Lancerguy

Hi, I am trying to make a database file and I frustratingly cannot get it to work. I took the Arcade Capcom CPS-3 db3 file and used TablesPlus as an SQLite editor. I just added my ROMs to this DB3 file then tried to attach it to my emulator in GameEx but it does not list publisher, number of players, year, description, etc. The "Name" matches the name in my map file. The "TOSEC" matches my ROM name. What am I missing?

Ya, I hate to just randomly add to the conversation, but I don't think I saw whether you had tried headkaze's suggestion about checking for heavy CPU or hard drive activity during the "hang". If you run in windowed mode, an easy way to see would be to open task manager (ctrl+alt+del). You can watch the CPU at the bottom of the task manager, or go to the processes tab for a better look at what is using CPU. You might report back what % is being used while it's hanging, and what processes are using what % (especially GameEx). If you've copied your whole emulation setup to the local hard drive that the OS is on (which I definitely recommend for testing), you should also note the amount of hard drive activity during the hanging (i.e. Is the hard drive light on constantly, blinking rapidly, or not really on that much. That way at least we'll know if it's just slow, or if something is actually causing the system to pause or time out before re-loading GameEx. Also, your system shows it has an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650. The ATI site shows that it doesn't have "switchable graphics" on it. Even so, if it DOES, I might suggest trying to disable it in BIOS. I'm not sure what your options will be in BIOS, but it's probably under "dynamic switching" or something of that sort, but there should be 3 options. There should be one for integrated, one for discrete, and an option that dynamically switches between the two as needed. I would suggest trying the integrated option for maximum performance (lower battery life though). GameEx shows 1920MB of video memory available because of ATI's "HyperMemory", which shares all available memory with the graphics card, so the card 'technically' has your entire RAM available to it. You probably have 1920MB of RAM available in general. Also, I really don't think it has anything to do with the G13 device.

I fixed my issue by making a batch file run BEFORE and one that runs AFTER, but only launching the exe as the emulator from gameex. That fixed my issue with crashing on exit and the resolution issue and the ini modification issue. The BEFORE batch modifies the ini by taking the ROMFILE variable from gameex and appending it, then it launches the reschange to make it 640x480. GameEx launches makaron in a ready to go state. The batch that runs on exit (when i hit escape) changes the res back to 1024x768 and runs pskill makaron.exe (or naomi.exe), that fixes the res and crash on exit issues. The reason it GameEx was hanging with "Playing..." was because I was launching a batch file as the emu, and escape doesn't properly work in that scenario I guess? I still had issues even after creating the batch file, because GameEx continued to launch the emu while my 'before' stuff was running. To fix this, I added "call" to the front of the batch file in the 'before' and 'after' spots. ie: call "C:\emu\launchbefore.bat" That way, GameEx waits for the previous batch to finish before launching the next batch file. This also ensures GameEx doesn't re-launch before the 'after' batch finishes.

Makaron is developed by Deunan Knute, and although there is very little documentation other than his livejournal, it works EXTREMELY WELL, once you get it working. The emulation is MUCH MUCH more perfect than any other DC emulator, it emulates sound and graphics almost 100% accurately, much more so than nullDC or chankast. Also, Deunan claims that at this point it actually runs slightly MORE efficient than an original Dreamcast. It also runs Naomi games much more flawlessly than nulldc. I am very impressed with his work. The only problem is that you have to dig through his livejournal to find the releases, and then dig through the journal to get information. His website is http://dknute.livejournal.com/ and the latest release is Makaron T11/1 (Test 11, release 1) Let me know if you need help. I'm going to play around with this today and see what I can get working.

I've been working on setting up the Makaron Dreamcast/Naomi emulator for use with GameEx. As it is now, I have set GameEx to launch a batch file, which in turn renames the image to a readable name and then launches the NAOMI.exe. I do it through a batch file because there is no option to load an image into the NAOMI emulator, it is loaded via an INI file, so I "append" the name of the image into the ini file. Also, I have to run a command line resolution changer, because the program crashes if not running at 640x480. So, the batch file basically sets up the INI, launches the reschanger, then laucnhes the NAOMI emulator. My issue is as follows: When closing the emulator, it doesn't actually close, I believe this has to do with having to hit Alt+F4 multiple times to close the program. Also, I have reschange run AFTER it exits, because GameEx will give an error if it is still in 640x480 when GameEx comes back up. So, I've tried to add pskill naomi.exe to a batch file, along with the reschange, but it doesn't close the emulator. When I try it at the command line, it works fine, closing the naomi.exe with pskill, then changing the res back to 1024x768. Also, GameEx won't re-launch, it insists that I am still "in-game" and has to be closed manually Is there a way to force close naomi.exe, change the res back BEFORE GameEx opens, and then make GameEx recognize that naomi is exited? I hope that's explained well enough.

Thanks!

Dang fRequEnCy, you're following me around the forum huh? Oh well, I appreciate it though...MESS was driving me crazy, that makes sense though. Since posting this I fond the ESC quits MESS, regardless of whether gameex is running or not, my bad :-P

I've got 2 issues that are absolutely DRIVING ME CRAZY. I am trying to configure the default keys for the emulators to use (you know, the abxy keys for example). I am currently working on MESS and ZSNES, I'll use them as my examples. I have loaded up zsnes independently and configured the controls (because I changed the default IPAC controls since ALT seemed to effect some of my emus.), but when I load up zsnes through gameex, the controls are back to the way they were (using ctrl, alt, etc). I close gameex and bring up zsnes independently again, and my new controls are still mapped properly, but they go back to the original mapping when I launch through gameex! Secondly, I figured I'd disable the ESC to close so I could hit escape, bringup the menu in the emulator, and then modify the controls, but no matter if I turn off map keys, turn off advanced config it STILL closes the emu on ESC key. EDIT: Ok, I jumped the gun a little bit. The ZSNES is working OK, I was hitting the wrong button :-P However, how in the holy hell are you supposed to configure MESS options. The emulator DOES automatically close on ESC key, and I can't seem to load up ROMs outside of GameEX to the MESS emulator, it looks like it requires a lot of setup to run outside of GameEX, and I just want to set buttons!

