nullPointer

Great job vsilvalopes! Our very first Member of the Month award couldn't have gone to a more deserving member. Thanks for being a fantastic contributor to our community. Can't wait to see what you're concocting next!

Sorry to hear about the tough times KRC. While I've never met you, I know without a doubt that you'll be there for your friends and family in times of grief or adversity. Please let us know if we can provide any additional help or support (or just stay out of it). Glad to see you back man.

Happy (belated) birthday thurmansevolution! I hope it was awesome! Here's to a fantastic year ahead!

Happy (belated) Birthday Brian! In (belated) celebration of your birthday I've organized a (belated) birthday competition (belatedly). A (belated) battle for the ages. Careful y’all it’s about to get real up in here (in a belated sort of way). VS Hoffman vs. The Hoff: Head to Head Round 1: Legacy Hoffman: Widely regarded as an administrator on emulation forums The Hoff: Played Michael Knight in TV's Knight Rider Advantage: The Hoff Round 2: Skills and Abilities Hoffman: Can configure MAME with his eyes closed The Hoff: Doesn't know what MAME stands for Advantage: Hoffman Round 3: Prowess The Hoff: Spent a lot of time with famous chicks in bikinis including (but not limited to) Nicole Eggert, Yasmine Bleeth, Carmen Electra (pre-crazy), and Pamela Anderson (pre-hepatitis) Hoffman: Has probably seen pictures of those chicks Advantage: The Hoff Round 4: Diet The Hoff: Has been known to enjoy a good floor burger from time to time Hoffman: Never seen him eat a burger (floor or otherwise). For all I know he's a vegan. Advantage: Hoffman (unless that vegan thing is true, since you know ... bacon) Round 5: Birthday The Hoff: Born on July 17 Hoffman: Born on October 31 - the most f***kin rock and roll of all holidays Advantage: Hoffman So there you have it. Hoffman takes it by a nose. Way to go buddy. Hope you had a good birthday! Hope to be seein' ya around these hallowed GameEx halls!

I’ve been meaning to mention it for a few posts, but you can (basically) make GameEx do the same thing. Just set Merge Sets to Yes in the Setup Wizard. When you do that you’ll end up with one “Main Entry” in your game list (i.e. for example you’ll have one entry for Final Fantasy VII in the list). That way when you select the single game entry form the main list it will take you to the “Game Specific” screen in which you’ll have an entry for each disc in the set. This will allow you to launch any game in that set directly from GameEx. Merge Sets is one of my favorite features of GameEx! I use it on everything.

Don’t worry I’m still working to address the ePSXecutor issue. This will probably take the form of an external wrapper that’s separate from SwitchDisc. That way it will be of more utility to those that want to use ePSXecutor (particularly with a Launch After command), but could care less about SwitchDisc. As far as SwitchDisc goes I’m also working on a means to control this behavior natively from SwitchDisc (We discussed this in PM – thanks by the way!). I’ll put nullDC as the next emulator on my radar. I stand by my statement that if you can change discs within the emulator using a combination of key presses and/or commands, you can change discs in SwitchDisc. I’ll try to put together a working config for nullDC. Regarding your Dreamcast disc images … erm … my guess is that you must have ripped the images from your discs and subsequently compressed the images in parts using WinRAR. Boy if I could count the times I did this to my disc images without remembering having done so … well admittedly I'd not be counting for very long . Any hoo, I imagine you’ll want to use WinRAR to recombine those pieces into (what’s probably) an iso in order to operate with nullDC. Here’s a brief guide on how to do that: How to Combine Parts of RAR Files I'm not saying that's definitely the case, but to me it would seem to be the most likely scenario.

Hi and welcome to the forums Darccide4Life! I gotta tell you, the information you’ve provided isn’t much to go on. You seem to be equating the roms with the emulator itself which isn’t the case at all (any more than an emulator can be equated to a frontend). It sounds like you may have gotten bad rom dump(s), or that alternately you may even have a hardware issue going on (it is very strange that you’re experiencing the same problem with completely unrelated emulators). I would even lean more towards a hardware issue than anything else TBH. Perhaps if you wouldn’t mind elaborating a bit regarding your issue, we can be of more assistance. Also please be advised that discussion about acquiring roms and where to find them is strictly forbidden (not that you were going there, I figured I’d just mention it in advance).

