headkaze

Version 2.32 Released - This is an important update as it fixes the bug in the event system. There is no real advantage apart from being able to define special mappings for parent ROMs. If you just configue your controls in Mame that is fine, it should still work okay. Oh yeah I did change that didn't I. I will take a look at fixing this for the next version Can you report back if your still having this problem with the latest version? That value isn't really used for anything. It's the Global Pulse speed for the LEDWiz but I never use it. Last plugin it was used as the speed for flashing the buttons for Speak N Flash but now it's not used. Well the thing is the profile for Mame isn't really used because all the color mappings are done for you. If you mean you wan't the buttons lit up using the Mame/Default profile when browsing through a list? But it lights up the buttons for each game. The Default config should only be used if there is no lighting for the specific game. I probably need to take another look at it though. Thanks for all the feedback guys

Is that anything to do with my plugin? You should be able to have custom lighting for bowling or golden tee. Not sure if that is the issue here.

Creek: That problem with the IPAC losing it's config after every boot can be solved..

There are definately some bugs in the Plugin as I've noticed some myself. There is a problem with the event system which I'll be solving for the next version. I just need a break from it for a while, but keep posting your bug reports here.

It's not so much about the documentation in this case although there is a New User Guide, it's all about the Setup Wizard. The New User Guide is really just an html form of what's available in the Setup Wizard. It's quite helpful in that it guides you through the install and provides links to related software and information so you can read up as you go through and set everything up. For each setting there is a "?" link which explains what the setting does. You can run it at any time and it won't mess with your current settings so don't be afraid of running it again later. Personally I would do the Advanced mode for the first time and run the Verify Setup at the end to check paths.

Yes it can do all those things you want. Alot of people use GameEx with IPAC's and ArcadeVGA's. You can program your IPAC using WinIPAC by sending it a variable for the game Eg. WinIPAC.exe [ROMName].ipc for example. You can hide XP on your cab by using Tom's other program called Instant Sheller (available on the main GameEx website) and it will be as close to hiding Window's as you can get including changing the XP loading screen to a Mame logo or black screen. GameEx has a built in CP Viewer or you can check out CP Wizard (although I would wait for the next version). Depending on how complex you want your CP Viewer to be, GameEx's internal one is good enough if your not worried about customising it to look like your own, or have ultra accurate label mapping.

Great to hear Tom. The forums can be quite slow for me on occations, hopefully this will solve that.

AFAIK it would have to be a super wrapper as there are a number of things it would have to do.. 1. Launch Mame Plus Plus and wait for the game list in the GUI to populate 2. Search the ListView for the game you want to run 3. Right click on the game then select the "Kaillera Netplay..." menu 4. Get a handle to the Kaillera client window 5. Press the "Enter IP..." button 6. Get a handle to the "Enter Server IP address" window, then search childs till you get a handle to the textbox 7. Enter an IP address then press the Connect button Although I'm sure I could write a wrapper to do that, it would be alot of work. The listview stuff is the hardest but I have already written code to read and click listview items as in the Model 2 wrapper. This would have to be written in C for the listview stuff as I don't think you can do that in AutoIt. A problem I do see is scrolling through the list so you can click it, that would be horribly messy. In the model 2 wrapper I maximise the window so the whole list is visible. You would have to manually scroll through the listview in Mame Plus Plus. The way around some of this would be to take the Mame Plus Plus source code and modify it to accept an IP address from the command line then you only need to do steps 4 to 7 before you launch the game. That would be alot easier than dealing with the listview and the wrapper would need to be integrated into the Mame Plus Plus source.

Bascially you Get Mame Plus Plus from here. Problem is to select a server you have to open the server select screen in Kaillera. So it will never really work in GameEx without having to do that anyway. So it will kinda ruin the "hidden windows" look.

Can you please post a screenshot to show me this "String[] Array" thing? Also please post your PluginLCD.ini and PluginLCD.log.

I'm glad all those days of scraping AllGame actually came to something. Great work on making these databases come to life guys Great stuff Tom, and to those who are wondering about the attract info feature. It's just been updated and is actually better than the original screenshots. I'll be waiting in baited breath for Tom to implement it (no need to remind him as I've dropped enough hints already) Okay time to go play some golf.. oh hang on I don't play golf.. O_O

Oqqalz seems like a hard man to get a hold of unfortunately. The only thing I can suggest is get yourself a copy of "Mame Compiler" and apply one of the .diff files that removes the need to skip the disclaimers.

