headkaze

CPWizard Homepage

Yes I know, part of the reason why it was always a working title and why I was asking for ideas for a new name. I was thinking Control Freak, but I don't think it explains itself well enough. Anyone have any ideas?

Also under performance settings you can set it to reduce CPU usage.

Anyone want to help me beta test this? If your computer savvy, don't mind playing around with software and testing things and have patience and regularity on these forums. Please PM me for a link to download the beta of CPViewer. You have to be a regular on here and I have to know you to apply. Also it's a big download (20MB) so you should have some decent ADSL link to the Net for downloading updates as I fix bugs. Thanks

$10 is a suggested amount. You can donate more, less or nothing at all. It all depends on if you like the program and want to support the poor and broke person who spends nights and days of his free time coding it. If your a broke student who has little cash in the first place, I would suggest you keep your money for books and beer instead

Check out Wait.exe. But Brian's idea is better, just spawn a second batch file for mounting the image, or use "Start deamon.exe" to run it and continue to the next line in the batch file. It will still wait for the game to finish until you quit, so you should be fine.

Thanks guys, appreciate it. Aparently there is a torrent on pd but I can't find it. Nevermind I'll keep looking around and thanks for the PM's I think I have enough info now to find them.

Can anyone show me where I can get a torrent or zip of the available pdf's for arcade machines. I've found a couple of slooow sites that make you download each one at a time which is painfully slow. I've also found a torrent but the tracker no longer recognized it. Can anyone help out?

Ahhh I can't believe I missed them I was on this webpage a few weeks ago downloading PCB's for testing in CPViewer. I didn't even see them and they're right there in front of my face. What was the smarta** comment?

What are MAME artwork preview images?

Sorry guys I was hoping to release CPViewer this weekend. But I'm having some problems minimizing Mame on my Arcade machine. It runs beautifully on my dev machine but is randomly not working on my cab. I'm not sure what it is, but I've already cracked a few beers to celebrate it's release. Unfortunately, I have not been able to solve the issue in my inebriated state so I will have to wait until tommorrow. I'm very pissed off about this more than anyone so sorry about the delay and bringing up hopes. Stay tuned it will be released next week some time. I feel it wouldn't be much of a release anyway with Brians mum in hospital so it's for the best IMHO anyway. Hopefully she will recover soon and I can release the software in better spirits. Again Brian our preyers are with you and your family.

I used to work in a hospital doing helpdesk and technical services. And whenever I went into the ICU to fix a computer it would always make my heart pound. All the machines and people and intensitiy. It was always intense and I felt afraid. But these people know what they're doing, they really do a great job and in all honesty they are the greatest people on the earth. IMHO we should idolise them instead of musicians and actors. Don't worry she's in good hands mate!

hansolo77: Please explain what Kaillera is to me. IRC chat will be separate to the GameEx website. What goes on in IRC will stay on IRC and I or any other moderator here will note tollerate IRC chat being brought into this forum. Sorry but I say that from experience and it's a good thing. hansolo77: Don't worry it's on it's way I'm just working through some issues with the latest version of Mame. But it should work as said. I don't expect anyone to donate until I release it to the public. It should definately add some extra value to your cab Time Pilot: Not sure if I can have the buttons change color to match the LEDWiz if thats what you mean. With your second point, the CPViewer can already show on your secondary monitor. I will probably add a feature later on so it can show random images while your playing a game or something. Secondary monitor will be something I will definately enhance in the future. Thanks for the feeback so far

Cool! Thanks Tom

Mate, that's terrible news My prayers are with your mum and family. I don't know what else to say, I just hope she recovers soon.

Definately the winner in my book!