No it's definitely not worthless information, and I was hoping someone else might chime in as well. Perhaps greater minds will prevail! Currently the also watch list contains the following ePSXe - since ePSXecutor launches ePSXe and exits SwitchDisc - since if you change discs in ePSXecutor you need to restart the emulator (via SwitchDisc) I would think that ePSXecutor wouldn't need to be on the list since that's what's launched by GameEx (i.e. the "emulator" itself). Honestly I'm still trying to figure out whether this is a bug (in the way that GameEx handles the advanced emu config), or "works as designed". It all depends on the way GameEx is supposed to handle the advanced emulator config I guess. At this point I'm sort of scratching my head since what I would expect to happen, is not in fact what's happening (thus my hypothesis above).

It's a very good question. I was originally thinking that the problem was related to a missing DirectX dll (or an out of date dll), but it does certainly seem to be tied to the theme. That used to be my main theme too, and I never experienced issues, but I've since updated it to a V4 theme (i.e. it's mostly the same, just updated to v4). I guess this may require some investigation?

So I just had an epiphany (hey, drinking before noon tends to have that effect j/k). I think I know why Launch After fails to run for ePSXecutor. Check out this order of events: GameEx starts ePSXecutor (via a shortcut) ePSXecutor starts ePSXe and subsequently exits GameEx knows nothing about what ePSXecutor does (nor does it care), In fact GameEx would take back focus right then and there, if not for the advanced emulator config. For all GameEx knows ePSXecutor is the emulator (and it's not running anymore). So if GameEx thinks ePSXecutor is the emulator, and that "emulator" is no longer running, how does it know when to run a Launch After command? Answer: I suspect it doesn't. I don't think this behavior is relegated to SwitchDisc. I think GameEx will have difficulty running any Launch After command for this configuration. In order for GameEx to run a Launch After command for ePSXecutor, it's going to need to run ePSXecutor through some sort of wrapper. Perhaps that's my next little project. p.s. Sorry about triple posting, but I figure each one was dedicated to a distinctly different train of thought.

I meant to post this earlier. You can update DirectX right here. I don't believe dxdiag will notify you about necessary updates. I'd also definitely do as Draco suggests and see if that makes a difference for you.

Hi criveman, To me this looks an awful lot like a DirectX error. You'll want to verify that you're running the most recent DirectX version for your OS. It looks like you're running on XP, so this handy dandy guide might be useful to you.

This is some phenomenal work Sokurah! Thanks for sharing with the community.

A new build is available in the first post of the thread. This release includes the following changes: 1.0.3 Critical Fix: Send Key Strings were not parsing correctly under some circumstances. All Send Key Strings will parse correctly now. Improved clipboard behavior SwitchDisc Configurator: Improved navigation within the tree view. You can now navigate using arrow keys and select a module using the Enter key. Thanks for checking out SwitchDisc!

Hi criveman! There are indeed tools available which will help you determine whether the version of your ROM set matches your version of MAME (this process is known as auditing your ROMs, and accordingly the tools typically fall under the umbrella of ROM auditing software). 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. Hey, for the record, I think the problem you reported here may in fact be related to an issue in which your ROM version doesn't match your version of MAME (purely an educated guess, but the symptoms sure seem to fit). Let us know how you get on with this, and feel free to report back if you run into any problems.

Here's a brief tutorial on running AutoIt scripts. Long story short you'll probably need to install AutoIt. It's a pretty great suite of tools, so it's not a bad idea at all. As I mentioned, I've never used MuDiGUI, but the instructions at least seem to be fairly straight forward (and it's certainly a novel approach to the problem of changing discs.) Tonight I was simply burned out on screwing around with ePSXecutor, so I put together a SwitchDisc config for pSX. Seems to work just fine. It's a lot more straight forward in terms of GameEx integration since you don't have to worry about an Advanced Emulator Config. pSX has an integrated means of changing discs during game play, so you don't need to completely restart the emulator. SwitchDisc can easily leverage that integrated support. Here's the config. No commands here, it's all about the send keys: pSX v1.13 SwitchDisc Config: You'll note that I'm also storing disc images in sub-directories here. That part is optional, but it sure keeps your directories cleaner! Here's the GameEx config I'm using to accompany the above SwitchDisc config: [Console] Sony Playstation (pSX) The above seems to be working like a champ for me (so far anyway).

