Geronimo

As I wrote, I'm dealing with up to 5 or 6 PDFs per game, so using the extra paths is not a feasible workaround. I'd like to know if GameEx supports multiple artwork files per type now, and if not, if such a feature is planned.

Back at working with my GameEx setup after a long pause, so please forgive me if I'm not up to speed (; . Is it possible now to have GameEx show multiple files per artwork category? Specifically, I have "converted" a collection intended for another frontend to GameEx standards. The collection has a few games with more than one PDF manual in it (up to about 5 PDFs), all of which are relevant. I could of course combine the PDFs into a single file, but it would be much neater if GameEx would let me choose which PDF to view.

Looking nice! Incidentally, I was thinking about how to integrate GameBase data & extras into GameEx just the other day. A few question: - do I have to have GameBase installed for this to work? - how are the emulators launched? Are they launched directly from GameEx, or will GameEx launch GameBase, which in turn launches the emulator? - will all GameBase extras be visible in GameEx? For instance, many games have multiple screenshots, or additional material like walkthroughs etc. . Will I be able to see all this stuff in GameEx? - do I need to change the directory structure of the GameBase files (or rename them) in order to have the integration? I'm not a big GameBase fan, but it'd be nice if GameEx would use the data "as is", as that'd leave the option of using GameBase itself. Also, I'm curious about how the integration is implemented. I presume you're using the GameBase .mdb file directly as a data source, right? Or is the GameBase info imported into/converted to a GameEx mdb? GoTheBunnies: http://tinyurl.com/2u39xbg

You can also setup a controller "inside" MAME, with MAME functionality, by editing "ctrlr" files. The system is quite powerful and flexible and allows setting specific configs for specific games (by ROM name). You can basically map everything the way you like it, including UI commands and hotkeys. Here's a simple example cfg for my 360 controller i made a long time ago: <mameconfig version="10"> <system name="default"> <input> <port type="UI_CONFIGURE"> <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_TAB OR JOYCODE_1_BUTTON9 JOYCODE_1_BUTTON1</newseq> </port> <port type="UI_ON_SCREEN_DISPLAY"> <newseq type="standard">JOYCODE_1_BUTTON9 JOYCODE_1_BUTTON2</newseq> </port> <port type="UI_LEFT"> <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_LEFT OR JOYCODE_1_LEFT OR J1_HAT_SWITCH_L</newseq> </port> <port type="UI_RIGHT"> <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_RIGHT OR JOYCODE_1_RIGHT OR J1_HAT_SWITCH_R</newseq> </port> <port type="UI_DOWN"> <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_DOWN OR JOYCODE_1_DOWN OR J1_HAT_SWITCH_D</newseq> </port> <port type="UI_UP"> <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_UP OR JOYCODE_1_UP OR J1_HAT_SWITCH_U</newseq> </port> <port type="UI_SELECT"> <newseq type="standard">JOYCODE_1_BUTTON1</newseq> </port> <port type="P1_JOYSTICK_RIGHT"> <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_RIGHT OR JOYCODE_1_RIGHT OR J1_HAT_SWITCH_R</newseq> </port> <port type="P1_JOYSTICK_LEFT"> <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_LEFT OR JOYCODE_1_LEFT OR J1_HAT_SWITCH_L</newseq> </port> <port type="P1_JOYSTICK_DOWN"> <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_DOWN OR JOYCODE_1_DOWN OR J1_HAT_SWITCH_D</newseq> </port> <port type="P1_JOYSTICK_UP"> <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_UP OR JOYCODE_1_UP OR J1_HAT_SWITCH_U</newseq> </port> <port type="P1_BUTTON1"> <newseq type="standard">JOYCODE_1_BUTTON1</newseq> </port> <port type="P1_BUTTON2"> <newseq type="standard">JOYCODE_1_BUTTON2</newseq> </port> <port type="P1_BUTTON3"> <newseq type="standard">JOYCODE_1_BUTTON3</newseq> </port> <port type="P1_BUTTON4"> <newseq type="standard">JOYCODE_1_BUTTON4</newseq> </port> <port type="P1_BUTTON5"> <newseq type="standard">JOYCODE_1_BUTTON5</newseq> </port> <port type="P1_BUTTON6"> <newseq type="standard">JOYCODE_1_BUTTON6</newseq> </port> <port type="START1"> <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_1 OR JOYCODE_1_BUTTON8</newseq> </port> <port type="COIN1"> <newseq type="standard">KEYCODE_5 OR JOYCODE_1_BUTTON7</newseq> </port> </input> </system> </mameconfig>

Yeah, i've let setup download everything when installing the new version this morning. Is there a way to check which version of the viewer i have installed? Maybe it's an overwrite problem or something like that. If you have a CRC or MD5 i could checksum my file.

