Toonces

Hi Tom, I've noticed this in the last few releases and kept meaning to bring it up. Whenever I upgrade since the DVD features were added, the config file gets reset to have them both on (Enable Videos & Enable DVD). I disable them using configuration and then next time I upgrade, they're back on again although the rest of my settings stay set as they were. I noticed this in 4.61 through 4.65. Thanks! Toonces

Custom Key remapping and Joystick choice! Man, you rock! I will test this out tonight! Toonces (Who's always lurking) Thanks Tom!

Hi Tom! Sorry, I have been pretty busy with work the last few weeks. I have been keeping up with the GameEx builds and am putting together a friends machine right now using GameEx as the front end. The switchable controls rock! These are probably the best controls I've used. I will have some feedback soon. Lots of new features to go through! Off the top of my head, the only thing I've noticed is that with 4.01 & 4.03 that it seems to take longer to get back to GameEX after I quit Project64 games. It gets back but there's a long pause before the menu comes up. I need to look at my config before I complain about it though Thanks for the great FE. Simply the best looking and easiest to setup! Toonces

Thanks for the GREAT support Tom! Erik

Ok, I replaced the exe and added FlatStartPage=True to the top of the General section of gameex.ini. When I launch Gameex, I get a debug popup saying the progrm has caused an exception it can't handle and asks if I want to debug or terminate. I have tried the FlatStartPage=True in several places in teh .ini just to make sure. Attached is my log file. Thanks! Toonces log.txt

Hmmm, they look the same to me. controlmap.csv = 5,4 Way Diagonals,Diagonal 4-way Joystick|joy4way controls.ini = P1Controls=Diagonal 4-way Joystick+joy4way Runitgame.bat = @ECHO OFF CALL C:\SETMODE\SETMODE.BAT 4 C: CD "C:\mame" mamep4.exe qbert -rompath "C:\mame\roms" -skip_disclaimer -joystick -skip_gameinfo -triplebuffer -nowindow -cheat -skip_validitychecks -resolution 352x256 -nohwstretch CALL C:\setmode\setmode.bat 3 Any Ideas? Thanks! Toonces Edit: I also checked the other 4 way diagonals and they all do the same. QBert Qubes & Congo Bongo.

I added CALL to the run before and after lines and switched back to the .bat file. It works beautifully! I am having one problem with the mode mapping though. I selected Q*Bert, a 4 way diagonal game and it gave me standard 4 way mode. How are you parsing the csv for comparison? SirPoonga has stated he will not change the joy4way short decsription to djoy4way for the diagonals so it would have to look for the word diagonal in the description to match it up. Thanks!

Yes, they do have different names. There may be some overlap though. My GP-Wiz49's show up as GPWiz49-1 and -2 because the maker has that as an option. The keyboard shows up as generic game controller device, the SuperJoypad shows up as SuperJoypad and so does the N64 controller. I think it must be based on the controller chip used by the manufacturers on how they show up in the list. Perhaps the best way might be to just offer a dropdown that shows the names and lets you pick?? Then GameEx could just use the device number internally based on which one was picked. I did find out that when I have everything plugged in that it all stays the same as far as which order in the list. It seems to go by which order they were originally plugged in. I'm not really sure the best way to approach this one other than what I have above.

Tom, I might be premature because you are probably already heading that way with this but in addition to being able to turn the joystick/gamepad on/off, is it possible for you to read the controls available from the gamepads in the system and have a dropdown box populate with the selection of which gamepad GameEx will use for itself? That is not to say it will turn off keyboard (joystick) by selecting one, it would just use the selected control. In my case, with the GP-Wiz49 (and also Ultimarc's new APAC), the joysticks appear to windows as gamepads. However, I also use a JPAC for all buttons and monitor interface so I end up with a "Hybrid" setup that uses both. Most things is GameEx work fine with this until I get fancy and start adding my other crap back in like SNES & N64 controllers. If I could select which controller GameEx uses, it shouldn't matter what order they appear to the system as. So the default would be for gamepad #1 but you could override it and select the desired gamepad by name (GP-Wiz49-1 in my case). I hope that makes sense, please let me know if I need to clarify what I wrote. Thanks Again! Toonces

