Draco1962

Now, to answer another question. I myself have not built an arcade cab. From what I have seen of those that have using an LCD monitor, most leave the monitor in the landscape orientation. This may be that they are emulating consoles in addition to MAME and similar arcade emus. I think that even if you are running an exclusive arcade emu machine, you will find that some of the later games will benefit from the extra real estate that a landscape orientation provides, especially some of the side scrollers and later light gun games.

@RIP-Felix - I took the liberty of merging your two topics since you were basically asking the same question in both threads. There is no need to do this! If someone has an answer to your questions they will answer, but it may not be the day you ask. If not, then that is how it goes. Please bear in mind that multiple threads from the same OP for the same issue/question are kinda frowned upon in forum communities. While we try to be a little more forgiving, please watch this. Thanks!

To all U.S. Veterans and our Veteran Allies across the world - thanks for fighting the good fight for democracy and freedom. Without you, tyranny would be the rule of law. Our rights to freedom of expression, religious choice, gun ownership, and freedom from oppression would not exist. It is my pleasure to honor each of you as our true heroes - living and fallen. Your sacrifices in the times spent away from your loved ones, even your lives in some cases, have made it possible for each of us to be here and enjoy this hobby and forum!

Sounds like you are trying to totally emulate a single program Arcade Cab to give the appearance of the original attract mode and start up as close as possible. If so, I would think you would be better off running some batch files on startup of your PC to directly load MAME and use a MAME screensaver (and not attract mode from GameEx). Kinda defeats the purpose of having a Front End IMO.

If you run GameEx windowed, Greenshot does a great job of image capture, probably better than Fraps for getting a still image. Very similar to Snag-It, but free!

If you got a good rig for most everything else, I would stay away from overclocking. I know there are those that love to push their systems beyond spec but I have found it better to live without a few programs until I can make my next upgrade or build than losing my current machine altogether because I fried something.

Thanks, Ian and sorry to hear of your loss. Good to see you about the forums!

I like this! Not sure if the issue that is causing the lack of crispness may be causing the contrast to be thrown, but on the background, the reds are close enough to the frame and other reds in the foreground to kind of wash them out a little. Maybe upping the contrast a tad and dropping the brightness on the background image fo r the curtains will balance the overall contrast between the background/foreground and give it a little more pop.

I have found as I get older and continue to experience losses of friends and family along the way, those that remain become much more precious to me. You begin to realize that the number of sunrises and sunsets we have to experience are not infinite and you never know which one you will experience last. I guess that is coming to grips with our frail mortality. Sorry to sound like a major downer and fatalistic as that is not my intent here. It is my hope that, for myself and others, that we can reflect on these types of experiences and take something back that is good and can be shared with others.

I think it better to go to a GPU card to onboard video. No sharing of RAM with the CPU. Easily replaced/upgraded. I don't run any of the more recent emulators such as these just yet, so not sure how to advise you regarding.

Elite promotion done - I am not even going to seek a consensus for this recommendation, Mike, as I am sure that there will be no disagreement.

One thing to consider is using wireless controllers (Xbox 360 controllers for PC are a favorite) for your console emulations. Adultery and a few others have used them successfully with their Arcade cabs (for that matter, Adultery doesn't have a CP on his). That way you can augment your arcade cab instead of trying to build a CP with so many buttons it looks like a Skittle spill!

LATE UPDATE: I had been in sporadic contact via PM with Rob aka Ninja Rygar a few times after his last post in this thread but then lost contact, After a little digging to find his full real name, I was able to determine that he did not survive his battle with cancer, having passed away just a few weeks after on May 18, 2011. His online obituary can be found here. He was an energetic and friendly soul that, even though his time in the forums was relatively short, he left a positive impression. While a bit late, rest in peace my friend. Pain is not for you any longer and may its sting fade in the hearts of those you touched and loved in the short time you were here that remain until their time comes to join you in God's embrace. I will leave this thread open for a while so others that knew him may respond with words of tribute to him as they wish, then will lock it permanently.

Google found this site for me with a few.

It all adds up, Han. Even if you haven't money to donate, donating time somewhere is a help.

Getting the warm fuzzies! Thanks, Matt!

You may also want to consider launching a bat file to kill the game via "Launch After" fi you are running the game isolated to run in its own emulator setting.

Kinda curious how to check the memory usage when the screen saver is active without some means of logging the memory usage through an app. As soon as you exit the screen saver you will not be able to see anything via task manager and vice versa.

You are correct. My point was to educate those that may not be aware of this feature and expand upon, not a contradict your instruction. Sometimes I will run the Setup Wizard from the Start Menu if I am making multiple changes and will exit GameEx and start it anew, as you noted, for those changes to take effect. The benefit of accessing Setup Wizard via GameEx is that it will relaunch itself once it has been detected the exit from Setup Wizard. This is especially useful in those setups where the user has the OS hidden and does not need or desire to drop back to the OS level to make changes via the Setup Wizard.

One thing to mention is that Zip/7-Zip/GoodMerge support is available only if you have purchased a 1 year or Lifetime subscription to GameEx. Besides enabling Zip/7-Zip/GoodMerge support, you have a host of other useful features that you may be interested. More about these features can be found here.

Actually, you can modify Setup Wizard from within GameEx. If you are not using Custom Menus, you will find the Setup Wizard under More Games & Programs and then Configuration. This will load the Setup Wizard and exit GameEx. You can make and apply changes to the various settings. Once you have confirmed the changes at the very end, Setup Wizard will exit and GameEx will reload.

d'Oh! Reading is fundamental! Thanks!

Well done, Sokurah! I have unlocked your thread in the User Projects forum if you would like to update it with this latest offering!

When reporting a possible GameEx bug or error, please ensure you submit a copy of your log.txt and gameex.ini file so we may quickly assist you. Please refer to this link for additional information.

@8trek - please be mindful that you had two related threads started for Visual Pinball when you should have continued troubleshooting within the original thread. One was prior to upgrading your GameEx as suggested, following which you opened the second thread noting your upgrade and continued issues. I have merged the two accordingly. This helps you and the GameEx members assisting you to avoid much confusion, instead of trying to address the same issue across multiple threads.