hansolo77

Wow way to go! The big 9.0! And here I was just getting ready to get the last update!

Another great update! Can't wait to try it out.

Just felt like dropping in to wish everybody the same! Happy Thanksgiving!

ReadyBoost is some kinda hybrid flash drive. It has special software on the device, as well as Vista running special drivers to access it. You can consider it as a pagefile if that helps you understand it's functionality. What it actually does is monitor your activity while it's plugged in, and begins to write the "pagefile" to it based on the things you most frequently access. That allows for a faster response in load times because the information is already loaded on the drive, rather than having to read it off a disk. This is very helpful for Media Center. It stores all the information about your music, photos, movies, and recorded tv. Since I use this computer as a Media Center / GameEx, it runs both extremely well, and very fast. I did an expirement and unplugged it once. The system was a lot slower. The reason why this works so well, is because the information stores on the drive even when the computer is turned off. Without it, the system has to read the information from the harddrive every time, and copy it to the RAM and the pagefile in order to run it. With this, it's just THERE ready to be used at a moments request.

You really have to have a decent system to run it. I custom built mine for my HTPC using the latest models of the hardware. It's got 4gb Ram, 2gb Readyboost, 1.5tb harddrive. Intel Core2Duo E6600. nVidia 8600GTS, 756mb Ram, PCIe-16x. This thing flies and has yet to crash on me.

I don't really know. It works through USB, and is controlled with irTrans software.

I these new "shiny" icons. One thing I might suggest.. change the inset icon for Vector. You can barely see what it is because it's mostly black. There are lots of vector games to chose from.. Or if you want to use the Star Wars one, maybe temp configure Mame with a thicker line.

Quick Question.. can I configure this to use the VFD built into my Media Center's case?

Whats wrong with Vista? I love it!

Thanks!

Yes you did it right dalomarius10... you're supposed to copy over the original file by renaming it. It's kinda like a patched version of the original. So you just replace it.

Darn, so there's no way to fix it then. That's a bummer, but as I said, no biggie.

Hey guys.. just a quick question for ya. This isn't really a BAD problem, it's just annoying. While within GE, the video snaps look great, everthing looks like it should. But when in Attract Mode, the videos are then rendered and displayed Full Screen (as they should be) but their aspect ratio is wrong. Instead of being displayed in their original 4:3 aspect, they're being stretched to 16:9 to fill the entire screen on my widescreen TV. As I said, it's not a BAD problem, just annoying. I'd like to still have "black bars" on the sides so I can see the videos in the same aspect as the games would be normally. I think this is a codec problem, but FFDSHOW is properlly configured to display in 4:3 if the image is 4:3, and it not configured to stretch anything. Any ideas?

Man.. this must have taken a lot of time and work. What programming skills I have are limited really to DOS Batch's and basic. I was learning a little C code but became overwhelmed. The same is true with AutoIT. I can sit here, and read the lines of code on their own and understand how they all work. It's plain and simple, black and white. But to sit there, for instance, with a blank sheet of paper or notepad, and just start writing from nothing, has got to be a task. I wouldn't even know where to begin! I just wanted to say that, because even though I understand it, I couldn't write it. And I for one appreciate this effort, even though I haven't started on a Game & Watch section for my own GE.

I think I figured out why the "new" icons weren't showing up. I tried moving the folder with the INI's in it to the mame folder, adding to the list of /roms /artwork /snaps, etc. I then did a quick rom update, and the new lists showed up, but no icons. I did a theme change, then came back and it worked! Probably exiting and restarting GX would have workd out too. But I wanted to let you know that you should reword your instructions. You say default path is "blah blah blah". I took that to mean you could make it any path. That doesn't work for some reason. By putting it into the MAME path, it seemed to work perfectly.

Hey Tom.. I've got an interesting puzzle. I was updating my MAME icons with Adultery's latest release. I had this problem before, but just now remembered I hadn't said anything about it. Basically, when I go into MAME folder, you get those 4 buttons on the side. I can only select the top one. Once on that list, I can't move the selector up or down. I can select it with a mouse though, so I know the links work. Any ideas?