Ok, I got some time to test this out today. It does not work with the batch files but if I compile the batch file with bat2exe into an executable it works great! When using the batch files, the screen goes black, I hear the mode change then it pauses for a second and goes back to the menu. I have a feeling this has to do with calling a batch file from within another batch file. I seem to recall that when you call a batch file from another batch file you have to use a CALL statement in order for the batch file to return control to the original batch file. I hope that makes sense. I just found where I saw that. See http://www.computerhope.com/batch.htm as a reference for the syntax. I am attaching the release package that have my batch files, the instructions and the compiled batch files. You can use them for testing even if you have nothing hooked up as all it does it set bits on the parallel port. This is a great start. I have to say it is really cool to have your joystick reconfigure itself when you launch a game! Along the same lines, can you make [EMULATOR] a valid variable? It would need to return the emulator being used. This would make it possible to download codes to the IPAC/JPAC based on the emulator. My next step is to combine both the mode switching and the key remapping using winipac into a single batch file so I can completely configure all controls (joysticks and buttons) based on the game being launched. This is going to be a little tricky as I am not sure whether batch files are going to be flexible enough (or probably more rightly so, my programming skills at creating the batch file) to accomplish the variables of inputs that could be passed to it ( [CONTROLS] [ROM] [EMULATOR] ) Thanks Again for putting this feature in! Erik setmode.zip

Hi Reuben, There is a thread Here. The short story is that there is a new control interface by Groovy Game Gear (http://www.groovygamegear.com) called the GP-Wiz49 that supports the use of Midway/Happ/Williams 49 way joysticks. One of the features of the interface is Digital Restrictor System (DRS) that makes the 49 way joystick act as a dedicated 2/4/8/16 & 49 way joystick. It's basically the next thing in all in 1 switchable joysticks. Compared to the Ultimarc T-Stick+ it blows it away and the cost is even a little lower. What Tom's change does is allow GameEx to switch the mode of the joystick to the appropriate type based on the rom you are running. So if you run pacman, the joystick behaves as a 4 way, if you run defender, it acts like a 2 way vertical joystick if you run robotron it acts like an 8 way. If you run a game that is not in controls.ini it defaults to 8 way. All in all a very exciting upgrade! Hope that helps, Toonces

It's BOOM PS2/N64 adapter. I got it off eBay Here When you tried your other adapter, what kind of controller did you use? A lot of the aftermarket ones do not work well due to design differences. The only controller that works consistently is the one from Nintendo. Toonces

Oh, one other thing, when you do release the version with GP-49 support, make sure to add in the change log that it does automatic switching of 2/4/8/49 way modes based on the selected game and controls.ini. A World First!

Yeah, I think the possibility of it being used for more than just display has also rekindled his interest. He knows you are adding the support to GameEx to do automatic mode switching. He pointed me to the Dev Kit today to get the list of all modes that I used as a basis for the list I uploaded. I can't seem to talk him into using djoy4way for the diagonals but he is going to fix the vjoy2way for up & down buttons

It's not a terrible thing for me. More of an XP problem in my mind. One of the Windows "Annoyances" Thanks!

