headkaze

I will probably have to add a "Run Game" feature in the wrapper which will allow you to run games from a list in the GUI. By testing I just mean running as many games as possible and making sure they run okay. Also need to make sure the key mapping system works. By default it will map the X-Arcade keys to an IPAC. There are a few other things to test like all the different generated data files for GameEx.

Maybe the newer cards are okay but with my Radeon 9800 Pro newer drivers slow GameEx to a stuttering crawl. Even just scrolling through a list. It's not related to that issue with the 3d transitions because that arose when I was still using the older driver. I do have an Arcade VGA card but I got a PCIE version and my cab is AGP. I don't know why I did that really I guess I always thought I would eventually upgrade my cab's PC. I don't think Direct Draw has to worry about speed issues in the future because even if the drivers aren't optimized for it the brute speed of them will mean GameEx will still perform well into the future.

Received my WHDLoad key today Thanks again to Ian and Wobbly, I've added a credit in the program dedicated to you guys. Well progress is going great. I'm really working hard on this! "WinUAE Loader" as I've creatively called it is currently at 5,169 lines of code. Yes it's been quite alot of work to make sure it does all the little config tweaks like GameBase Amiga to ensure games run with their most compatible settings. For example it uses the same technique as GameBase Amiga to plug the Mouse into joyport0 if the game needs it. It's the attention to detail like this which will make Amiga gaming in GameEx as seamless as possible. BTW Are there people out there with a full GameBase Amiga game set that can help me test this?

The loader can now generate an AMIGA.mdb file in the format GameEx reads So now games can be sorted in GameEx based on Date, Developer, Category or NumPlayers. I think that about covers everything for GameEx support now! Now I can finally work on the GUI! (Time to make a large coffee methinks)

Yep your right, I was wrong about multi disks being in the one SPS archive and I probably should have made a post correcting myself. I was referring to an SPS TOSEC collection I found on the net that had the ipf files inside zips. Obviously (well now anyway) you run your favourite ROM tool with the SPS dat and it creates the right disks. So I managed to find a few for testing. I have SPS fully working along with standard GameBase Amiga and WHDLoad sets now. So the wrapper supports every GameBase game! That's 4924 games with 2028 SPS and 2177 WHDLoad. All the disk spanning, uae settings etc are handled on a per game basis using the GameBase Amiga database. You will also be able to update the data when a new GameBase Amiga database is released although you don't actually need GameBase/GameBase Amiga installed to use the wrapper. The wrapper includes map files for GameEx so it can display the "friendly name" when viewing a list. I wan't to put a little tool in there for renaming snaps too. Now the only thing it doesn't do is generate the mdb database file for GameEx. You know the one's with (GoodName, Date, Developer, Category, Description, Name, NumPlayers). I'm going to try my best to have the wrapper generate one from the GameBase Amiga database. But right now it's the only thing the wrapper doesn't do (apart from cook you breakfast in bed - maybe for the next version?) Now I just gotta get the damn configuration GUI done so I can release it lol

I'm using old Catalyst drivers otherwise GameEx slows to a crawl, it seems ATI gave up on DirectDraw a long time ago

What's with the caps lock? Anyways AutoHotkey allows you to do that. You can compile a script to an exe. It's as simple as.. (y)::(x) ..to do what you want. Do a search for AutoHotkey on this forum for more info.

Okay figured out the what that Control variable is. It seems it selects from a list of controls.. JoyPort2, JoyPort1, Keyboard, PaddlePort2, PaddlePort1, Mouse, Lightpen, KoalaPad, LightGun And there are both default settings and per-game settings. I think that's mystery solved? Now I just gotta figure out how to handle multiple disk spans for SPS games..

Okay sent off the money for the key, now just waiting for it in the mail Now I have some questions I need help with... Currently GameBase and WHDLoad games work okay in the wrapper (the ones I've tested so far anyway). But.. I'm not sure about SPS ones because they arn't adf but ipf format. Does anyone know how this set works? How are multiple disks handled? (EDIT: Looks like multiple disks are stored in one zip archive) Also I was looking in the Scripts folder of GameBase Amiga and I understand most of it except for the following: AFAIK It's either (1) a global setting that determines whether or not the joystick or mouse is in port 0 OR (2) It's a PER GAME setting in the database that determines whether the joystick or mouse is in port 0. It would make sense to have a setting in the database for each game because some games need the mouse in port 0 and some games need a joystick in port 0. If it is (2) then I need to find the setting in "GameBase Amiga.mdb" that sets this "Control" variable to true (1) or false (0). Any help finding it will save me time for working on other parts of the wrapper. The basic functionality of the wrapper is working. I have sucessfully remapped keys so any cab setup will work with it. I think I'll include a default mapping for IPAC's. Eventually I guess a Joy<->Key mapping feature will be handy (for people who have U360's for joysticks and IPAC's for buttons) but I think I'll leave that for another version. I don't think it's easy to generate joystick input so it might only be Joy->Key. Blocking joystick input could be difficult as well. Sorry just thinking out aloud now lol So overall it's in a very good place, just need a bit of help answering these questions if you can?

Thanks guys! Now.. I'm off to buy a WHDLoad key...

If Ian is going to purchase the key via his credit card then maybe you could send your part to him so you can split it? Ian: I sent you my ISP e-mail address, so if you want you can PM wobbly to get his donation? Does that work okay for everyone?

