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Thanks for the kind words! Sounds like a plan my man! nullDC it is. I’m thinking I’ll take this opportunity to make an incremental release of SwitchDisc. I’ve been messing around a bit with integrating nullDC with SwitchDisc, and there are a couple features I can add that might help to simplify that integration. Just as a preview, I’m steering towards a Send Keys solution for this one. nullDc has a dedicated function for changing discs, and when possible I favor using the in-built functionality of the emulator. After nullDC I plan to turn my attention to Dolphin. Nah, that’s pretty much been my mission statement all along during the development of SwitchDisc. If I can’t meet my own mission statement (or at the very least make an attempt) I may as well pack it in and call it a day! I rely on users like you to keep me honest as far as that goes. This is a good call. It’s something that hadn’t jumped out at me before, but makes total sense. As much as possible I’d like SwitchDisc to obscure the fact that an emulator is running, so hiding the mouse pointer would be a natural extension of that. Expect to see this feature implemented in a future release. I’m still looking into this report. What you describe above sounds like it might be related to the GameEx in-game pause screen? If you can reproduce the issue would you mind posting a copy of your GameEx log (and your GameEx.ini) after it occurs? I’ll need to implement this as an enhancement. It’s something that I had simply not accounted for at this time. It’s a relatively simple fix to make, but I need to give some thought as to the best way to implement it. I’ve got a couple ideas though. It may be that it needs to be new dedicated field of some sort . Nice catch!

Yes indeed. This is a great tutorial, and should be easy to locate for users interested in implementing custom menus. I've taken the liberty of moving this tutorial into the Pinned and Hot topics forum so that it's easy to find. Thanks again DazzleHP for taking the time to create this great tutorial!

Dude I’m so happy to hear that we finally got this working for you! I was beginning to feel pretty bleak that my most dedicated user and tester had yet to achieve satisfactory performance from the software. I can’t thank you enough for your perseverance and continued interest in SwitchDisc. Your feedback has helped me to improve the software and provided me with a vision of how it can continue to improve in the future. If public opinion (for whatever it’s worth) reflects anything, let it reflect that fact alone. I definitely have some work cut out for me insofar as SwtichDisc documentation goes, and I’ll definitely put together a set of recommended keys for the various functions (These may vary a bit from one emulator to the next, but I think I can still throw together a good set of recommended/default settings). Thank you for reporting this. I’ll investigate later tonight. I haven’t actually done extended play testing through the wrapper (who has time to game anymore? ), so I’ll check it out. Please proceed with caution here. I’d hate for anyone to lose game progress due to the wrapper dropping out from under them. That certainly wouldn’t put me on anyone’s Christmas list! Thanks again man.

Nice to see the ugly ol’ American SNES getting some love up there! I swear every other region had a nice svelte stream lined looking model SNES whereas the US version looked like a product of some minimalist backwoods Eastern Bloc engineering. All the same, I’ve got a lot of good memories tied up in that ugly ol’ box!