I merged your new problem report with your original report since it sounds like a very similar issue, if not the exact same issue. Please post a copy of your GameEx.ini and a copy of your log after having attempted to run one of the bogus ROMs. Thanks!

You know man, after I reported successful operation, I experienced something similar to you (well mostly similar). I never had it where SwitchDisc hasn't loaded at all, but I did have a situation in which SwitchDisc didn't close. It was too late in the evening to do more extensive testing, but I'll have some time tonight. I'm honestly not sure whether it's a problem with SwitchDisc or GameEx, but it definitely sucks. I'm leaning more towards it being an issue with GameEx since I've never had the SwitchDisc.exe -q command fail while I was running SwitchDisc outside of GameEx. Furthermore, if SwitchDisc continues to run without closing, it should prevent GameEx from returning to focus since we've explicitly configured it not to return focus to GameEx until it stops running (via the advanced config). Maybe it's the advanced config that's the issue, but if so I can't see where the problem might be. As a joke, I was going to call this release of SwitchDisc the Infernal Build, since well, check out the size of the download. Turns out that moniker may not have been all that far off. I like your idea for a feature request. I will definitely consider adding that feature. I would make the exit keys configurable to the user so they could enter their own exit key (or combination of keys). It would be a great idea to disable the exit keys during a disc swap operation, so that one didn't inadvertently exit a game during that operation. The only issue here would be integrating the feature (cleanly) with GameEx. GameEx has a send keys feature, but it executes before the emulator loads, not after. That would leave the possibility of running an external AutoHotKey (or equivalent) script as your Launch After command in GameEx in order to kill SD. One of my mantras during development of SD has been ".NET or bust" (mainly as i was looking to expand my skill set), meaning that I don't really want to include a spaghetti code blend of .NET, AHK, AutoIt, whatever, with the release of SwitchDisc. Accordingly I could write up a really simple "SwithDisc Killer" module (this would be a separate executable included with SwitchDisc). This module could consist of a single configurable choice: Send Keys (which would simply send the Exit key(s)) or send a Taskill command to SD. It does feel like a workaround, but I guess if the shoe fits ... Hey, one other thing ... you've been awesome about testing SD, and I can't thank you enough for that, but I also am worried this is beginning to impede upon your enjoyment of GameEx and emulation in general. I'd hate for my crappy program to have that effect on anyone. I should take this opportunity to point out an alternative to SwitchDisc which is MuDiGUI (sort of the spiritual ancestor of SwitchDisc). I dunno, I've never used it, but it might offer up some better results for you (I don't think it looks better than SD if I may be so bold, but if it works better it may be a better choice in terms of general gaming). I dunno, I'm just tossing it out as an option.

What can I say? It's awesome to see "Labor of Love" projects like this come together in spectacular fashion. You keep making this thing better and better! Keep up the great work man!

