Toonces

I am also running GameEx as a shell now. I made sure all my other problems were adressed and Windows was optimized as much as I was going to do then followed the instructions on the page from GameEx site under extras. Toonces

Hi Rob, I had the same thing happen so I switched to a PCI Soundblaster Live card and there was no difference. It was really noticable with Williams games like Robotron. Tom had said to try lowering the sample rate and play with the sound settings in MAME32 then transfer the settings that worked to MAME.ini. The overall problem is CPU usage taking away from MAME which is probably why it works fine without GameEx in the picture since the CPU usage would naturally be lower without it. What I ended up doing was removing UltraVNC (remote management), turning off the Jukebox and removing the Soundblaster card and going back to the built in AC97 sound. Once I did that, the sound returned to normal. I also went through and eliminated pretty much everything in startup and started going through the optimisation guides for WindowsXP disabling unneeded services, etc. I was able to reinstall UltraVNC so I can manage my machine remotely and have not had the sound problem reappear. I have not yet reenabled the jukebox because it plays whatever it feels like rather than when and what I want. It's probably just me but I haven't quite figured out the proper way to control it so I get what I want. Yet. What it all seems to boild down to is optimizing WindowsXP (or whatever OS you are using) to be as light as possible so GameEx can get the resources it needs. Hope this help. Sorry it can't be a simple "turn this on/off" and it will work answer Toonces

What kind of video card are you using and what resolution? You might try updating the video drivers to the latest version.

I had that happen when my drivers for the AVGA card were not correctly installed. You have to install the ones from the Ultimarc CD. The ones XP installs by default will get you a display but they don't work properly with the card for anything else.

Tom, Would it be possible for you to add a commandline option to do update list so that it could run from a command prompt? I am trying to streamline my update process via batch files and would like to run the update list as part of the process. Thanks! Toonces

Hi Tom, how did this look to beef up the joypad support in GameEx? The source is included and as it also has a scripting language it might make more things possible? Toonces

Tom, I was just thinking about this and don't think there's a good way around the filters to show certain games. However, I did think of something that might help. How about a new addition to the filter? Something called "Do Not Filter" which would just be either the rom name on the line, semi-colon seperated (just like the filter list) or the path to a text file which contains the rom names, 1 per line, to not filter? That way you could process those roms in the list after the filtering to add them back in. I would think that most people don't have a huge number of exceptions but by allowing either a list of roms on the line or the path to a text file it would accomodate both large and small lists. Personally, I want Pac Man back as both Pac Man and Puck Man get filtered when using no clones unless better and Japan. Removing either gives me way more roms than I want :-) A short exceptions list would allow me to add in the 3 or 4 clones, etc that I would want. Thanks! Toonces

Of course now that I've posted something it won't happen anymore. I will keep an eye out and when it happens I'll make a list and see if I can come up with a commonality.

Unless you find a used one they all originate from there. Andy is the one that figured out how to modify the card and is the only one that sells it new. Any resellers you might find would either be at the same price or ossibly higher since they have to buy them from Ultimarc. It's well worth the price not to have to screw with getting a cheapo card working.

The ArcadeVGA card is available from Ultimarc http://www.ultimarc.com/ Toonces

Tom, I've also been having this strange behavior but figured it was my 4 year old managing to hit every button on the control panel in unison with holding both sticks up and down at the same time or some strange thing like that. Over the last week I would say it's happened 2-3 times. It hasn't been replacing All MAME with my favorites but I will go in to All MAME and there will be 49 games where there used to be 1895. My favorites will either be empty or it will contain the 4 games I had there. My other thought is that it was the way I have to exit GameEx with CTL+ALT+DEL since I have exit disabled. I hadn't posted it because I just figured it was me or my kids corrupting the list. Toonces

Here's a cool little program that just might do the trick. http://www.autohotkey.com/ It also happens to be an open source project and source code is available. Can handle 1-32 joysticks and buttons as well as other keyboard stuff.

Here's a link directly to the product: GP-49 Encoder

Ok, so I should have looked at the documentation BEFORE posting this as GameEx already supports a gamepad although not completely :-) So, my question for Tom is, would you consider exapnding joypad support to allow exiting the game, etc from a joypad. The offer of a free encoder stands though if it will help support the encoder to the fullest extent allowable by law Thanks! Toonces

