kicker75

I have over 35 systems configured to run thru rocketlauncher and gameex... I made a guide about it if you are interested and having a hard time with it. It also deals with the transition from gameex to RL and back. I have neogeo cd setup thru neoraine in rl. Rocketlauncher makes everything easy to use. Download emulator, sometimes you need to fire it up once to configure a few things, then you let rl do its magic. I even run the sorted mame list thru rl... and my emulator of choice is retroarch... running about 95% of my systems. edit: in the guide I wrote last week about rl, I also show how to run the sorted mame list (i also run daphne thru rl... makes it much easier to configure in gameex... as you dont need to configure each framefile... you just delete the line since its not needed..)

Well... yeah My computer is now rather stable (changed power supply because it blew two months or so ago, and the motherboard blew up as well), so I changed ps+mobo, and re-installed windows, now using 10. I reboot my computer every month or so... more likely when something ask me to. Since I lost the habit of rebooting my system, I didn't thought to reboot before I'm happy to say tho that I have installed all my systems back. Using rocketlauncher is so easy... nothing more to remember than rocketlauncher -s "system" [ROM] ... pretty easy stuff once its configured over there... a huge time saver. I can't recommend it enough. I even planned up ahead my next few ones and added them already so they dont end up messing my ocd later, and disabled them for the time being! Some observations tho: GameEx seems to be horrible at maintaining its gameex.ini file. Clearly, plain text doesn't cut it. The file is too big, it becomes messy quickly, and that is without editing it by hand. Even if you organize your emulator section, and even gameex itself, will keep on changing the order of the lines that makes up an emulator definition. For example, sometimes the paths are near top, near [emulator], and sometimes it's near the end. Play with your settings, and it changes again. To give you an idea, my 32 emulator config was at an heavy 500kb+.. the one I messed up re-ordering. This new setup right now, have 44 emulators already added, and weight in at only 210kb. GameEx is also a lot snappier and responsive. (Not like moving the mouse around etc, this is the same, but I mean, loading a menu, itself, categories... etc.) So there is really a benefit of setting it right the first time, and not playing with it anymore. But it shouldn't be this way. The config file should be broken down into sections, and different ini files. Each [section] should be split into different ini... and each emulator should have its own ini... then managing the main config file would be a lot easier. [Emulator 1] config=emulator1.ini But I believe the best thing to do would be to use xml... as size doesn't really matter with it... an xml of the size of gameex.ini would likely be a lot faster, more stable, wouldn't ever change (except the values)... The cache part of the config should also be in a separate file. Some cleanup of the setup wizard, grouping of options, better naming, description... consistency... like in display hide desktop isn't yes or no, its hide operating system... confusing. Later, you have hide/show taskbar... yes or no... again... yes or no for what? hide or show? you pretty much have to try it out to figure... common sense would lead you to think that yes apply to hide since its first... but it could be labelled and have a better description, cause even the description isn't helping. Hide Taskbar: Yes/No would have done the same job, more efficiently. And again, grouping.... putting it next to hide desktop would make sense. A lot of things like that could be improved in the setup wizard. But that's out of topic! Like these topic usually end, with the user redoing everything... its now resolved, yes, but the problem still remains... I hope you guys are going to seriously look at it, and consider my suggestions for the config file... this behavior needs to be fixed... redoing stuff because of your own mistake sucks enough... but its a lot easier to accept and get over it then when you use a function and that it instantly messes up hours and hours of work. Sorry if I did come across edgy...thanks null