I have a problem seeing the Extended Pack on my system. The default icons look good, except there is some black pixels scattered around on some which makes it look kinda cheap. I'm using the Blue Hybrid Widescreen theme. I copied all of the extended pack icons to the same folder with the default icons (/media/icons). Then I moved the extracted folder for the INI's to the root path of theme. Configured GameEx as per your instructions (pointing the custom lists to the INI folder). I then rebuilt the mame rom list. No go.

Allright, allright! I get the picture. Sheesh!

Yeah, I wanted to help without getting myself into trouble...

So the stretching that I was seeing WAS a problem with the bezel and not a problem with my MAME setup.. That's a relief!

Just to throw this out there.. HK wrote a program to extract all of this automaticaly for you. It extracts the tables, scripts, music, pictures, SCREENSHOTS, everything needed! They extract into individual folders. Just point GameEx to the newly created "snap" folder after the program exits, and you're done! One thing I should mention though, this program only works on a specific set of tables. Without giving away any names or website addresses, I'll tell you this much; it's on a very popular gaming bit torrent site, and their "official name" hs the initials PD. If you know what I'm talking about, great. If not, try google or something, cause we can't give out that information. Here's the link to the program: http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?ac...ost&id=2372

Ok, I tried the "demo" set and, well, from my POV, it's a start. I really like this idea, but for me, it didn't seem to work right. 3 of the games used were vertical games. When I loaded them up, the screen became stretched out of proportion. The bezel was oviously created to fill a 4x3 screen, not a 3x4 one. The bezel itself was in proper aspect ratio but the game was stretched horizontally to reach the edges of the bezel.. and it looked horrible. However, the SF2 game looked great. I know it get's compressed vertically to fit on the screen, but it wasn't as noticable as it was the vertical games. Also, I like the black->blue gradient, but I gotta say something about the text. If you're going to use BLUE, then the RED has to go. They're too contrrasting and they're difficult to read. The yellow and the stars popped out great and looked fine. Maybe a lighter shade of red would look better, towards the pink side? One last thing. The improper aspect ratio may be local on my end since this is also the first version of MAME i'm using that I've compiled. I probably have a setting wrong there or something. If so, this may not be an issue after all. Can somebody else report on this and tell me if it's my problem (and if it is, tell me how to fix it? )?

Just to be stupid, because that'sthe way I am... do you have cats? Or maybe (heaven forbid) a mouse/rat problem? Cats like to climb all over stuff. We still have our cats jumping up on our computer desk and walking on the keyboard because they want attention. If you have cats.. they could be jumping up on the control panel, and triggering GameEx to exit the screensaver, then when they walk away it starts up again. Of course, if you don't have cats, or mice/rats... maybe it's ghosts?! LOL Actually, funning aside.. If you think the problem might be the PSU, does it really hurt to swap it out with another one? Just temporary. I did that with my computer. I swapped out my PSU with my dad's, and voila! Everything started working again with no problems. So I gave it back to him and just bought a new one. Haven't had trouble since. You might also look into buying one of those PSU testors. I've read some good reports on some of them. And finally, when was the last time you took the parts out of your cab and gave them a fresh spring cleaning? A can of compressed air to blow out the dust and cobwebs could save you too. My auntis computer was having the same problems as you, and we couldn't figure out what it was. Then I head a story at work about a guy who spring cleaned his computer, and LITERALLY hosed itdown. It got me thinking, and sure enough.. Her computer was massively overheating. All of the air vents were clogged, 2 fans had burned out and weren't running, and her case was almost too hot to touch.. Replaced the fans, and blasted out the dust.. her computer has run fine ever since, and doesn't lockup/crash/reboot/etc anymore.

The problem could be your romfilter. Instead of setting it to *.s*, just use *.* and make sure your rom path is correct. If everythig is set up right in zsnes, and there are ONLY roms in the roms folder, it should work.

I think HK's picture mockup he did looks great! I'd love to see something like that integrated into the system. Perhaps once the programming has been done, you could add a few lines of code to render the overlay as per user choice. That way the plugin will generate either the large version as per HK's design, or a small 10 pixel high description. Then in GameEx, have an option like this... Attract Mode Info << [OFF] [sMALL] [LARGE] >>