nullPointer

I’m not currently using a virtual drive for nullDC, but it’s more a matter of just getting it working than it is of any real conscious decision on my part. TBH I sometimes prefer a virtual drive because they are typically more robust about handling various disc image formats. It’s not necessarily better or worse than running the disc image natively within the emulator, just a different way of doing things. If you plan to use a virtual drive you’ll want to grab Daemon Tools Lite, since GameEx has native support for it (Ever wonder what was going on with those [VIRTUALDRIVE] parameters appearing in some of the default Emulator commands in GameEx? Now you know. ) As far as the focus issue goes, it looks like you’ll want to use an Advanced Emulator Config for nullDC with SwitchDisc set as an additional watched process (at least that’s my first thought). Ah, I alienate people all the time. I’m pretty used to it. (See what I mean? That was my attempt at "humor") Ready to have your mind blown (or maybe it’s just me)? I said earlier that the code for collecting the mouse click and the mouse move functions was basically the same. That wasn’t right. It’s exactly the same (well except for the one variable). To wit: The other weird part is that I explicitly created an error in the MouseMove method to see what would happen. The Configurator crashed (as expected), but it did generate an error message like so: I went ahead and put together a quick configurator build that utilizes error trapping specific to the Mouse Move button. If that method throws an error it will be caught ... but TBH now I’m not so sure it’s going to behave any differently for you. Please replace your current version of the Configurator tool with the one attached. This one will generate an error message if something goes wrong when you click the Mouse Move button, but I'm starting to wonder if something else is happening (what that might be, I have no idea) SwitchDiscConfigurator-1.0.4.1.7z Thanks man, hopefully we’ll get to the bottom of it.

All I'm saying is that you're the undisputed master of 'tying it all together' so to speak. It certainly wouldn't have occurred to me to replace the weather icons in keeping with the concept of the theme.

Those are fantastic Draco. I tell ya your eye for details is astounding. Really getting excited to see this one in action!

Hi JmJ17 and welcome to the GameEx forums! Sorry for your difficulties. Yeah, I'd agree that GameEx should run smoothly on that machine. GameEx is typically not exceedingly demanding for modern systems such as yours. It will likely provide some benefit for the purposes of troubleshooting if you post your GameEx log after having encountered these difficulties, and a copy of your GameEx config. Here's a thread explaining how to do that. Now for a couple of standard questions to help us get a handle on your situation. Are your system drivers up to date? It will likely be beneficial to verify that your Nvidia video drivers are up to date for your card as well as any sound drivers. Are you using any non-standard codecs on your machine? Several GameEx users have experienced great success with the Shark007 codec pack. It comes highly recommended by most of our 'Power-Users'. If you install these codecs please be sure to follow the instructions carefully (primarily install the 32bit pack followed by the 64bit components in that order). Thanks man! We'll take a look at that information and hopefully we can get you up and running in a collaborative fashion.

Sweet, at the very least I’m glad to hear that disc swaps are taking place for you in nullDC. I’m wondering if there’s a nullDC command line option to override the ‘Use default disc’ setting. I’ll look into that. Another option might be running from a virtual drive. I have to admit that I don’t have as much knowledge about nullDC as some other emulators. As a final option we could resort to a loader (yuck), but I’d like to avoid it if at all possible. Not silly at all! It’s my silly utility, and sometimes I myself barely remember how it works. I’ve been promising to write up the detailed documentation for awhile now, I just need to make it a bigger priority (for better or worse I tend to put user requests and troubleshooting ahead of documentation). I’m inclined to believe there’s an issue hidden somewhere in SD, I just haven’t replicated the environmental variables in such a way as to trigger it. In programmer-speak it’s called ‘swallowing an exception’ when an application encounters an error but doesn’t provide any user feedback about the error. I believe that’s what’s happening here. Sometimes swallowing an exception is good, but only when it’s explicitly intentional (in this case it’s not). I just need to get in there and make the code spit out the appropriate error message within that block of code (or for that matter any error message). I’ll put together a custom build of the configurator to do that, and pass it your direction. That way when it crashes hopefully we’ll have a bit more information. Just to confirm, you’re able to set mouse clicks through the configurator but not mouse moves right? Hey, I just noticed - Happy 100th Post man!