Hey guys CPViewer is on the brink of beta release!!! Did you just wet your pants in excitement? hehe I've been working my butt off to get it finalized and in working order so people can start designing their CP's and also posting label files and emulator maps. But more on that later. I have some questions to ask, and appreciate it if people would take the time to post their ideas here. 1. CPViewer will support catver.ini, command.dat, controlsdat, MAWS hall of fame, history.dat, mameinfo.dat, nplayers.ini and story.dat (hiscores) and artwork display (snaps, titles, marquees, cabs, cpanels, pcb's) and manuals. I think I've covered about everything you could possibly read about a Mame game. This will all be available at the press of a key *while your playing the game*. Have I missed any data files out there or anything for Mame games that you wan't in your CP Viewer? 2. CPViewer will provide an IRC chat room (again available at all times at the press of a key). What server do you think we should go for and what channel name? #ArcadeChat on EFNet? Also I need someone who has a reliable PC online all day and knows how to op an IRC room. I need someone who can run a bot in the room and op/ban the people we want. Moderators on this forum will have op status but I need someone to keep the place from getting taken over by lamers. If I can't find anyone I have a friend in the Nintendo DS coding scene who can possibly lend me his bot. I have no idea if people will use IRC chat functionality from thier cabs, it may be a big flop I don't know! But it should be good if it gets popular enough to pause a game and go into chat to ask for help if you get stuck in a game, or want to brag about your current highscore! (If CPViewer crashes Mame don't come crying to me though!) 3. CPViewer will support other emulators besides Mame. But there will be issues minimizing and restoring some emulators. I will need help from the community in creating the necessary map files to make it happen. I don't want my program to have to use AutoIt / Autohotkey scripts to deal with emulators so I will need help to figure out how to deal with each one separately. If it simply minimizes and maximizes then no problem, if there needs to be specific code to make it work I will implement it directly into the viewer. Some emulators may not work at all with my program. 4. Console data. Right now CPViewer will support GameEx mdb database files which contain GoodName data for consoles that can be displayed on the CP. This includes Name, Category, Developer, NumPlayers, Date and Description. Additonally you can have label files which will map game specific controls onto a CP. Are there any online databases we can scrape information about consoles? 5. Instruction cards. Currently I have no intstruction card support but it would be nice. Know anywhere I can get them? 6. Finally the name. CPViewer was always a working title, but now it's sort of ended up being the name because I can't think of a better name (yeah and I thought I was creative). CPViewer was initially suppossed to be just that. A CPViewer and editor. But it has taken on a life of it's own. Now it's much more, so can you think of a better name? I will be posting a complete list of features and screenshots when the beta is released (here first of course!). And Tom will get the first preview That about covers the main things. I will be accepting PayPal donations for this project because I've put alot of time and effort into it. I'm thinking $10 US should be fair. What do you think? Too high? I do need to buy a new development PC because it's getting painfully slow working on large projects, so donations would be going towards that. Finally here is a screenshot of some of the things it can do (I wasn't going to post this but what the hay)

The page loads and I can view posts, but it just sits there with the load bar stuck downloading the rss image (which is actually displayed). This has only been a recent problem. I'm also using IE7. It's not big problem really, but since others were experiencing it I thought I should pipe up about it.

Problem seems to have come back

Seems to be working fine now. Before it was getting stuck downloading http://www.gameex.info/forums/style_images/1/rss.png. Seems okay now.

We live and breath Games... we Game inhale we GameEx hale

If thats in pounds I will have to stick with a breast fondle BTW I didn't mean it in that way you sick bastard!

I know what you mean, but you might need to rephrase that. If I didn't know you any better I would have thought you were making a negative comment! I know your not, but it can be read in a wrong way hehe

Your just a few steps ahead of me mate Stay tuned for CPViewer I'm about to release it, in fact it's looking like it might make a release over the weekend. It depends on Tom as well because I'm sending him a beta to get it integrated into GameEx before I post it here. It will support Mame and other emulators including PC games. It also has a built in editor with a bunch of graphics to design and make your own control panel.

It's quite easy to generate an image with text using php/Image Magick or ASP.NET. The question is, how do you generate those lovely 3d fonts? Perhaps he's using something like Xara 3d or Ulead Cool 3D and making them manually?