Toonces

Hi Tom, One note, IF you wanted to add support for controlling the GP-49 or anything else directly into GameEx, I have found some very good resources on Parallel port programming. In trying to find a simple program that just sets some bits on the port I ran into hundreds of pages and examples including how to get around NT/2K/XP protection of the ports. Funny, all that info and only 1 dos program to actually do the setting Anyways, here are some links with the required DLL and programming examples: http://www.lvr.com/parport.htm - Has links to more parallel port info than should exist. Lots of technical info and programming examples. http://www.logix4u.net/ - Freeware DLL that works with Win9X through XP. Includes programming examples too Between those two links, there's enough info there to make your head hurt. For a programmer, there's enough info there to easily write an application using the parallel port I am not asking you to change how you plan to support the GP-49. The run before and run after options will work very well for me. I just wanted to pass on the info I found because it seems very useful if you want to control pretty much anything via the parallel port. Erik

I downloaded it last night at http://www.gameex.net/ Maybe your browser has the old page cached?

Tom, I wrote some batch files to take %[CONTROLMODE] as numbers 1-8 in order to support the new run before and run after functions. I PM'd you the URL for you to downlaod the files. Please take a look and let me know if any changes are needed. Calling the actual MS-DOS proggram directly just wasn't working out so I made the batch files as wrappers. I also included compiled versions of the batch file in case it is easier to use in another batch file. I think the best way to approach it as you had stated. The only change is I would also make modes 2 & 8 as valid although they'll never map to anything with the standard controls.ini. If you added support for the mappings in the gameex.ini someone could change it as they want so maybe 49 way games actually use mode 2 instead of 1. dunno. Best Regards, Erik

ok, a couple of different scenarios for this one. The first is on a per rom basis in order to change key mappings based on the game. This is especially useful for emulators that do not have the same key mappings that MAME uses or where you might want a different button mapping for a specific game. The way I see this being used is in the same batch file you run before and after a game. It could be passed in with the rom name and the IPC file would be gamename.ipc so the correct ipc file would be identified by simply passing in the rom name without extension. Something you are already doing by adding romname without extension as a variable. On a per emulator basis, it could pass in based on the emulator name? That way every time you launched an emulator you want to remap the keys for it would pass the emulator name in and you could have an emulator.ipc file. Tis might even be a better solution for ZiNC as I think it uses the same mappings for every game, they're just different than MAME's default. Being zinc support is built in, this is one place I could see you passing the emulator name. On exit you would just pass back in MAME or even gameex.ipc to remap back to defulat or customized gamex settings. With the addition of the launch before and after batch files you really don't need to do anything other than maybe provide the emulator name as a variable? The run before and after really kinda takes care of it

http://www.ultimarc.com/winipac.html has the instructions for using it to download the codes. Basically, you create a profile you want. save it as an .IPC file then use it in a batch file as: "winipac <IPC file name>" The winipac program works with both old and new versions of the ipac/jpac so no worries about which type you have. Thanks Again! Toonce

Awesome! The only thing I see with using the numbers instead of passing the joy4way or whatever directly is that it ties you to maintaining the translation of controls.ini to the joystick mode. Unless the translation were in the config file of course. Maybe that's the way to do it? let gamex pass all the modes 1-8 based on the gameex.ini having a section that say joy4way=4, analog=1, djoy4way=5 (assuming I were to modify the 5 or 6 enteries in controls.ini to reflect diagonal games as djoy4way). etc. That way it could be extended easily by the end user and you don't have to leave any modes out for people that want to use the 2 I am leaving out. It definately works for me in any case though. I guess it depends on how you want to maintain it I love it however you do it.

BTW, since I have gotten the relay board I have figured out, that with the dos utilities it provides, the relay board is not strictly needed in order to control the GP-49. You could have a parallel cable, connect it directly to the switch terminals on the GP-49 and just adjust the batch file to do reverse login. Instead of turning on the desired bits you would initialize them all on then turn them off as needed. One of the things the relay board does provide is isolation though so there's always the possibility that you could fry either your GP-49 or your computer or both. It shouldn't be a problem but the possibility exists as both are powered seperately and may not have the same ground reference. The relay board is just safer. The plus sidde is you can also trigger other stuff like lights or even monitor power, etc. Toonces

