how) to go about trouble-shooting this. I've been reading around the net a bit, and I get the impression that a few people have had slowdowns of one sort or another on AMD cpus, and that perhaps it's just a matter of settings (either in mame, or in the system bios .. ie. overheating, etc). Still others are saying that Mame started running slower on AMDs somewhere around version .112 I'm fairly new to emulation, and Mame in particular. Does anyone have some good suggestions about what common problems or settings I should address?

I think they are great!!! I agree that the reason few people are downloading them is probably because they are still a WIP, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't be appreciated by everyone if, and when, they were included in the GameEx install... I'm sure there are many people who enjoy and appreciate the features in gameex that don't make it onto the forum. Now with the change in categories, they are more useful than ever. I actually USE them to narrow down the choices when picking a game to play. Now if only there was a complete collection of game manuals somewhere, then my life would be fulfilled.. ok... maybe not... but at least my emu setup would be complete

Just a couple of quick questions... I have an athalon64 system running 32bit windows xp pro. Do you know if the athalon64 optimizations only work in a 64bit enviornment or would my cpu be helped by these anyway? The other question I have is about the hiscore.dat. I've downlaoded the latest and poped it into the mame directory however I've noticed in the mame.ini that there is a listing for hiscore_directory just below the cheat-file listing and it just says "hi"... do I need to change or remove this. I don't appear to have any directory named "hi" in my mame folder.

I may need to give pSX another look, but I spent the time (with much help from this forum) to set up epsxe with delta (making configs for each game) and I'm quite happy with the results thus far. I'd be interested in knowing any stumbling blocks (non compatibility, etc) people have run into with pSX. I know a couple other people who are wanting me to help them set up an emulation center, and I am not thrilled about the idea of training them all to set up delta, nor would I like to configure their games myself. There's one thing I do know for sure, I will be suggesting they all register a copy of GameEx

Good news, she says she'll do it. Had to get hold of her on myspace (lol) as I kept missing her on the phone (damn time difference). With any luck I should be able to order them tomorrow, just need to get her address again (forgot to ask) as I haven't sent her anything in awhile Hopefully the turn around time on all this won't be toooo long. I know how much it sucks when those little problems pop up. I'm a perfectionist to a point, and then I just say "stuff it" , and try something else... fingers crossed this will fix your problem.

I've followed the above instructions. Used mame 119 source applied (in order) u1.diff, u2.diff, hi_u2.diff Set the the compile options to P4 / Dual Core and compiled. I think i've done this right, but what I'm left with is a number of strange .exe files in addition to the mamep4.exe I'm fairly new to command line mame, but the binary version of 118, that I had been using, doesn't contain most of these .exe files, and has a number of other files that are not present in the folder (post compiling). I figured it was safe to assume that anything in the mame-compiler/mame/ folder that wasn't the original source files, was the finished result. Is this all I need? or should I dump these into the old mame folder? Oh, and if the "optimize for p4, dual core, etc" feature is only to speed up the compiling process, then why add the P4 bit to the end of the mame.exe? (ie.mamep4.exe) I'd thought it was a change in the mame source to speed up mame once compiled (based on cpu).. Anyways, sorry if none of this makes sense. it's 1:30am and I really should be sleeping instead of mucking with mame. but what can i say... I'm addicted

Hey mate, just got back online (been having issues with my internet)... I'll try and get hold of my sister tonight, and see if she won't mind helping us out. I'll post back here as soon as I know...

Yeah, took a quick look at the PartsExpress site, and they look pretty cheap. I can try and get ahold of my sister tomorrow and see if she won't mind watching for them in the mail, and forwarding them this way. I'm not sure exactly which ones you will need though. I know nothing about bucking magnets, and I'd hate to order the wrong ones. If you wanna take a look, and work out which ones you think you need. I'll take care of the rest mate. -Brian (SpyDIRmaN)

Thanks for the suggestion. I had done the Delete game data thing, but hadn't erased the emu.maps. I noticed there were also a number of files labled "emu#.dbcache" I deleted those as well, and that seems to have fixed the category miss-matching that happened before. still no change with the grouped emus not being able to sort, but I think I read somewhere by TOM that Grouped emu's don't yet support DBs. Maybe I should consider it a bonus that the DBs even show up. Perhaps while Tom's doing the Search features he will revamp the DB support and include it's use within Grouped emu's (at least for configurations, like mine, using the same DBs accross all grouped emus)...

