AlphaUMi

Just be patient, I use WinVICE and I'll look into this tonight. Your issue is very strange since you say that the buttons work... D-pad should work automatically too. Open WinVICE outside of GE, don't load anything. Look at the bar at the bottom of the WinVICE's window. There are two crosses symbolising the joysticks. Do they respond to your movement? And in the meantime... take a look at CCS64. I'm not the only one to say that is the best emulator since v2.0 (now we have 3.8). It emulates 99,9% of the software. This is the claim of the author, of course, but trust me, I've found CCS64 more compatible and accurate than WinVICE, which is a great emulator, though.

I'm not sure if Tom is happy about this, and I'm willing to translate\correct the Italian language file for the Setup Wizard too... Let's see if Tom is interested or not in cleaning the ini before starting the job. One little glitch with the custom\default directories (at least with the old version of Setup Wizard) is that the setup immediately creates the default directories even if you click the button to change them, so they remains empty and then users have to browse manually through folders and delete them. But in the end these aren't bugs or issues at all... I just wanted to clean and reorder things a bit. Cheers, Alpha.

Happy Birthday fReq! You're a column of the GameEx team! We all drink a cold ice beer in your honour!

Nice to meet you, Draco! Yes, my holiday was relaxing and enjoyable, I spent most of the time reading good books and going to the sea! I see how many changes and improvements there has been in the last time, GameEx Arcade, for example, is simply astonishing! So, do you think it's better wait for Tom to read this post and answer before starting the job? Or maybe I could just start and report here the changes I made...

I noticed that after I change a theme, the 'Back' button doesn't work. Or, better said, I hear the sound when I press the button, but I get stuck in the theme selection screen, and can't go back. Even using the mouse and pressing 'Back' at the top of the screen doesn't work. If I restart GameEx everything is fine... until I change the theme again. I tried with Black Glass, Enter the Dragon and Giga Drive. I don't know if this applies to default themes too. Possibly I'll check and report here. I don't think you need my config file since the back button and everything else work fine, it's just a glitch that occurs in the theme selection screen. But ask me if you think it could be useful. EDIT: This happens with default themes too... Cheers, Alpha.

Hello! I salute you all, just returned back from holidays. Some time ago, quickly surfing this forums in an internet café, I read something about the possibility of cleaning the default ini from some custom\redundant entries in it. This is not an issue, of course, just a matter of 'order'. Call me a perfectionist, if you want, but I would like to clean the ini, since Tom has more serious and important things to do improving GameEx and his other software. Then this file could be included in future versions of GamEx. Moderators and every users who notices something about this could point me to what should be cleaned. For example, the default ini has two entries for the arcade ambiance directory that, I guess, reflect the directories in Tom's Computer. I mean things like this. What do you say, Tom? Could I dare to accomplish this task? Cheers, Alpha.

Really, much faster. Thanks!

Of course Tom! I was just planning to do so!

I was out of my place for awhile... just come back now. The only thing I can say regarding this issue is that, being I'm running XP SP3 fully updated and not having any issues, and after assuring that you don't have any permission/access problem with XP, which doesn't have the UAC, ehm... try to (temporary) disable your antivirus and firewall software, just to troubleshoot if this could be the cause.

Well... you put a couple of good questions. Basically, Gamebase is an universal emulator frontend, as GameEx is. You can configure your emulators, add game informations, screenshots, etc. But consider that building a database from the very beginning is a long and tedious work, since you have to set directories for each game, and specify the directories of each screenshots, ads, music file, etc. for each game. From this point of view there is no reason for using Gamebase instead of GameEx (and really... there isn't one... GameEx is so wonderful!). GB look is as you can see in the screenshots. Gamebase64, despite the similar name, isn't a frontend, but an already set-up Database for the greatest (huge!) c64 collection of the world (21000 games), completed with music files, screenshots, ads, docs, very detailed game information etc. With Gamebase, Gamebase64 Database, and Gamebase64 torrent you'll have the most completed C64 collection available, relatively easy to configure since the Gamebase64 database is (as I said) already configure to match the CB64 torrent collection of games, snaps, ads, music, etc. In the end, unless you use an already set-up database of the few that actually exist (C64, Amiga, and two or three others), Gamebase is very tedious to configure. But let's say you want to have the GB64 collection. It's easy to configure, and it's huge. The advantage to use GameEx with Gamebase... is that you have your C64 games in a centralized frontend, without exiting GameEx to play C64 games along with games from other platforms. I don't suggest to use Gamebase to configure your various emulators collections. I say: configure it to manage the C64, and then use it with GameEx... just to have everything in one place. And for me this is worth doing. Cheers, Alpha. And finally: C64 rules! (It was my first computer I used for gaming when I was a teenager)...

