greatflash

Now I need to take a moment and thank you again for all your work. Ad infinitum.

Great news. Looks like the configs need cleaning. We certainly should not have three configs for the same system using the same emulator. Perhaps two. One for normal launch and one for the launcher. One thing to mention. If you find a game that does not launch correctly and run, please post the log file that the launcher creates. This will enable me to update the launcher to increase its already high comparability. Some games are on disks and the launcher has no hard and fast way of knowing how to configure expansions for the emulator and the log will enable support to be added. Ps. Most two player vic20 games used the keyboard for the second player.

Using GameEX 14?

That is not the command line for the latest vic config that should be included with v14 of GameEX. It calls the launcher and not xvic directly? I have no way of checking v14 atm but with post the config and launcher on the boards as soon as I can after work. Can you check with setup wizard and add a new vic 20 emulator using the emulator config section?

The config automatically added when importing the emulator for vic 20 does not need modification in any way other than the paths. Are you sure you are using the correct config? Zip support should be off and it does expect your roms to be zipped (the launcher handles the unzipping). I have a feeling your roms are zipped?

I have not had a chance to fully check out v14 along with the new configs due to a dead pc, so cannot be a great help. If you check the winvice directory you will see a log file generated. This gives info on the last game launched and should be of some help. As soon as I can, I will post the launcher to the board.

With gc and wii games, I tend to use dolphin to compress them and then delete the originals. This keeps everything the same format and also saves a little space (and is preferable to zip based compression for speed).

This no longer works. The launcher was written for 32 bit systems and has such been outdated. The latest 14 release of gameEX now contains a new config and a new launcher to hopefully make this a painless process. If you can update to v14 and import the vic20 vwinvice config (allowing the emulator to also install) this will solve all your problems (and is also vastly improved). Failing that, I can post the launcher and config to the main board for you to download and use on your existing set up. Let me know.

Awesome work Tom (as always)

Just a quick update. Attached is the latest list along with a nice an tidy html showing the last list on the left and the new on the right and highlighting the changes. Any probs. let me know. (Hopefully I was comparing with the last list I uploaded - but with my senility - who knows? ) DeveloperList.txt Differences.html

This is a launcher to handle the launching of Vic-20 games etc and supports all formats. The 'read me' is included in the archive and replicated here - XVicLauncher V1.0 By Michael Ware (GreatFlash) What is it? This is a launcher to enable the launching of Vic-20 roms more easily through XVIC (Vice). The Vic-20 is a funny old beast and has several quirks that make the launching of roms automatically a bit of a pain. The problem is that as memory is added to a Vic-20, several adresses change. For example, when unexpanded the screen memory is at $1e00 and the colour memory is at $9600. Shove in 8k or more of expansion, and things change. screen is now $1000 and colour is at $9400. Also, the user basic area changes within the initial 8192 bytes.That's just part of the problem. The next one is cartidge roms. These can come in several formats and contain one or two files. So, What does it do? Pass a zipped rom to XVicLauncher and it will extract and interrogate the files. Memory will then be set and cartidges will be mounted in the correct memory areas for execution. Or, that is the hope. There is one stumbling block.... Disk files.Disk files can contain a single little 3.5k game or 100k of game. There is no way to know. XVicLauncher will set the emu to 16k in the hope (as it usually the case) that the title on the disk is one that requires memory expansion. So, What if a game does not work? Everytime a game is launched, XVicLauncher writes a little log file for you. So, if something is amiss, send me the log file and I can fix it. The log contains a checksum that can be used to identify a game and this can be added to a database that will later (in an updated launcher) enable the game to run... hurrah!Note: It is best, both for me and for roms linking to the databases, to use a known collection like NoIntro/Tosec/GoodName. This also means that the checksums in the log file will link to the collections better when a non-loading rom is rectified. Ok, enough chat - how do i use it? (Manual Install) Simple... download Vice and unzip it into your typical choice of emulator path. ie. C:/Emulators/Vice Grab XVicLauncher and unzip the contents into the same directory. Using the setup wizard, either add the Vic20 VICE config, or modify your existing one (or, just be clever and do it all manually). The main points of note needed are as follows :- Working Path: The path you unzipped the emu toCommand Line: XVicLauncher.exe "[rompath]/[romfile]"Advanced Config:[Mapping Off] Exit (ALT+F4) Important, the launcher only works with 'ZIPPED' roms and needs to take charge of the unzipping.. so, turn GX's internal unzipping off - Zip/7-Zip/Goodmerge/RAR: No The launcher does it's own unzipping for two reasons. It needs control of the zipping process, and, if the archive contains disks, all disks are mounted in order to up to 4 virtual Vic-20 drives. (This feature may be added to a C64 launcher later as well). Set up Xvic.exe to your preferences. Set it to run full screen and once you have it all to your liking, save the settings in the emulator. Automatic Install If you are running the latest GX, then you don't need to manually download and extract. Using the set-up wizard, add the VIC 20 WinVice emulator and the launcher is included as part of the install. But.. this may not always be the latest version (though currently it is), so check here also. Anyway... Any problems - just give me a shout!XVicLauncher10.zip

Welcome Thurman, and congratulations.

