headkaze

Here is my renderer.cfg if it's of any help ; ogl/d3d renderer settings XSize = 1280; Window/fullscreen X size YSize = 1024; Window/fullscreen Y size FullScreen = 1 ; Fullscreen mode: 0/1 ColorDepth = 32 ; Fullscreen color depth: 16/32 ScanLines = 0 ; Scanlines: 0=none, 1=black, 2=bright Filtering = 0 ; Texture filtering: 0-3 (filtering causes glitches!) Blending = 2 ; Enhanced color blend: ogl: 0/1; D3D: 0-2 Dithering = 0 ; Dithering: 0/1 (only needed in 16 bit color depths) ShowFPS = 0 ; FPS display on startup: 0/1 FrameLimitation = 1 ; Frame limit: 0/1 FrameSkipping = 0 ; Frame skip: 0/1 FramerateDetection = 1 ; Auto framerate detection: 0/1 FramerateManual = 100 ; Manual framerate: 0-1000 TextureType = 3 ; Textures: 0=card's default, 1=4 bit, 2=5bit, 3=8bit TextureCaching = 2 ; Caching type: 0-3, def=2, mode 3 is not available on most cards EnableKeys = 1 ; Enable renderer keys: 0/1, def=1 (enables keys for the fps menu/pause) FastExcel = 0 ; Speed hack for SF 'excel' modes. Will cause glitches if enabled!

Hehe I've already donated But I'm glad to help anyway. Just my way of thanking for your hard work!

Have you tried using the D3D renderer instead of OpenGL? It's in the Wind3d directory of the link I gave above.

emphatic: It's supposed to be played at the start of GameEx. Just set the full path to the AVI with the StartupVideo= option. Spyhunter: here is a direct link

Volume v1.0 ======== I'm posting this little util here since someone requested such a util in another thread. Tom provided a util that will set the volume (setvol) but this will use profiles for each game and also restore the original volume after launching the game. You can launch before and after a game to store/restore volume settings. You run "volume -read" before the game to store current volume, launch the game and then you manually set the volume the way you want it, exit the game then run "volume -write" to write the game volume settings and restore volume back to original volume. Now when you run the game again it will set the volume to your manual setting. It can also store/retrieve volumes for multiple games, just use the "-file <filename>" switch with both the -read and -write switches and it will read/write a volume dat file for that game. You could use a batch file... @echo off volume.exe -read -file mygame.dat mygame.exe volume.exe -write -file mygame.dat Or in GameEx's case you can use the LaunchBefore= and LaunchAfter= options. You can send the name of the game to -file <name of game> in emulators so that each game launched will store it's own volume file. You only have to manually set the volume once during the game, then it will remember forever. You can always change it again during the game and it will store the new volume. Also, I am considering adding the ability to store the % of volume from the original instead of the actual volume level. That way If you lower your main volume then launch the game it will change to a % louder or softer, so if you want you system to be louder or softer the game will play sound at a level relative to that volume. Let me know if anyone wan't this feature and I will add it. volume.zip

Hi, I have another feature request which I think would be _really_ cool. Instead of having video previews of games in GameEx why not use the same code as attract mode screensaver which launches and closes mame as a preview? Instead of launching it in fullscreen mode it could start Mame in windowed mode the size and shape of the preview picture box. I have written code to do this sorta thing before, it's quite easy to use SetWindowPos with the TOPMOST flag to force it above the GameEx window to the size and position of the preview box or just create a child window in GameEx the size, position and shape of the preview box and use the SetParent API function to place the mame window in there. That would be a totally cool feature IMHO!

He told you the name of the topic is "help me please" a few posts below yours... oh well here is the answer..

Actually, I quite agree they are not really about speeding GameEx up, but rather taking less processor power. These are tweaks I recommend since making these changes I have got processor usage of GameEx from 50% on a P4 3Ghz with 1Gig of RAM and Radeon 9800 Pro 256 to about 2-5%. Which I think are important changes to make especially for a computer inside a cabinet running 24-7. Preventing the likelyhood of overheating the computer becomes paramount, so if anything they should be default settings at least. To be honest I didn't even notice that the background was even moving until I made my own theme and realised the background was waving around. I thought my monitor was on the blink!

I'm using the latest version of Mame32.

20. In your THEMES\Theme folder, make sure that your selected theme's (Eg. "default - default") Theme.ini has AniBak=false. 21. Set NoWaitVSync=True in GameEx.ini 22. Set Sleep=16 in GameEx.ini

Eh? I've checked out GameEx.ini and there is no "Skip disclaimer" option. Where did you get that?? EDIT: Ok, found it! Thanks emphatic!

