headkaze

1. Get Chankast Launch 2. Set up your config for chankast... [Emulator_4] Enabled=True StartPageName=Dreamcast TitleText=Dreamcast StartPageLogo=dreamcast RomFilter=*.lnk RomsInFolders=False ROMPath=D:\Games\Dreamcast SnapPath=D:\Games\Dreamcast\snap WorkingPath=D:\Games\Chankast MapKeys=False WaitBeforeKeys= SendKeys= ReplaceDash=False ReplaceUnder=False Capitals=False RemoveBrackets=False AlsoLaunch= ShowDesktop=False Debug=False MapFile= OLDatZip= Command=[ROMPath]\[RomFile] TitlePath= BoxPath= LaunchBefore= LaunchAfter= CartPath= configFile= ExcludedFiles= 3. Read the FAQ make sure you have the correct version of Daemon Tools etc. 4. Run chankast emulator after mounting a game, check the drive letter is setup to your mounted image drive letter. Does the game play ok when you try launching it manually, Is your image self bootable? Check that also, or convert it to self boot using ExoBoot. Still not working? Read the FAQ again. 5. Setup shortcuts to chankast_launch.exe for each game... Eg. Eg. D:\Games\Chankast\chankast_launch.exe -screen 1280x1024 -fullscreen -cpu 108 -showstats -daemon "C:\Program Files\D-Tools\daemon.exe" 0 "D:\Games\Dreamcast\roms\Game.cdi"

1. Get Chankast Launch 2. Set up your config for chankast... [Emulator_4] Enabled=True StartPageName=Dreamcast TitleText=Dreamcast StartPageLogo=dreamcast RomFilter=*.lnk RomsInFolders=False ROMPath=D:\Games\Dreamcast SnapPath=D:\Games\Dreamcast\snap WorkingPath=D:\Games\Chankast MapKeys=False WaitBeforeKeys= SendKeys= ReplaceDash=False ReplaceUnder=False Capitals=False RemoveBrackets=False AlsoLaunch= ShowDesktop=False Debug=False MapFile= OLDatZip= Command=[ROMPath]\[RomFile] TitlePath= BoxPath= LaunchBefore= LaunchAfter= CartPath= configFile= ExcludedFiles= 3. Read the FAQ make sure you have the correct version of Daemon Tools etc. 4. Run chankast emulator after mounting a game, check the drive letter is setup to your mounted image drive letter. Does the game play ok when you try launching it manually, Is your image self bootable? Check that also, or convert it to self boot using ExoBoot. Still not working? Read the FAQ again. 5. Setup shortcuts to chankast_launch.exe for each game... Eg. Eg. D:\Games\Chankast\chankast_launch.exe -screen 1280x1024 -fullscreen -cpu 108 -showstats -daemon "C:\Program Files\D-Tools\daemon.exe" 0 "D:\Games\Dreamcast\roms\Game.cdi"

You canno't have -skip_disclaimer, -skip_gameinfo or -skip_validitychecks in the MameOptions= parameter in GameEx.ini anymore. If you do it will not launch properly. I use the latest version of Mame32 and it works fine for me, just compile your own version which skips the disclaimer automatically, or use the Bypass Disclaimer/Warning option in GameEx setup.

You have to update the list to add games. Updating Mame32 dosn't update your roms does it? They are separate things.

No, you shouldn't need to

Ok tried deleting those files and re-generating the list, still missing icons at the end, then I tried updating my icons to match all the games and it worked! My theory on this: if you don't have an icon for every rom you have, GameEx is not creating a blank icon properly. So for all the icons you have missing become blank icons at the end of the list. Can you try deleting some of your icons, delete those icon files in MEDIA and re-generate your list. Do you have blank icons at the end of your list now? Still havn't figured out how to fix the Adult Games problem.

I found this little program that runs in system tray and will hide the cursor after a few seconds of inactivity. Dunno if it will work with GameEx since I don't think it will hide the egg timer cursor, but I havn't tried it yet (can someone confirm). http://www.ezblitz.com/TimsHideCursor/TimsHideCursor.exe Here is an explaination on how he did it.. This would be a nice function in GameEx, rather than hiding it completely.

If your not using Mame32, give that a try

Works fine, should be no problems at all.

Ok, I've tried a few things... 1. I tried using Tweak UI to clear the icon cache 2. I tried a clean reboot and doing a list update 3. I tried installing the latest catver.ini I have less than 7000 icons (3,177 to be exact), so I don't know what's going on. How do I delete "SurfaceIcons"? I can't find such a file in the DATA dir of GameEx, nor anything in the Mame32 folder. Also my video card is a Radeon 9800 Pro with 256M so I can't see it running out of memory any time soon (the PC has 1 Gig of RAM too). I've enabled adult games in both NoAdult=False and ShowAdult=True options in GameEx.ini.

