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I'm totally shooting from the hip here (I'm not exactly a theme wizard), but I'm guessing it has to do with the version of the theme. For some reason I think I upgraded the default theme to a version 4 theme at one point (with no ill effects).

You have to navigate up one level to the general Spesoft Forums (Upper left in your screen shot) in order to see the News sub-forums. Spesoft Forums > PinballX FWIW, GameEx [NEWS] release threads have never been part of the GameEx sub-forums either. GameEx has never even had it's own special sub-forum dedicated to release threads (although to be fair in the case of GameEx there is generally a separate thread appearing in the GameEx - General forum). There's been a bit of forum reorganization lately which is the reason for the transition.

Allow me to direct your attention here my good man: 1.73 Released (Or if your clicking hand is all out of GAS I shall quoth the release notes right here)

A Ha! I'm not sure I follow you completely, but if the disc images need to retain their current naming structure then I would recommend using a map file to display these games within GameEx. Basically a map file maps a file name (i.e. "game.iso") to a display name (i.e. "Super Smash Brothers Melee"). There are a number of tools that can assist you in the creation of map files, but in this particular case there may still be a good deal of manual intervention involved. Take a look at one (or both) of the following: (apologies to out super talented development team if I've missed any): Map File Maker Map File Magician Good Luck!

I'm with you; if I were in your shoes I'd probably go with the second option. I think the cons you listed under option 2 have less impact than the cons listed under option 1. And it grants you more freedom to do additional stuff in the future, (like a plugin interface between GameEx and the standalone version). If I were branching out on a project like this I would try to package up most of the common functional bits into a DLL so in the future you could utilize common static methods across disparate code modules. Just a thought. I'm currently blocked from reaching retroachievements.org, but now I'm curious to check out their API as well! If it turned out that the API itself was not geared towards exposing achievement lists (which would frankly be a bit surprising) in a common (XML?) format, it would be extremely useful if your application was able to do so. The other super-duper sweet thing about this is that it affords the opportunity to cross-pollinate achievements from all sorts of systems and pull them into a singular interface (essentially for any system that allows you to pull down achievement data). Say ... like on Steam for instance. That's also where I think it might be beneficial to develop a "common" XML layout for various achievements, since the format of Steam achievements will likely be different than retroachievements, which in turn will likely be different than other systems as well. That way if Tom wanted to display achievements directly in GameEx (via your DLL for instance) he would only need to worry about trying to parse one common XML layout rather than dozens. And one other thing ... allow me to say that YOU ARE DA MAN! I have amazing respect and admiration for your willingness to dive into a project like this and go for the throat. You rule.

I love this idea! The only potential issue I can see with this is that traditionally GameEx takes a "hands off" approach to whatever the emulator is doing at any given time. Due to the fact that the emulator itself is "in charge" of tracking achievements (since only the emulator knows what's going on with the game at any given time), GameEx is somewhat divorced from that process. In order to manage this there would need to be some sort of "interface" between GameEx and the specialty emulator(s) tracking the achievements (possibly something along the lines of HiToText or something). What I'm saying is that the interface would need to be built before GameEx could do anything with it (again much like HiToText), and that this functionality would be very dependent on emulator functionality beyond the control of GameEx. As a result (assuming that the interface were part of the GameEx core) GameEx would potentially need to be updated every time the emulator received an update. This sort of thing gets ugly in that GameEx would be effectively beholden to the release cycle of an external project. Due to the factors above I think it would be better managed in the form of a plugin rather than as part of the GameEx core. Now what would be sweet is if Tom were to put appropriate method hooks into GameEx so that any variety of "achievement plugins" could feed a common format of achievement data into GameEx which would in turn be displayed in GameEx. The beauty of a model like this is that it opens it up possibilities for aspiring developers to develop any multitude of achievement plugins so long as generated achievement data where passed in a common format (... like HiToText ... I sound like a broken record don't I! ). So with something like this I could see my Steam Achievements, right next to my Retro Achievements, right next to say ... my High Score Competition achievements or something (assuming there were plugins available for all of that). And best of all GameEx doesn't have to "know about" the development cycles of any of those other projects (Naturally the plugins would ... although at least in that case we're talking about microcosms of very specific purpose driven development) Going even further to the down the rabbit hole, assuming achievement data was in a standardized format, it could also be passed into GameEx Online in the form of a web service! (or whatevs) Whoa ... sorry I really went on there! You really got my imagination working there Han! That's my two cents at any rate, and this is (naturally) all pie-in-the-sky talk. I'd love to hear what Tom had to say on the subject!