Hi Tom, I've compiled a custom version of Mame32 which automatically skips the warning/disclaimer screens. Is there any chance to add an option which stops GameEx from sending the "ok" etc. to Mame?

You only need to remove -skip_disclaimer and -skip_gameinfo. The rest should be left there. The reason is that newer builds of mame don't have the option to skip the disclaimer screen. What happens is when you launch mame with those options an error occurs saying "unknown option" and then it closes immediately.

Hi Tom Just reporting an error in GameEx I seem to be getting quite often. It seems to happen after the mame screensaver has played for a while, I then press ESC to exit the screensaver, then press ESC again which will close GameEx and show the following error message.

Make sure you have downloaded the ZiNc OpenGL and D3D renderers 1.2 and extracted the renderer.znc file from the wind3d folder into the Zinc folder.

This is only a guess, but launching a *.lnk (shortcut) from GameEx means GameEx can't get a handle to the game's window or process. I assume Tom uses a hook into the game's message system to process the ESC key and close it down. Even if he uses a global hook he dosn't have a handle to the game's window to close it down. Another issue is that GameEx has no way of knowing when the game has exited without a process handle because it can't wait for the process to end, therefore it dosn't know when to make it's window foreground. We will need Tom to verify exactly how GameEx launches .lnk's (I'm assuming it's using ShellExecuteEx which won't return a Process Handle/ID or Window handle launching a .lnk). I just tried launching a PC game using a shortcut from GameEx and it returns to it fine. So I'm not sure exactly what your problem is then. It looks like you will have to exit the game using it's normal exit method (via a menu option usually) instead of ESC, unless pressing ESC is the game's proper way to exit. I hope you have a trackball or keyboard handy. The only way around it would be for Tom to enumerate the windows until it matches a caption specified by the user. This dosn't seem very practical since there is no easy way to know the caption of every game. Unless each game can have it's own config file containing the caption (found by using Spy++) it's impossible to do. I guess the only other solution is to use the game's main .exe instead of shortcuts. But that may cause problems with the game locating it's files.

This is how I launch PC games. Obviously replace the PC dir to your own containing shortcuts to your games. [Emulator_1] Enabled=True StartPageName=PC Games TitleText=PC Games StartPageLogo=pc RomFilter=*.lnk RomsInFolders=False ROMPath=D:\Games\PC SnapPath=D:\Games\PC\shots WorkingPath=D:\Games\PC MapKeys=False WaitBeforeKeys= SendKeys= ReplaceDash=False ReplaceUnder=False Capitals=False RemoveBrackets=False AlsoLaunch= ShowDesktop=False Debug=False MapFile= OLDatZip= Command=[ROMPath]\[RomFile] TitlePath=D:\Games\PC\shots BoxPath= LaunchBefore= LaunchAfter= CartPath= configFile= ExcludedFiles= CustomBackground=

The only practical problem I can see is not being able to use video card acceleration on the second screen. Unless I am mistaken DX can only buffer on one screen, the other screen will be purely software drawn. ie. Slow. I don't see the point really. I don't see many people using this feature, nor can I imagine people putting a second monitor in their cabinets to make use of this feature. Sorry Jellyman, but why add something that 1% of the users will use. It seems like a fair amount of work for such a small amount of people. Yes it would be a cool option, but I think there are probably better things to add during the precious time Tom spends on coding GameEx (but this is just IMHO). Support for outputting pure GameEx on a second screen could be worthwhile though. I can imagine it being used for outputting to a projector. Then you would have to add the support to move launched game windows to the second screen which won't work for DX in exclusive mode. That opens another can of worms and again a feature that only a small amount of users would actually find practical use for. In any case, sorry to put down your feature request.

I found the problem, according to Mame "Double Dragon (Japan)" is the original ROM and "Double Dragon (US)" is a clone. So I just removed "Japan" from the GameFilter option and it worked. Ahhh, I love this front end sooo much

You could always run a batch file on GameEx startup that copies the GameEx.ini file over to the other machine. Then just make sure all your admin work is done on the machine you run the batch from.

I was playing around with some GameEx options today, and I tried turning NoGameInfo=True and NoClones=True. Then re-generated my MAME list. But to my suprise "Double Dragon (US)" was now missing from the list. Why? I have the default GameFilter=... options so why would it remove this? Infact, there was now no playable Double Dragon 1 available on the list, only "Double Dragon (Neo-Geo)" and "Double Dragon (PlayChoice-10)" which both suck compared to the original. (EDIT: It did remove the text between the brackets) Which brings me to the conclusion that GameEx determines clones by alphabetical order? Once it finds one, the others are a clone? I think we might need a new option "ForceGameFilter=US" or something so you force it to display US roms etc. Am I the only one experiencing this?