Hi Nightlife! Figured I’d take a swing at this one since it’s gone unaddressed thus far. I should note that I don’t use the integrated artwork download feature through GameEx. I’m a bit stuck in my ways, so I still use the original EmuMovies Artwork Download Utility. Hard to teach an old dog new tricks! Having said that I did take the integrated artwork download functionality for a test drive when the feature was first introduced Yes, the integrated download feature will simply download artwork into the artwork directories you’ve configured via the setup wizard. I suspect that it won’t. If it did automatically download updates it could run the risk of overwriting someone’s custom artwork (with matching file names), which would be very bad depending on how much time had been spent on that. This is just a guess though. Once again I’m not entirely sure. Someone else may have to field this one. If I were to guess I would say that it defaulted to lower res videos, but that’s purely conjecture. This pretty much ties into your first question. If you have your artwork paths configured, I believe the integrated artwork download will only grab the files that you’re missing. Hopefully I haven’t misstated anything here. If so my hope is that someone can correct my misinformation. Good luck Nightlife. If you discover any additional information regarding integrated artwork downloading through your personal use, please feel free to report back. Thanks!

Holy crap man! Really loving this most recent one. Well done!

Gimmeclassic is right on the money. If you want to create an entirely new menu item, the custom menu tool is the way to go. Have you got these games running through GameEx already? If not you'll want to create a new emulator slot for these games from within the Setup Wizard. You'll want to do this prior to creating a new menu item, in order for that slot to appear in the Custom Menu tool. OTOH, if you already have an emulator slot setup for these games, you technically already have a dedicated list for these games appearing within the Emulated Games section. If that’s sufficient for your needs, you could forgo the Custom Menu step altogether. Good luck man. Let us know how it goes for you.

Dude, I'm so with you on this. I was always (and to a certain degree still am) on the "no codec packs' bandwagon. The one exception I'll make is for Shark007. Interestingly enough the developer of Shark007 is very vigilant about keeping the codecs up to date, but more importantly he's vigilant about insuring that there are no conflicts within this set of codecs. He also goes out of his way to insure that the Shark007 pack can be uninstalled cleanly with no adverse effects to the prior state of the system (or at least that's his stated goal, and I can say that I haven't run into any issues). Just be sure to carefully follow the installation instructions on the Shark007 site, and you should be good to go.

I was pretty sure that you did. That's why I'm thinking that there is at least partial compatibility with recent versions of MAME. At the same time though several users have reported crashing issues with more current MAME versions. [somewhat Resolved]Has anyone had this problem? - between Instant Sheller and CPWizard?? HiToText (Version 2010.11.4) 143u9 MAME build and hitotext HI to Text crashing It's all very mysterious! Glad you have it working though.

Awesome! Thanks again Tom.

Hmm … I’m wondering if nullDC_104_r50 has a slightly different menu layout from r136? Or maybe the method for opening files is different? In r136 when you reach the change disc dialog, it’s a small dialog box with a text field for entering the full path of the disc you’d like to load, and a “…” button. When you click the “…” button it opens the Windows Open File dialog like the one pictured above. (Sorry I’m kinda working from memory here, as I’m away from my emulation rig). Does that sound like what you’re seeing? I’m pretty sure SwitchDisc still copies the full path of the selected disc to the clipboard when you select a disc through the GUI (or simply the path of the next disc if you’re not using a GUI). … At least I don’t think I’ve altered that behavior (sorry, like I say I’m also away from my development rig). You should just be able to set a key combo for Ctrl-V at the appropriate time and have it paste the full path of your selected disc. Regarding the Mouse-Move issue in the configurator, I’m not sure what to say. I can’t duplicate the problem. The only machine I tried that didn’t work was an older XP machine in which .NET 4 was not installed. But ... on that machine SwithDisc (and the configurator) wouldn’t even start up due to the .NET 4 dependencies. The weird part is that the process to collect mouse movements is pretty much the same as the one that collects mouse clicks. If one wasn’t working it seems like they both should fail. I’ll try to put together a custom build of the configurator with more verbose error message output for that component. Thanks again man!

Progress! Based on your latest developments, did you also go into ePSXe and configure it to point at your virtual drive? You’ll notice that in your latest command line that there’s no ROM specified: That’s because this command simply assumes that ePSXe has been configured to read from whatever is mounted to your virtual drive. In terms of PlayStation emulators ePSXe is one of the better ones, but it’s certainly not the easiest one to use. It seems that all PlayStation emulators have little eccentricities when it come to running them (IMO). If you reach a point where you’re ready to throw in the towel on ePSXe I can recommend pSX (sometimes know as pSXfin). It’s probably the most user-friendly PlayStation emulator out there.