Well, I might be on my way to success now. I rebooted my computer... must have had an uptime of 3-4 weeks, uninstalled and cleaned gameex, and started over anew. I tried to set my stuff as much as possible as I originally did at first. The two main differences between this time, and my previous times, I put no file extension in as anyway, there is only zip files in there... and I set map keys to no. There are many obscure settings in gameex, and lots of time, the title and description of an option is cryptic at best. Map keys, I thought it had something to do with the esc key being able to exit out the emulator. That was my first guess, and since I use rocketlauncher, I set it off without thinking much. In my previous attempts, I let it enabled, as I figured it wouldn't matter anyway, and I was only setting the bare to get going faster in gameex. So I set up 10 emulators on first setup. And all of them now works as expected. Since it's working again fine, I'm scared of trying to find what was my problem (like the console stuff not working without a map), by turning map keys back on, and adding a file extension filter (this one I highly doubt it affects anything, as it was something I later added in my configuration... but map keys always been off...) Could be the fact that I rebooted my computer as well... who knows. Like I said, dont really want to find out. However, I'm sure that, by playing with the order in my setup wizard list, I could screw things up again. This should be really looked at... Now that the heat is off, let me explain why I might have been "harsh"... I spent weeks downloading roms, setting my emulators, rocketlauncher, etc... and gameex.. I was close to almost call it being done (at least for a while), when I did a screw up and overwrite my roms with the software lists roms. I found the no intro romset and downloaded it. I was adding my last few systems, and since I'm probably a bit OCD like most involved in this OCD hobby.. my unsorted emulators list in the setup wizard bugged me... I added the systems at first, as they got downloaded... so pretty much by size they were, and time it took to get them Then you know the rest... it brought back memories of old times, and I remembered having had the very same issue, and about in pretty much the same circonstances... after I was done adding my emulators with no fixed order, I wanted to clean things up and bam... I was a bit ticked off to see the issue remained after all these years... by now, I should be having fun, not having an headache trying to fix my usage of a function that is present in the setup ui but should require some attention or temporary removal. Here are a few other glitches I noticed: Sometimes, when resizing the setup ui windows, with the handle at least, it resets you back to the beginning and also clear your selection to the window about setting up the 3 paths. And also clear your selection of custom and resets you back to basic. This happened to me twice, while I wanted to make the standard window larger in the emulator selection screen to see it all. I've installed gameex a lot of times today, and 2 or 3 times out of them all, I had one option in the many checkboxes in the first screen... there was download demo at the end... most of the time it doesn't show up, but I dunno why, it showed up a few times... And another, even if you don't select steam support files in this same checkbox list, by default steam is enabled in the options, and if you forget to set if off, when you fire gameex, you realize that steam works even tho you didn't ticked off the steam support files... not a big issue, but clearly something not working as it should. I'll report back once I'm done. At least, I have my sorted list, and I'm adding them sorted now. edit: all my consoles are setup with no maps and its working fine. I do have recorded a video after I wrote my previous post here... its not encoded and online yet, but I will likely do that tomorrow or in the days to come so you can at least see the screw up with sorting.

You wouldn't believe what happened. I uninstalled gameex, cleaned everything I could again (cause if I dont do this... let say I had mame as emu #1, and had 32k games in it, then when reinstalling, and setting emu #1 to atari 2600, it would report the number of games mame had in the other install)... and set out to record a video. I did this: Installed gameex, configured display to change fullscreen from window to be able to record it, change the background setting cause it messes up the config at times, reverting any changes made to it... since the background process seems to keep a cached copy and restores the config file when it detect changes or something like that... and set up mame and atari 2600 system. When I got to gameex, both systems were shown empty. I then exited gameex, added a map file for mame, and none for atari 2600 since there is none... then gameex showed mame properly. Atari was still empty. I decided to add turbografx-16 system since it haves a map file for it. When I got to gameex, now both mame and tg16 had games in them, atari still empty. I then went ahead, and swapped mame with tg16, leaving atari in the middle. When I got to gameex, everything was fine, the sort worked. I was like, you are shitting me right... I cancelled the recording, and was literally pissed... but at least, for the first time, I took notice that it does work at times. So I went ahead, and swapped atari with tg16... and then things screwed up... atari showed tg16 games, and tg16 still was showing tg16 games too. I wish I would have kept recording... but I wouldnt mind doing it again.

Ah ok, I use rocketlauncher to deal with that... as you can assign some games in the list a different emulator than the default for the system, as well as different parameters for the emulator in question... Yeah, I will of course never use the sort function again That much is certain! As for duplicating the issue... like I said, when I did the two emu test, I went straight to config the emu, left everything else by default. I had erased the registry settings, cleaned up temp, did as much as I could to have a clean install and still, pressing the up arrows did it again. And yes, you have understood the problem correctly. GameEx is set to sort emulator by name by default. So the list doesn't change in gameex. I still saw mame first, and atari 2nd. However, mame now reported to have the number of games the atari 2600 had, and the atari now was displaying 32k games. But both lists were in fact empty. In my first install, when it screwed up, there was a few systems displaying games in their list, however, it wasn't the right games, it was the games of another system. So yeah, to keep it simple, let say we have emu1 that is mame, and emu2 that is atari 2600, is I make emu2 become emu1 in the setup wizard, the list displayed in gameex becomes wrong, and don't match the change in setup wizard. Everything points me to think that when the sort function is used, gameex forget to take care of the emu_* files, and the registry settings it keeps for the number of games... so it breaks everything apart.. thats my feeling... edit: and likely the emu_* part in the gameex.ini file (that looks like some sort of cache) edit2: I wanted to proceed and add map files and try to get myself out this way... but I couldnt find a map file for the atari 2600 system... so I thought about using the one I made for the mame software list, and it did displayed the 1500 or so games in this list. However, after removing the map file in the config, the list still displayed the 1500 games... and of course, none of them works.. I know its not the kind of things you will usually do, but nevertheless, it shouldn't happen. I only tried this because I'm stuck all I can do is try stuff...