Oh, crap! Sorry, like I said I'm still learning the ropes. I missed that, I've been using the button up the top, which I now realise is the exit to main menu button.

Actually I mean after you launch a game and return back to GameEx then when you exit the menu of the selected game your back to the start of the main menu. I guess I mean exiting from any menu, to go back to the previous one with the previously selected option highlighted. But I guess it could work upon exit too? Here is another suggestion for Arcade Mode. LockInGamesList=True. When the user enters a list of games the user gets "trapped" in there where now the up and down joystick go up and down the list by 1 game (as normal), but now the left and right joystick will go up and down the list by 1 page. To exit, the user presses the appropriate button/key to exit the list. It's just a little confusing I believe for first time users (ie. My dumb ass friends) to use button/joystick combinations to navigate the menus. In a similar vein an option for the main menu. HorizontalMenuSelect=True. Instead of a vertical list to choose options, you move the joystick left or right to show each menu option from the main menu (the image pops up and the large text shows you where you are). You select just as normal, by pressing the selection button. This way the large text on the top of the screen, instead of saying "Start" says the option your on, could be used instead of the list. I like the DisplayBackgroundImage=snap option, so this would look even better with a simplified menu system. These two would obviously be "options" rather than forcing the user to do it this way. I mean GameEx already has a tonne of options (I wen't through GameEx.ini last night, I mean it's already *very* customizable!). I think it would work great for cabinets!

If your doing alot of maintenence work, you might like to use the attached program, since clicking the "Show Desktop" icon in quick launch will show the icons, but only until you open another window and the icons will hide again. I guess it's not for everyone, and personally I never knew about that option in the context menu, but I suppose its for people who want them there for just one click of the icon. (Personally, I'm going to use Instant Sheller (once everything is setup on my machine), and see how it goes. If it gets annoying having no instant access to the desktop I may have to try my solution since I am an habitual fiddler of software.

Chankast Launch v1.3 - By Headkaze ================================== -: DESCRIPTION :- This is a wrapper for the Dreamcast emulator Chankast (http://www.chanka.org). It works with all versions of Chankast, even those that are not designed for full screen mode. It is also written in C++ and is only 72k in size. The purpose of this program is to launch a game in full screen mode so you can play it like an ordinary game without worrying about manually mounting images. It now has an exit key option so you can quit Chankast easily. -: INSTRUCTIONS :- Drop chankcast_launch.exe into the same dir as chankast. Create a shortcut to it for each game. Right click on the shortcut and select properties. Edit the properties so it will launch the game as desired. Eg. "C:\chankast\chankast_launch.exe" -fullscreen -cpu 108 -showstats -daemon "C:\Program Files\D-Tools\daemon.exe" 0 "D:\Dreamcast\image.cdi" NOTE: I use DAEMON Tools 4.0 (http://www.daemon-tools.cc) * To remove "Secure mode confirmation" dialog, go to Daemon Tools->Options->Secure mode to turn it off * To remove "Unable to mount image. Device x has outstanding open handles." use the new -unmount option. -: VERSION HISTORY :- Version 1.3 Added exit key, no auto start, unmount image Version 1.2 Added bin loading, -forcefull can now be used with -screen option to change resolution, forced delay to give Daemon Tools more time to mount the image, added region change Version 1.1 Added -forcefull for versions < 0.25 Version 1.0 First Release -: COMMAND LINE OPTIONS :- USAGE: chankcast_launch.exe -options options: -chankast exe Chankast exe (Chankast_alpha_25.exe default) -file bin Filename of iso/bin to load -drive letter Set default drive letter -screen 640x480|800x600|1024x768|1280x1024 Video Mode -fullscreen Full Screen Mode -forcefull Force Full Screen Mode (for versions < 0.25) Can be used with the -screen switch to change resolution -cpu value CPU Speed (100% default) -priority normal|high Priority -zwrite ZWrite -zwritealpha AplhaTest ZWrite -capcomhack Capcom Hack -vga Cable Type to VGA -ntsc Cable Type to NTSC -showstats Show Stats -daemon exe device iso Deamon Tools exe (full path "in quotes"), device number, and ISO (full path "in quotes") -unmount Unmount image on exit -region jap|usa|euro Set region of DC flash file -delay secs Delay in seconds for Deamon Tools to mount image (default 5 secs) -exit ascii Define ascii key for exit (Default 27, ESC key) -nostart No auto start -help Displays this Message Box chankast_launch.zip