OK, great big update here. I appreciate your help so far, and I'm going to leave a little documentation here and attach the files I made in case anyone wants to use them. I don't think I'm breaking any rules based on the posts and faq I've seen so far by mentioning filenames, etc... I ended up writing a batch file that parses my directory full of folders to and creates a file named "romfolder".txt fir each directory. I then created another batch file (my actual loader) that, when gameex launches the txt file INTO my batch file, it parses the text file name and then opens the subfolder, then parses that directory for my .001 file, extracts that archive into an unzipped folder in my ROM root, then it checks the file to see if it is a .cdi ready to go or if it is a bin/cue (dreamcast emus don't like those), it runs bin2boot.exe. After that, it launches the emulator (set up for both chankastex and nulldc) It works like a charm when I pass the txt file directly to it in a dos prompt or from explorer, but there are still a couple of kinks in it running from gameex. I'm working on that... My directories look like this: ROMs\ Armada_USA_DC-KALISTO\ kal-arma.001 kal-arma.002 .... Atari_Anniversary_Edition_USA_DC-ECKO\ eck-aae.001 eck-aae.002 .... .... unzipped The first batch file, creator.bat, creates text files for each folder, example: Armada_USA_DC-KALISTO.txt Atari_Anniversary_Edition_USA_DC-ECKO.txt in that same folder as the ROM subdirectories The second file uses that input (I set gameex to filter for .txt files) to open the subdirectory, extract the contents, etc... That should give anyone the idea of how it looks. I have commented my script pretty well, and made sure that MOST things are not dependent on the specific paths on my PC (The obvious ones should be clear, like I:\ROMs and that sort of thing can be easily modified), but the batch file should work on just about anyone's PC as long as the hardcoded emulator and rom paths are modified. I still need to edit for supporting rars, because I just noticed some of them are rars (Geez, no standards anymore, huh?). And I am not sure GameEX will actually launch my batch file correctly yet (I know it works from CMD and from explorer with only 1 input, the .txt filename), but it is a great start. Thanks for your help so far frequency, I will try to update this thread as I fix up my files, so others can use this as well. IF GAMEEX 7ZIP SUPPORT WORKED FOR .001 FILES, THIS WOULD BE WAAAAAAAAY EASIER. DC.zip

OK, I thought that was what the map file was, I was just confused because most of the time on this forum people use the term when talking about roms in subfolders, and it didn't seem like using the map would help with that. I can easily generate a file like this with a quick sendto batch file for directory listing and a little bit of spreadsheet merging skills. I'm still kinda stuck on the subfolder portion though. I haven't ever used autoit, although I have seen example scripts and it doesn't look too difficult. I believe I saw some examples for using it for subfolders on this forum actually. I have run a couple of searches for +autoit +subfolders, but I can't seem to find the information I once saw here... ALSO, there is still the question of getting gameex to recognize the fact that it is looking for .001 files but needing to run .cdi files. I am thinking this is getting too complicated... I am also considering just re-zipping all of them into zips and dropping them in a single directory Let me know what you think. If I re-zip all of them, I could still use the map file so I don't have to rename all of them, correct? If using the map file, kal-sc.zip | Soul Calibur will display the name "Soul Calibur" but use the kal-sc.zip file, will it also unzip the file for me when I launch if I have 7zip support enabled? Or do I need to do a launch before or something.

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I am trying to keep the "scene" organization for my files, they are labeled as FULL_GAME_NAME_SCENE_GROUP\shortname.001-shortname.NNN, example might be (I'm just making one up because I'm at work): SOUL_CALIBUR_kal_RARx14\kal-sc.001. The 001 files can be uncompressed with 7za.exe, however even if I set the rom filter to *.001 and enable 7zip support, it doesn't read them as valid 7zip files I guess, because it won't launch. I have also fiddled with using the Run Before to run 7zip and extract them to a folder, but the issue there is that it would be looking for say, kal-sc.001 instead of kal-sc.cdi. I've gotten nullDC and ChankastEX to run EXACTLY like I want them too without the use of Launch Before or Launch After, but they just look for cdi files in the ROM directory, so I think I'm ready to try and tackle this part of it... In your reply keep in mind that Chankast is using the chankast_launch.exe (wrapper?) to run, nullDC is not using anything. If it isn't possible, or would take WAY to much time, then I suppose I will re-zip them all...Just let me know what you think. It would be no problem to generate a directory listing or something if that would help work into the map file, I don't fully understand the whole "map file" thing, if you can help could you also send a sample or example map file?

My CD Images are compressed into archives that begin in .001-.NNN, and I would like to leave them inside this standard compression without having to change all of them. I have fiddled around with the Launch Before, the 7zip support, and the rom filters, but haven't been able to successfully have GameEx extract and open the files. Does anyone have an idea for getting past this. The files are also in subfolders, but as of my reading on the forum, I can safely say I will have to forgo getting the subfolders to work, but recompressing all the images doesn't really sound very appealing...