myztikjenz

Enhancement request to Setup tools: As someone who just got bit by needing LAV Filters installed (and not really knowing anything about LAV Filters), it'd be helpful to just include them as part of the installation process. Understanding that there may be licensing restrictions that would prevent this, if the setup tool had a way to show, under the Video settings, a sample video that says "You should see a video here. If not, go install the filters found here..." that would help folks who aren't aware additional installs are needed to make the product work. See this discussion for additional details:

An idea from the customer's perspective: could you add into the Video Setup section some sample of what the main app does that requires the h264/h265 codex? Then you could put a note: "You should see a short snippet of a video here. If you don't, you need to install Lav Filters, get them here: link". I would have definitely seen that as part of the setup process.

Oh jeez... I only now see the link to download the LAV Filters from here. My apologies for not seeing those sooner.

Yup, that was it. Installed v0.78 from here: https://github.com/Nevcairiel/LAVFilters/releases and all appears to be working great! Still need to configure other bits for the monitor, but I'm sure I'll be able to figure that out. Thank you so much for the continued help @Tom Speirs and @Draco1962, I really appreciate it.

Final note for tonight: I went to "Update the game list" just to see what that would do and... it hangs. Windows doesn't see it as hung, the process is reported as "Running", but the "waitingon" program says there's a similar deadlock to the one I posted tonight. And the GameEx log doesn't appear to have any changes to it either. Is there some relationship to the fact that I'm not starting from some known-good MAME build-out? I have been piecing this thing together as I learn how it works but I could have done something wrong here. Could it be there's a crapload of missing data someplace that GameEx is expecting?

There is a difference, although subtle, between launching 1943 and Choplifter. Taking a video was probably the best way to show it. No idea if it's of any value to this investigation. IMG_2388.mp4

Tried to re-run tonight as-is to see if the server reboot had any effect. It did not. Then I tried both running windowed mode and with downloads disabled. While the thread count was a lot less with downloads disabled, it still hung (and with GameEx running in windowed mode, I was able to see the Windows "this app isn't responding" dialog) Installed 18.63 (noticed it had just been released), verified that windowed mode and downloads were disabled. And I still get the hang. Dropped out of Test Mode just to make sure that wasn't causing something weird to happen. Still hang. I had been testing trying to launch 1943 (since it was near the top) and thought maybe someone was getting confused about vertical vs horizontal orientation. Launched Choplifter instead and thought it might have been different but it's not, it still hangs. It just takes maybe a little longer? Instead of hanging on the game launch screen, it goes pretty quickly to black after playing the game start sound. 1943 seems to hang on that screen more readily, but even it will go to black eventually. There is an artwork log but since disabling downloads, it hasn't updated. Happy to upload it if you think it'd help any. Also, I never see MAME in the process list... which is probably obvious, but I'm saying it out loud in case it helps. Finally, I downgraded to 18.62 on the off-chance that 18.63 had some sort of weird issue and .62 was where the magic was at. Alas, there was no magic there (same hang).

Downgraded to 18.56 and the same problem occurs, no changes to the config file. Learned a little about troubleshooting Windows programs that are hanging and found a little something about Wait Chains. And a program called "waitingon". Seems GameEx is hung on network I/O, in what appears to be a deadlock between two threads. See the attached image. I see GameEx get periodic bursts of 10Mb/s downloads from 104.26.13.59 for a few seconds, then it stops and never recovers. I'm guessing there's some resource it's expecting that I don't have then gets hung waiting for a response?

I'll give 18.56 a go tonight and report back on what I find. And no need to apologize... being in software development myself, I know these things happen. I'm sure we'll get it figured out. And I appreciate the feedback from both you and Draco1962 that this isn't normal and that there's something off here.

Hi everyone, I've been trying to install GameEx Arcade Edition for a couple of weeks now and I cannot get this figured out. GameEX appears to hang at a number of different places (starting a game, looking at marquees, just idling...). Trying to start a game has never worked for me. I imagine I'm holding something wrong here, but I'm not seeing what. There's nothing interesting in the logs when this happens. My setup: Windows 10 (in test mode) with CRT Emudriver for a Radeon HD 5450 graphics card, connected to a 25" K7000. Also have a regular LCD monitor connected. MAME is groovymame 0260.002. GameEx Arcade Edition v18.61 (although this was happening on 18.58 as well). The only thing I've noticed is that some of the hangs appear to be coming with some network traffic. When GameEx freezes, it isn't busy (<1% CPU) but the network will be downloading 2-20Mbps, but even that slows down after a bit... but the app remains hung. Adding my ini and log files here. And I saw in another thread that paths are sometimes the cause of hangs... are all MAME paths required even if they are empty? log.txt GameEx.ini