I was just preparing what I thought would be needed and as I was going through controls.ini noticed that 2 way may already be taken care of. Horizontal 2 way entries have joy2way and vertical ones like defender already have vjoy2way so those are already addressed. That would only leave a few cases to modify and they could be done in controls.ini directly so GameEx could simply pass whatever is after the + in controls.ini! So P1Controls=Diagonal 4-way Joystick+djoy4way would pass djoy4way (note, I added the d. There are only a few games that use a diagonal stick so it's easier to modify controls.ini rather than GameEx. As far as standardizing, my idea is to talk to SirPoonga (maintainer of controls.ini) and see if they can accomodate the slight modifications. But as far as GameEx goes, just the batch file support along with being able to pass that piece of info should work beautifully. I am attaching the readme file from the dos utility. If anyone can assist me in getting the batch file to work I would GREATLY appreciate it. Thanks! Toonces k74_dos.txt

HEHE, See my reply. Funny, I was answering that for the last hour and when I posted it there was your answer. I agree completely. a batch option before and after would give the flexibility to do all kinds of things. The relay board has the driver and dos program to use in a batch file already so it should be an easy thing to do. As you can see from my post above, I am not quite sure what to do about some of the variables only because they affect fairly popular games. Defender, Q*Bert, etc. I am no batch file expert either so I am not sure where to begin. On a similar note, the relay board was just delivered So I can play with this and "Git R Done"! Thanks Tom! Toonces

I've been thinking of an easy way this might be done and after reading Cupid's post, perhaps the easy way would be to have GameEx be able to run a batch file before and after any game that is run. The batch file would need to be able to have variables passed to it from GameEx. I beleive this is similar to how you have emulators run passing in rom name, etc. The questions then become what variables are available in GameEx and what to pass to the batch file. Looking at controls.ini. Here's a typical entry: [mspacman] gamename=Ms. Pac-Man numPlayers=2 alternating=1 mirrored=1 tilt=0 cocktail=1 usesService=0 miscDetails= P1NumButtons=0 P1Controls=4-way Joystick+joy4way P1_JOYSTICK_UP=Up P1_JOYSTICK_DOWN=Down P1_JOYSTICK_LEFT=Left P1_JOYSTICK_RIGHT=Right It looks like the thing to pass in would be joy4way and then the batch file could use that to set the mode to 4 way. Passing just that would probably handle about 85-90% of the games? There are 8 selectable modes. 1 - Raw49 - Standard 49 way 2 - Progressive 49 - basically the same thing with a dead zone inbetween the active zones. 3 - 8 way 4 - 4 way 5 - 4 way diagonals - Q*Bert, etc 6 - 2 way horizontal 7 - 2 way vertical 8 - 16 way - custom mode to try to make 720 more playable. 49 way works better. So, with the above modes in mind I eliminated 2 modes that I don't think are very useful nor do they map to any kind of "standard" mode. I am kicking out modes 2 & 8 leaving my list as: 1 - 49 way 3 - 8 way 4 - 4 way 5 - 4 way diagonal 6 - 2 way H 7 - 2 way V passing in just joy4way will not work for Q*Bert as I really want mode 5 for that game. So back to controls.ini and look at Q*Bert. The entry for P1Controls there looks like this: P1Controls=Diagonal 4-way Joystick+joy4way So this information is there to be had. Unfortunately, I am not sure of how to handle it in the batch file. I have found that it not always consistent in controls.ini. Take for example, Puzzle Bobble which uses a 2 way Horizontal stick: P1Controls=2-way Joystick (Horizontal)+joy2way The direction of the 2 way is noted in parentheses. That appears to be consistent throughout for 2 way modes. It's just not the same way 4 way does it So how do you effectively parse controls.ini and pass something usable by the batch file?? There are other anomolies but those could effectively be dealt with by ending the batch file with a default 8 way control if nothing matches. Sorry if this wandered off topic into batch file stuff. Toonces

Hi Cupid, Looking at what you want to do I am curious as to what your program does? Do you have to manually set a resolution (LOW, MED, HIGH res)? Using .ini files for each game will already override default game settings or even using arcade mode or AVGA support. Just Curious Toonces

Welcome Back Tom! I hope the vacation was a relaxing one! I really hate to ask but do you think it might be possible for you to look at adding GP-49 mode switching via parallel port as well? I haven't been this happy with a product since I found MAME and then GameEx. It's really awesome to finally have a decent all in one stick. Besides, then GameEx would be the first FE to support it! Just imagine, your joystick(s) automatically change modes to match the game you're playing What more could you want? Anyways, enough begging from me. Thanks again for the awesome FE and Welcome back!!! Erik

Go into each game you want to reconfigure and hit the tab key on your keyboard (Shift + P1 joy R if IPAC/JPAC) That will get you into the menu where you can reconfigure the controls by selecting the desired control and hitting enter (Shift + P1 joy L) then the key you want it to be (P2 B5 & B6). Hope that helps, Toonces