I think this is a wonderful idea Riffman! Just like Draco mentioned, please feel free to let us know if you'd like any assistance with moving your information into the standardized guide layout. Thanks so much for your contributions.

I suspect a matching utility will not be of much use here if the disc images really are named "game.iso", "GAFE01.wbfs", and the like. There's just not enough of a "handle" there to find a good match I should think. Like everyone else I would strongly endorse learning a ROM management tool such as ClrMamePro or ROMCenter. The obvious benefit here is that all your games will conform to standard naming conventions via an automated tool. The less obvious benefit (but infinitely more valuable IMO) is that through the use of the tool, you can rest assured that your disc images are valid and not corrupted in any way (this last one is especially important for disc images). For new(ish) users I tend to recommend ROMCenter. It’s a great tool to have in your arsenal. Here are a couple of tutorials to help get you started with ROMCenter: Romcenter 3 tutorial ROMCenter Wiki Another great tool to be aware of is the venerable ClrMamePro. ClrMamePro is not nearly as user friendly as ROMCenter, but it’s got a lot more history behind it, and often times you’ll see the grizzled old emulation veterans using CMP over ROMCenter. Here’s the complete guide to using ClrMamePro. Good luck man!

In order to disable the preview video, just remove the video from ..\GameEx\MEDIA\STEAM\VIDEO (it will be named according to the numeric Steam game ID). If the problem persists, there may be some helpful information to be seen in your log and/or runitgame.bat.

Check out the following settings on the Input Settings screen in the Setup Wizard (the last one is the most direct answer to your question but the other ones will obviously have an impact as well)

And the sound wizard strikes again! Thanks for all your contributions gStav.

There are at least two potential answers to this question. Adultery's Xpadder plugin supports Steam games, so if all you're looking for is the Xpadder fix, he's got you covered. If you need to get more complicated, you still wouldn't need to create a separate emulator entry. Each Steam game can have it's own wrapper. I believe that all of the wrappers currently available for Steam games were written in AutoHotKey. Being that GameEx actually runs compiled executables generated from the wrapper scripts you could actually use whatever scripting language you like so long as the resultant script can be compiled as an executable (I believe you mentioned at one point that you were a Python wizard? ... actually after having typed it, "Python Wizard" will also hence forth be the name of my non-existent metal band). Generally the scripts themselves aren't terribly complicated being that they primarily automate timed mouse clicks and key presses, but really the skis the limit. In a nutshell you would need create a compiled executable named the same as the numeric Steam ID for the game you're running. You would then add that executable to the GameEx\MEDIA\STEAM\WRAPPERS directory, at which point GameEx would auto-magically start running that wrapper along side the associated game. All of the wrappers are also included in their uncompliled "script form" so you can look at those for examples and inspiration if you like. If you still really want to make a separate emulator for Steam (you don't ), this old chestnut has a lot of great information. Noted! Also if you're interested feel free to join the GameEx group on Steam!

Congratulations you two! Thanks for all your contributions, and thanks for being a great part of our community!

Hi wahoo Certainly a weird issue. Just out of curiosity, what happens if you reverse your previous test? Take one of the non-working ads for Atari Lynx and place it in the TVAdPath directory of an emulator that does play the Ads properly (with whatever renaming needs to happen). Does that cause the Lynx ad to play properly by any chance?