OK I may have made some headway with this issue. I downloaded SwitchDisc from this thread to my alternate PC. I setup a new emulator config for ePSXecutor in GameEx. I copied the Advanced Emulator Config from this post. I made a couple of tweaks to the Switchdisc config seen here. And guess what? Everything launched just fine, but when I exited the emulator my Launch After command did not run as expected (it didn't run at all)! So I took a couple steps back and I reverted to the Advanced Emulator Config from this post. Then when I exited the emulator ... everything worked! (i.e. the Launch After command worked as expected) turns out that the experimental changes I made to the Advanced Emulator Config weren't superfluous at all, and in fact they were what enabled full functionality. That was certainly a piece of dumb luck! If you haven't done so yet, I'd go ahead and overwrite the ePSXecutor SwitchDisc Advanced Emulator Config with those settings. Other than that, everything is working as expected. Here are the details that are fit to print using the config on the secondary machine: [Console] Sony Playstation (ePSXecutor) SwitchDisc.xml Advanced Emulator Config [Mapping On] ePSXecutor SwitchDisc (Process Close) runitgame.bat Regarding the runitgame.bat, my previous statement about the emulator command was wrong. Looks like the ePSXecutor game shortcuts do launch ePSXecutor using a reference to the internal game config. Sorry I hadn't realized that before! Any hoo, I'd definitely recommend updating your Advanced Emulator config if you haven't done so. There's a slight discrepancy in the way we've got directory paths configured too. I've got my ePSXecutor shortcuts stored in a separate directory that ePSXe and ePSXecutor WorkingPath=E:\Emulation\Emulators\ePSXe v1.70 RomPath=E:\Emulation\Emulators\ePSXe v1.70\shortcuts I think you mentioned that your shortcuts are in the same directory as ePSXe.exe and ePSXecutor.exe, but maybe you should try separating them into separate diectories? Then point your Working Path at the directory containing ePSXe.exe and ePSXecutor.exe and point your ROM directory at the directory containing the shortcuts. Our SwitchDisc commands are identical so I really think you should be good to go there. There's one other thing that's likely going to trip you up (when you get so far as changing discs): <SwitchDiscCmd>'[DISCPATH}\[DISCFILE]"</SwitchDiscCmd> You'll want to change that command so it's completely encloses in double-quotes (the first one is a single quote). Heh, well that's stepping back into history. It was that experience that planted the first seeds for SwitchDisc. Those disc combining kits were a great idea, but in execution they were often buggy, so it was back to the old drawing board. Those settings should still work fine for running 'vanilla' ePSXe from a virtual drive though. But no that's not what I'm doing currently. Especially for the purposes of this config I'm using -loadbin. I do endorse running disc based emulators from a virtual drive where applicable, but it adds a additional layer of complexity, and for now I'd like to avoid additional complexity. This is a very good question. I'd give it a shot, and see how it goes! It does involve bringing a batch file back into the picture, but if ePSXe and SwitchDisc are taking a while to load it could certainly cause the issue you're experiencing. Note that the timeout command only works on Vista and above. Believe it or not I don't have nullDC configured on any of my machines at the current time. When I have some spare time, I'll take a look and see if I can get it working.

Definitely. It's not quite as straight forward as that, but it can certainly be done. If you do get into it, you may find that you want to dial back the number of buttons in the combination though. Essentially this works via the 'control set' feature in Xpadder. So if 'control set 1' is your default button configuration for gaming you set one button in 'control set 1' which opens 'control set 2' while held. One button in 'control set 2' will open 'control set 3' while held. Essentially you end up with as many 'control sets' as you require buttons to be held in your key combination. So long as you're holding down all those buttons at the same time the 'last control set' in the chain will contain one button that actually executes the multiple key stroke macro. Xpadder has relatively sophisticated controls for configuring multiple key macros, so you're good to go there. OTOH, I don't want to be the one to blame if you wind up feeling like you wasted five bucks! To my mind Xpadder is highly worth the purchase, but you may not feel the same. If you're looking for something free, you might also check out Joy2Key (I've never used it, so can't fully elucidate on the features it offers).

Yep, I'd definitely second the suggestion on Xpadder. In fact it's what I use to execute in-game save and load states exactly as you describe here (albeit I don't use the same button combination obviously). If you go with Xpadder, don't forget to checkout Adultery's awesome Xpadder plug-in for GameEx. It makes it a breeze to incorporate Xpadder into GameEx.