I honestly have to say I’m a bit stumped. I’ll go back through and review your settings, but from what you’re saying everything sounds correct. This may be an unforeseen issue in code (I can verify that I have ePSXecutor disc swapping working without issue on my machine, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's not an issue somewhere), or we may still be up against some invalid config settings. If you don’t mind, please review the following for veracity. The working path in SwitchDisc should match the working path in GameEx exactly. It’s main purpose is to identify the emulator. Based on the log I would say that something in this step is not quite right. All the same, if SwitchDisc can’t identify the emulator it should simply load all emulators (you’ll be able to tell if it’s done this as the games in the GUI will display both the game name and the emulator name). Does that sound like it describes the issue you’re experiencing? Is it bringing up the SwitchDisc GUI at all? Your command settings look good GameEx uses --cmd "<QUOTE>[ROMPATH]\[ROMFILE]<QUOTE>" SwitchDisc uses --cmd "<QUOTE>[DISCPATH]\[DISCFILE]<QUOTE>" (The next release of SwitchDisc will support the use of [ROMPATH]\[ROMFILE]) That part looks good, but it sounds like the process is failing before it gets so far as to run the switch command. Beyond that, I’m not too sure what else to suggest. We’ve made some changes to your config settings, so if you don’t mind uploading your current GameEx emulator settings and your SwitchDisc settings I’d be happy to make an updated assessment. Also could you clarify where exactly the process goes wrong? The following questions will help in that capacity Does SD start correctly (i.e. is it running in the system tray when you start your game)? It sound like it is, but just to start at the beginning. Does the GUI initialize and display correctly? You can verify this either via the configurable trigger key or right-clicking on the system tray icon and selecting SwitchDisc. If you’re using the trigger key please verify that the assigned key is not already performing some other function in the emulator (I suppose this actually could explain the emulator issues you were experiencing earlier if your SD trigger key was actually changing something in ePSXe). For the record I’m currently using F9 as a trigger which doesn’t seem to have any adverse effects. If the GUI displays correctly, what exactly happens when you select a game? Does ePSXe simply remain on the current game? Does ePSXe get closed? Something else? If we can get schedules synched up I can offer up some real-time assistance if you’d like. I’m located in the Mountain Standard Time zone in the U.S. (UTC−07) but am often not available until 10:00 PM or later in the evenings. I couldn’t guarantee it, but I’d wager we can get this taken care of relatively quickly if I’m looking at the same screens you are. Let me know via PM if that sounds like a good option for you, and we can work something out. Thanks man.

Wow! Great update Tom. Thanks a lot! Do you sleep at all?

Thanks for putting together this tutorial DazzleHP! This is an awesome contribution!

Seriously, that brushed aluminum effect looks tight. It matches my HTPC case!

We're getting there. You got the working path issue worked out, but you still need to fix up this issue: So in the SwitchDisc configurator you need to change this: [color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]ePSXecutor_wrapper.exe --cmd "<QUOTE>[[b]ROM[/b]PATH]\[[b]ROM[/b]FILE]<QUOTE>"[/font][/color] [code] To this: [code] [color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]ePSXecutor_wrapper.exe --cmd "<QUOTE>[[b]DISC[/b]PATH]\[[b]DISC[/b]FILE]<QUOTE>"[/font][/color] [code] The more I think about it I'll probably go ahead and modify SD to also allow for the ROM[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]PATH and ROM[/font][/color][color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]FILE to be substituted for the current notation (for the next release). It is admittedly a bit confusing currently especially in terms of GameEx integration.[/font][/color] [color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Enjoy your time with your family man! That's always the most important. I'm curious to hear what you think of the Lincoln movie (in the Social forum natch).[/font][/color]

Running out of ways to express gratitude for all the recent changes, so this time I'll just say Thanks a Bunch!

Have no fear sir. We're getting closer. At the very least, I can see a couple different places where things are going wrong (thanks for reupping your SD config it's a lot easier to interpret this go round). Your log shows that the working path sent into SwitchDisc is Whereas your config is pointing to a different working path: Ideally those paths should match up. Getting the Working Paths in order should fix the above issue. If SD can’t determine what emulator is running (which means it can’t determine what send key settings and commands to run), it won’t attempt to do anything in terms of a disc swap operation. But once it does attempt to change discs you might encounter the following issue. The command being send to SwitchDisc is not correct for the SwitchDisc placeholder notation: That command will work for GameEx (the < and > are XML placeholders for < and > respectively), but for the purposes of SwithDisc that command should be set to the following: ePSXecutor_wrapper.exe --cmd "<QUOTE>[DISCPATH]\[DISCFILE]<QUOTE>" I dunno maybe I should let ROMPATH and ROMFILE be allowable settings for SD. I’ve been resistant to the idea since disc images are technically not ROMs. Given that SD is designed to work with disc based emulation it just made more sense to me at the time. The above changes should help to some degree as far as SD goes, but your other comments lead me to believe there may be other issues happening here. I hate to say it, but these issues sound like an ePSXe problem. The screen going black until ESC is pressed would indicate that ePSXe (and the wrapper by association) is running, but the game isn’t loading correctly. It sounds especially indicative of an ePSXe issue where the game is running but without sound. Neither the wrapper nor SwitchDisc has control over that. Best shot: I can take a look at your runitgame.bat (and if we’re being thorough your emulator config from GameEx), but my concern is that there’s something amiss with your plugin settings coming from ePSXecutor. The wrapper doesn’t provide a lot of feedback to the user, but it should pop an error message anytime it experiences a critical error (note that it doesn’t know too much about ePSXe itself other than to determine if it’s running or not). We’ll get there man. Thanks for your perseverance.

