headkaze

Great info! Thanks Angelic Penguin! (Worth putting in the FAQ I believe)

Try putting GameEx in windowed mode next time you get a prompt for an update (Alt-Enter) and see if some sort of notification pops up asking to allow GameEx access to the internet.

Indeed it does cheers!

This may sound like another complaint, so I apologise if it does. I just really noticed that the new alpha fading routines are much slower than before (scrolling through a list seems to be stutter for example). I think this is due to the text above fading in instead of scrolling down from above. It could also be what looks like the text scrolling in from behind I'm not sure. If it could be possible Tom to have an option to use the old alpha blend routine I will really appreciate it. I could drop my resolution down to 1024 x 768 but for a while now its been running fine at 1280 x 1024 and I would love to keep it that way. Thanks again for all your tireless work, you are a LEGEND BTW I just received a deguessing wand in the mail today and it fixed my horried monitor discolouration! It has been a great day for me EDIT: Just noticed that videos in attract mode run alot smoother. Brilliant!

Everything is fixed in the latest version apart from the alpha fade (not sure if it's intentional but it dosn't look as good as earlier versions AFAIK) and the clock animation is still the same. Buuuut, I'm sounding too much like I'm complaining, this is a really great release, everything else is fine now. Great work Tom BTW I'm always happy to do personal testing if need be

Like I said it could be the version of Mame your using or multiple key mappings I'm not sure. But this plugin should work if you map buttons to something else in Mame. The last feature I added was for this so there hasn't been much testing for it. It works for me that's about all I know

This error is related to the reading of Mame's cfg files which is a recently added feature. It could be caused by a variety of things.. - The version of Mame. Since I have added support for the latest version of Mame, older versions of Mame may have a different xml structure for their cfg files. - You have key mappings in your cfg files that I have not taken into consideration. My plugin can only handle simple key mappings, as I havn't had the opportunity to test more complicated mappings (Eg. multiple key mappings). - If your not using custom key mappings in Mame, I suggest you delete all the files in <MAMEFOLDER>\cfg. That may solve the issue. Provide me with more info and I may be able to fix the bug. Otherwise I can always add an option to turn off support for custom key mappings.

Yeah I know, it happened to me too. The plugin has always been backwards compatible but when GameEx overwrites it with the older version the older version can't read the the newer LCD.ini settings so it overwrites them when you enter the configuration. Hopefully Tom will add a check to overwrite only if the file is newer.

Forgot to mention you might want to add the latest LCD plugin as it will probably be the latest for a while (unless there are bug fixes). Here are my latest findings for version 7.73 - Alpha fading between menus dosn't look as good as it did before. It's hard to explain but text fading out towards you looks okay, but the new text fading in from behind is corrupted. - No more crashing when you ctrl-alt-del to exit It also seems to shutdown plugins correctly when you exit this way too which is cool. - Enabling GradientTitleFont results in the title text background being black. In other words black is not color keyed out. - MenuTextSameSize is actually called MenuFontSameSize this solves my layout issue (thanks heaps for fixing this one ) - The clock animation still looks the same - Something seems to be introduced too, when the video snap first displays it shows corrupt video. This is only for a moment before the video starts playing. No biggy, but does look a bit wacky. Thanks for the release Tom, and let me know if I can help with any more testing.

How are you running the game from GameEx? If you are launching a file that exits and launches another it will exit back to GameEx. Often you need to find the real game exe and run that instead.

Hi Tom thanks for the release. This version seems to cause layout issues with my theme. I've attached a screenshot so you can see what I mean. Also have you removed 3d alpha blend effect? I really liked that effect but it seems to have been removed. Also any chance of making the clock animation an option to turn off? And one last note, you are including an old version of the Theme Editor the latest is 1.76.

I suppose I should mention my video cards, the image with the 5 dropping down is a Radeon 9800 Pro, and the other is a Geforce 6600 GT.

I think he means good luck getting a reply from Randy by e-mail (he's known to ignore his e-mails).

I was wondering if anyone else was getting a display bug in the clock animation when the minutes rolled over. I have the display bug on two of my machines, the first screenshot attached is on the machine where it's not too bad and the second is on my cab which looks like the digits are falling down instead of rolling over. Just wondered if anyone else had this? It's not a big deal really, it just makes it look like a glitch instead of a feature. If others have this problem then maybe Tom will fix it or add an option to turn it off.

LCD Plugin 1.90 Released - Added custom key mapping support (Mame cfg files) so it should light up buttons correctly. - Added variable speeds to lwa's for some variation This is a bit experimental at the moment, so report back any problems here. You have to assign keys to the buttons you want to allow custom mappings for. If you don't use custom mappings you can ignore these settings and use the plugin as before.

Cupid: Not sure if your still around, but a guy named 2600 on the BYOAC forums has released a .NET 2.0 library for controlling the UltraStik's. It might be helpful. You can check it out here

I think so, but your probably best to e-mail Randy from GGG to find out for sure.

