IMBerzerk

Oh yes.... the wife factor... did I mention it was a 'dream' room to have? Same here, it has to pass the House, then to Congress, back to the House to be vetoed by the President anyway.

No boundries..... Nirvana AIC Soundgarden Peral Jam Rush Zeppelin Rolling Stones Genesis Judas Priest RHCP The Clash Journey KISS Duran Duran Micheal Jackson (yeech!!!) Billy Joel Heart Twisted Sister AC/DC Lynard Skynard .38 Special Devo (I'm through being cool) Cheap Trick Heck... I even have Glenn Miller on mine Oh yeah... and most of the Soundtrack of 'Heavy Metal'... I HIGHLY reccomend that to any 70'-80's Classic cabinet owner. IMBerzerk

Hello Corey, welcome to the forum. I, like you, was new to GameEx only about two months ago. But by spending a lot of time with it, have discovered it's very configurable and works really great. All the questions you have can be configured in the setup. You have to go 'Advanced' and page through each menu at first. It's best to do this simply to learn. Then once you get a good grasp on where things are, then use the 'custom' selection. Just spend more time with the configuration, and keep reading. You'll be there before you know it and then knocking yourself in the head saying ...'Oh... yeah!!' more than you know. IMBerzerk

You might be in line for what I want to do in my basement. A 70's/80's room. I eventually want to dedicate a corner area, about 8x10 (feet) in size, decorate it with that classic late 70's look and put my game consolse in it. I only have a VCS, a Coleco vision, and 3 Intellivsions (2 Mattel, 1 Sears), but I think it would look cool. I see guys on the internet that have all these crazy shelf set-ups, and all kinds of modern looking things that simply don't look cool with a 2600 hooked up to it. I want to go out to a Salvation Army store, and pick-up an old Zenith or RCA 19" TV, get a wood TV stand, get some shag rug (brown or green) and put wood paneling all over the walls. Then get one of those old tweed couches with the funny patterns on it, and a corner light setup, you know, kinda dark like it used to be. This way, when I walk into the room... it's like a time-machine. That's the way to do it. IMBerzerk

Ok, I can give a pic of the Sears Super Video Arcade unit and the box. An Intellivision box in good shape, as well as the Intellivoice box. I don't have anything else unfortunately, but I'm happy to contribute whatever I can.

I love what the Odyssey 400/500 box says..."The Originator of Home Video Games". Man... vintage stuff... VINTAGE!!! Take pictures of the system boxes as well. It would be great if GameEx had an option to display the unit's box as well. I have a Sear Super Video Arcade box I can donate a picture of ... All the best, IMBerzerk

Sounds like a good script, I'll try it for the emulators I have not touched yet... it'll be much easier that way. Thanks for writing it. IMBerzerk

It must have been all that experimental stuff I 'did' back in the 80's... ya know, to 'enhance' my Game Room skills.

Tempest, Nope, I didn't miss your point at all... you kinda missed mine. I have NO intention of ever updating anything regarding MAME. Been there, done that... too many ROMs. They get left alone. It's the other consoles that I want to play with. The Intellivision, the Colecovision, etc.... those with 100 or less games that I can totally customize everything.. the artwork, the name, etc. So far, I'm almost done with the Intellivsion list. It looks great! Everything matches, plus I've added a lot of game details from Moby games and the Intellivision site. Still more to do... IMBerzerk.

Actually, it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. All I am doing is changing the fist box to fit what my ROM names are. That's it. I'll add the ones that are missing, and move on. At least now I have a good checklist to go by, rather than guess at what the name might be. I did things very different, especially with my Intellivision ROMs. I grouped them according to publisher, so mine look like this: Activision - Stampede Activision - River Raid Imagic - Nova Blast Imagic - Dragonfire Intellivoice - B17 Bomber Etc. You get the point. yep... IMBerzerk

Got it... it opened in Access. Oh man... here I go!!