Oh yeeeah ... I almost forgot. There are some issues with running ePSXe in GameEx using the [-virtualdrive-] parameter. Essentially it boils down to this: ePSXe needs to be run through a virtual SCSI drive using DaemonTools. By default DaemonTools drives are virtual DT drives. If you have a virtual DT drive installed it seems that GameEx will favor that drive over the virtual SCSI (meaning that ePSXe won't run). I myself have had success with this when I simply removed the the virtual DT drives (i.e. I only have virtual SCSI drives). Other users have had decidedly mixed results using this approach. Here's some reading material: SCSI vs DT Virtual Drive [RESOLVED] Launch After Command Running Before Emulator Fully Loads Feature & Enhancement Requests If you're fairly comfortable working with batch scripts, it's a fairly arbitrary operation to handle manual mounting of disc images using Launch Before and Launch After parameters. If that sounds like a pain in the butt, you can always just go with the -loadbin option and forgo DaemonTools altogether.

No problem about the questions Mreitz775, that's what we're here for. The following line in your log lists two separate ePSXe commands, and I'm not sure which one is actually being executed (or if it's trying to run both commands in one shot) The first command will load a disc image directly in ePSXe. The second command will mount the disc image using DaemonTools Lite. Note that this second method assumes that you've configured ePSXe to read from your DaemonTools virtual drive. Do you have DaemonTools installed? Also please note that these two commands are mutually exclusive. To get to the bottom of this I would ask that you post a copy of the emulator config you're running for ePSXe (note that this is different than your full GameEx.ini). If you want to go for the full Monty you could also post your runitgame.bat after attempting to run ePSXe through GameEx. Here are the instructions (if you need a refresher). Thanks man!

Would you mind checking to see whether you've got .NET 4.0 installed on your machine? Here's one way of doing that, but if you don't mind an additional utility on your machine you can also use Belarc Advisor. I think I've ruled out a number of possibilities already. I've tested on Windows 7 64bit and Windows XP 32bit without issue which to my mind rules out missing dependencies related to the OS or 32/64 bit discrepancies. The common denominator with these test environments is that both machines have .NET 4.0 (as well as .NET 3.5) installed. Here's the Web Installer for the .NET 4.0 framework I'm not sure how the disc swap operation works in nullDC, so I may not have a setting right in there. I'm not sure what you mean about pasting the current dics selection. I have been trying to set a sequence of keypresses to open the game selection in nullDC (windows explorer window). I have goten that far with mouse clicks alone ( I will probably change that to a combination of alt/arrows/tabs in case the window isn't always in the same screen position), but am trying to paste the selected disc into the open dialog box and press open. Of course this is not the disc swap operation method built into nullDC, if we can get that working then that would be ideal. This is just another way to load the other disc. I'll mess with it a little more to see if I can figure it out. I'm not sure that log is the one occurring directly after the error (or at least this would be an extremely unusual situation). The reason I say that is according to that log the command parameters passed into SD included an exit flag (1/23/2013 4:29:00 PM Exit = True), meaning that SwitchDisc closed as soon as it was opened (you'll notice that it ran for less than a second). The "Sequence Contains No Elements" message provides some good info, but it may be a problem with the config. I'd need to have a look at the specific config to be sure. You can only call the Open File Dialog operation when there's an Open File Dialog already on the screen. To go into a greater degree of detail on that, the operation will attempt to find a window called "Open" (in which the parent window is the emulator). Then it's going to look for a field called "File Name" and insert text into that field. If any of those conditions aren't met it will kick throw the "Sequence contains no elements" message (in other words it either can't find the Window, or it can't find the field). That's why it requires a Windows "stock" open file dialog for operation as those elements are common to that dialog. For reference it's the one that looks similar to this: Hey just out of curiosity what version of nullDC are you using for all of this?

To combine MAME and Zinc lists you'll want to use the appropriate settings in the Setup Wizard. See here for further details. In order to pull off the rest of this organizational structure, you'll be looking at creating your own custom menus. Regular forum contributor DazzleHP has created an excellent tutorial for getting started with Custom Menus. It's been a while since I've opened up the custom menu editor, but you should be able to accomplish the remainder of the organizational goals you describe here using that tool. Good luck man!