Happy Birthday Kustom Kid! Hope it rocks! Live it up and let tomorrow pay for today!

Hi m1rock! Welcome to the GameEx forums! Always great to see such enthusiasm from new members! It sounds like you've been pretty successful overall in getting your system setup thus far. Well done! So let's jump on some questions. I’m not entirely familiar with the IGT slots line, but based on your comments I’d recommend looking into setting it up as an emulator rather than an external application. That will provide an edge over running it as an external application (among other things you’ll be able to leverage an Advanced Emulator Config). I’d recommend converting your movie to MP4 format. GameEx supports several video formats, but that’s currently the most common/preferred format. Handbrake should be able to handle the conversion without breaking a sweat. (it’s a brilliant piece of kit if you’ve never had the opportunity to try it out) This may or may not lead to questions regarding codecs. If the MP4 doesn’t play in GameEx the standard advice around here is to install the Shark007 codec pack There’s not a tutorial available, but the app itself is not terribly difficult to dive into. Several members here are running custom menus, so there’s a lot of assistance available should you hit a rough patch. If I may be so bold, we’ve got a lot of very sharp members here. Tempest is one such member. A while back he wrote an app called MAME Mapping Magician to address this very need in GameEx. You can find that utility here: Start Menu > All Programs > GameEx > Configuration > MAME Emu Maps So those are some brief answers to some very good questions, any one of which could open up an entire topic of discussion. Don’t be afraid to ask any questions you may have regarding any aspect of it! This forum has a lot of very knowledgeable, helpful individuals, and we tend to keep the snark to a minimum (as opposed to some emulation based forums). Noobs welcome here! We all had dumb questions when we started out (heck I have them on a regular ongoing basis). But the point is that they’re not dumb questions at all as that’s how we all learned the ins and outs of this (nuanced and occasionally frustrating) hobby. The only deficiency occurs where you’re afraid to ask. Hope to see you around man!

I haven't experienced this behavior with the recent updates, so it's definitely possible that something is going on with your system (or possibly not). Your GameEx log may be able to shed some light as to whether there are errors occurring during startup.

NFL Blitz is just one of those games that's notoriously difficult to emulate through MAME. I don't know that I've ever heard of someone getting it to emulate perfectly in MAME. The PS1 is probably a fairly solid alternative, although I believe the Dreamcast version has better graphics and sound (Not entirely sure, but I think the DC version is actually a bit closer to the arcade version).

Dude that is some effed up twisted shiznit ... I like it! Seriously though, it's those parents that deserve the zombie treatment. Half of them are already the spawn of Satan, so it wouldn't really be that much of a stretch.