Circo, just had another thought that is worthy of mention and topic related. With Scummvm, you have box art and videos using two different naming conventions. One uses a rom zip file name (not consistent enough) and the other uses the Scummvm id name (recommended). One thing I have done is create a Scummvm manager. This fixes any errors that may be in your collection and changes many of the id names (creating dummy files with these names to enable easy gx launching of the games and also matching the revised Scummvm database). This tool is in the beta/testing section of the forums and also includes a version of the new database. It may be worth checking out for use on name matching?

Hello Circo. The databases will be updated in the next release all going well. Just doing a little but of a tidy up on the nes set. Ps. With the download software Circo, ps1 covers download Saturn instead. Just thought I would mention it.

You are on the right track. The main problem is that the nes database is still a bit of a mess. It is huge and I have been puting it off for the most part. There are smaller databases and time has been spent ticking off the smaller ones prior to tackling the larger ones. The two entries you show would become a single entry (and may well be now in current versions). As for the match picking the last entry. I am not 100% sure without looking through the code, but I expect that Tom is using either a dictionary or sql functions within gx to find the matches for caching. Either way, the scan would start at the last record in the database and scan backwards to find a match. This is generally the case as compilation of code takes preference over reversed iterations as it is quicker (not that it would make any difference on such a large list - but that's just the way things work). So. Upshot to this is In the reply to your other post.

Thanks for the interest in the databases and I concede that the current ones available with gx are a little outdated and in need of work. But... Behind the scenes and hidden in a dusty broom cupboard, I have been updating them all in readiness for evo's release. The nes database is massive and would take an incredible amount of work to bring totally up to date, but... It has been updated along with many others. I did speak with Tom as he wanted to release the updated databases in an gx release, but I thought it would be best to release them along with Evo. Perhaps it would he better to release them? I did release one of the databases for Scummvm (with over 400 entries) in the beta and testing topic (for elites) and that will be released as soon as I have confirmation that the needed scummvm tool that accompanies it is working correctly so that can also be publicly released. So, for continued development my thoughs are this. I am looking for other knowledgeable people to perhaps have access to the Dbm software (yes - it is bespoke) but would prefer this to be limited to elites and the ilk. The software is VERY in-house and HK and I certainly want it to remain that way. This leads to the problem that (like the wii database topic) that anyone editing the databases manually then limits there usefulness to the gx community. The internal databases are very strict (where possible) and names, publishers, and syntax must be consistent across the board. This means that any databases modifications without the use of DBM will break the coherence and delights like 'also on', listing by publisher, players, etc. would no longer function correctly. Mentioning the Wii database, the gx ones have also been heavily updated as well.

One thing that is semi what you need. If you are using the databases for your emu (and if you are not - though to a lesser extent) when you select outrun it should list 'also on' and show all other systems with the game. Perhaps there could be a way to use this functionality to generate a special list to retain the 'also on' as favourites? I only mention databases as this will also work with differently named Roms and also match across different spelling and languages (or it should at least). Ie. Tempest SHOULD list tempest 2000 amongst its matches.

You can take a breather for a week or so. Then I will post an update. Got a few things to work on ATM.

Until the next list update..... Sobering words ( lol ) Well done folks

I was referring to the current wip one. This has all data for 95% of the games. These databases will be released when evo is released.

Just a note. There is already a wii database that matches to ReDump sets. Currently it is unfinished, though does contain over 500 titles.

These two are linked in the databases so that they act as one. Not sure if they should be merged into a single company though seeing the similarity of the name?

Will double check in a mo and let you know. If it is a dupe, I think Supervision would be the logical name? What do you think. There are quite often very similar names. Of the top of my head, adventuresoft is one.

Just thought I would double check and also offer an alternative way of presenting changes. Stig, if I just upload a diff as the html earlier, would that be easier (in future)

Just decided to look at a bit of software to aid this. Using http://www.scootersoftware.com/ Here is a report Report.html