Hey Ian.. appreciate it!! My guess would be that it doesn't accept a gmail account for an e-mail because anyone can get one. I'll send you my ISP address in PM. Cheers EDIT: Wow, didn't get a chance to read Wobbly's posts! Thanks! So what should we do now? lol

Progress is going well But... I was wondering if someone here could donate me a registration key for WHDLoad? I can live with the fact it has a nag screen but I found out that some games wont run if it's not regged. That will make testing some games impossible without it A WHDLoad key costs $30 US which is more expensive than GameEx! It would be nice if writing this wrapper didn't cost me any money. Here's the page for more info.. http://www.whdload.de/reg.html P.S I will only accept a reg key that is under my name and e-mail address. Ie. Don't send me pirate keys or a copy of someone elses please!

I'm a big Amiga fan too! I still have my old Amiga 1200 + 40 gig. I should set that thing up to run WHDLoad I lost my damn null serial cable though which I need to transfer data using PC2Amiga. Oh well I'll get round to it out one day. Incidently that old serial cable used to be used to connect 2 Amigas for head to head action in games like Stunt Car Racer and Populous with my cousin Ahh the good ol days Your post made me remember about the disk swapper. Although WHDLoad support is already implemented I still want to be able to launch WinUAE for other games. So what I think I'll do for that is have the ability to map a single key to rotate inserting disks into the disk swapper. Still it sure will beat the hell out of using the current shortcuts.

Sorry guys this one is going to take a bit longer than I first anticipated. The good news is it's motivated me enough to create the ultimate WinUAE wrapper for arcade cabinets! Here are some of the features I'm working on.. - Support for *all* GameBase Amiga games (including GameBase, WHDLoad, SPS, TOSEC etc.) - Automatically change controls based on settings, and send correct UAE configs using per game settings (from GameBase database) - Map any key/joystick to the limited control systems of WinUAE (No need to remap X-Arcade controls using an AutoHotkey/AutoIt script) - Completely hide CLI when booting WHDLoad games (this is already working fine ) - Anything else I can think of! (your welcome to make suggestions in this thread) What I am aiming to achieve here is a wrapper that works like GameBase and supports all the games of GameBase only without the need for GameBase! Plus our need for some extra things like hiding loading and remapping controls (of course). So if all you've ever wanted is a GameBase FE for WinUAE that looks like GameEx, you are about to get it! I'm really excited about this wrapper and I hope all you Amiga fans are too! Finally someone is going to take the pain out of setting up WinUAE for cabs! Yay! And you can thank DamageCase because without him this would not have been made! So I'd like to thank you also DamageCase I wouldn't have even looked at GameBase without your first post and I honestly would have missed all those UAE settings in the database without your second post. That seoncd post was absolutely necessary to get me on the right track!

I sent Tom the updated Visual Pinball profiles not sure why they aren't included in newer versions of GameEx... [calls out to Tom]Hey Tom can you included the profiles attached to this post in the next version of GX?[/call out to Tom] PinballConfigs.zip

I think you have to enable Custom Text or something?

What got me was viewing the Extras table in Access 2003 that WHDLoad data was separated by newline characters so I couldn't see them without scrolling down So it's all figured out now and yes it does work! It's been alot of work but it's going to be great for cabs. I'm just working on the configuation GUI for the wrapper then I'll do a release. Stay tuned EDIT: Nevermind about the system-configuration file I figured it out myself.

This is really strange when I was looking at the "GameBase Amiga.mdb" database file in Access 2003 there was none of that extra data DamageCase posted; but now when I load the data in using code it has all that extra info! Strange indeed! wobbly: I think there is more to it than what your saying there. I'll post back my results soon...

I'm aware of that, I was wondering where the data DamageCase posted came from. The way it's posted implies it comes from Extra's but the only data I see is 2|~|0|~|0|~|5|~|0|~|1|~||~|cd=dh1:1943; So if there are extra settings I need to get on a per game basis and write to WHDLoad.uae where do they come from? Or are these custom settings he's put in there himself? Apart from that post by DamageCase confusing me I think I understand most of what's going on, so I'm going to start developing a wrapper.

I can find the whdload settings but not the winuae config data. Where is this info? It's not in my Extra's database in GameBase Amiga.mdb.

I love the idea of this project! But I have no idea where to start lol WHDLoad enables you to run Amiga games from a HDD inside Workbench, that much I know. So I guess what we need to do is create some sort of wrapper that basically does the same as what Gamebase does but silently. So obviously I'll need to do some research to figure this all out. Now if it's just reading in an access database file and then creating some sort of config file based on the data from it then this sounds like quite an easy project. But before I get started on this has anyone contacted the Gamebase programmers and asked if they could add command line support? Then Gamebase itself could be used as a wrapper but in command line mode not show the actual menu system. That would be the first thing to do. I'm just downloading the WHDLoad Games Pack's but I have no idea where to start or what to do but I am VERY interested in getting this working so any additional info to help get started would be appreciated. Also I really do think contact the Gamebase guys would be the best first step and if we can't persuade them to add support for what we want then I'll be more than happy to take up the job myself.

Sweet guys love the videos Here is alexdog69's links Project Page http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72753 Interview http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-po...SS_17451249.mp3 Pics http://picasaweb.google.com/kyle.orland/MAMECabinet YouTube

Fantastic! I loved it! I finally can see what the BetaBrite looks like with the plugin. That's really cool, I want one now for my cab Is your BetaBrite capable of displaying graphics (animated gif's)? Because that would probably be the next thing I would add support for as a guy made a bunch of arcade related animated gif's for his sign and they look great. BTW What is that high pitched squeeling noise in the background? Have you got a parrot or something? lol

No idea mate ??? Havn't heard anything like this yet.. Check the PLUGINS\PluginLCD\Profiles folder... maybe there is a bunch of junk there? I'm not sure? Let me know if there is a bug!