Draco1962

Looking good! If you don't mind a suggestion - You may want to eliminate whatever is causing the black bars for each game showing on the lists. About a 30% opacity might be OK if you desire to have something there, but would love to see more of the actual BG art showing which, btw, is great!

You may want to reference the images I have provided here with regards to resolutions. This is really helpful in determining what resolutions to use and how well they will scale up or down for others within their aspect ratio. For example, 1024x768 scales down to 800x600, 640x480, etc. as it is within the 4:3 aspect ratio. 1920x1080 and1280x720 are the more popular 16:9 aspect ratios found in HD resolutions. If you want to have images for 1024x768, they will display at 1920x1080, but because you will be forcing it to go from 4:3 to 16:9 aspect ratios, you will have noticeable horizontal and vertical distortion of the image. To cater to those that want HD, you will have to create basically 2 different separate themes. If you create a 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 image (a 16:10 aspect ratio), you can fudge just a little when using with 1920x1080 as it is much closer to 16:9, but you will still experience some vertical distortion. Whatever ratio you decide on for your theme, it is always better to work at the highest resolution possible and scale down within that aspect ratio to avoid graininess or pixelization of the image that occurs when you try to scale up.

I was going to wish everyone a Happy Memorial Day, but, instead, will wish you a reflective and safe Memorial Day. Being a service-connected family (I nor my wife did not serve in the U.S. armed services, our fathers served in the Air Force and Navy respectively, with grandfathers that served in the Army and Navy), we know from our dependent years the sacrifices our fathers made to ensure that our freedoms we often take for granted remain. I clearly recall the sacrifices my mom made to keep 4 kids safe, fed, in school, while my dad was away. My wife experienced similar while her dad was deployed 6+ months at a time, leaving her and her mom and brother behind. We were lucky in that our dads returned. Some are not so fortunate having lost their parent or sibling away, or had them return not as whole as they had left. Please take a few minutes to reflect upon this and, better yet, thank someone you know that is serving or has served. Lend a hand to someone who is waiting for news of their loved one's return.

You are 32 years old today which is quite old in puppy years. Not to say that you are an old dog, because that would be a near impossible assumption since we know, from your numerous posts and your yearbook pic on your avatar that you are clearly not a dog as dogs cannot type. Since you are not a dog, I don't think that the chew bone I bought will be an appropriate gift. Thanks, so much, for making me brave the elements caused by tropical storm Beryl to return your gift and try to find a store that is open to get you something more appropriate, whatever that might be. As I might not return thanks to Han's selfishness on his birthday, I want to take this opportunity to HIJACK this birthday wish to let everyone know how much you all mean to me and it has been real, but not nearly as real as the guilt Han will experience be should I not return from my adventure in finding him an age & species appropriate gift.

NEW FEATURE/ENHANCEMENT REQUEST: Have an option to select the desired browser choice via initial setup or Setup Wizard. The program would initially detect the installed browsers on the PC and give the user an opportunity to download/install others not detected, such as Kylo Browser which is designed specifically for HTPC use,is Mozilla-based, and open source.

Microsoft uses Sego UI for the Xbox 360 screen fonts (and it looks good in use with Windows 7 Media Center). I have begun to use it in work I have been doing on my HTPC themes as it looks good on the "10 foot user interface" (the theoretical average distance from recliner to TV screen viewability). For those that don't know the difference, a Serif font is one where there is a little piece hanging off the ends of a letter as in the Times New Roman font. Obviously, Sans Serif is "without the dangler."

Agreed. There is no "obligation" to drink to fit in. If that is a pre-req for having "friends" then you are better off alone. I have seen alcohol destroy too many families, lives and relationships where excess was involved. I have been known to make a 6-pack last 3 months and have a modest sized bottle of Crown that is close to 2 years old and has had 3-4 shots poured from it.

A pre-You're Welcome! It's a modest start and I have to agree with Adultery, don't be too hard on yourself. To be honest, if it looked like crap, I would still congratulate you on creating your own theme as you are in a small minority.

Acfixer - welcome to the GameEx fourms. I have taken the liberty of merging your last post which was setup as a new thread as opposed to continuing your original post (which I had extracted from a long since dead thread as well). There is likely not going to be one solution that is going to fix the several different issues you are having. Some options will require that you use Custom Menus. Others, modifying the Custom Text. You have already discovered that you cannot change Start within Custom Text as it does not exist there as an option that is changeable. I know you are excited to get things ordered the way that you want them to appear. I will ask that you be patient as there are quite a few folks here that are willing to help, but it may take some time to respond, especially from those in the US that may be on holiday or entertaining family on the long weekend.

Understood. The theme I am presently working on is a very simple 1920x1200 layout with color gradient backgrounds, minimalist foreground elements. I am eliminating "dedicated" menu bar areas as well as list and image areas (i.e., no frames or transparencies to indicate where they are). All logos are getting a total remake and there will be no emulator specific backgrounds created. In the end it will be very plain but pleasing for HTPC use.

I can understand if you are not comfortable, but the only way to win is to play! Yes, there is lots of competition, but it takes more than knock-your-socks-off good looks to have a successful theme. I have submitted quite a few themes over the last few years and I can find quite a bit of fault in every one of them. I can proudly say that quite a few of them have proven popular despite any misgivings I may have regarding them. If the theme requires too much effort to make work for an end-user, it will not necessarily win on its looks alone.

Did you configure your new MAMEUI64 install with the paths to your ROMS? Did you setup the paths in GameEX to the new executable?

There may have been some dust on one or more of the fan blades that came off or the shift in position aligned a fan in such a way that the balance was better even if any dust build-up is still present. You may want to check that out any ways and spray some compressed air (PC off of course) and vacuum it out.

Why? You drank a toast to someone lost. Nothing wrong because you didn't partake of his favorite drink. The fact that you cared to show up and be with others and remember him is what matters. [We now return you to the thread already in progress...which was long since hijacked into utter silliness about 10 posts ago]

MAME32 is now known as MAMEUI and has 32-bit and 64-bit versions depending upon your OS version (you can use the 32-bit version with Win 7 x64 successfully but why not take advantage of a 64-bit OS?). The video is obviously dated, but the process is every bit the same.

You might want to consider using something like xpadder. It is only about $9.99 for a lifetime license including updates, has excellent support and many users here have lots of experience with it in use with GameEx.

I noticed that your custominput.ini file has the following under : Notice that there is nothing here for GLOBALESCAPEKEYCOMBO.. Your JoystickExit=4|5|6|7 does show. Not sure if this is the problem but please try the attached file and rename it to custominput.ini and see if it works with GLOBALESCAPEKEYCOMBO=4|5|6|7 . custominput.ini.txt

The great thing is that it wouldn't have to mix the air, just pass air through tubes within the refrigerated air and return to the heat source in a closed or nearly closed loop. Well the second great thing. The first would be beer!

Would be cool if you could use the keg cooler to cool the CPU and GPU as well...

Yeah, might need you to provide us with a copy of your gameex.ini file as the pics are hard to read.

Just be mindful of your cabling inside. How it lays in the vertical position may not remain when on it's side and can block or deflect air flow within the case. Cable stays or zip ties are good for ensuring that they stay where you want them.

Can you go into the Input settings (via Setup Wizard) and tell us what your settings are, please?

Are you having problems with the sound via the emulator when you run it outside of GameEx?

One thing you will notice is the X and Y coordinates as well as the length and width boxes. Likely you will need to adjust these, save the changes, test, load, adjust, test, until you get it where you like it.

If one wav file is bad it will impact all sound. You will need to pull & replace one file at a time to determine which one is suspect.