nullPointer

The loss of MAWS and the search for a suitable replacement has come up a few times in the GameEx forums, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to share a project I've been following with great interest. Ids over on the BYOAC forums has developed a standalone desktop version of MAWS that has progressed to a point of being a very valuable tool to keep in your emulation arsenal. In some ways being a standalone app grants MAWLER advantages that were impossible even for the original version of MAWS (first and foremost being that MAWLER is not vulnerable to security flaws over the web! ) This project is still under active development, so it can only get better from here! Don't be afraid to let him know if MAWLER turns out to be something useful to you! Project Thread

Nice work Crylen! If I had to pick between those two images I'd pick the second one being that the castle background draws my eye in a bit more. It's going to be cool to see where you go with this one!

Great update Tom and Adultery! The updates to the Game Info and Xpadder plugins are absolutely massive, and it goes without saying that Steam integration is one of my favorite aspects of GameEx. Thanks Guys!

Sorry for the tardiness of my reply here. Turns out it's taking longer to get back home to my gaming rig than I expected. Having said that I know for a fact that the configuration in the post quoted below is a working config for nullDC (without need for a loader). Try starting from there and see how it goes you. For the purposes of this discussion you're mainly interested in the command line itself (and possibly the ROM filter depending on what type of disc images are in your Dreamcast set):

They all have their own path settings on the MAME Settings screen in the Setup Wizard.

It sounds like you're trying to setup MAME as a "standard" emulator. GameEx has several features dedicated especially to MAME, but you need to configure it through the MAME Settings section in the Setup Wizard. If you believe you have done that, but are still experiencing a problem please upload a copy of your GameEx.ini, and we can investigate further. This thread contains instructions on how to do that. Thanks!

I don't think nullDC even needs a loader at this point. You may need to update to a more recent version of the emulator, but you shouldn't need a loader. It can be a bit tricky to configure though. I'm away from my gaming rig ATM, but I'll post a working config for nullDC when I get home unless someone beats me to it in the meantime.

I'm gonna be honest with you guys. Greatflash is kind of a hero of mine. But maybe not for the reasons you think. Q: Is it because he and Ben write kickass games together like some kind of Starsky and Hutch of the coding world? A: Well sorta, but no. Q: Is it because he's readily fluent in Assembly language A: No. I think Flash and Ada Lovelace may have written the assembly language together on a loom. (But I might be thinking of Linda Lovelace) Q: Is it because Flash singlehandedly heads up the GameEx Database project, doing 99.99999% of the work, and enabling all of us to enjoy one of the cooolest features of GameEx? A: Yes absolutely. The man is a database animal! But wait there's more! Q: Is it because he gets interviewed in cool retrogaming features? A: That's undoubtedly pretty cool, but no. Q: Is it the cool accent? A: Also yes, but at least I can do bad imitation of that. It's the name. It's pretty brilliant really, because hey if I ever flashed someone I would hope that they it considered to be great; a moment that completely redefined their mundane and drab existence. A truly great flash. Everyone I hope you'll take a moment to join me in wishing a marvelous birthday to our very own Greatflash!

I'm thinking we're on to something here. I actually just installed two new games on Steam last night (thanks Humble Bundle!), and those two games are not displaying in GameEx. It would be good to get additional verification of this from someone that has Steam working in GameEx (i.e. make sure Steam is updated and then install a game from their library to see if GameEx picks it up), but yeah I'm guessing Steam made changes to the way it handles config.vdf. Gabe what have you done to us!!

Now I think we may be getting to the bottom of it. My config.vdf file has a node called "apps" and under that node it contains entries for each game I've installed under Steam. Like so: I wonder if Steam has changed the way they store and parse that data but not bothered to change legacy installations? At any rate, for the time being GameEx needs the "apps" section present in config.vdf in order to parse game information. At this point I'm thinking Tom may need to have a look at this ...

My Steam pass has all sorts of special chars in it too, so that part shouldn't matter. The login information you enter in GameEx should be whatever you use to actually login to Steam. But just to clarify, config.vdf is present and it has nodes for each of your games under the "apps" node?

Oops I neglected to mention something up there. screenshots.vdf is the way GameEx detects the games you've imported into Steam (which totally makes sense why you wouldn't have one). For just regular ol' Steam games check for the following file: ..\Steam\config\config.vdf I believe it's actually that file that GameEx uses to build the bulk of the list. If that file is present it may be worth trying the following steps: Close Steam then rename ..\Steam\config\config.vdf to config.old Open Steam again and Steam will create a new config.vdf Then open GameEx to see if anything has changed in the meantime

I would say that the easiest way to accomplish what you would describe would be to delve into the world of custom menus (although depending on your goal you may not be able to configure it precisely as you envision, you should be able to get a close approximation). DazzleHP wrote a really nice guide on the subject which can be found in the link.

So there's a file in your Steam installation directory called screenshots.vdf. Mine is located under: .. Steam\userdata\88640038\760\screenshots.vdf But I'm not sure that location is universal. Basically GameEx uses that file to build steamdata.ini. It actually would be helpful to know if you can find that file in your Steam directory, and if so what it contains. If GameEx can't find that file, there may be something different about your Steam installation.

That's part of the reason we ask to see the log. If there was an error happenning with GameEx, the log would show it. That's why we keep asking questions about factors external to GameEx, as GameEx seems to be running fine according to the available information. @Adultery & Draco: Any chance this could be some kind of weird caching issue?