I'm not using emulator groups for the moment. I used the re-sort in the setup wizard, and did sort it by mistake by systems, thinking it would sort it by arcade, console, handheld that kinda stuff, but it didnt produced the result I wanted (which is really alphabetical when I gave it a second thought).. so I re-sorted it alphabetically. But on this new test install I installed mame and atari 2600... I only used the arrow up on the 2nd one, raising it 1st... and that's it. Then the number of games were reported wrong in gameex. If you used emulator groups, maybe that's why you haven't had the exact same result as I did... If I have to record a video of me, installing gameex from scratch, installing two emulators, swapping them, without settings anything else in the config... then I will do it.

The two posts I linked are exactly what happened to me... here is another very similar, that clearly shows again that there is something wrong going on with sort emulator function... 2011 this time... http://www.gameex.info/forums/topic/9936-resolved-emulator-sort-conflict-with-custom-menu-app/?hl=%2Bsort+%2Bemulator

I already tried that... I don't need to add all my 32 emulators to find out that something is wrong. I mean... I installed it fresh, installed one system by hand, and there is still a problem remaining. I already sent my log and config file, by looking at them, one can figure where my gameex is installed... d:\gameex. nothing fancy there. Well.. try this out... create a new gameex install, add two emulator, and in the emulation selection screen, swap them... and see what happens in gameex... I doubt that I'm the only one having this issue, as I could probably find quite a few topics similar to this in these forums... and the one I linked in my op is a good example. I could link quite a few post about this issue... and I have had it years ago... Check this one out... http://www.gameex.info/forums/topic/9237-strange-problem-with-emulator-lists/?hl=%2Bsort+%2Bemulator+%2Bsetup+%2Bwizard#entry68700 yeah, deleting the emulators and redoing it again, because you used a function that is broken and shouldn't be there, and for years... yeah everything is fine and the problem is only on my end... how stupid must I be... and as you can see, i'm far from being a computer illiterate... I can only imagine what it would be if I would be "green"... edit: look at the date of this post...2010... that must be around the time I built my first setup... likely 2009-2010... or so...

Made some progress.... but I must say that my patience is wearing thin... I like troubleshooting, but when the devs can't even recognize there is a problem somewhere, one can only go so far to prove there is actually an issue somewhere. I uninstalled gameex (yet another time) I then deleted the gameex registry entries, except the key and pass one, and I found emu_* files in %appdata%\Local\Temp... so I deleted the whole temp dir since there was also some directory created by gameex in there as well. Reinstalled gameex, set up the first emulator right away, to mame, and was greeted yet again to an empty list. Then I assigned an emulator map... that I downloaded because I never used one in my very first install (the only that ever worked as it should, until I re-ordered), and the games appeared. I loaded my old gameex.ini with all 32 emulators setup, and the mame list was still showing, but all others were not. I started to assign map files to consoles, and the games started to show up in gameex. I never used map files, except on systems that had rom names like mame. All the other console were setup without a map and only a database and it worked. So, even after clearing all I cleared before reinstalling, I'm still having the feeling that something is wrong... why I didn't needed map files before, and why I do now? edit: I just tried to remove the mapping file on the colecovision system (as it was the one selected when I got to advanced emu config screen), and the games list was still showing in GameEx... I don't understand. I had to use one to make the games appear, and now its not needed anymore...