I know I mentioned this before but now I have the GP-49 with Midway 49 way sticks and wanted to bring up the idea of supporting automatic mode switching based on controls.ini. For those that don't know, the GP-49 is a new interface for Midway/Happ 49 way sticks commonly found in NFL Blitz, NBA Jam and a few others. It was a way to get almost analog functionality at a cheaper cost per stick since it wasn't a full analog stick. The GP-49 is a USB interface for these sticks and the computer treats them as standard HID gamepads. To MAME it looks like an analog stick (just like a gamepad with an analog stick) and no special drivers or versions of MAME are needed. One thing that makes the GP-49 interface so appealing is that the developer has incorporated 7 Digital Restrictor Selection (DRS) modes to allow using the stick in dedicated 2 way H, 2 way V, 4 way, 8 way, 16 way, 49 way progressive and 49 way RAW modes. After using it for a day I can say he got the DRS modes very close to original sticks and it is the best option out there for an all in one switchable joystick. If you don't like the tight, wrist killing feel of the Ultimarc t-stick+ and long for a decent "Old School" feel like the Wico sticks then this is what you are looking for! Enough of the commercial. Here's the one "Annoyance" I have with the product. In order to switch modes you have to install a dedicated Mode Switch button and one additional button for each mode you want to use. The mode buttons can double as player buttons though so you can use your normal player 1 buttons along with the new dedicated button to do the switching. For people with limited space on their CP adding another button isn't necessarily the best option. The other issue might be configuring MAME and your other emulators to use the new player buttons once you switch them to the GP-49. The way I want to approach this is not to add or change the buttons already running through my JPAC but rather have the mode change accomplished by the PC. Ideally it will do this automatically based on the game being played and the info in controls.ini which GameEx already uses to display the control panel layout. The same info can be used to switch modes if there is a way to send the button pushes from the PC rather than using buttons. This also means you can keep all of your emulator key configs the same and won't have an issue with exiting a game using a gamepad because only the joystick controls need to run through the GP-49. The question is how do you do it? The easiest answer and the one I am looking for support of is to use a Parallel port relay board and have GameEx set the appropriate bits on the parallel port that would correspond to the desired mode. An inexpensive board that would work perfectly and is available as a kit or fully assembled is This One. There are already dos & windows programs that support the board although the support in GameEx would not have to use them. A driver is needed to access the parallel port in Win2K & XP. A free driver along with programming examples of how to use the DLL is available Here. The simple explaination is that GameEx would need to set 2 bits for any given mode then possibly clear them as only a short push of the button is needed. Using bit 0 as the mode switch button, the modes would go something like mode1 - mode 7 = bit 1 to bit 7. Very simple and it makes sense. Since there are 8 relays on the board, every mode can be accessed via this method and GameEx can select the desired mode based on controls.ini for automatic mode switching based on the selected game! Something no other front end can do as of yet!!! There are a couple of things I can think of like what to do if the game you are trying to play is not in controls.ini. The answer for that would be to possibly flash a message that control info is not available and default to 8 way. The user can always add it to their control.dat to use a particular mode in the future. Also, since there are 2 49 way modes GameEx would either need a way to know which of the 49 way modes the user wanted (RAW or Progressive) via the config or controls.ini would have to be modified by the user with an annotation as to which one to use. Personally, I didn't see or feel much difference between the 2 49 way modes and would think that just having it as a config item would be more than enough. I sincerly hope that Tom has the time and desire to add this type of support (and soon. My relay board will be here in a couple of days ) as it would be VERY useful as the MAME community starts finding out about these sticks & the GP-49. Now is a good time to pick the sticks up on eBay as they are cheap because so very few games used them and until recently, MAME didn't support using them. I just bought a pair of them on eBay for $26 + shipping. Certainly better than the $92 I paid for 2 t-stick+ that these replaced. 1 GP-49 is needed for each stick you want to use and at $19.95 for the solder version, it's a bargain! http://www.groovygamegear.com is where you will find the GP-49. Thanks! Toonces

The ArcadeVGA support in GameEx is taken from Tom's ArcadeVGA utility so it operates on pretty much the same principle. The only thing that GameEx appears to do is add the parameters to the commandline rather than using an ini. One way that GameEx could allow custom resolutions with ArcadeVGA active would be to allow ini files to override the ArcadeVGA settings. That way any game that has an ini would use the ini over the ArcadeVGA settings of GameEx. Personally, I don't have a problem using the built in support but then I don't play MK and the few games that use the streach feature look ok to me Just my .25 Toonces

