hansolo77

I just loaded up the program this morning, and it popped up a dialog saying there were updates to some of my sets. I said ok to view them, and it changed my system dropdown to just showing "Atari 2600". The media drop down then lists 4 items. Does this mean that all 4 of those are new/updated? Will downloading them then update my sets? Sorry I'm a complete nube. ALSO... it is listing an updated set for "Box_3D" which I had downloaded once, but then decided to not use. Is there anyway to remove this from a saved list somewhere that says I want to know when it's updated?

When it comes to CD based games, what is the best method for adding them into GameEx? I think this was asked a LONG time ago, but there's been so many changes to the frontend, I don't know if there's any new ways to accomplish it. I have a Sega-CD set, and would really like to have a setup where they're not stored on the hard drive. I know GameEx has a setting to watch for a specific file or something on a CD. Would this be the way to do it? I never had the CD based games working in GameEx before. Would I be able to burn them, store them in a binder or something, and still have GameEx recognize roms for listing without needing them in the drive first? [EDIT] Oops, didn't realize mentioning that was bad. I didn't say WHERE, but ok.

You need to decide which set would be best for you.. Goodroms, or GoodName roms, are Roms that are known to work with the emulators and consoles. They typically include 1 rom from each region (NTSC/USA, PAL/Europe, NTSC/Japan). These are then "GoodMerged" so that you have 1 Rom zip, which when extracted shows the different regions available. I started with this originally, but soon learned it was a waste of space having multiple copies of the same rom, just from different regions; especially when I usually only play the USA ones to begin with. NoIntro roms are what I think most people use. These roms are organized in a slightly different way than Goodroms. Generally, they're not merged, so you can do better file system management by getting rid of duplicates from other regions you don't want. This is the one I use, as stated above; you can easierly get rid of the duplicate roms from other regions you don't want. TOSEC is just a flat out collection of every rom dump you can find. Be it working or not. They can include bad dumps and homebrews that people wrote themselves. They also contain other things not related to games, such as application software (especially in computer romsets). Get these only as a last resort, unless you're a purist and want to have EVERYTHING. Once you've decided on a set to get, do your pruning before getting the extra artwork and videos. The best way to make sure you have ALL the roms is with TOSEC, but you'll also have a bunch of stuff you don't want. GoodRoms will give you a lot of duplication between regions. NoIntro is just the best all around.

Must be nice having money. I've got trouble with stress and anxiety, so I can't really work a full time job that pays well. I have to work part time, in a grocery story deli, making minimum wage.

Well, with Partition Magic, you could repartition on the fly without loosing any data stored on it.

Well, right now I've just got the 1 drive dedicated to emulation. It's only 500gb. I'm still downloading stuff in the background on the server, which is why that new drive is already full. My working plan is to download on the server, organize it for storing, then copy over everything I need as I have time/room for it. Everything is all on it's primary 500gb partition. I know this is a no-no, since partitioning is helpful in elminating data lost, and helps speed defragmenting; however...I don't really feel like repartitioning now. Perhaps, some day, I can afford a larger drive again. And instead of putting it into the server, I'll stick in the HTPC and move all these things around to new partitions. Maybe something like 1 partition for MAME, 1 for Consoles, 1 for Computers, 1 for HandHelds, 1 for Pinball, and 1 for all the extras. UHG. Do they still make partition magic?