Something like that

Hi Tom, Sorry, I left the 2 unused modes out of the files. Here it is again with the 2 unused modes defined at the bottom. Erik controlmap.zip

How's this? The file is in Excel & csv formats and uses the definitions found in the controls.ini dev kit. It looks like you have to use more than just the short description like joy4way because of Diagonal controls and 2 button controls not being consistent with the rest of the definitions (they don't use modifiers, just text in the description). Erik controlmap.zip

Hi, I wanted to throw this out and see if anyone has any ideas. So far, I have a total of 5 gamepads on my cab. 2 are the interface for my joysticks, 1 is built in to my keyboard, 1 is a Super SmartJoy SNES controller and the other is a PS2/N64 to usb adapter that I use with an N64 controller for project64. My problem is that when I have this stuff plugged in or if I unplug something and plug it back in, GameEx uses the first gamepad in the list as the controller for navigation and I never know which one that is. Sometimes it's my joysticks and sometimes it's the SNES controller and other times it's the keyboard's joystick. The only way I know how to manage that is to disable all the controls except the joysticks. It's not really an ideal way to deal with it since I play a mix of games and not just MAME. Anyone have any ideas on how to make sure the GP-49 is the first controller in the list every time so I can use my joysticks for navigation? I set my preferred device in the gamepad control panel but that only applies to older applications. Tom, Would it be possible for GameEx to see which is the preffered device and use it or maybe even a selection of which gamepad device to use? I can't imagine that I am the only one with more than one gamepad. Then Again...... Thanks! Erik

You didn't get the memo?

I use 640X288 for those settings rather than the defaults with 256. The games are full screen and don't look bad at all. But, that doesn't mean it will on your monitor but it's a start

When I switched to the 49 way sticks and got them under computer control I left all my existing buttons on the JPAC so I could exit programs, etc without having to use joytokey. Now that I am running a "Hybrid" system that only uses the gamepad joysticks and normal keyboard keys for buttons, I've found things like Enter and Tab don't work as they were shifted commands that relied on the joystick for input. Since the JPAC does not interface to the joystick to get those shifted keys. This is another place that Run Before and Run After will take care of as I will just remap my keys and setup my mappings specifically for GameEx and use a different mapping for MAME, ZiNC, etc. The downside to all this is I broke zinc since I am no longer using the arrow keys for up down left right and my son can't play Mr. Driller anymore I also ran out of USB ports and had to unplug the N64 controller and broke all those games too:) Thank God my wife only plays SNES DK Country. That's the one controller I left alone It's not a problem, just my experiences so far living on the bleeding edge of emulation technology Back to Robotron (It's FUN again!) Erik

No Problem Tom! I appreciate that you are willing to add new features and are open to suggestions. The Run Before and Run After each mame rom along with the parsing of the Controls.ini along with those files I sent are all that is needed to get GP-49 capability working. Any other stuff on the parallel ports is really just info I found. You can get all kinds of crazy with that stuff but you really don't need to. I don't know how you are planning on parsing controls.ini but even just a straight mapping in gameex.ini would work well and shouldn't require a lot more programming. Something simple like: joy8way=3 joy4way=4 stick=1 analog=1 That handles a great majority of the games in MAME and allows the end user to customize the mappings. There's a lot of buzz over on BYOAC about computer control of the GP-49 and people are chomping at the bit for a front end that supports it so they have a good reason to ditch their t-stick+ and omnisticks. Minwah is out of the country so the feild is wide open to be the first I am going to make some text changes to the readme file included in the zip I sent then I plan on releasing the files on BYOAC probably tomorrow. I've had a lot of requests for the stuff. If you look at the new pics I posted you'll see that I have menu items to switch joystick modes so I can change before I play a game. Works really well! If you've wanted an all in one stick I would encourage you to give it a try. Great feel. Very responsive and the best control so far short of a bunch of dedicated sticks. Thanks Again for addressing so many of my requests! Erik

Ok, I've done some updating on my cab and thought I'd share some new pics. Things I've done since last pics: Changed out the 2 T-Stick+ for Midway 49 way sticks. (You can see the new menu items I added to switch joystick modes!) I am working on replacing the handles with Red Balltops. Figured out how to change the LED Marquee Here it is as of today:

I don't think there's any kind of delay in the videos. My video snaps come right up when I select a game. One thing you might want to do is turn off Alpha Blending for videos. I had a sluggishness issue with videos in general until I turned that off. I can't say I notice a difference either other than now the videos are fast. Toonces