The numbers that gameex pulls off from the main menu are the old numbers of my systems on my first install, prior to re-ordering. My emulator #2 had 51 games, etc... so it looks like the registry key aren't deleted upon uninstall, and aren't modified when re-ordering either. But, as much as I looked at them, it only seems to be some cache values for the number of games, it doesn't seems to be used for anything else, so I doubt deleting those will actually make the games appear... but what do I have to lose! I just deleted them to see if GameEx would say, hey the values are missing, lets do a rescan... but it didn't... Now on the main menu, I see no number of games reported, and my two lists are still empty... EDIT: I have looked in %appdata%, my documents, programdata, did a search for gameex and emu_* on both my c: and d: drive to find any clues as to how gameex is keeping my first install in memory like this... but I haven't had any luck. Think I will have to resort to use disk usage from sysinternals and see which files are read when opening and closing gameex... I believe that's how I managed to find out back then... EDIT2: The sysinternals tools I meant was procmon, and it doesn't seems to run on windows 10 yet. Diskmon runs, but it doesn't show up filenames, only raw data... useless for me in this case...

I have just done a test... and it confirms my belief... On my new installation, I added a second emulator, the atari 2600. I should have around 600 roms inside this dir, yet GameEx tells me I have 51 games in this system (from the main menu) and upon entering, I see an empty list again. I have gone to the setup wizard, and I swapped emu #2 with #1. When I went back to GameEx, the listing was still MAME #1, Atari 2600 #2 as expected, since its sorted by name. But MAME was now showing 51 games (still empty once inside) and atari was reporting 32k some games... still empty from inside. There is something very wrong somewhere...

For the record, here is the last log file from my previous installation (that was fully setup) log.txt

I have the feeling that GameEx doesnt "re-create" the emu_* cache files. When I delete the emu_* files, gameex doesn't start any slower, and if I check the log, I see that gameex is actually telling me that it's pulling out the databases out of cache. Attached, is my log of my new installation, with only 1 emulator. I mean, I've set up 32 emulators on my previous setup, I should be able to setup mame right on a new install. As you can see nearing the end, it tells me this: Not Restoring Emulator Database From Cache: 1000 So it's telling me that it's not restoring the emulator 1 (which seems to be called emu_1000 in the cache?)... but if I delete the emu_* files, it will tell me that its restoring databases from cache. But I'm deleting the cache! It makes no sense! Like I previously said, this very issue happened to me a few years back. I remember having to redo all my emulators because I re-ordered my emulator list in the setup wizard. Please note, I didn't re-order the list in the wizard thinking it would re-order them inside gameex. I knew it was sorted a-z... I just wanted to have a cleaner list inside the wizard.. the same reason I did this years ago too. My ultimate goal for the real list inside gameex was to use the custom menu as you said, and create myself some categories to sort out my list, like Arcade, Hand-Held, Consoles, etc... also have thought about sorting them by generations... but anyway.. I also have vague memory of finding the files that gameex pulls "from the cache" to generate the emu_* files... but I haven't managed to find it back. log.txt

My native language is french, so my english might not be as good as a native english. The problem is simple.. the way GameEx deals with the emulators list is a bit "fragile" to say the least. If you set it right, and know what you are doing, it goes well. However, if you either make a mistake, or want to change something once it's set, right or wrong, then you might be running into troubles. My support files won't be any helpful, as I re-installed GameEx and starting from scratch. However, I'm still having ghosts from my other installation. I have completely deleted the gameex dir and re-installed at the same location. I configured everything up to mame, all was good. Then I set up my first emulator, which is mame again (to have a full list without any filters), and I see that gamex tells me that there is 32k something roms in it, but when I click to enter, its empty. I have found this registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\GameEx\Emulators... and the number of games in each systems are cached in the registry. So again, they probably haven't followed the re-order change as the emu_* files. Here is something else I tried. After I re-installed fresh the first time, I copied all my .db3 to the new installation, and copied my old gameex.ini to the new installation (with no remaining files from the previous.. entirely deleted)... and yet, I end up with the very same problem as my other installation. (the attach is this ini) The re-order function in the setup wizard was what started all this. I remember having this issues a few years ago... same thing happened... I set up my emulators, with no specific orders, and fiddling a bit to get them all to work. Then once I was done, I wanted to clean up the emulator list in the wizard, even tho it had no real benefits... and it screwed up my config. Another problem... Any software that scans media, and builds a database... if you delete the database, it will either be re-create automatically, or you will scan your folders and it will come back anew. Why is that feature not possible within gameex? I mean, its possible for the mame list, why not for the others? As the thread I linked in my op points out, when you delete those emu_* files... you are pretty much screwed up. I believe what happens is... when you re-order, and, for example, emu 5 becomes emu 10. When you will go to gameex, you will see the same list you usually see, the re-order doesn't affect it, but I guess that emu #5 in the list displays the list of emu #10... showing the wrong number of games for the systems, and the wrong games.. So, in short, when you re-order the emulators, it seems as if the emu_* files (and maybe entries in the ini?) aren't following the changes... on top of what's in the registry. GameEx.ini