I'll start things off with a direct copy of MY post from EmuMovies. It's a good read, to whoever cares...; Well, I should probably introduce myself. My real name is Aaron. I currently live my dad, and his new future wife. I say future, knowing full well that by the time I realize I have made this post, months from now, they'll probably be married, and this introduction no longer matters. But anyway... I go by hansolo77. Always have, and always will. Sorta like my dad back in the 80's. He was known as Captain Sulu on the old Atari BBS's. My real mom was known as Lady in Lace. Now that I'm older, I can see the reasons for these names, although at the age of 6, it never really dawned on me. Of course, Sulu has his own ship now, the USS Excelsior. So dad's name sorta doesn't fit well anymore. Maybe Captain Chekov woulda been better! Hehe. But I'm going on about things that aren't about me. I created the hansolo77 persona back when we had a Freenet, the local dialup internet available through our public library. When registering, I wanted a screenname that was cool, like Dad's. I decided to go with my favorite character from Star Wars (since Dad's was his favorite from Star Trek). Unfortunately, somebody had already taken hansolo, so I had to go with two 7's at the end. When I was on the Freenet, I participated in MUD's, and was a MOD in the MUD "Infinity", which I believe still runs today. I went by Lance in the MUD though, because hansolo77 was a bit out of the context for the MUD genre. When I wasn't playing in the MUD, I played on my brother's 3-part monster console.. the Sega Genesis/CD/32X. When I wasn't doing that, I played on Dad's Atari ST (where I logged into said MUD). Before that, we played on one of two of Dad's Atari 800 computers. He was a bit of a pirate back in his day. He worked in a small appliance repair shop in the mall, and they sold the Atari Cartridges. He would take a new, unopened game, and rip the ROM to a floppy disk. Back in those days, you could store probably 15 or so games on a single floppy disk. So he would do that, and then use their resealing machine to repackage the game so it looked brand new. We had probably 100 disks with 15 games each on them, so a LOT of games. When the Atari ST came to market, Dad was a big Atari dealer and bought one. He joined a local user group of pirates, where they traded copies of games with each other, and so, again, we had over 500 Atari ST games. When we weren't playing on the Atari's, we were over at our friends house playing on his Nintendo NES. When his parents finally got him a Sega Genesis, suddenly I was left in the dust to play on the classic Atari's and online MUDs. After the buzz of the 32X started to die down, my brother got his SECOND console for Christmas, the Nintendo 64. So we then had 2 Atari 800's, an Atari ST, the Sega Genesis/CD/32X, and the Nintendo 64. All of which belonged to other people. For myself, when the PlayStation finally came to market, I just had to buy one for myself to call my own. I was so impressed with the quality of the system, and that the controller was so much easier to use than the Nintendo 64. Of course, being that it was MY system, I was quick to find out how to do my own generation's version of pirating. I learned quickly from the internet, that you can use the SWAP method while using a Gameshark. I did that for a while, then the GoldFinger, which was similar, but was built using Yaroze, which bypassed the security checks inplace. I finally got a mod chip though, because I was sick of having to swap out a legit game to play a backup. Once I got my chip, the rest was history. I started my own user group at school and work. I was in highschool now, so the community available to me was really booming. I was charging $5 for a copied game, and $10 if they wanted a label/case to go with it. If they had a game I didn't, I did a fair 1 to 1 trade for free. I know I should be in jail for it, but it was all in good fun. I think overall, I only made about $50 bucks, and the rest were all just free trades. When it was all said and done, I've got a lot of Playstation games in 4 350-disk binders stashed in the closet. They still work on my chipped Playstation, but I've moved on to bigger, better things. When the Playstation 2 came out, of course I was eager to mod it and start my collection all over again. I never did get it chipped. My PS2 was one of the older generation ones, that had a lot of trouble reading CD's. That didn't stop me from getting a network adapter and participating in the online gaming. When I registered on the Playstation Network, somebody had actually already taken my hansolo77 name for their own, so I had to come up with something else. I chose ChewVodka. I like the way it rolls off the tongue, and the comments I get about it; "dude, you can't CHEW vodka.. oh wait, it's like CHEWBACCA!!! hehe I get it!". I participated in the Playstation Network's Gamer Advisory Panel, where you get prerelease games to beta test on the network. I met quite a few guys doing that, that are still friends to this day. We play on the Xbox 360 now. I never got a PS3. When it came down to decision time on which to get, a PS3 or Xbox 360, my deciding factor was; can I mod it to play backups? The original purpose of this decision wasn't because I wanted to pirate more games. I'm older and wiser now. I wanted the ability to play a backup, wilst keeping the originals safe. This actually turned out to be a GREAT idea. For those who don't know, from the GameEx forum, I'm a survivor of a house fire. It totally destroyed like 90% of my things. One of the things that didn't make it, was the ORIGINAL copies of like 6 of my Xbox 360 games. Microsoft said they wouldn't replace them, as their warranty doesn't cover "acts of GOD", which it wasn't, but whatever. All I have is my backups to play now. So backing up is a GOOD thing, and I recommend EVERYBODY do it. You never know when something disasterous could happen. So how did I get here, mixed up in all this ROM and emulating stuff? Well.... My 2nd job I had was at a computer Tech Support call center. People would call in having trouble getting their computers connected to the internet. It was a great job, cept for the management (but its like that everywhere you go). My direct supervisor was a really cool guy though. There would be extrememly slow nights, where we would just sit around sometimes for an hour between calls. On the weekends, our call center was used just as an emergency overflow (calls were so low, we were just there incase another call center got really REALLY busy, which almost never happened). On the weekends, it would sometimes be 4 hours between calls. So to pass the time, our way cool supervisor actually allowed us to install the FUSION Sega Genesis emulator. We would sit there and play bomberman all day against each other! I got busted though, and was playing Sonic Spinball during a "regular" day where calls were like 5 minutes between. So because of my ignorance, he had to scold me, and then we weren't allowed to play anymore on weekends. Bummer. But that didn't stop me. I still played them at home! Haha, take that management! Because of the pirate nature of my upbringing, I now wanted to collect EVERY ROM and EVERY EMULATOR out there. I then learned of GameEx, way back in its infancy. I was one of the very first people to have it. I loved the way it allowed me to just go right in, browse to the game I want to play, and just play it, without having to do a lot of work. Then I saw some videos where people were using it to display ARTWORK, like boxes, screenshots, etc. I thought this was a great idea, and started getting those. Shortly after, I became aware of Circo and his videos. This is just the next greatest thing! When I first knew of Circo, he was a bit of a shy guy, a lurker in the GameEx forums. He didn't really say much, and it looked like everybody was just taking advantage of all his hard work. He had this website, but it wasn't at all what it is today. With that being said, I'd like to express my own thanks to Circo, for all the help he's provided the community and to me personally in fulfilling my (apparent) life long dream!