I agree with Rob. I would gladly play $30-40 for a registered version with all the features. As far as Improvements. Things that are important to me are: 1. Kid Friendly - This would mean maintenance functions like rebuilding the list, gettting to config, etc would be able to be hidden but still accessable though a key combination that is not accidentally hit and possibly be password protected. I have everything hidden and and it works much better now until I have to update then I have to go back to the desktop using CTL+ALT+DEL (this is more difficult since 3.47 as GameEx keeps regaining control once the task manager is up. Takes about 4-5 tries before I can actually exit) and then reenable update list or go into configuration directly. The newly added -listupdate switch does make this scriptable but I would still like to be able to conbtrol & do everything from the frontend itself. I am using GameEx as a shell. The ability to auto update GameEx for the registered version would also be a great addition to this. 2. Better Jukebox control. I got very confused with this. The controls do not seem obvious and I could never get it to play what I wanted to hear. Even with the jukebox disabled it played whatever was in my playlist and I wasn't able to change it. Pretty much I just didn't understand the controls enough to use it and ended up not using it. Perhaps an easier to use, arcade controls friendly "front end" for the jukebox would make it easier. 3. Ability to remap controls & better gamepad support. I am in the process of switching over to the new groovygamegear interface for Happ 49 way sticks. This is seen by Windows as a standard gamepad. I am not completely switching from my jpac as I plan to leave the buttons as is but the ability to navigate with a combination of gamepad & keys would be needed. If you've been looking for a really good 4/8 way switchable joystick and don't like the tight ultimarc or omni sticks, the Happ 49 way with a GP-49 is the way to go. It feels like a wico balltop stick with the added benefit of being switchable between 2 way, 4 way, 8 way, 16 way and 49 way! Definately a must have if you don't want a panel stuffed full of joysticks. 4. Ability to arrange menu item order. Because I want to As far as the method of how you would nag, etc for unregistered. How about a nag on startup and shutdown/exit and any time a registered feature is selected. That way the free functions are still free and the commercial is still shown on startup & shutdown and people who only want the free features can have it without constant nagging. I get really turned off by constant nagging and rather than using the product would be more inclined to find something else rather than purchase it. However, a few non-interfering nags that are well placed and lets me use the product for what is supposed to be free will tend to get me hooked. That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Toonces

Thanks Tom! You da man! Toonces

It looks like the problem with zinc controlls is the controller plugin in zinc uses different buttons and the config files do not change them properly. You can get a working controller plugin here Replace the plugin with the one you download at the link above. It has the MAME key mappings hardcoded in the plugin and will work with the default settings gameex uses. At least it does for me Toonces

Don't get me wrong, I asked for that in the beggining too However, after looking at this several times and trying to suggest a way that would make it easier, I pretty much came to the same conclusion that unless you manage the individual roms, there's really not a really good way of filtering out large numbers of roms and keeping what you would want without some major catagorization and cross categrories. Right now, catlist and the other support files do a decent job but it would probably take a few people quite a bit of time to be able tocategorize to the level needed to get realy granular. you'd need something along the lines of DMOZ and a team of volunteers to accomplish the task. Of course, I think the upcoming "No Filter List" feature will go a long way to getting you back roms you want included. A good source to find out parent roms, etc is MAWS. The search features should help you identify which is the parent set, etc. http://www.mameworld.net/maws/ Toonces

They did that with my 7000 based card but the new 9250 based card didn't blue screen. just gave me a vanilla 640X480 16 color screen.

Cool! I like that option. Many times I just wait for the attract mode SS to kick in just to see what it comes up with :-)

I think someone asked for and Tom is planning on a similar feature to do Alpha paging so that each time you hit a page up/down it would skip to the next letter in the alphabet. Toonces

The only problem with approaching it that way is that there are more than 5,000 sets in the current MAME. If you are going to manage a list that large, you might as well just manage the roms themselves and not put them in your rom folder. Then you don't have to filter anything. just put only the sets you want in the rom directory and let it build the list. The filters are good for tossing out large categories of games. Not perfect but it does get the list to be a bit more manageable. I think with Tom implimenting a "don not filter" list in an upcomming release that will be about as good as any fe gets at filtering without having to manage the roms one by one. just my .25 Toonces

Try turning off the secondary display and see if it still does the same thing.

The games I had replacing were actually the favorites. Seems my kids loaded it up with their favorites Anyways, I've since only had this happen 1 more time. The last time it had the 10 games from favorites. Toonces