I delete them, but they keep on coming back. If I delete the emu_* files, and load gameex again, gameex will regenerate them just as they were. I have even went as far as deleting all my emus in the setup wizard, making sure to clean the gameex.ini of the stuff left behind, removing all the emu_ entries over there too, and making sure to remove anything left in between the [emulator] definitions. Then I opened gameex, and made sure to have an empty system. (Except mame) After that, I opened my backup copy of gameex.ini and copy and pasted emulator 1 to 32 into my new empty one, replacing the blank definition of emulator 1 to 32. Loaded gameex, and was stunned to see that it somehow still list my systems wrong, showing the very same wrong games... It's like, when I re-ordered my systems in the wizard, it didn't took care of renaming the emu_ cache file... and that's where the problem is. Actually, I cannot see how the other thread has been resolved, you might want to show me where, cause he starts by saying that he deleted his emu_* files, and end up saying he had to delete all emulators and start over anew... I dont see this as a solution to a problem as simple as this. I have vague memory of finding the files that gameex hides, and pull back to do that trick... it cannot regenerate cache files out of thin air... there is some place it stores stuff and I cant remember where. But why is it that we can't rescan systems?

It's an issue I remember having a few years back. Never found the problem, so I remember resorting to erasing all emus, and redoing the emu setup. However, I don't really feel like doing it again this time. What happened is I used the sort emulator in the setup wizard (the same thing I done back then)... because I didn't added the emulators in any particular order, I thought I could sort them when I would be done. However, the problem is, when I go back to gameex, the emulator lists are all wrong. They are showing up the roms of the previous system a given emulator slot was mapped to. For example, my emulator 10 was the system sega genesis. It's now something else. So when I go to genesis in gameex, I'm seeing the listing of another system. I tried to delete the dbcache, map, and everything emu_ something in the cache folder, and now all my lists and empty. Any way I can fix that without redoing all my emulators setup? Thank you very much in advance! edit: forgot to link a similar thread that wasn't resolved: http://www.gameex.info/forums/topic/7918-force-rescan-of-emulator-roms/?view=findpost&p=58364&hl=%2Bdeleted+%2Bdbcache

I got a wireless 360 controller with a cheap chinese receiver, and it works just fine under windows 10. They dont get recognized automatically, but I use the receiver driver for windows 10 selecting it by hand, and it works just fine.

Hmmm, I sort of screwed up. It turns out all the roms that didn't matched to no-intro, was indeed redumped.. but they are now in a format preventing me from using them outside of mame, and they won't work (at least, I haven't figured out how to) when renamed and using the -cart option. So yeah, I have overwritten pretty much all my console roms... However, as I really like these softlists, I haven't given up yet. I have made myself a nice little batch file here: if exist "Title\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Title\%%J.png" "%%I.png"if exist "Snap\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Snap\%%J.png" "%%I.png"if exist "Overlay\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Overlay\%%J.png" "%%I.png"if exist "Disc\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Disc\%%J.png" "%%I.png"if exist "CD\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "CD\%%J.png" "%%I.png"if exist "CartTop\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "CartTop\%%J.png" "%%I.png"if exist "Cart_3D\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Cart_3D\%%J.png" "%%I.png"if exist "Cart\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Cart\%%J.png" "%%I.png"if exist "BoxBack\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "BoxBack\%%J.png" "%%I.png"if exist "Box_Spine\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Box_Spine\%%J.png" "%%I.png"if exist "Box_Full\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Box_Full\%%J.png" "%%I.png"if exist "Box_3D\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Box_3D\%%J.png" "%%I.png"if exist "Box\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Box\%%J.png" "%%I.png"if exist "Banner\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Banner\%%J.png" "%%I.png"if exist "Background\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Background\%%J.jpg" "%%I.jpg"if exist "Advert\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Advert\%%J.png" "%%I.png"if exist "Map\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Map\%%J.pdf" "%%I.pdf"if exist "Manual\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Manual\%%J.pdf" "%%I.pdf"if exist "Music\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Music\%%J.mp3" "%%I.mp3"if exist "Video_MP4_HI_QUAL\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Video_MP4_HI_QUAL\%%J.mp4" "%%I.mp4"if exist "Video_Advert_MP4\" for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %%I in (%1.map) do ren "Video_Advert_MP4\%%J.mp4" "%%I.mp4So after I have downloaded the artwork for the renamed roms (and fix the few that didn't got picked up by emumovies, renaming them according to the map file), I run this batch file, and it will check what directory is present and rename the artwork, mp3, pdf, mp4 there is, back to the mame name. All at once. So far, I have done nes, atari 7800 and coleco. This brings another question. I have noticed that some titles even get matched to the database. However... the majority don't match, and the few I've noticed, seems to be (PAL) titles. The 7800 have lots of (PAL) and (NTSC) double cartridges for almost every games, and I wanna build the artwork for all roms (at least from what I find on emumovies) in the mame set. I've opened up the db3 file and looked inside, and all these nointro, tosec fields, dont have pal or NTSC, usa, europe, etc... it's only the bare title. How come for example, Meltdown (PAL) is matched in the list, and gives me the genre, description etc, and Meltdown (NTSC) isn't matched and showing no genre etc? My initial idea was to try to fix the database, and duplicate the needed entries, however, I can't figure out what to do with it.