You'd be right. I haven't gotten much of a chance to game test, as I am still setting everything up, but in my effort to get all of my N64 games working I noticed that while project64 1.6 played most games well with my hardware, there were a couple of games that benifited from PJ 1.7 beta's updated video driver (Jabo's Direct3D8 1.7.0.53). The only 2 games I have set to use it at the moment are: Pokemon Stadium, and Command & Conquer, but I'm sure I could find a few more that run better using it. I was just going to run them all through the PJ64 1.7 but noticed that a lot of the games that ran smooth in 1.6 suffered serious frame rate drops in 1.7. I think this might have to do with my hardware being a little less than ideal (Athalon64 3400, 1GBram, 128 GRFX) but again, I haven't done much testing yet. You can easily recreate the strange effects that GameEx has while using Groups by just grouping an emulator with a blank emu in advance config. You'll notice that the Grouped emu will automatically get listed at the top of the EMUs list in GameEx and that while the DBs still show up, the sort by category doesn't work at all... There's also a bit of a bug I noticed last night. After erasing the game data in advanced config as suggested by LB11, I went to my SNES games and searched by category. Most of the games sorted perfectly, but I noticed that for some strange reason "Fighter's History" was showing up as a RPG game. I double checked the DB and it's listed as a fighting game, so there is no reason what-so-ever that it should get listed with the RPGs but there it is anyway... ???? I have no idea what's causing that, but it does seem a bit buggy.

Great work on the DBs fellas! Much easier to use now! I've noticed something a bit strange now in GameEx, I have a couple of emus set up in GROUPS but using the same DB. (ie 2 versions of Project64 both set to use the same DB, and then grouped in gameEx). Anyway, while the DB list seems to show up fine (all the game data, etc is there) I can't seem to sort by anything but game name. All the other options (category, year, etc) don't work, and just continue to show every game. Is this a short coming on GameEx's side or is there a better way to set things up so it all works smooth? I hope that made enough sense to understand. I'm a bit hungover and tired tonight

I've noticed that there are a number of listings in allgames, for games that are not currently in the MDBs. In particular systems like Playstation have a number of games that the current MDBs don't list at all. For example: "Stuart Little 2" for Playstation is listed on allgames, but appears nowhere in any MDB for use with GameEx. I had just been entering the info Manually for the missing games that i had, but it would be great (now that we have the data) to get those games in there. I took a quick look at the MDBs that LB11 just did and while the allgames Cat info went in just fine, the missing games are, well, still missing. I know, I know "one thing at a time", but there are plans in the works to add the games (listed in the all games database) that were previously missing before right?

I'm following this closely, as the DBs are an awesome addition to my GameEx setup. And would love to help out in anyway that I can. I noticed that the AllGames data has a "Genre" field and a "Style" field, That work quite well together. The style field seems to work like a subcategory, which would be awesome if/and when Tom decides to include subcategory support in gameEx. Will both these fields be supported in the proposed changes to the DBs? Ideally (at least for me) the current category field would be replaced with allgame's much narrower, and hence more usable, "genre" field, and a subcategory field could be added to the DBs using allgame's "style" information (which would be used later if we can talk tom into subcategory support). At least then it would actually be useful, and at least remotely accurate, to search for games by category in gameex, where as at the moment it returns a huge list of multi-category nonesense. Honestly I think the current categories (moby's genre info) aren't very usable for sorting games, and at best, prove mildly informative. There's just far too many cryptic, multi, categories in it (ie. Action-strategy-sport-RPG as a single category). Perhaps I'm missing something... I dunno. that's my 2 cents anyway