You can only do global mappings in ctrlr files for source files or parent roms, you can't specifiy "use this config if the game has x number of buttons" you will have to write a script to read GameInfo.xml and read in the number of buttons and write a config for each game (unfortunatly). I think Mame's input system is complicated enough without supporting configs on a per button or whatever else basis! FYI If your going to have separate configs for each game, they should go in the cfg folder, not in the ctrlr file. Anyway, for me I have a 7 button layout for each player and I just use buttons 1 to 7 for all games except map the bottom 4 for NeoGeo games.

Sorry guys, I've managed to introduce a new bug I'm working on a fix as we speak. Should be up soon EDIT: Okay 2.31 is up. Please report any problems here.

Great stuff MADrigal! Thanks for that. Parachute is one of my favourite G & W games. Green House was also another one I was fond of and actually play that on my DS

PluginLCD 2.3 Released - Added new colors.ini - Fixed mapping bug when using custom ctrlr files (no one even noticed!) A little bit more info about what this bug fixes. When you use a ctrlr file (you probably should), for a SlikStik, Hot Rod, X-Arcade, IPAC, whatever it has all the default buttons configured for your device in a file stored in the ctrlr folder (Eg. hotrod.cfg, hotrodse.cfg, slikstik.cfg, xarcade.cfg, IPAC2.cfg - most of which are available on the Net). These are really handy files to have because you can also store key mappings for single games, source files or parent ROMs as well as your device's default key mappings. For example you can have keys defined for "neogeo" so if you have 7 buttons for each player layout on your CP and you would like your bottom row of buttons to be mapped for NeoGeo, you can place a single entry in your ctrlr file instead of making one for each game. Attached is an image of my CP and the key mappings (default for MiniPac). The second picture shows a players buttons 1 to 7. For normal games this layout is fine, but for NeoGeo games they have four buttons all in a row. So what you want is the bottom row of buttons (7, 4, 5 and 6) to be mapped to buttons (1, 2, 3 and 4) respectively. This update will take these custom mappings into account and still light your buttons correctly for games. Hence the "advanced control mapping" system of this plugin.

Okay what you need to do is create a ctrlr file that goes into your Mame's ctrlr folder. Lets call it IPAC2.cfg. You need to open you Mame's ini configuration file and make sure it points to the ctrlr file like so ctrlr IPAC2 Next you need to put all your mappings in there. You can use source file names or parent roms, so for neogeo games, just use "neogeo". Attached is an example of doing that. Obviously you will need to use a default SlikStik ctrlr file instead and add the appropriate mappings for "neogeo" below the default. IPAC2.zip

DaveMMR from over at BYOAC was kind enough to do an update of colors.ini. This includes a bunch of additions and some fixes. If you use my PluginLCD place this file in GameEx\PLUGINS\PluginLCD. Big thanks to DaveMMR! colors.zip

Here's a little story about a program I was playing with. Basically my goal was to use my new Raw Input injection code for Mame and implement the client/server code of kaillera into a dll that attaches to Mame. This was to add kaillera support to vanilla Mame. I got it working but there were sync issues. For a start I had to run the server on one of my machines also running as a client. So one client had a faster connection to the server than the other. But this could very well be the case in a "over the net" connection too. I told Tom about this project and he had actually looked at doing this a while back. But in the end even with working code we decided the sync issues didn't make it worth continuing on with. You can imagine in SF for example if your jumping in the air and then kick if that kick is not at the exact time as on the other connected client, it will start moving out of sync until you think your punching player two when your actually punching thin air! I had a look at the version of Mame that has kaillera built in and I believe it has more robust code to check that the two are synced. Unfortunately with my code since I was injecting keys and running as an attached dll I did not have per frame precision on dealing with input and sync issues.

You don't have your port inputs correct (unless all your buttons are mapped to port 1 on your PACDrive - not likely!). I did explain this to you in a PM that you have to map all the ports on your PACDrive and put them into the config under Single. Single means what port output on the PACDrive is this control connected to. Ignore the Red, Green and Blue ones as they are for the LEDWiz. As you change the Single value for each control you should see it light up the right button.

Go into the LCD / LED Plugin configuration in the Plugin Manager.. - The female voice are actually samples. To turn them off go to Options 1 and take the tick off "Enable Samples". - To turn of the speech go to Options 2 and take the tick off "Enable" under Speech.

The state checkbox means whether the led's associated with the control are lit or not. What you need to do to light your P1 & P2 Coin and Start buttons in under your GameEx default profile set them to "Always Active", that way they will always be lit.

No you have to remap everything. It only takes a few minutes - yes I had to do it too

Thanks Stu and NoLogic Will check this out when I get time on my cab again.

Something else to look forward to is Arzoo's LEDBlinky Animation Editor which creates LWAX files my plugin can play back. Here is a screenshot. It's still WIP but it should be available soon