Aww, you wound me Felix! Of course I care! I’m still hoping we can get you up and running - at the very least so I know that Switchdisc is working for someone other than myself (and for all I know you’re the only other person who has tried the application). Stuff like this is what keeps developers up at night. Let’s check out what you’ve got here: I omitted a lot of stuff form the spoiler because I have to agree; to my eyes your SwitchDisc commands are looking good at this point. I think there may be an issue with your emulator config in GameEx. If you have the patience, and don’t mind travelling down this well worn path one more time, let’s see if we can’t go all Samurai (or Pirate if you prefer) on that Ninja Gremlin. Hmm … I started typing out some suggestions, but I realized that I’m making some assumptions about your GameEx emulator config based on your runitgame.bat. I’d like to avoid keeping you running in circles, so I reversed course mid-stream. Would you mind posting your GameEx emulator config for ePSXecutor? That would be worth its weight in gold to assist in troubleshooting the config. (If you feel like being super helpful you could post your GameEx emulator config for ePSXecutor and your SwitchDisc config – that would be the best means of trouble shooting) Here’s a quick overview of what I’m observing: It looks like the emulator command in your GameEx config is different than the one I’m using. It looks like you’re launching ePSXecutor.exe using a reference to the named profile within ePSXecutor. I’d like to see what happens if you launch the game shortcut directly. I dunno if it will make a difference to the problem, but the one big difference I’m seeing is that it appears you’re launching ePSXecutor differently than I am. I'm currently away from my machine, or I'd post my own runitgame.bat for comparison. It looks like GameEx is sending a different working path to SwitchDisc than the one that’s configured in GameEx. From the perspective of SwitchDisc this is relatively minor, but it does stand out as something of a discrepancy. I still have a relatively high degree of confidence that we can get you going. If you don’t mind posting your GameEx emulator config for ePSXecutor (i.e. the one that you export from the setup wizard) and your SwitchDisc config I’m fairly sure I can put you on the right track (I may need to verify a couple of file locations with you). If it makes you feel any better I myself have struggled with Launch Before and Launch After parameters on a couple of different occasions (and once even specifically with ePSXe). It can definitely be frustrating, but it’s not insurmountable. Ah, I see. Sounds cool then. Hey, it’s auxillary to the task at hand, but you might consider running the DS3Tool when GameEx itself starts up. It would be one less thing to worry about in terms of this specific emulator config, and then your controller would be good to go for any emulator you choose to run during your GameEx session. Just a thought. Check out the Tweaks / Performance screen in the Setup Wizard if you’re interested. On that screen you’ll find an entry for Launch On Startup (alternatively you might want to take a look at Launch On Startup Don’t Wait depending on whether GameEx waits for the DS3Tool to complete, which would obviously pose a problem) This is a very interesting point, and one which I hadn’t considered. I will do as you suggest. I’ll download SwitchDisc from this thread, and double check that it works on the other machine I have running GameEx. I should take this opportunity to mention that both of these machines are running Win 7 64 bit. Early on in SwitchDisc development I was also doing some minor testing on an XP machine, but I haven’t done so in a while (and probably can’t at this point since that machine is my work computer (as in my job) – It’s one thing to have a dev build of SwitchDisc sitting on my work machine, quite another to have GameEx and (possibly) several emulators installed on there ). I’ll report back with my findings.

OK here's an alternate working GameEx config verified on my own system. Note that I'm not using any batch scripts here. Before I used batch scripts to illustrate how one might accomplish that. In the previous example I was using the batch script(s) to open and close Xpadder in addition to SwitchDisc. In reality if I were doing that, I'd use Adulterys excellent Xpadder plug-in instead. Felix in your case I'd experiment with launching your DS3Tool using Also Launch. If that doesn't work swap around the Launch Before and Also Launch Commands (i.e put SwitchDisc in the Also Launch and your DS3Tool in the Launch Before). The advanced emulator config referenced here is the exact same one I posted here, but I renamed it slightly for the purpose of clarity (i.e. since SwitchDisc is included in the advanced config I renamed it to reflect that). [Console] Sony Playstation (ePSXecutor) Here are the pertinent changes (in fact these are the only changes). Hey Ma, no batch files! AlsoLaunch= LaunchBefore=start "" "E:\Visual_Studio_2010\Projects\Build\SwitchDisc\SwitchDisc.exe" -w "[WORKINGPATH]" -f "[ROMFILE]" LaunchAfter=start "" "E:\Visual_Studio_2010\Projects\Build\SwitchDisc\SwitchDisc.exe" -q Note the judicious use of start "" "process.exe" I'd highly recommend applying the same technique. I've experienced some unpredictable behavior in GameEx when I haven't done that (particularly for Launch Before / Launch After). Good luck man. I'm hoping between this config and the previous it should put you on the right track.