Just to be sure, you mentioned that you originally had your games GoodMerged, but then undid the operation correct? So at this point each individual ROM is either in its own .zip or is just hanging out there on its own (like with a .pce extension or whatever)? If that’s the case you’ll probably want to change the Zip/7-Zip/GoodMerge/RAR setting from Yes to No (It’s listed as GamesIn7Zips=True in your Emulator Config). That may have an impact. You may also want to have a play with setting up a ROM filter (possibly setting it to *.pce or whatever your ROM extension is). You could also probably change the Scan Sub Folders setting (listed as RomsInFolders=True in your Emu Config) from Yes to No unless you actually need it. Does each ROM have it's own directory by any chance? If not you won't need that setting. Lastly the Merge Sets setting (listed as MergeSets=True in your Emu config) may be playing a role here. If you want all your ROMs to appear in a single flattened list you'll want to change that to false. Otherwise GameEx will start grouping ROMs by country and version into a sub-menu structure. I really like grouping in this fashion, but not everyone does. Try the above settings first to see whether they have an impact. If that doesn't work we'll proceed to the next step.

Basically MAWS acted as a searchable aggregate data source for MAME roms. So it cross-referenced nplayers.ini, catver.ini, controls.ini, mame.exe -listxml, etc. It was also a source of artwork, as well as a pretty robust ratings system. So while it wasn't necessarily an essential tool, it could sure come in handy when you absolutely had to have the list of all side-scrolling beat-em-ups, supporting 8-way joysticks, and 4 players! Like I said, not exactly indispensable tool, but it could certainly be a fascinating way to kill some time. AFAIK It wasn't actually a lack of community interest that brought MAWS down, it was the fact that it apparently had a deeply embedded security flaw which had gone previously undiscovered until a group of malicious hackers brought the site down on the back of that exploit. Apparently the MAWS admin elected to take it completely offline rather than start over from scratch. There have been other tools that have done similar things, but nothing to my knowledge that filled the exact same niche as MAWS. At any rate I'm certainly glad that a talented developer has decided to pick up the torch.

To me it sounds like HideOS.exe might be interfering here (i.e it may be stealing focus as the foreground window in the way that Adultery describes). The Alt+Tab idea will likely be a good test of this theory.

These machines of ours actually play games!? Why am I just finding out about this now!?

Happy birthday Stigzler! Thanks for being a part of this community, and I hope your birthday is EPIC!! Maybe you'll get to actually play a game!

For that you can refer right here. Have fun man!

Taito Type X games ran on a Windows XP platform, and the story goes that the arcade hardware consisted of off the shelf PC components. So theoretically these games run natively under Windows (rather than requiring emulation of any sort). But the march of time stops for no man and as XP becomes more and more a relic of the past, these games become more and more difficult to run (although this is not a system I run in all honesty). This thread contains some good information both on the platform and on running the games.

@Riffman81: Han and Tempest pretty much nailed it. GameEx Evolution is a full on "sequel" to GameEx, much moreso than any incremental update. Several key features of GameEx are being rebuilt from the ground up and as such GameEx Evolution will represent a new frontier for GameEx. Having said that, I can personally attest to Tom's unwavering dedication to insure that GameEx remains the most easily configurable frontend out there. Working in close contact with GameEx users means that Tom has a very good vision of what makes GameEx so great. You can rest assured that many of the features we all love about GameEx will remain true to the philosophy GameEx has always followed. The more things change the more they stay the same! In terms of current gen theme compatibility, I'll defer to the man himself: Hey on a personal note I really enjoyed the GameEx Evolution writeup you did for The3rdLevel.net! Nice job!

Oh sure that's an excellent point, I had read it the other way. Well slavearm it looks like you're covered for whatever it is you're trying to accomplish here.

When you received the email from GameEx.com notifying you of the creation of your GameEx card it should have included a registry key (mine is called 966.gxkey). Running that registry key is the trick to linking your GameEx card to your installation of GameEx.