MtDew12oz

Feature Request : Caller Id Pop up or screen overlay or name number just for a few seconds. If anyone else knows of a good that may work with GameEx let me know.

Checked out your LEDWizLighter app and I have to say I'm a happy GameEx'r today. Thanks! This have given me a solution to use multiple devices through GameEx and light leds based on emulators and other PC Apps when launched. As I mentioned before I could address hitting one controller via scripts but that was it. Since I have so many buttons and only the ability to use one board outside of MAME, my work around was to break up the RGB wires from each led/button across 2 devices which gave me limited lighting abilities through GameEx. MAME games aside, my vision has always been to have all my buttons lit blue, and based GameEx control buttons, emulator, or PC game, available buttons are lit up in a different color. Since you set it up where you can select a controls.ini file and change the cfg folder I was able to create a custom controls.ini for each emulator type, PC game, GameEx controls, and all the other junk I launch from GameEx, generate cfg files for them and viola! Just load them via the LEDWizLighter. One request, can you make a build of LEDWizGen that looks up the list of available controls using an ini? Or better yet a drop down list of available control defined lists, possibly reading ini's from a folder? This would allow others to easily create cfgs for other emulators too, and make for easier maintenance for cfg generation. I can help with configurations and INI definitions TOM ? > LedWiz integration within GameEx sounds like a good idea, but is there going to be any plans for other emulator integration? Maybe having and entry within GameEx's Config Emulators to load a LEDWizGen generated cfg file before emu launch. I would think GameEx could easily integrate LEDWizLighter.exe fairly easily. Let me know what ya'll think and what I can do to contribute. Thanks again! Sam

Big Star Wars fan here, would love to see some SW themes. A theme I've had in mind is something using images from Star Wars - Republic Commando. Rather then using movie shots I was thinking the game has some pretty high quality graphics, but not your typical clean around the edges type graphics you normaly see in games. If you or anyone else is interested I can grab some samples and post email.

Haven't been on in awhile and was just going to post a suggestion about LEDWiz Support when I ran across this thread... Talk about timing... Native GameEx support would be great, but I found another workaround that I need to share... PowerMAME, another custom MAME compile but this is designed towards LEDWiz users. Been running dual boards now for a few months with GameEx using PowerMAME in place of standard MAME.exe. Tried to run it within GameEx using it as an AdvancedMAME option within GameEx's configuration but found just calling it instead of mame.exe to be more effective. PowerMAME supports LEDWiz, including multiple boards, without having to call a separate program and it even has a cool feature that uses MS Speech to tell you what buttons are available when you pause the a game, cool novelty when showing off my cabinet but its very annoying. You can program attract sequences which will start when GameEx calls PowerMAME and initially loads your rom and will continue the sequence until a credit button is hit, at which point it will light your buttons or whatever you set it up for, including support for 2, 4, and 8 way joy indicators. Also has a timer which will restart the attract mode if you finish a game and no buttons are pressed for whatever time you configure it with. Setting up for using within GameEx is no different then setting up mame.exe, and I suggest doing all your configurations initially using the UI, PowerMAME32 - http://www.unappliedbraincells.com/ Unfortunately the author has not updated the version since MAME v0.105, and may discontinue any more upgrades do to demands on his time, but if you don't care to be on the bleeding edge of MAME versions and are looking for easy integration of a LEDWiz solution, I recommend checking it out. Also, this method does not address changing lighting when you first start GameEx or any of your emulators but I found I can still change LEDS using simple batch files and passing commands to my LEDWiz using the LaunchBefore, unfortunately I can't address more then one LEDWiz via scripts, yet. I did find another small dos app, called SwiftLED (search for it in BYOAC) or let me know and maybe I can send it or something. This is a cool small little DOS app that allows you to use the software that comes with the LEDWiz boards to create a lighting sequence and then run it via a command line. Perfect for setting up a cool animation as a attract seq when GameEx first starts up but you have to make sure to kill it via a script before loading anything else that is going to reach out to the controllers such as PowerMAME or LEDWizLighter. Haven't checked out LEDWizLighter yet, looking forward to seeing what I can do with it.

Ran into that problem as well but figured out that if you launch vpauto using a batch file it'll cut down on the crashes. I still get them but it's a lot better then it was. Try it.

Never occured to me. Thanks!

