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Have you tried mounting your games to a normal Virtual DT drive (as opposed to the Virtual SCSI)? It's worth a shot.

Howdy Stigz! Are you making adjustments to the GameEx databases? If so, you could always break the proprietary chains of Access and switch over to the SQLite databases (.db3). There are a number of freely available editors available for SQLiite. (I made the switch to Database Browser Portable based on Stu1983's suggestion). At this point the the .mdb files are considered to be the legacy databases. Also as a word to the wise: If you're making edits to the GameEx databases, and you (presumably) wish to keep those edits, you'll want to set the file(s) to read-only after you make your desired changes. That way they won't get overwritten when you update GameEx. Although ... in this case you do run the risk of missing out on some great updates to the database(s).

Well here are a couple of things to try: I always install DirectX components via the web installer. It takes the guess work out of what to install: DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer If you do that and you're still experiencing issues, it could be caused by a number of potential issues. Microsoft provides a good starting point for diagnosing issues like these, but this is by no means an all encompassing list. The DirectX Diagnostic Tool (dxdiag) is your friend. Diagnosing basic problems with DirectX Bear in mind that the above error could just as easily be caused by a codec problem though. Did you verify that you grabbed the correct codecs for XP and that you installed them correctly? There's also still the nagging question of video drivers. It would be good if you can figure out what model of video card you're running so you can verify that your video drivers are up to date (even if it's a legacy card you'll want to check that you're running the last good version of the associated drivers)

Hi Tempest So the table selection menu in Pinball FX2 is laid out in a grid, like so: That's where the arrow keys are being applied to select a table. I'm not entirely sure what ordering they've applied to the default menu layout, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of rhyme or reason to it.

Yeah, like I said, I've never had a need to use that setting so I really don't know much about it. If it doesn't work as intended this issue may constitute a bug report. Having said that it would be good to know if your video drivers are up to date before we get carried away.

Nice list u-man The one additional piece of information that might be helpful would be to supply the version of MAME that this would apply to. Being that the status of ROMs can potentially change from one version of MAME to the next, one would want to make sure they were applying this list to the correct version.

Hi coinheaven Do you happen to know the model of the video card? Often times the manufacturer will be able to provide drivers for legacy video cards, so long as you know what model it is that you're looking for. Regarding the Shark video codecs you should just be able to install the pack and run with it. The default codec settings for the pack are pretty good, and should cover the general needs of most users.

Thanks for the effort on these loaders Rockyrocket and Krak! Making the loaders a bit more generic as rockyrocket describes sounds like it would be a bang-up idea. Looking forward to that. I'd be curious to hear initial impressions on the Defense Force table as well.

Wow, nice detective work kannadav! There is a setting found on the Display Settings page of the Setup Wizard which will allow you to specify the use of 16 Bit Color. I've never tried it out, but you might experiment with setting Use 16 Bit Colour to Yes to see if that addresses your needs.

Way to go Draco! You've got a tough battle ahead, but you're a tough guy. You can do it!

Hi coinheaven A lot of us here on the forums use and recommend the Shark007 codecs. Be sure to select the proper codecs for your operating system, and that you follow the installation instructions carefully.

It's always great to see you posting fReq. Seems like I'm always learning something from you even to this day!

Don't sweat it! There's really nothing preventing the use of the standalone version of SwitchDisc. The 2020 comment was more a reference to how this sort of project seems like it's never truly done (particularly not when IRL stuff has the habit of taking center stage). The only issue I'm currently aware of with SD is that it can have a fairly persistent hiccup with nullDC. Not such a huge issue unless you're right in the middle of Shenmue or something.

Slightly OT, but there was a user who uploaded a guide for GamebaseST a while back. Seems like a pretty solid guide, although I am very much like Adultery in that I've never attempted to set up Gamebase myself.

Here's a two-for-one answer (what a bargain!) You'll want to use a wrapper for games that utilize some sort of Launcher that pops up prior to actually running the game. Grand Theft Auto IV comes to mind (with the Rockstar Club Login popup), as well as Batman Arkham Asylum (which just has a standard Launcher with options for "Play this Game", "Options", etc.) Typically the wrapper is a compiled AutoHotKey script that sends Mouse Clicks, Key Presses and the like to bypass these launchers. There are several wrappers that have already been written, and I'm sure there are multitudes out there still waiting to be discovered. Any existing wrappers can be found in the GameEx\media\steam\wrappers directory. You'll also notice that there's a GameEx\media\steam\configs directory. This directory houses a config for each of your Steam games. With a config you can exercise some degree of control over how GameEx executes the associated game. I find that most often I use a custom config when I need to specify an alternate watched process (Steam games that get run through DOSBox are an example of this - the watched process (overidewaitprocess) needs to be DOSBox, not whatever it is that Steam launches). This will prevent GameEx from taking back focus before you exit the game. I believe you could also use a custom config to specify Launch Before and Launch After parameters on a per game basis, but have never had a need to do so.