Oh I see, your still going to use 2 LEDWiz, but will be running some off the same outputs. I think that should be okay. I did read about the fuse, but I didn't use one. Where just running the standard RGB drives so I don't think this applies. Though you may need to check with running two LED's on a single output.

Sorry I have no idea.

The first thing you can try is the latest version. See if there is any change. ThemeEditor.zip

Yes, thats exactly what it does. If you take a look at the attached image (the colours don't come up very well, but you get the idea) I have four buttons running along the bottom mapped in Mame for NeoGeo games. The plugin will read these custom mappings and light them up. This version hasn't been released yet, but it will be soon. You can see by the screenshot of the LCDPlugin that you can now assign keys to your buttons. Now if you create custom key assignments in Mame, it creates a cfg file. These are the files I use to remap the colors to the correct buttons on your CP. Eg. 3countb.cfg <?xml version="1.0"?> <!-- This file is autogenerated; comments and unknown tags will be stripped --> <mameconfig version="10"> <system name="3countb"> <input> <port type="P1_BUTTON1" mask="16" index="5" defvalue="16"> <newseq type="standard"> KEYCODE_C </newseq> </port> <port type="P1_BUTTON2" mask="32" index="6" defvalue="32"> <newseq type="standard"> KEYCODE_LSHIFT </newseq> </port> <port type="P1_BUTTON3" mask="64" index="7" defvalue="64"> <newseq type="standard"> KEYCODE_Z </newseq> </port> <port type="P1_BUTTON4" mask="128" index="8" defvalue="128"> <newseq type="standard"> KEYCODE_X </newseq> </port> <port type="P2_BUTTON1" mask="16" index="14" defvalue="16"> <newseq type="standard"> KEYCODE_J </newseq> </port> <port type="P2_BUTTON2" mask="32" index="15" defvalue="32"> <newseq type="standard"> KEYCODE_W </newseq> </port> <port type="P2_BUTTON3" mask="64" index="16" defvalue="64"> <newseq type="standard"> KEYCODE_I </newseq> </port> <port type="P2_BUTTON4" mask="128" index="17" defvalue="128"> <newseq type="standard"> KEYCODE_K </newseq> </port> </input> </system> </mameconfig>

I've heard of that bug before, but I can't seem to reproduce the problem here. What's even stranger is that the method called by both the Welcome screen and menu system for opening a theme is the same. So I can't understand why one way works and the other way doesn't. To change the text color, go into the Theme Options, select "Text Color". There is a newer version of the Theme Editor (1.76) that will be released when Tom adds support for module layouts. Then every screen in GameEx will be able to have a custom layout. MameWah layout importing should then work properly too.

Yes thats exactly what I did. I got an old pc power cable with molex plug, cut off one of the ends and ran the 5v/ground to a cable then split it off into two more cables that supplied each LEDWiz. Yes, you will need two USB ports. I'm not sure if they have to be powered though if your running the power off the PC PSU. Either way, you will need to extra USB ports. Check the front of your PC, I just found two free USB ports on mine the other day. I'm not sure if you could do that. They will not always be running exactly the same when there is proper animation software written you can jump back and forth between the two sides. I have no idea if you could use one LEDWiz to power both sides though. Yeah, don't bother ordering microswitches if you plan to just swap over your buttons. Don't forget the button wrench too, it will save you a whole lot of time and trouble. I'm not exactly sure, as loadman reakons the insulation plastic was so thin he could use his fingernails to pull it off. Maybe it's easier than we first thought and ended up doing things the long way. I guess you can try and see, the cables are long enough to make mistakes. I think it's pretty important. I'm pretty useless when it comes to soldering too, but I did have to solder the Common Anodes together and it's not too difficult. Adding a bit of solder makes the connections more solid so I would give it a go. You could always try folding them over if you don't want to attempt the soldering though. I don't think they are too bright, no. I don't find them distracting and I've played in the dark. You can always set the option in the plugin to turn off the lights when you start a game. No the software has recently come out of beta and has been fully tested by me and is in good working order. Everything works great as far as I can tell. A new feature I am working on at the moment is reading in custom key mappings from Mame so buttons are always lit right even if you configure your buttons differently for a game. For example, the bottom row of buttons on my CP are like that for NeoGeo games. So I have all the NeoGeo games have their own cfg's in Mame\cfg that map the first 4 buttons to the bottom row. My plugin now lights them correctly. Yes the plugin does support lighting for RGB trackballs. I think it would definately be cool to have one lit up. I recently added a feature to have certain controls perminately lit. The guy who suggested it wanted his trackball always lit. I have my ESC and Pause keys perminately lit now too. On some of the buttons the springs can rattle a bit when you hammer them. I guess that sort of thing might wear in. I didn't mention this in the article because I didn't want to review the gear just show how I set it up. The only difference I would say would be the spring rattles on more buttons than I had with the Happs. You will be using the same microswitches so they're won't be much difference apart from that.

Try ShowDesktop mode.

I have Secure Mode turned off in Daemon Tools and it stays off when I reboot. I have Daemon Tools 4 I believe.