Well ... not really. That file lists the Steam games in your collection, but I believe it needs to be created by GameEx. It's kind of like the map file that GameEx uses to list your Steam games and associated information. If GameEx isn't finding your Steam games in the first place I doubt that manually creating steamdata.ini will do much to change that.

I wonder if UAC is screwing with it due to Steam being installed under Program Files? I've got mine installed to a custom location, but surely someone else is running it under the default location that has it working? If you are looking at moving your Steam installation it's not really difficult but it's also not as straight forward as it sounds. See here.

Absolutely amazing Adultery. I really don't know how you do it, but I'm glad that you do. Thanks for all the amazing work on this plugin!

Yes that predictive text thing happys to me all the time too.

I don't believe you need any specific version of IE installed. When you're inside of GameEx are you looking under Emulated Games/Steam Games? That's the default location for the Steam list, and it is a bit unusual since Steam is not an emulator and doesn't run emulated games ... but there you go. I could certainly see that throwing someone for a loop if they didn't know where to look. If you don't have that list present in GameEx would you mind checking your GameEx installation directory for the following file and posting it here? .. GameEx\DATA\steamdata.ini Thanks! EDIT: The weird part is that your log looks like this for Steam initialization: 10:56:37.1 1/11/2014: Checking if Steam enabled10:56:37.1 1/11/2014: Steam is installed correctlyWhereas mine looks like this: 14:48:56.5 1/11/2014: Checking if Steam enabled14:48:56.5 1/11/2014: Steam is installed correctly14:48:56.5 1/11/2014: Directory does not exist: e:\\steam\\steamapps\\nullpointerx\\source sdk base14:48:56.5 1/11/2014: Directory does not exist: e:\\steam\\steamapps\\nullpointerx\\source sdk base 200714:48:56.8 1/11/2014: Found: E:\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\Half-Life 214:48:56.8 1/11/2014: Found Steam game. Steam enabled.I'm not so much worried about my log not finding the SDK packages, but the fact that your log is neither finding nor even looking for any Steam games seems like a critical difference. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the way Steam itself is configured on your machine.

Hi Slavearm and Welcome to the GameEx forums! Sorry to hear about the difficulties you've been having. GameEx is generally regarded as one of the easier frontends to set up, so let's see if we can't set you right with some of these issues eh!? 1. I have never once downloaded an emulator through the Setup Wizard. I appreciate that the feature is there, and it is probably a boon for new users, but I'd just as soon download my own directly from the project page of any given emulator. Purely a personal preferance, but it sounds like you're in the same boat. Having said that, it should be super easy to configure this way in GameEx. Just add the emulated system from the emulator selection screen in the setup wizard(and potentially select the matching emulator), and just move directly to the Emulator Configuration screen (without opting to download anything). So long as you select the proper working path for your pre-existing emulator it should work just fine. If you're having issues with your game lists you could always just use a map file to configure the lists as you please. 2. As far as Steam goes it's pretty much just as Adultery describes. Is Steam running when you start GameEx? Are you signed into your Steam account when GameEx is running? Most importantly do you have Steam games installed on the same machine that GameEx is running on? Steam functionality is a registered feature, but you mentioned that you are in fact using a registered version of GameEx, so that shouldn't be the issue. 3. Custom Menus. If I could offer a humble piece of advice here, I'd get GameEx up and running before I even considered implementing custom menus. Quite frankly it's an additional layer of complexity that you don't need right now, and you're probably creating more headaches for yourself in the process. We'll get there, but for now let's take some baby steps! Let's get some of these other issues in the "win column" before we worry about those whiz-bang custom menus eh? 4. I'm gonna hold you to that cartwheel thing. In the meantime let's focus on one item from your list at a time. Pick one and we'll go from there!

Instructions for catching a polar bear: Using an ice auger and a pike drill a hole in the polar ice pack. The hole should eventually be ~5ft in diameter.Take a bag of frozen peas and line the edge of the hole with a single row of peas.When a polar bear comes to take a pea kick him directly in the ice hole.

Glad to hear you got it sorted Beaps73! Yeah typically if a CUE file is present then that's what you'll want to mount. I had forgotten that several (most?) NeoGeo Cd sets use that crazy CUE/ISO/Mp3/wav format. Now I'm curious whether the Redump set is formatted like that. Anyone know off hand? I'm unable to view the Redump site at my current location.

In most cases with disc based emulators you need to manually configure the emulator itself to boot from the applicable disc drive, otherwise it will just sit there waiting for you to load a game manually. I’m away from my gaming rig ATM, but does CDZ have such an option? Have you pointed it at your DaemonTools Drive? In some cases this can also be handled via a command line switch, but I'm not certain whether CDZ has such an option. (I use NeoRaine for NeoGeo CD emulation, and I haven't even done that for a long time).

Right now the best advice I can offer is to request more information about the nature of the problem. Please do as Draco suggests and post a full copy of your log after running this emulator along with the contents of your runitgame.bat. There are a couple of questions beyond that though. Is the problem that the emulator is not starting at all, or does it start but cannot find a disc image? If it's the latter, are your disc images being mounted to the DaemonTools drive? Are you using DaemonTools Lite or DaemonTools Pro? If I were to guess I'd say that your games aren't being mounted to the virtual drive, but without more information it's a total shot in the dark. If it does turn out to be an issue with mounting images, I'd recommend trying Adultery's Virtual Drive Loader plugin being that it allows you to exercise a great deal more control over mounting discs in GameEx.