Looks really cool KRC! It's fun to see how this theme is taking shape,

Yes GameEx has the ability to display high score information within the frontend via an integrated utility called HiToText. This feature can be enabled on the MAME Settings screen under the Advance MAME Settings section via the 'Enable High Scores' field. I think that this feature contains the functionality you’re looking for ... when it's working correctly. Read on … The good news is that you’re already 90% of the way there in that you’re running a compiled version of MAME with high score support enabled. The bad news is that HiToText hasn't been updated in quite a while and is incompatible with more recent MAME versions. According to the developer 0.139 was the last version of MAME to support HiToText, so if you're really interested in this feature, I suppose you could always revert back to an earlier version of MAME (remember that you'll have to revert all your ROMs and CHDs back as well). TBH I’m not sure the extent to which HiToText is incompatible with more recent versions of MAME. I kinda think that there’s still some partial compatibility, but when it runs into problems it tends to crash MAME outright (once again this is my limited understanding) Fyrecrypts (the developer of HiToText) has officially called it quits on the project, but he has generously made the source code available through SourceForge. Perhaps with a little luck a motivated developer will take the reigns of the project and make the appropriate updates.

I definitely did. I dunno man, must be related to user class maybe? I had no idea that certain users weren't able to do this TBH. I hear ya man, and we appreciate you jumping through the hoops. I think the closer we can get to your exact use-case scenario the better the chance we'll be able to duplicate the problem you're experiencing. It won't do any of us any good if the troubleshooters are just spinning their wheels trying to recreate the problem from the ground up using methods that may or may not reflect what you’ve done thus far. So it’s more of a ‘help us help you’ sort of request, which is purely at your discretion of course. Thanks for your patience, and I’m hoping we can all make heads or tails of this.

I don’t think so. You might be looking for something along the lines of the disc combining kits created by Shalma a while back. With his ‘kits’ you could combine multi-disc PlayStation games into a single disc image. I always thought it was a really cool project. I was able to successfully combine several multi-disc games, but I didn’t play through any of the resultant images long enough to reach a point requiring a disc change operation. My understanding is that his kits removed the ‘change disc’ screens, and that game play simply continued as if the change had taken place where those screens would have appeared. The problem I ran into with this approach was that the resultant images were very large whereas the PlayStation hardware (and by proxy nearly any emulator of that hardware) was only ever designed to play CD-ROMs. The disc combining kits created images much larger than a standard CD-ROM (I believe the images were formatted as DVD5), so they could cause some funny glitches in emulation. Shalma also created a special branch of ePSXe (called ePSXe_shark) capable of playing the combined images, so there is that (actually several of his shark enhancements found their way into the 1.8 release of ePSXe to my understanding). In the end I went back to using single (uncombined) disc images instead and started development on SwitchDisc to handle multi-disc games.

You're doing a bangup job tracking down the issue! I was just getting ready to post something similar: Bug Check 0x5: INVALID_PROCESS_ATTACH_ATTEMPT, which seems to confirm your findings as well. Likely culprits include (as you point out) driver issues, and/or faulty memory. For a memory test you can give MemTest86+ a shot. As for driver issues, it might be worthwhile reporting to the product page of your motherboard (as well as video card(s) and sound card (if applicable)) to determine if your drivers are up to date. Just out of curiosity, are you running that SSD with AHCI enabled?

The open file dialog does the following (in order of operation): - Copies the directory path of the selected disc into the file name field of the open file dialog - Sends the Enter key - Copies the file name of the selected disc into the file name field into the open file dialog - Sends the Enter key Note that this operation was designed for the standard Windows Open File dialog. It might work with custom dialogs but the functionality of the custom dialog would need to be a close match to the default Windows dialog. Wow that's not so good. Do you mean to say that the entire Configurator crashes when you attempt to input a Mouse move operation? If that's the case I'll dig into the code a bit to determine if I introduced a new dependency (I may have inadvertently bumped up the .NET requirements, or (less likely) neglected to include a separate external library. Do mouse operations work otherwise? What happens if you attempt to enter the send keys string I posted above directly into your SwitchDisc config (i.e. enter it directly into the file)? Does it work when you execute it? If not would you mind posting your SD log afterwards? Thanks as always Felix.

Your ROM path in MAME looks to be the culprit: I'm guessing it should simply be this: C:\Documents and Settings\Jonathan\My Documents\PC Games\GameEx Frontend\GameEx\CONFIG\EMULATORS\Emulators\MAME\roms Remember to rebuild your MAME list from within GameEx each time you make this type of change. Good luck man!

Hi aliens8us, and welcome to the GameEx forums! Not sure what's happening here, but this command line for starting MAME seems to be a bit out of control: I'd likely tag that as the cause of the issue you describe. Perhaps if you wouldn't mind posting a copy of your GameEx.ini we can go a bit further in determining the root cause of this issue. Here's a thread describing how to do that.