I have downloaded the software list torrent a few days ago, and I've been wondering how I would use those roms. As GameEx does not support it natively, I have found a usable workaround for the time being. I'm using the .map files I generated with the python script, along with this dos command: for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=|" %I in (vectrex.map) do ren %I "%J.zip"​So what I do is make a copy of the .map file in question to a copy of the target rom directory in the software list romset. For example, for the gce vectrex, I would copy and paste the vectrex directory, creating vectrex - Copy directory. I copy the vectrex.map file to this directory (making sure not to move it), then you need to edit it, otherwise, the filename might contain characters not suitable for rename. So far, here is the search and replace that I do: ":" -> " -" "~" -> "-" """ -> "" (If you dont understand this one, I replace the " character with nothing...) "3​" -> " 3" (Aliens3 to Aliens 3) "é" -> "e" So, after these five search and replace, I save the file, and run the above command. ​And I end up with a directory of roms that are almost no-intro. The names in the hash files are similar to no-intro format, just a bit more descriptive. For example, in the Gameboy cartridge, you have a sgb tag to know which support super game boy. ​At first, I was matching them to no-intro dats with clrmamepro, and quite a few systems matched almost 100%... and some to various extent. The coleco romset in the software list shares about 10-15 cartridges with the no-intro romset... so most have been redumped since. So by using the dos command, I end up with roms that matches with the emumovies tools, and I can get the artwork for them. You can test the command first by replace ren by echo... this will echo out both variables (the short name and long name) of each entry in the file. Hope it helps someone. PS: Since they are in a format close to no-intro, you can easily rename them to no-intro with a rom renaming tool... don't use clrmame pro, as it won't be able to match all roms since its checksum based. I use hyperspin rom manager... mame168_hash_gameex_maps.rar

I also think the same. Years ago, when there was emulators that would run a few systems, I would tell myself, why bother with something that is likely going to be bloated, and why not use a specific emulator for each systems. Times have changed... computers are now much more powerful than they were, and it turns out, I don't really see retroarch and mame running any slower than their standalone equivalent. Plus it makes setting this up a lot easier. You get to have the same feel in each systems, the same shaders, etc... I'm sold to RetroArch... I dig its way to autoconfigure gaming devices. If I fire up an arcade racing game, for the first time, retroarch will have mapped the triggers on my xbox 360 controller to gas/break, and will be using the left analog stick for steering. No additional work needed. Fire up street fighter, and you have the mappings you would expect. Start and select buttons are properly mapped on console games... It supports everything mame does + much more... You should have a look into it if you haven't already. I posted a nice guide to make it work in gameex properly a few days ago, if you are interested, check it out! But yeah, I hope that GameEx will end up having support for the whole mess software lists the same way it does with mame. So, we would install mame+chd, mess+chd, and have everything installed at once.... after scanning for hours initially!