Hi, groovygamegear.com has just started shipping a new encoder that allows the use of a Happ 49 way joystick as a 2/4/8/16/49 way switchable USB joypad. According to what I have read, it looks like a standard USB joypad to the system. This a change from the keyboard based encoders as the mappings are to joypad buttons rather than keyboard mappings. MAME and most other emulators should support it without problems. I'm not sure about GameEx unless joytokey is used. Rather than using joytokey I am wondering the possibility of GameEx supporting joypads directly at some point in the future. The product looks promising as a better alternative to the Ultimarc t-stick+ (which I have now and though it works, I don't care for the tight controls) and the GGG OmniStick. Another possibility with the new encoder is the ability to set the control type based on which game is loading. This will take more development and some as of yet, undeveloped hardware. To switch modes there is a dedicated button (like the JPAC's shift key) that you press along with 1 of 7 buttons. That sets the control type to 2H/2V/4/8/16/49 RAW/49Progressive. I am looking at building a small board that would attach to the parallel port and to the encoder to set the mode automatically. The front end would then need to send the appropriate signal to the parallel port which would simulate pressing the appropriate buttons to activate the desired mode. There are quite a few possibilities here as it could also include an LED driver to display the joystick's mode or even seperate LEDs. All kinds of things. Unfortunately, the developer did not put support for mode changes into the product so it could be done on the fly by sending a command via USB. I don't know why as it seems like a natural thing to do. Anyways, it's a new product and has potential to be a great solution for those of us that do not want 16 joysticks and 50 buttons on our panels just to play the majority of games. The t-sticks & OmniSticks are an option but are just too tight to be able to play games like Robotron very well. The Happ 49 way at least feels more like the arcade controls I am used to (more like the Happ Super). GGG sells the 49 way sticks for $33 each and the GP-49 encodeer is $20-35 depending on the version (solder vs non vs screw terminals). You require 1 encoder for each stick used. as a bonus you get 23 other switch inputs on each stick so if you do like a plethora of buttons it can be done :-) If it seems expensive for a 2 stick setup consider that a pair of t-stick+ with balltop handles runs $91 shipped. Going with 2 solder type encoders and 2 49 way sticks runs about $110 shipped. Not really that much more and you get many more possibilities. Tom, would you consider looking at adding joypad support to GameEx? I am sure it would be an evolutionary thing especially if the additional switchboard for automatic mode switching were made but it would be a huge step towards better controls. I'll even offer to send you an encoder board if it helps :-) As for the switching board, I am going to start looking at what is necessary on the hardware end but I am not a programmer so any assistance on writing a control program for it would be most welcome. Best Reagrds, Toonces

I ran across this commandline addition about a week ago and emailed it to myself then forgot about it. Another post on the board about ROM loading speed jogged my memory so I tried it and can report it works great! When I hit play this game it loads up right away! WooHoo! I have verified this works with Commandline MAME and the p4 optimized build of Commandline MAME only. So how do you get your ROMs loading faster? Add the switch -skip_validitychecks to the MAME launch parameters. That's it. For the original thread that mentions this, see: http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showt...o=&fpart=1&vc=1 Now go reclaim those valuable seconds of waiting for a ROM to load! Toonces

add this parameter to your MAME Launch parameters: -skip_validitychecks I think you will be quite pleased. Apparently MAME checks all of the drivers before loading a ROM to ensure that there are no mismatched DLLs. See http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showt...o=&fpart=1&vc=1 for more info. I did this on my cab today and it goes right into the games now. Toonces

Just to make sure Rob can keep up with the changes made to his Theme to get it to work with 640 X 288. I resized all of the backgrounds in his 640X288 to be exactly 640X288. That along with your changed unselected.bmp and the new version of gameex.exe fixed it to display properly. The only thing not quite fitting for that skin since I resized it is the snapshot/video box is a little too big and goes outside of the bottom blue line on the left hand side. Looks awesome though! Thank You to Tom & Rob! Erik

Works like a charm! can I use that same unselected.bmp in all of the themes to fix them? Thanks Again! Erik

Cool! I turned off Alpha Blending and switched back to the Video Fun Theme and it no longer has a speed problem. Just the video in the background of the buttons is all. Kinda psychadelic :-) Thanks Tom! Erik

Ok, I replaced the file. Everything looks great on loading and goes to the main menu without any problems or distorted graphics. However, when I try to go into a sub menu like All MAME Games or Laserdisk Games or anything else, GameEx crashes. Here is the log file and my GameEx.ini. I am running 3.43 with MAME .94 As a side note, I also tried the new Video Fun Theme and had the same video in the unselected bars problem. When I went into a sub menu with video everything slowed to a crawl but I suspect it was resizing the video that may be causing that? It looks VERY promising though! Thanks! Erik gameex_log_ini.zip

Ok, I have rescalled all of the backgrounds to 640X288 and get the same thing. I did notice that when I hit a game in the mame list that I had a video for, the blue backgrounds on all of the unselected lines would change to whatever the video is. I tried a few things like turning down the accelleration a notch but that didn't do anything. I also disabled alpha blending but again no change. The only way for me to update the drivers is to replace the card. Fortunately I have a new one coming in this week for a friends machine so I can at least test it. For now it's back to Default - Default which works with everything :-) Thanks! Erik

Thanks Tom, I will try rescaling the backgrounds and see if that works. I have the older ATI 7000 based ArcadeVGA. Do you know if it still does it with the newer one? Best, Erik

Hi Rob, Thanks! I installed the Theme per your instructions and it appears that things are the correct size but there are a few oddities. 1. the selected menu item appears to have a strange flash of something going on. as the blue scroll goes up it flashes a different color. I went through all of the graphics and found that the selected.bmp is green while selected1 to 20.bmp were blue. It's also the same way in your original BlueEx Arcade I had downloaded and tried before. 2. All of the unselected menu items have a scrambled blue bar over them that looks like the selected animation mixed with whatever is on my desktop. I checked unselected.bmp and it is solid black so I am not sure what is going on there. I took some pictures and a video to demonstrate what I am seeing. I tried to take a screenshot but was unsuccessful. Maybe GameEx captures ALT+Prt Screen? Anyways, here is a picture of the screen. I thought you might be able to see things better by looking at the video (sorry for the poor quality. It's hard to get it to synch with the screen). though so I posted it at the URL below. 640X288 BlueEx Video Thanks for everything! Erik

Hi Rob, Yes, it was me that asked for 640X288. That is the highest Non-Interlaced resolution possible with an ArcadeVGA card and a Low Res monitor. Thanks for your work on the Themes! Great Stuff! Toonces