Alright! We've got some ground to cover. First things first, I had to make a minor update to the wrapper to better support (and simplify) integration with SwitchDisc. So the first thing you'll want to do is grab the new version of the wrapper found here. Did you grab it? Good! Once you've got the updated wrapper the Switch Disc Config turns out to be exceedingly simple: Here's the long form if you're interested: Works a treat on my rig. Let's address some questions. The [MENU, RETURN] send key operation isn't explicitly designed to steal focus from the emulator. It's simply the equivalent of pressing Alt+Enter while the emulator is running (i.e. it puts the emulator in windowed/fullscreen mode). Turns out it's nigh impossible to steal focus from a full screen application. So while putting the emulator in windowed mode makes it possible for SwitchDisc to steal focus it's not the mechanism for that functionality. If you're already running the emulator in windowed mode you definitely don't want to do this prior to displaying the SD GUI. Actually SwitchDisc is by default designed to (attempt to) steal focus when you bring up the GUI (although as I mentioned sometimes you need to put the emulator into windowed mode first). It's not a perfect process though. If both SwitchDisc and the Emulator are fighting to be top most there's always a possibility that the emulator will win. Having said that, I was fairly sure that I had ironed out any remaining wrinkles to that end at this point (I haven't had SD unsuccessfully bid for focus since early on in development). Best advice: be sure you're running the most recent version of SD. You've hit the the nail on the head there laddie. I bill SwitchDisc as being able to change discs for any emulator (or frontend in this case) in which it's possible to change discs via a combination of keyboard input and/or command line input. Unfortunately ePSXecutor doesn't fall cleanly into that category. There are two methods of changing discs utilized in PlayStation games. In the first method the game will prompt you to save to the memory card, change discs, and reset the system. SwitchDisc can handle that method of changing discs just fine through ePSXecutor (since it's possible to kill and restart the emulator via the command line)In the second method the game will simply prompt you to change discs, and press a key. This creates an issue for SwitchDisc when using ePSXecutor (at least if you're using the -loadbin technique). The only way to pull this off in ePSXe is through the menu. SwitchDisc could handle that part just fine if ePSXecutor allowed you to access the ePSXe menu in a way that was manageable. Thus nogui command is out for ePSXe as you wisely noted. The trouble is that if you load the ePSXe GUI through ePSXecutor it doesn't load your game it only loads the GUI. That doesn't work very well when you're trying to create a seamless gaming experience (vis a vis GameEx). Thus there's not a lot SwitchDisc can do in this situation since it's a limitation of ePSXecutor. (There actually is a way that SD could still handle this specific operation, but it gets into some advanced usage, and is a fairly big departure from our current approach. Bonus points if you can see where I'm heading with that one. )Any hoo, hopefully the above config puts you on the right track. If not please post an updated version of your SwitchDisc config and log (Particularly the config. Not sure what happened but the one posted above is a bit of a hot mess. Not your fault though, it looks like some formatter tried to reformat all the URL namespace info with [url=] tags. It also appears to be missing a good chunk of emulator info for the first emulator). Thanks man!

Hi Felix Glad to hear the wrapper is working out for you! When you have a moment would you mind posting your SwitchDisc config (and possibly your SwitchDisc log)? In order to get this firing on all cylinders we probably also need to tweak your SwitchDisc config (among other things we need to adjust your working path so that it matches the one in GameEx). Thanks man!

Awesome Venomouse! I'm glad to hear you got everything sorted out.

Dude! You're hired for my next construction project! (Lord knows I don't know WTH I'm doing )

Hi Venomouse Sounds like you've done your homework, but all the same, it would be helpful to have a look at your GameEx config and log file so we're looking at the same thing you are. In terms of the log it might be helpful to recreate the issue and post your log immediately after closing GameEx. Also just to save an extra step, please make sure you're running the most recent version of GameEx (there have been a few updates this week). Thanks!

Wow, you've been a busy guy this week Tom! Thanks for all your hard work.

That Centipede screen is dope Krak! It's really cool to see how these screens have continued to evolve (as well as your skill in crafting them). Nice work man.

I honestly don't know what would cause that. It might help to note that I started from scratch when adding a slot for the wrapper in GameEx (I used the default ePSXe settings as a starting point). Also note that you shouldn't need a custom Advanced Emulator Config anymore. Here's my working config for the wrapper (using SwitchDisc). If it continues to give you problems, it would be helpful to have a look at your runitgame.bat ("Run Last Game" under GameEx utilities in the start menu) Here's my runitgame.bat in the event that you'd like a point of comparison chcp 65001 E: CD "E:\Visual_Studio_2010\Projects\Build\ePSXecutor_wrapper" start "" "E:\Visual_Studio_2010\Projects\Build\SwitchDisc\SwitchDisc.exe" -w "E:\Visual_Studio_2010\Projects\Build\ePSXecutor_wrapper" -f "Final Fantasy VII (USA) (Disc 1).LNK" ePSXecutor_wrapper.exe --cmd "<QUOTE>E:\Emulation\Emulators\ePSXe v1.7.0\shortcuts\Final Fantasy VII (USA) (Disc 1).LNK<QUOTE>" start "" "E:\Visual_Studio_2010\Projects\Build\SwitchDisc\SwitchDisc.exe" -q