I tried OpenOffice Base, it gave me a bunch of charaters, and a lot of jibberish. It looked like a coded database. I'll try Access.

What are you guys using to read the databases? I'd like to open them and look to see what the name is calling for, then I can change it to that name, or vice-versa. At this point, I just want to view the files. From there, I'll see if I really want to dive in.

Precisely. I don't want to see 'DK' for Donkey Kong, or CBongo for Congo Bongo. Also, one major issues with automatic updates for me... my cabinets are not connected to the Internet. They're stand-alones, and will remain that way. So if I dabble, and things work, cool... if not.. oh well. More time at work wasted. Hey, us Network guys need something to do while CISCO's never fail. IMBerzerk

Thanks Head, I'm more concerned about the console games like Colecovision, Atari, NES, Intellivision, etc. I wouldn't even dream about touching the MAME roms. That would be a nightmare.

Now that I've got a pretty firm understanding on how GameEx works, I'd like to start altering the information databases to match the names of my ROMs. I have a habit of cutomizing everything, so my ROM names are no different. What is the best program to use to view, edit and alter the GameEx databases. Thanks, IMBerzerk

OK... let me guess..... hold on... listen to it again... ahhh... yes... this is Dig Dug... NO... wait... err.... Galax... no... Gorf? Ah, Jeeze... I know it's that yellow thingie.. that eats dots... Pacu?, Munchie... er... I give up. Considering my cabinet is a Berzerk unit, I can't use it, but it sounds great and brings back memories. Thanks for posting it. IMBerzerk

OK, here. Before we do anything, make sure MESS knows where your Artwork folder is. It has to be pointed at it before anything will work. So check to be sure. Now, Take this section of the .LAY file.... It begins at the element name....and ends at the close 'view' statement for each section. In each section, there is a name of the game. They all have to match the ROM name except the 'view name', but I matched that one anyway. I noticed that GameEx like to use the name of the ROM, so the 'view name' doesn't work. I think that's for MESS only. So using the section, and you have a ROM named Armor Attack in your list, it should look like this... Now, you need to rename the layout for Armor Attack to 'Armor Attack', as it is written on the ROM file. So now you have the ROM, .LAY file and the layout all saying the same thing. Make sure you have the .LAY in the same ZIP file as the layout(s).... I have them zipped, you don't have to, I found it worked better if it was zipped. Now place the zipped file in the MESS 'Artwork' folder, make sure MESS has that folder defaulted as the Artwork folder as I stated above. Now renamed all screenshots, box art...etc... to the same name as the rom. That's it. It should work now. If not, post your layout file section for Armor Attack and tell me what you have the layout named to, and the ROM. We'll get it, like I said, it took me a while, but I got it. Now I have all ROMs working with accompanying layouts. I just have to get the 'Spectrum' version to work now... but why bother, it's in 3D and I can't see it that way. IMBerzerk

I don't know what this is either. But to make it work, it has a lot to do with the layout file. It must match the name of the ROM in that file, and it must be the same name in the zip file. Basically, make everything have the same name that is listed in the layout file and it should work. Also... the file he included is a text file. It needs to be a .LAY file in order to work. IMBerzerk

Same here... good to go! Thanks for the quick fix. IMBerzerk

Every time I come out of a game, the song starts back at the beginning. I have music set to 'pause' playlist and play whatever. It worked fine until I upgraded today. Other than that, all else is working great. IMBerzerk

Funny... a well-dressed British chap knocked on my door yesterday, holding what looked like an apparatus to take blood. I wonder if that was for the technical help.... ? :lol:

Just letting you know, my 'Hat is in the Ring'. Another happy GameEx user. and you guys were thinking I was a troll.... eh? All the best, IMBerzerk.... ??... yes.

Funny, it's not playing them. Not sure why. They work in Media PLayer, so I know I have the proper codec. I'll skip the gui and check the INI file. IMBerzerk

I take that back... it works! It took me a while, but I finally got it working, and it makes a HUGE difference. Thanks!