Yeah I know right The whole mindset behind emulation is rather conservative. It is likely going to take a collaborated effort to help it take off. It would start to get serious consideration once the artwork problem will be solved I believe. GameEx could be a game changer, as it is already more flexible than Hyperspin and more suited to the task. Hyperspin only works well with a very strict naming scheme. It's artwork downloader download the full sets, regardless of the roms you have for example... But imagine if GameEx would have a MESS setup similar to the way MAME is setup... you would enter the root of your mess software list romset, and boom... all systems configured at once... with all artwork... how cool would it be? I believe this must get some serious thought put into. In the meantime, I have ran the python script I downloaded yesterday against all the hash xmls, and generated map files for each of the systems found in the 0.168 softlist romset. I wanted to create a topic about it, but I can't find any better place than general. If you wish to add it to the map downloads, feel free! edit: updated the rar... noticed that each map files had .xml. still to it... I removed them all. So if you set your system's name according to mame/mess, then the map file should load automatically now. mame168_hash_gameex_maps.rar

I'm back to the emulators scene after a few years break, and I just got familiar with the software lists romset. Or what is also known as the mess romset. I think it's a great idea, but I find support to this list lacking in both GameEx and Hyperspin. With all the hash files we have, it would be nice to have support for the mess games list built into GameEx the same way MAME is done. I have seen this asked once or twice yesterday when I was looking on the forums for information about this. I happen to have downloaded the full 0.168 software list (still need the chds), wanted to see if I would like this, and I do. So I will likely be getting the chds as well, and replace all my roms with this. Is there any script or modification that could be done to GameEx that would configure the artwork downloader to fetch the correct artwork and name it after the mess romset? As it is now, I have ran the emumovies tool on the a2600 (atari 2600) list and it did get all the artwork for the one word titles. Like Airlock, Amidar, etc... and the tool name the downloaded file after the rom names, so it would require little work to make this happen.... the magic is already there in the map file I generated with a python script I found in these forums. I run the python script against the hash files, and I end up with a map file for GameEx. If the artwork downloader could detect the mess romset, and use the map files to download the artwork... I think it could be made to integrate in GameEx rather easily. At the moment, the only thing getting in the way of this romset to pick up popularity, is likely because of the artwork headaches that goes along with it. Since there is no artwork package yet for this... but if GameEx could download the artworks for this romset by itself with the help of the map files.. it would be quite an interesting feature. I hope that GameEx end up reading these hash files directly to use all the information contained inside. A fullly featured MESS games list like the MAME one, with all the systems automatically detected and sorted, with the ability to sort clones, enable/disable individually, etc... as it is, the merge option in advanced emu setup does nothing for these. I have setup the a2600 folder with the map file, and merge doesn't seem to work. If I can lend a hand, I sure would. I don't have much coding skill, but I do have some spare time.. let me know if I can be of any help making this happen.

So, what are you guys doing with these at the moment? You are adding them one system by one, just as you add the other systems in GameEx? Assign a map file, and that's it? Run it against a no-intro/tosec dat file and rename? I have been thinking about this... but I wonder, the file scheme found on emumovies, what's it's called? Isn't it the hyperspin naming scheme? The way I have setup my romsets at the moment... I have downloaded sets like tosec atari 2600, then ran it against the hyperspin 2600 xml, managed to get nearly all roms supported by it.. but I wonder.. there is like 645 or 655 roms in this set. All with artwork. Does that mean there is only artwork for around 650 atari roms? So, if I want a list with roms that have artwork only, I should keep doing this, or does emumovies have more artwork than the hyperspin sets? So if I were to run my mess list of atari 2600 games against tosec, and set this list in gameex, would I have more artwork (if any?) than with the hyperspin xmls? Not sure if I come out clear... sorry my native language is french.. @Draco1962: Done! I added the suggestion to the thread.

I'm back to the emulators scene after a few years break, and I just got familiar with the software lists romset. Or what is also known as the mess romset. I think it's a great idea, but I find support to this list lacking in both GameEx and Hyperspin. With all the hash files we have, it would be nice to have support for the mess games list built into GameEx the same way MAME is done. I have seen this asked once or twice yesterday when I was looking on the forums for information about this. I happen to have downloaded the full 0.168 software list (still need the chds), wanted to see if I would like this, and I do. So I will likely be getting the chds as well, and replace all my roms with this. Is there any script or modification that could be done to GameEx that would configure the artwork downloader to fetch the correct artwork and name it after the mess romset? As it is now, I have ran the emumovies tool on the a2600 (atari 2600) list and it did get all the artwork for the one word titles. Like Airlock, Amidar, etc... and the tool name the downloaded file after the rom names, so it would require little work to make this happen.... the magic is already there in the map file I generated with a python script I found in these forums. I run the python script against the hash files, and I end up with a map file for GameEx. If the artwork downloader could detect the mess romset, and use the map files to download the artwork... I think it could be made to integrate in GameEx rather easily. At the moment, the only thing getting in the way of this romset to pick up popularity, is likely because of the artwork headaches that goes along with it. Since there is no artwork package yet for this... but if GameEx could download the artworks for this romset by itself with the help of the map files.. it would be quite an interesting feature. I hope that GameEx end up reading these hash files directly to use all the information contained inside. A fullly featured MESS games list like the MAME one, with all the systems automatically detected and sorted, with the ability to sort clones, enable/disable individually, etc... as it is, the merge option in advanced emu setup does nothing for these. I have setup the a2600 folder with the map file, and merge doesn't seem to work. If I can lend a hand, I sure would. I don't have much coding skill, but I do have some spare time.. let me know if I can be of any help making this happen.