Introductions all around! I saw over at EmuMovies he had a topic for this, and thought we should have one too.. So please, introduce yourself. How did you get into the scene? Where did you hear about GameEx? Whats the name of your first born? Who was President when you were born? Anything you want! We'd like to get to know you better.

It is on mine, read my reply on the Taito Type X thread!

How large, in file space, are these? I'd be interested in adding them to my setup, but I'm limited. Before venturing into this area again, I just bought a 1tb drive for my server to store a lot of this stuff. That was last week. Right now, with what emulators I have installed (still only consoles and MAME right now) and the artwork (haven't started getting videos yet), my 1tb drive is now down to 132gb left!

I don't have a problem with the program. I was merely suggesting having them separated out, so you can have one, or the other, or both, and have GameEx appropriately recognize them without having to merge the 2 folders together.

Yeah, I had forgotten how the control path setting worked, so I search here. Somebody else was setting it up, and said it needed to be either a universal path with the file name matching the system, or pointing to a specific file (how mine is setup). But yet, it works in GameEx, so it's just a Wizard issue.

VERSION 11.99 I spent all day yesterday making a whole bunch of controller art for all my emulators using my own controller, and drawing lines to the matching controller. I saved all of them in their own console path, as control.png. Example: M:\_CONSOLES\Atari 2600\Controls\control.png I did this for 99% of my emulators, with the exceptions to the ones that I couldn't find an image of the controller for. They are all named like this. I have the setup wizard pointing to each path\image, and they show up fine while inside GameEx. However, the Wizard's verify tab reports "Does not Exit" and "No files found" for all of them. Just reporting it!

Here's one I don't think has even crossed the minds of the powers that be: Setup Wizard.... Separate the Snap/Video path for emulators into Snap Path and Video Path This would be great with the Download Service Utility through EmuMovies. That way you don't have to combine the snaps/videos together so you have a working video and static image for GX Live, etc. Kinda surprised it's never been mentioned before.

I'm not a big fan of FTP though. The Download Service Utility works great for my purposes. I'm glad it exists!

Ok, so I'll just have to make a new global download folder, like "M:\_ARTWORK" and just keep everything local there. That's cool. I don't mind, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't overlooking anything blindly obvious. I tend to do that.

Ok, I just ran a download of the Channel F Boxes. For testing purposes, I left the download path as the default to see what kind of output it would make. I discovered that it had created a sub folder called "Fairchild_Channel_F", and then another one in there called "Box". When reading up about this program, apparently it can scan your already downloaded packs, and match with the server to see if there are any new updates. My questions are: 1) How does it match already downloaded packs? Do you have to have the artwork stored in a central location rather than your own path? 2) Is there any way to have the output path not create a subfolder for the Console? Basically, I have a separate drive (M:\) where I have all my game stuff. My consoles are located in M:\_CONSOLES. From there, I have a subfolder for each console; ie: M:\_CONSOLES\Fairchild Channel F. I would like to be able to just point the program to the ROM path (M:\_CONSOLES\Fairchild Channel F\ROMS) and then to the root path for the individual art packs. So that way it would make the folders M:\_CONSOLES\Fairchild Channel F\Box and M:\_CONSOLES\Fairchild Channel F\Snaps. Is this possible? If not, then if I download everything to a default download path and then move the files out and put them in their places I want them, then would the program still be able to recognize if there is an updated art? I hope this was clear enough.

Yeah I see that now. It's wierd that it didn't do it for me last night. I wonder if perhaps the program doesn't work with free accounts, like Circo suggested. Either that, or maybe it was because my account wasn't fully activated? In either case, it DOES seem to work better now.

I've actually not had any luck with SkinnyMatch. I don't know, maybe I just don't know how to use it. But everytime I try, I only get like 10 or so 100% matches, more (like 15?) around 60%, and then most of them are 0% match. I tried doing the manual match thing, but it doesn't work for me.

Yeah I have some saved email in Yahoo's Inbox from that long ago too. I just deleted this one. On a lighter note though, they did finally email me back with the info this morning. I had sent them another request last night after I started this thread. I complained about how they can have such a nice, well polished game yet have the absolute worst support area. I mean, they literally have NOTHING as far as how to get the game if you've lost the install files. It's all done now though, they resent me a copy of the original receipt email that had the links and stuff. I saved this one in a new place, and have saved the install file over on my Home Server for safe keeping.

Yup, very much appreciated.

Thanks Circo. Got it all sorted now.

You should be able to just have GameEx update your game list. Look in the menu for it. Make sure you have your setup set so it only catches ROMs you have, rather than showing ALL ROMs. Should be pretty obvious. When GameEx finishes updating the list, you'll have a new "gamelist.ini".

@ Draco The bottom info far looks too difficult to read. The icons are in the foreground, but the text next to them is under the hexagon grid. This makes it hard to read that stuff. Is there a way to bring the text to the foreground too? Like the cloud in the weather. Just looks wrong? Also, I'm not a huge fan of scanlines. Some purest out there might, but if I got this theme, I'd be hard pressed to find a way to disable them...