Here's a link to the Chankast Launch post.. http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?showtopic=752

Hey Tom, love what you did with the Galaxian theme! Just a few questions... The icons only reach about letter T in my Mame list and they are no longer shown (T to Z titles show no icon). Is there some sort of limitation to the amount of icons you can store in memory or is something else causing this? I've tried updating the list a few times and sometimes icons are added and sometimes they are removed. Very strange. Also I have enabled Adult games which worked for a while, now when I click on them it says *No Games Found*. What do you think might have caused that? (I have the allow adult games option enabled) Keep it up, GameEx is just getting better by the day!

In Internet Explorer try holding down Ctrl and using the middle mouse button roller to change the default font size.

This is not the usual behaviour of a USB device, it should in theory install the driver once and then whenever you plug it in again it should just work. The only situation where I have seen this happen is when I plug the device into a different USB port it seems some devices need to install the driver again for each port.

I always believe Microsoft keyboards and mice are good quality, and they are often bundled together. All I can say about the wireless aspect is make sure they use radio waves and not infrared otherwise you will need line of sight to the IR reciever.

I'm quite happy to make the source available although it's written in C++ not .Net.

I've just tried setting up GameEx to load as the Shell instead of explorer.exe and when I exit GameEx I use LaunchOnExit=explorer.exe. It works great, apart from one problem... GameEx for some reason waits for the process to end. Therefore GameEx is still running in the background after launching the shell, so when you shutdown outside of GameEx you get the message "End Program - GameEx.exe". Why does GameEx wait for the LaunchOnExit process to end? Obviously it should just launch whatever and exit. Can you please fix this Tom? Currently a "quick hack" solution is to automatically kill processes instantly using the following registry edits: HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop\AutoEndTasks=1 HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop\WaitToKillAppTimeout=0 You must be using WaitForSingleObject(hHandle, INFINITE) to wait for the process launched on exit to end. There should be no waiting when launching this process.

GameEx can use Media Player thus all the codecs available in Media Player are automatically available in GameEx. It was requested recently though to allow a different player for DVD's.

Hmm not sure if it should behave that way with ESC. Since ESC is the "universal" exit button, I have a button on my CP dedicated to it. The problem is, if someone plays a video and presses the ESC key, you want them to return to GameEx not exit GameEx nor use the backspace key. Attract mode can use ESC to get back to GameEx so I don't see why it dosn't do the same for video playback. Also, there should be an option to have ESC enabled, but password protect exiting GameEx or have some dialog to confirm exit. Also there could be an option to use the ESC key as navigating "Back" instead of backspace, so the one key is used as exit and go back a menu. If your in a sub-menu for instance, ESC will navigate back, if your in the main menu, it will ask if you want to exit or ask for a password. That would work much better IMHO and you only need one button for navigating back and exiting, rather than needing two buttons on your CP. If you have friends over and they use GameEx, you don't want them accidently exiting GameEx *ever*. But there will be times where you want access to the shell for maintenance, so you want to be able to exit GameEx without having to use DisableEscape=True or DisableExit=True.

Hey Tom, perhaps you can add an option in Instant Sheller to launch GameEx instead of the shell. That way you could add a .lnk to explorer.exe in GameEx which will launch the shell if you need it. Seems like a better way to do things since you can always instantly get the desktop if you need to do some maintenance. Or people could have LaunchOnExit=explorer.exe and the shell will load upon exiting GameEx. Courtesy Random24 in a thread on the Build Your Own Arcade Controls forums. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Getting a Front-end to run as a shell in XP and start with no user intervention You cannot do this if your computer is part of a domain. It must only be part of a workgroup. - Create a user that will be the auto-login user. (User should have admin rights at this time) - Configure XP to automate the logon process if your computer is not part of a domain. - Click Start, click Run, and type control userpasswords2. - Clear the Users must enter a username and password to use this computer check box. - Click Apply. - Enter the user name and pwd you wish to automatically log on with, and then click OK. - Click OK again and you're all done. Setup your FE the way you want it. Open regedit and browse to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" Look for a string entry called 'Shell'. If it is not there, create a string entry and name it 'Shell'. Set the value of this entry to the name and location of your Front-end. For GameEx, the shell entry may be "C:\Program Files\GameEx\GameEx.exe". For explorer, the entry is simply "explorer.exe". Log out as the auto-login user and log back in as another user with administrative rights. Change the auto-login user to a standard user. (This way people don't have more access than you want them to have.)

Hmm your right, they are both *.mpeg. Does GameEx exit for you when you press ESC during video play?

Just tried the video player in GameEx for the first time and found a few bugs. The first bug is that GameEx seems to list some videos twice. It did this with two videos, so two videos were doubled on the list. Second bug is, after I start playing a video if I press ESC to exit back to GameEx it will just exit back to the desktop and close GameEx.

Because there is a space in the filename I think you have to use double quotes. Eg. "C:\Program Files\Jnes" etc.

Is there anything I should know about installing the new version? Do I have to uninstall the previous version? Do I just install over the top? Will it keep my current config files?

You can try this intro movie here