hansolo77

Just a quick update.. All of the Future Pinball tables I have tried seem to work perfectly now. I've not tested EVERY LAST ONE, but I have loaded about 30 or 40 of them, which is a good portion. So it looks like the problem on the Future Pinball side is fixed. Now if we can only get Tom to update GameEx with my feature request to show emulators as subfolders while in an emulator group! Also, I finally finished downloading the full Visual Pinball and PinMAME set. So, I'll be extracting those over the weekend and seeing how that goes. I'll report back if I find anything.

The option in GameEx is called "7zip/Goodmerge" but it's not really that. In actuality, it's just "7zip" support. Goodmerge is a collection of roms that have been merged together so multiple versions of the same game are together under the same name. They are merged using 7zip for the best compression. What GameEx does is display the list of these 7z files, then extract it on the fly to display the list of roms therein. There is no real "Goodmerge" support.. So what you're seeing is the list of folders within the Goodmerge set. If I remember correctly, this set has a main folder, with subfolders divided by the first letter of the game. Once the folder is opened, it then shows all the games under that. So what you'll have to do is just move all of the files out of each individual folder, and just place them all into 1 big folder. Then it will show all the games for you, and work as it should.

Well, like I said, this was with Future Pinball. I haven't tried it with Visual Pinball yet. It might have been working fine with VP. This sounds great though. I'm glad you were able to figure it out. So it only checks to see if it's already extracted? Won't that cause a problem if you're extracting ALL tables? If it goes in alphanumeric order, the first would be the 1.0 version, and the most recent would be 6.0 (for example). Then only the 1.0 table would work. I'll try it out though and see what happens.

A few that I know off hand that don't work right are "Original Flipperless\Table Hockey".. "Original\Sonic the Headhog 2".. "Original\The Crypt II".. These are all in Future Pinball. When I extract all, none of them work except the first one. This is because the scripts in the library haven't been updated with the new variables and instructions. The table calls the library, and when the table loads, if it can't find the right scripts in the library, it poops out. In most cases (from what I've seen), the table is playable, only without a lot of the special things. For instance, in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the table is very solid, no lights, no artwork graphics, very nasty. In other's I've seen no music, or no sound effects. If somebody were to want to extract ALL tables, I'm pretty confident in saying that a newer library would work with an older table. Still, I'm not criticizing you at all HK. Your work is very impressive. And everybody else is dead on correct. It does save a LOT of time. Now if we can just get these kinks worked out. I'm still re-downloading the Visual Pinball set so I don't have word on it. I know I talked earlier in this thread, but that was after I had manually extracted these and didn't need your program. Now, I'm on a completely new system and had to redownload everything. Good luck!

you could also just remap the hotkey to a different key your control panel doesn't use...

Ok, gotta report my take on this. I'm currently running this for Future Pinball. All-in-all it seems like a really great app. It properly extracts the files and put them in their own folder where I select. The table files go into a folder called fpt and their libraries into a folder called fpl. Pretty self explanitory. Also, the screenshots go into 'snaps' which have already been properly named to work with GameEx. Things looked like they were fine. Until.... The first folder I tackled was the Original Flipperless Tables. It only had 8 tables so I thought that would be a good place to start. After running the extractor I was able to play most of the games. One of them didn't work though. It was the table called "Table Hockey [Original]". When I tried to load this table, it reported that it couldn't find the proper library. The file was there, but it didn't like it. So I went back to the original zip and recopied the library over. Now it works fine. I did some experimenting, and it looks like the extractor has problems with multiple versions. Since the program is designed to copy only the newest version (as enabled via a checkbox), it copies the right TABLE file, but doesn't copy the correct library it is associated with. I have noticed this on almost all tables with multiple versions. If the table has a library with it's version number in the name, it works fine. But if the library is a static name for all versions, the extractor only copies the first one it sees, which is usually the oldest version. Headkaze, you need to rethink how the extracter handles multiple versions. I would suggest if you have the process running, and it finds a multiple version table, it should extract these tables into their own folder based on version. Then have the program read the new folder names and copy only the files over from the newest folder. Then it just moves those files to their usual place like the other tables, and deletes the unneeded folders.

I'm always listed as either ChewVodka or BongSolo77. If anybody out there is interested in playing Silkroad Online, (silkroadonline.net)... I'm on the Poseidon server.

I personally like the Saitek controller line. One of the defining factors for me was a 6 button digital pad for me to play my Sega Genesis games, which the latter half of all use 6-buttons. I personally have a P2500, which they apparently don't make anymore. It was $9.99 at Walmart and uses a USB cable. They have quite a few options, cord(less), rumble(less), analog(less), 4-6 buttons, shoulder buttons, etc. The P2500 was corded USB with vibration, 2 shoulders, 6 buttons, 8-way d-pad, 2 analog sticks with buttons (L3 and R3 for those Playstation users). Really works out great. The closest available now is the P2600... http://www.saitek.com/uk/prod/gamepads.htm

did you forget about the 'show desktop?"