​RocketLauncher/RetroArch guide for GameEx Note: Note #2: Note #3: Download Links: ​GameEx Setup: So once you have your games working in RocketLauncher, either configured for HyperSpin, GameEx, getting them to work with GameEx is really easy. However, GameEx's HideOS.exe isn't playing nicely with RetroArch. The black screen it generates happens to be on top of retroarch, below the bezel. I will also show you how to fix this, and make it work with GameEx sorted MAME list. Let's get started. We will configure MAME and the Atari 2600 system. Atari 2600 Setup As you can see above, starting RocketLauncher is simple, and always the same. All my systems are configured this way. Here is another example: The system parameter, -s, works with the systems you have named in RocketLauncher. Also don't forget to disable Show Desktop in advanced emulator config here: Here is a screenshot of my RocketLauncher window: The -f and -p parameters are only needed if you have RocketLauncher configured for Hyperspin. If you have it configured for GameEx, you might not need them, or need to change them to work with GameEx. I would like some feedback from users setting up RocketLauncher for GameEx first on this. Now, if you are to launch your games (using retroarch), GameEx's HideOS.exe (the application that hide the desktop, if you have it enabled) gets in the way. Work-around for HideOS.exe and RetroArch ​If your goal is to run RetroArch with GameEx, please note that you will also need RocketLauncher, or need to write yourself an AutoHotKey script. I have tried different ways to fix this problem, using the before launch, after launch options in GameEx, with a batch file, and nothing worked. I wanted to have it run like any other emulators, like for example, MAME, with a smooth transition from GameEx -> RocketLauncher -> RetroArch -> RocketLauncher -> GameEx. Go to RocketLauncher, in the Modules tab (with global selected on the left), and look up RetroArch.ahk, and click the edit button as shown here: note: you might need to add c:\windows\notepad.exe in the RocketLauncherUI tab for the prefered module editor. Once you have RetroArch.ahk loaded in your text editor, do a text search for "run(" without the "". And you will find this part here You will need to add the line, Run, taskkill /IM HideOS.exe, right before the launch emulator function as shown above. This will kill HideOS.exe process right before launching RetroArch, so that when RocketLauncher fades out to RA, hideos.exe is killed and not showing anymore. However, since it's killed, you will need to start it again when the emulator finishes, otherwise you will see a glimpse of the desktop when ending your session. Browse to the end of the RetroArch.ahk script and change the Close Process procedure as shown below: By default, FadeOutStart is first, then WinClose second. I found out that ordering it this way result exactly in the behavior needed to cleanly exit out the emulator. Make sure you change your GameEx path in run, d:\gameex\hideos.exe. Congrats, you should by now be able to add as many systems as you wish thru rocketlauncher, and use retroarch for all the systems it supports, right from GameEx, with a clean start and exit. If you want to proceed further, and make the GameEx sorted MAME list work with RL/RA, follow on. MAME Setup Head back to the Setup Wizard, and choose AdvancedMAME. As you can see, the same thing applies here. You launch MAME games the same way as you start any other emulators. MAME Settings stays the same, here is mine: Almost forgot, head to Display Settings in the Setup Wizard, and make sure you have Hide Operating System selected for Hide Desktop option, and Yes to Hide/Show Taskbar later below. You should now have everything to make all your systems work with RocketLauncher/RetroArch. If you don't know RocketLauncher (and/or RA), I suggest you take time and learn both softwares. RL have a ton of options. On this matter, you might want to set the fade timer to 2000 milliseconds in RocketLauncher (or anything higher...) If you have any questions, please let me know, I'll do my best to help you out. GameEx.ini RetroArch.ahk.rar