The Shark Codecs are awesome, and I've recommended them for a long time. Having said that you'll want to be aware of potential issues with recent versions. I've not heard an update on this so maybe it's been resolved at this point, but it's something you'll probably want to keep in your back pocket just in case. (I only update my codecs if something appears to be broken, so it's been a while since I updated)

Got any plans for 2020? That would coincide nicely with my projected completion date once external factors are accounted for.

Man ... just as a test I'd use a video converter to see if GameEx picked them up in a different format. I use Handbrake, but you could also try the Spesoft Video Converter as well. The FLVs work okay for me, but I'm really wondering about the codec thing at this point.

What format are the videos in? Do they play OK on their own? Maybe a codec issue? Sorry for the basic type questions! I have the same two games and haven't had any issue that I know of. You could try to convert them to a different format to see what happens. If they worked in a different format I'd say it's a codec thing.

Sweet I figured I should verify that we were looking at the same list! So does Bit Trip Runner show a video or is it just PinBall FX 2 that has a problem? If neither game is displaying a video, I'm wondering if it's theme related. If this is the case would you mind checking to see if the videos display in the default theme?

Hi GC So I notice this in your config [Emulator_4]STARTPAGENAME=SteamTITLETEXT=SteamStartPageLogo=SteamWorkingPath=C:\Spellen\SteamRomPath=C:\Spellen\Steam\SteamAppsROMFilter=Command=steam.exe "[rompath]\[romfile]"SnapPath=C:\Spellen\GameEx\MEDIA\STEAM\SNAPTitlePath=BoxPath=CartPath=ManualPath=DATABASE=Enabled=FalseVideoSnapPath=C:\Spellen\GameEx\MEDIA\STEAM\VIDEOAre you trying to run Steam as a standalone emulator? If so, don't do that. You should try it out just using the standalone Steam integration as seen here. I'm not saying that's the direct cause of this particular issue ... but I'm not saying it's not.

Great update Adultery! This one is of great benefit for us 'single-screeners' out there. Super-cool. Well done!

It would definitely still be interested in doing it. I've got some ideas as to how this could work, but would need to iron out some of the details. The unreleased beta build I've had sitting around for quite a while contains some enhancements that would go quite a way towards supporting this. There are still a couple of issues though. I think at best a SwitchDisc plugin would act as a simplified interface between GameEx and SwitchDisc. The good news here is that you can run most of the SwitchDisc functions using only SwitchDiscUtilities.dll (at least if it's run in headless mode without a GUI). The bad news is that SwitchDisc really needs the SwitchDisc config file to actually perform the functionality, and at this point I don't think I can divorce the config from the application. So the config would still need to come from somewhere. It's possible that a SwitchDisc plugin could attempt to 'intelligently build' the config based the users GameEx settings, but I'd need to look into it. I think there would be a lot of info that really couldn't be derived from the GameEx settings. The other issue is that I'm still making changes to SwitchDisc. Ultimately I'd like to have the application pretty well ironed out before I tried to build a bridge between it and GameEx. It's 90-95% of the way there, but I still need to make some changes to the UI automation routines (this will offer better nullDC support specifically, but it's a 90/10 thing. The last 10% of the work could take as much of 90% of the time). This last bit is actually what's been holding up the next release, but I'm starting to think I should release a stop-gap version containing a number of unrelated enhancements so the next build can be purely focused on the UI Automation overhaul. At any rate I'm still bouncing ideas around for a plugin, but I'm not quite there yet.

Hi dschulpius, and thanks for your interest in SwitchDisc SwitchDisc should work fine for mounting your standalone ISOs. It's pretty configurable, so you may have to research the applicable mount and/or unmount commands for your virtual drive, but beyond that it should be fairly straight forward. I'm (still!) working on putting together a better user guide for SwitchDisc, but if you run into any difficulties feel free to ask any questions you may have in the release thread. You may hit a potential snag if you launch a game from GameEx and subsequently close the game for the purposes of changing discs. GameEx will take back focus while you're still in the process of changing discs. I actually do have a beta release build that can circumvent this issue. OTOH if you don't need the game to remain running in order to change discs, there's no reason you couldn't simply return to GameEx to launch the subsequent disc. If it becomes an insurmountable issue let me know and I can hook you up with a beta release version. Adultery and I talked about the possibility of a plug-in at one point, and there may still be something in the future, but as of today there is no Plugin version of SwitchDisc.

I would second this recommendation. It's one that I haven't tried, but have heard good things. Further if you do decide to stick with MotionInJoy, I'd highly recommend using this in place of the default configuration utility (DS3_Tool.exe).