Wow its been a long time. Sure has grown into a big boy from what it used to be. Very cool. Happy Birthday GameEx! And many happy returns!

I never heard of that site before. Is it just a db, like IMDB, or can you actually find tv shows to download and watch?

I still like GameExTras.

Got a little bug here, but don't really know if it is. Whenever your scrolling through your games, and you come across one that has multiple images with it; for instance, a game with cart, box, screen, AND title art; GameEx will scroll through the artwork for you after a set period of time. I first started to notice this a couple weeks ago when I was trying to get the GameEx screensaver to load while NOT viewing my weather (see previous threads). This is a great idea, do have it slideshow all the images for the particular game you're on, but I'm having a problem. Some of the videos on these games are longer than GameEx's time allowed between slides. So, if the video screenshot is playing, and GameEx goes to to the next slide (like a title or box art), the screen starts blinking rapidly, changes the art, but the audio from the video continues to play. So far, it hasn't crashed GameEx, but I'm sure it will eventually. Just curious if there is a way to either EXTEND the time between slides, or a way to just disable that particular function all together? Also, Tom... You've recently added more things to the MAME artwork lists, like PCB's and the artwork preview. I love it! Is there any reason why my request to include a screenshot link under the game continues to be ignored? I'd still like the option to go into a game, then scroll down the list of available artwork, and choose the screenshot as well as the carts and titles, etc. One other thing I'd like to through out there and maybe HK could use this with the cpviewer plugin... I recently downloaded a torrent that had a lot of game manuals in it. Some of these manuals are just maps, with the same name of the game. For instance; Final Fantasy (!).pdf and Final Fantasy (!)(map).pdf. GameEx only shows 1 manual on it's list. If the map pdf comes first in alphabetical order, the actual MANUAL doesn't ever come up. Is there a way to setup or have in a future release the ability to have multiple manuals for 1 game? This would be nice for some games that have an 'in box' manual, as well as a fold out map, and a "Prima Game Guide", etc. Examples of these in the config program would be "Manual Path", "Map Path", "Guide Path", etc. Just an idea, and like I said, maybe something like that could be more usefull in the cpviewer so you could pull up the map or guide while in game.

Maybe something like GameExTras?

OK, I never tried holding down button 1 while doing it. I've just always controlled with the MCE remote. Good to know that other method works too, and that you'll implement the left/right. Something to fore warn about that too is if you add zoom controlls, you'll probably need the left/right as well as up/down to scroll around. Simply having left/right for pages won't work in this case.

FEATURE REQUEST: Ability to scroll through manuals by pages as well as by lines. Currently you press up and down to scroll by lines. I'd like to press left and right to flip through pages. If you have an MCE remote, the page up/down buttons would be ideal. However, when you use them now, they just rapidly scroll the pages with just 1 push. You don't even have to hold it down. Another thing to consider might be a way to adjust the zoom. Have it open up full screen width like it does currently, but then allow the zoom to be adjusted as needed.

Just discovered: http://www.cpviewer.emuchrist.org/ Looks like we do need a new name for this, so people don't get confused.

This is one of those interesting threads, that you read to see if anything can be done, but you don't really know. IMO, wouldn't an empty artwork folder be good enough? If MAME doesn't have the artwork, thats when the GameEx bezel is supposed to be used. So why shouldn't it work? Have you tried taking out the line in the MAME configuration that assigns the folder(s) to use for artwork?

Man this is great news. I was just about to ask if anybody had started compiling anything like this for us. Now I don't have to! Let us know when it's all set up and ready to go!

I would be interested in this as well. I'm not a programmer, but am computer savvy. I also run Windows Vista, which may help out to identify and report bugs. If you just want a tester of sorts, sign me up. ::SIDE NOTE:: I just had 8 teeth pulled today, so I'll be out of work for the next few days. Basically just laying in bed in searing pain. Got lots of free time.

I said something LIKE Kaillera.

I haven't looked at the config program for this version yet, but I would imagine there's some new lines in there. Where there were fields for the locations of snaps, and cabs, and cp's, there is now also fields for pcb's and artwork previews. As I said, I haven't looked yet, so this is just an assumption... If I'm wrong, this would probably be the ideal way to do it Tom.

I don't know, I've never actually used it with MAME

...possibly... how would one go about this?

Kaillera is a plugin/protocol used by a lot of emulators which allows people to connect to each other over the internet. The first time I used it, me and a buddy of mine loaded up the Gens (Sega Genesis) emulator and fought each other in Mortal Kombat. Basically, Kaillera "emulates" the networked player as another controller. One person decides to be player 1 and hosts the game, and player 2 joins. Player 1 indicates that the controller in port 2 is "network" instead of another controller, and player 2 indicates that the controller in port 1 is "network" as well. Kaillera does the rest. http://www.kaillera.com/