I have seen a lot of questions about JoyToKey and such and I thought I would share my approach. I use a custom JoyToKey config for GameEx, MAME, PC games, vpinball, etc, (that's 1 config per) and have yet to ever mess with any custom key layouts in GameEx or any emulator. I have a basic batch file I use for setting only the JoyToKey configurations and an more advanced batch method that starts JoyToKey, mounts ISOs, and starts other applications as needed. It's all based on the same initial setup and folder structures and it's fairly easy to maintain. I know there are other ways to do a lot of the same things within GameEx but I have found this to very flexible and the best method for my particular setup. Note: I use the AlsoLaunch= to call the batch file, not LaunchBefore= I have found LaunchBefore to either hang or not allow the batch files to run to completion. Even though I may use the term Launch Before I'm referring to using the entry AlsoLaunch= Basic method: The JoyToKey custom configuration loader To avoid the First Configuration error or JoyToKey not loading the correct config file I have a separate folder for each game with it's own copy of JoyToKey, the JoyToKey.ini and the applicable config file. e:\JoyToKey\vpin e:\JoyToKey\xplane e:\JoyToKey\GameEx e:\JoyToKey\proj64 -- JoyToKey.exe -- JoyToKey.ini -- proj64.cfg The JoyToKey.ini has been modified in each folder to reflect the config filename within the same folder, for example the JoyToKey.ini file within the proj64 folder: [DirectInput] AnalogDeadZone=1000 AnalogSaturation=10000 [LastStatus] AllowMultipleRunning=0 StartIconified=1 WindowPositionTop=24 WindowPositionLeft=112 ListColumnWidthButton=75 ListColumnWidthKeyboard=163 ListColumnWidthAuto=42 FileName=proj64 You could actually leave the FileName=default and not change the cfg name but I like to be able to click on the taskbar icon and see what config file is loaded. The config needs to be modified for each game configuration you want to use, using Proj64 as an example, run JoyToKey within the Proj64 folder, then the Proj64 emulator, then program the JoyToKey configuration. I don't bother changing key layouts within each individual emulator or game, I do it all within JoyToKey, this ensures control panel layout consistency across all games including save and load games. Note: You can change the configuration of JoyToKey if you load a game via GameEx but changes to the config file will be lost since JoyToKey is stopped via taskkill and not a proper exit of the program. To make sure you don't loose any configuration information I suggest launching JoyToKey then the emulator outside of GameEx and saving. The Launch Before batch file : startup_proj64.bat @echo off&cls&color 0b set _j2k_home=proj64 :: -- [ location info ]-- set _j2k_drv=e set _j2k_path=\JoyToKey set _delay=2 :: -- [ JoyToKey Loader ]-- taskkill /F /IM JoyToKey.exe /T > nul ping -n %_delay% 127.0.0.1 > nul %_j2k_drv%: chdir "%_j2k_drv %:%_j2k_path%\%_j2k_home%" start "joytokey" "%_j2k_drv %:%_j2k_path%\%_j2k_home%\JoyToKey.exe" :: --[end]-- It may look confusing at first, especially with the drive letter and paths separated, but this is done to allow you to change the only the _j2k_home= line and save it without having to modify anything else. set _j2k_home=proj64 The name of the folder the JoyToKey configuration is located set _j2k_drv=e This is the drive letter of where the joytokey folders are located set _j2k_path=\JoyToKey The path without the drive letter or any quotes set _delay=2 The batch file will kill joytokey if it's running before loading it with the new config, this allows for a adjustable pause before continuing. Setting up this file for each game is easy, just change _home= to reflect the config folder you want to use, then save the batch file using the same name. If I need to make one for vpin; change line _home=vpin (same as the folder I created) then save the batch file as start_vpin.bat Then I put the batch file name into GameEx Emu entry VPinball AlsoLaunch=start_vpin.bat. That's it. I also have one that I use called startup_GameEx.bat that I use when I startup GameEx under Launch on startup don't wait, and I reuse the same batch file on every emulator LaunchAfter= Advanced Method: Loading JoyToKey, ISOs, LedWiz, and VPAuto Loader Aside from using this method as a Launch Before solution I also use the same batch file as a way to launch other programs and games within GameEx via a Emulator entry called Sam's CMD Launcher and put all the batch files into one folder and target roms *.bat, similar to the DOSBox solution I've seen floating around. I'll explain this in more detail later. I've built flexibility into this batch file that makes provisions for just about any startup scenario I need, loading JoyToKey, mount needed ISOs, etc, and LedWiz configurations. I