Draco1962

Wha VM client are you using? VMs are generally OK for most things but they tend to be finicky with regards to video adn sound card drivers. I have had best luck with VMWare Player. The main problem I see is video drivers as they are not updated as often as they are in the native OS on an actual PC. You must also be able to "share" your PC's drives with the virtual machine and the C:\ path in the VM is not the same as the host PC. This will require you to map a drive to the location on the host PC and will likely be assigned drive E: or later (D: being reserved for the host pc CD-ROM drive or clone drive).

I checked out the links that GreatFlash posted and the pics are great! Again, the offer stands if you have any questions regarding Gimp. I think you will find it much more powerful than paint.net and, for free, it can't be beat. I am still learning myself but they do have a great online help secition and there are quite a few places where people that use it have created blogs and tutorials - that's how I picked up a lot of what I learned. There are quite a few great images found within the various user themes and downloads thrown together over the years. Some not so great and some you just have to dig like Hell to find them on the Web. You have a very ecclectic selection from what I have seen over the last few months and I am sure that there is a need out there for them!

Have you tried installing your programs within another path? I use Win 7 and found this was necessary due to UAC and installing to paths that Windows recognizes as protected so that I do not have to Run as Administrator.

The fine folks at Rogue Synapse have created a fully functional Last Starfighter game based upon the "training" game featured in "The Last Starfighter." It has been available for a while, but I thought I would put a link here for anyone wanting to add to their cabs. For those of you running Vista or Windows 7, you will need to "Run as Administrator" to install the program. Additionally, you will run into an error due to missing d3drm.dll - this file is no longer provided beyond XP. You can download a copy here and simply copy it to your Last Star Fighter game directory. I have to admit to being blown away by their recreation of the cab used in the movie (the original was destroyed in a studio warehouse fire that was also responsible for destroying the original "Back to the Future" outdoor set and robotic "King Kong"). They have plans, marquees, sideart, fonts, etc. for anyone wanting to create a unique game cab. They have also created "Space Paranoids" based upon the game written by "Flynn" in "TRON!" It is designed to run in a cabinet with a MAME type interface via iPAC accoridng to the site. They have also provided some information on the cabinet for the game along with side art and marquee Enjoy!

didn't have one - found one, cleaned it up a bit...

Yeah, what Adultery said.

I liked this one a little better .. and if you go back to my original TRS-80 response, I cleaned and center cropped the image.

TRS-80... .:.EDIT - Cleaned up and cropped to center

Some pics for those emulating the Atari XL/XE 8-bit Computers...

There are quite a few tutorials for the program. The main thing to remember is most images are single layer, so you will have to add an alpha channel for the transparency. There are several selection tools that are quite useful - fuzzy select (great for the initial croping of the areas surrounding an image (if a solid color), Magic Lasso whic allows doe more free-form trimming, and color select (great if there is a a lot of one color to be rid of - but have to be careful if colors in image are close to colors surrounding. Once you get a handle on it, cleanup is relatively fast with a good image with decent contrast between subject and background. Will be glad to help as much as I can. Celly uses Photoshop (as does Vsilvalopes) and both are quite skilled from what I have seen so I am sure either will jump in occasionally. I was going to use Photoshop, but have been on an open-source kick as of late (migrating from MS Office to OpenOffice. I won't go so far as converting to Linux (I'm a Microsoft kinda guy and used to dealing with it - warts and all).

Tom - I have been tinkering with using AVI files in place of a logo or background and have encountered a few crashes. The AVI does not display (a black box appears instead). It is happening intermittently and not generating an error log as such. The AVI files will run with other apps with no problems. Followign is the error message generated by Windows: Description: Stopped working Problem signature: Problem Event Name: APPCRASH Application Name: GameEx.exe Application Version: 1.0.0.0 Application Timestamp: 4c216bdf Fault Module Name: cdgvid.ax Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0 Fault Module Timestamp: 4194dd28 Exception Code: c0000005 Exception Offset: 0000250b OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.48 Locale ID: 1033 I am running Win 7 Pro - 64-bit with latest updates on a Quad Core with 8 GB RAM and nVidia GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB with latest drivers. GameEx version is 11.07. Let me know if I can provide you with anything else that may be of help.

Here ya go - png file with alpha! BTW, I am still using GIMP (Open source equivalent to Photoshop). I have barely scratched the surface of what it is capable. Comes in both 32 and 64-bit flavors and is free!

I like how you think - maybe a GameEx screensaver is what I was actually thinking of. I haven't seen much recent action in the MAME screensaver forum. It would be nice to have one that features (on a screensaver scale, nmind you) the flexibility to select from MAME and other emus to match those that we run through GameEx.

Will the MAME Screensaver be updated to take advantage of the changes within GameEx regarding DirectDraw?

Once again, you pull one out of the hat! Thanks!

Here is another one, different perspective with controllers and tape deck.

Aaron - I have an idea and it may not work. First, OS ar you using? Windows 7 can use Libraries to join separate resource locations under one folder. For example, I have two folders under my Videos Libaries that are on the same drive, yet different paths. If you right-click on the Library, then left-clcik on Propertie, there is an option to add another folder - it doesn't have to be on the same drive as the other. It may be possible to point to the Library and have a single point of access to both. The only issue that I can see is is that there isn't a distinct path to the Library. This might be an ehancement request unless someone know how to set this up in GameEx.

Hmmm... how much does he earn in tips?

Were you able to resolve?

Aaron - If you don't mind my asking, what is the rationale behind having two folders of the same name\path on different logical drives? I do not beleive it is possible to have them show as one folder because of this.

You got that right! I must admit a dangerous fondness for the Megajuana Steak Chimichanga from Tijuana Flats. Not sure if that has anything to do with Adventurevision Image cleanup...

Anytime! Would have done a better clean-up, but there was this huge burrito screaming my name...

I wasn't able to quickly do anything with the image you had provided, but I found another I was able to edit. Let me know if this will work (It may need some minor cleanup in the alhpa-channel areas. Was trying to edit and eat at the same time).

Another option - configure automatic updates to notify you instead of download and install. That way, you can select which updates you wis to install and deselect those you do not.

I have it and sent the zipped theme to the themes link - ithe upload completed, but I do not see it in the list afterwards. Perhaps because my email address does not match to the username for Vslivalopes? Well, I stand corrected, it is now showing!