OK, here's two logs. What i did: copied the offending .txt (3D Pool.txt) to the "normal" manuals directory, because i thought the problem might be connected to the file being in an extra artwork path. Then tried to view the file in GameEx. The log for this session is "log01.txt". As you can see i get a "Error: eBook/Game Manual viewer not installed." message. Then tried to view a scanned PDF manual, which worked perfectly well. The log for this sessions is "log02.txt". Weird isn't it? (; Oh, and i've installed the latest GameEx prior to testing, of course. LOG.RAR

I'm seeing this too, sometimes even when starting GameEx. GameEx will try to "maximize" its Window and suddenly minimizes itself to the taskbar, without displaying anything. When that happens I usually end the GameEx task and try running it again, which works after a few attempts (or after enabling windowed mode in the config file).

Here's an exmaple, the same file used to create the PDF in the first post. The file had Unix linebreaks originally but has been converted to DOS linebreaks by UltraEdit. GameEx doesn't display the file in either format. 3D Pool.txt

Weird. The text file i've been testing with is < 79 chars in width because it's designed to be viewed in a terminal window. Nothing special there. I've tried a few different encodings (UTF-8, ANSII/ASCII) but GameEx just won't display the file. Ninja Rygar, would you happen to have an example of one file that shows in GameEx and one that doesn't? I'm a lazy person and maybe you can provide examples without too much trouble (; . Anyway, this text thing is one matter. What about the other one, the PDF rendering problems? Is this something that can be/will be fixed in a future GameEx version?

I've downloaded the most recent GameEx and let it download all the components during setup, including the manual viewer. GameEx still won't show the text file though.

I'd like to *bump* this topic because it probably describes a GameEx bug. Tom, any comments on the behaviour i've described?

It does?! I was assuming text files aren't supported because the help texts in the config app mention images and PDFs explicitly. Anyway, i've just tried with a simple ASCII TXT file in the artwork path (by exchanging one of the former PDF files with a text file) and GameEx doesn't display it. The path is configured as a "custom art path". I can see a navigational entry for the doc, but when i select it all i get is the "selected" sound effect but nothing else happens. Do i have to configure anything for this to work? Btw, thanks for the speedy reply Tom (; .

I was looking for a way to integrate text manuals, docs and guides/walkthoughs into GameEx. As GameEx doesn't support text files the only solution was to convert the text to PDF. I finally found a tool called "Free Text To PDF Converter v1.5" which is freeware and can be used from the shell. The conversion works very well and the resulting PDFs look great in FoxIt Reader and Acrobat Reader. The PDFs are not rendered correctly at all in GameEx though. The rendering looks horrible and makes certain parts plain unreadable. Tom, could you please look into this? I'm attaching an example PDF, please let me know if you need more info. 3D Pool.pdf

I've found one instance where a game is missing from the gameslist when "merge" is active. I've created a number of CMD files (batches) for starting WHDLoad games. Created a new emulator with the advanced setup app, pointed the ROM dir to where the batches are stored, set the file spec to "*.cmd", selected the "[PC] Commodore Amiga.mdb" database and activated merging. There's three batches for games in the "Abandoned Places" series (and lots more for other games of course) in my ROM dir: Abandoned Places.cmd Abandoned Places (German).cmd Abandoned Places 2.cmd "Abandoned Places (German)" isn't displayed in the game list, no matter what i try. I've deleted all "EMU_*.*" files in "c:\GameEx\DATA\" in order to force GameEx to rebuild its indexes/caches. The game still doesn't show up. I expected it to be merged with "Abandoned Places", but it doesn't show up in the main game list and the details page for "Abandoned Places". Happens with the latest GameEx version (10.72) as well. Renamed the file to "Abandoned Places (Ger).cmd", deleted the index/cache files, and it still doesn't show up at all. Same with "Abandoned Places (DE).cmd" and "Abandoned Places (D).cmd". Renamed the files to "Abandoned Places - A Time for Heroes.cmd" and "Abandoned Places - A Time for Heroes (German).cmd", as that's how the game is named in the mdb - still not showing up in the game list. Looks like GameEx doesn't like this game (; . This problem is rather unsettling. The number of WHDLoad games is not very large so it's relatively easy to spot missings. But what about large TOSEC sets with thousands of files? Please tell me if you need more information. I can provide the emulator config and all batches if it helps in identifying the issue. EDIT: spelling

This is a very nice feature indeed, especially for those huge TOSEC collections with their multitude of alternate versions. I've seen some problems with grouping ROMs together, resulting in an empty "gameslist" (the screen where you are supposed to choose a single ROM). I couldn't yet identify a pattern that creates the problem though, i'm going to report on this when i can supply more info and examples. A small issue i've noticed: the "[a]" tag, which is commonly used to denote an "alternate", is resolved to the "Australia" region by GameEx. I believe the agreed-upon standard is to have country/region tags enclosed by round brackets (-> "(" and ")") and more "special" stuff in square brackets (-> "[" and "]"). Tom, what are your thoughts on this? Would you change the current behavious in a future GameEx version? And a suggestion: how about showing the number of ROMs in a group in the games list? Something like "<ROM Name> (5)" or "<ROM Name> (5 items)" would be most useful.