use LedWiz to control lights within my buttons and change the colors based on emulator config loaded, the manufacture doesn't have a solution to do this yet but I figured out how to do this via batch files. I also change button light color based on Windows event log entries but that's outside of this write up, if interested let me know. The basic method must be in place for this to work. It may look complex at first but its very easy to use once you understand what it's doing. I have tried to simplify this as much as possible by creating a script that allows quick configuration changes within the first couple of sections of the script and flagging actions using on and off triggers. In the example below I launch JoyToKey, mount an ISO, change the colors of my buttons, then start a game. @echo off&cls&color 0b :: -- [ game location information ]- set _j2k_home=LegoStarwars set _j2k_drv=e set _j2k_path=\JoyToKey set _loc_game_drv=c set _loc_game=\Program Files\Giant\LEGO Star Wars Game set _game_exe=LegoStarwars.exe set _game_sw= set _loc_iso=I:\My ISOs\LEGOStarWars.iso ::-- [ actions to perform ]- set _delay=2 set _use_JoyToKey=on set _use_Ledwiz=on set _use_vpauto=off set _use_daemon=on ::-- [app locations ]- set _loc_GameEx=c:\Program Files\GameEx set _loc_gamex_drv=c set _ledwiz_path=E:\mame\apps\bat set _loc_daemon=C:\Program Files\DAEMON Tools set _loc_daemon_drv=c :: -- [ DO NOT EDIT ANYTHING BELOW ]-- :_JoyToKey if %_use_JoyToKey%==off goto _ledwiz taskkill /F /IM JoyToKey.exe /T > nul ping -n %_delay% 127.0.0.1 > nul %_j2k_drv%: chdir "%_j2k_drv %:%_j2k_path%\%_j2k_home%" start "joytokey" "%_j2k_drv %:%_j2k_path%\%_j2k_home%\JoyToKey.exe" goto _ledwiz :_ledwiz if %_use_Ledwiz%==off goto _vpauto taskkill /F /IM -t Ledwiz.exe /T > nul ping -n %_delay% 127.0.0.1 > nul start "Ledwiz" "%_ledwiz_path%\Ledwiz.exe" :: all green echo LWZ-SBA:0,0,0,128,5 | clip :: all green - blue 1,2,3 & 6 echo LWZ-SBA:136,136,0,128,5 | clip goto _vpauto :_vpauto if %_use_vpauto%==off goto _daemon taskkill /F /IM vpauto.exe /T > nul %_loc_gamex_drv% chdir "%_loc_GameEx%" start "vpauto" vpauto.exe goto _daemon :_daemon if %_use_daemon%==off goto _st_game %_loc_daemon_drv%: chdir "%_loc_daemon%" daemon.exe -unmount 0 daemon.exe -mount 0,"%_loc_iso%" ping -n %_delay% 127.0.0.1 > nul goto _st_game :_st_game %_loc_game_drv%: chdir "%_loc_game_drv%:%_loc_game%" "%_game_exe%" "%_game_sw%" :: -- [ cleanup :_unmount if %_use_daemon%==off goto _end %_loc_daemon_drv%: chdir "%_loc_daemon%" daemon.exe -unmount 0 goto _end :_end To use it as a AlsoLaunch= batch file just blank out unneeded lines and adjust the actions. Using my Proj64 example; :: -- [ game location information ]- set _j2k_home=Proj64 set _j2k_drv=e set _j2k_path=\JoyToKey set _loc_game_drv= set _loc_game= set _game_exe= set _game_sw= set _loc_iso= ::-- [ actions to perform ]- set _delay=2 set _use_JoyToKey=on set _use_Ledwiz=on set _use_vpauto=off set _use_daemon=off If you have a game or program that you need to launch and pass parameters just include them on the line set _game_sw= example: set _game_sw=/fullscreen /usejoy As I mentioned before I use an Emulator entry called Sam's CMD Launcher, to use this I just save all my batch files as example_name.cmd in E:\cmd and let GameEx pick it up. [Emulator_27] Enabled=True DumbyValue= STARTPAGENAME=Sam's CMD Launcher TITLETEXT=Sam's CMD Launcher StartPageLogo= ROMFilter=*.cmd RomsInFolders=False RomPath=E:\cmd SnapPath=E:\cmd\snap TitlePath= BoxPath= CartPath= WorkingPath=E:\cmd MapKeys=True WaitBeforeKeys= SendKeys= ReplaceDash=False ReplaceUnder=True Capitals=True RemoveBrackets=False ShowDesktop=True Debug=False MAPFile= AlsoLaunch= Command=""[ROMPath]\[RomFile]"" OLDatZip= LaunchBefore= LaunchAfter=C:\Program Files\bat\startup_GameEx.bat configFile= ExcludedFiles= CustomBackground= PlayMusic=True PCGame= DATABASE= GamesIn7Zips= I know this isn't a good solution for everybody but it might give ya'll some ideas on how to get things working for you.

Or a gallery view by marquee shots. A list view, 3 or 4 (changeable?) mini marquees wide.

I'm using a power strip that has a master outlet sensor that triggers the other outlets to go on/off when whenever the computer is turned on or off. Cost was just a couple more bucks then a high quality power strip, well worth it when you got everything crammed in a cabnet and you don't want to mess with all the plugs and switches. I have this plugged into a small battery backup with a power sensor that will trigger a shutdown in the event of a power outage - working great for some time now. Check http://www.smarthomeusa.com/Shop/Hardware-Cable/Item/LCG1/

You can count me in as well! Got several systems I use but my primary media system is a AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ , 2GB, MultiBoot XP/MCE/2003, ATI Radeon 9800.