Great guide! Very detailed and well done. Thanks Ben!

Thanks Ben & Tom! And by the way... I agree with your choice... since the beginning I use the Setup Wizard to configure things, so I can't be less than happy! EDIT: Excuse me if my question is silly, and I know it is a bit OT, but anyway: I use to clean the cache before updating to a newer version. But other than that, after an update is it necessary or advisable to update the MAME romlist in GameEx even if no change were made in the romset, or is it absolutely not influential?

As far as I know, the "Playability" of all games is marked as "Unknown" in the GB database. So we should run and try every single (of the 21000) available games? Obviously I haven't tried every single game. But as I said before, I think every game in the gamebase collection is working, but it's only a supposition. Please sprudel, which games aren't working in your setup? I'm not affiliated with CCS64 in any way, but when the programmer claims that the emulator reproduces the inner working of the original C64 at 99,9%... well so far I haven't found any fault in this claim. I'm just asking because I haven't found a single not-working game in the GB collection, so I'm curious....

I use this theme and there was another similar topic somewhere in the forum. I found that, if you delete all that ini files except from theme.ini, (I mean in the BlackGlass main folder) everything looks normal. Strange, but true, at least for me and for the other user who confirmed that this cleaning method worked. Those "extra" files seem to be leftover junk

Double post... sorry!

Well, Gamebase does not differentiate between games you have and games you haven't. Basically, you can configure your own database with your games from scratch, set your personal directories and so on, but this would require a lot of effort, and you must have a lot of patience (unless you have only few games). The GB64 Database is a database already configured to work with the Gamebase64 Collection, that we can consider the "official" and biggest C64 collection. If you download and install the already set-up Gamebase64 database, which, as I said, is pre-configured to work with the entire Gamebase64 collection, it will import entries and information for all the games included in the collection (21000), regardless of you actually have the games or not. About the playable game list: no, Gamebase doesn't have a Playable list view. We have: All Games, All SIDs, Favourite Games, Bugged Games, Original Disks and a few others. But you can create a custom list view, filtering the "Playable" field in the database... I did it just a couple of minutes ago... and it returned to me all the 21000 games. In fact I think all the 21000 games are playable (at least with CCS64, which is the best emulator available). My conclusion is that all the games in the collection are playable, otherwise they hadn't been included in the collection. Hope I have been clear. Alpha.

Unfortunately again, I think the answer is: no. Definitely we should ask Tom, when he has time and desire, if he's planning to expand the Gamebase functionality in GameEx. Maybe a post in the "Requested features" would be the best thing to do.

Thank you veeery much!!!

Hi skatei! Are other NEO GEO games listed in the All Games List? If not, I suggest to check the filter options in the Setup Wizard.exe, under MAME settings. Cheers, Alpha.

You're absolutely right: the ESC functionality is done by GameEx. The problem configuring settings (or not be able to configure settings) in GameEx is that Gamebase is not directly managed as part of the emulator list, you don't enable\configure it in the usual emulator menu under the Commodore 64 category, so I don't see a way to bind a particular keymapping file to its functionality. Gamebase has its own "window" in the Setup Wizard, which reflect two lines in Gamebase.ini: enable\disable Gamebase support and where the gamebase folder is. Stop. The remaining settings are managed automatically - which is a great feature from a certain point of view, but it could be frustrating when you want to personalize keys and settings: speaking of me, for example, I would have appreciated a way to close games with a gamepad button combination, as I do with other emulators... If we could find a way to bind Gamebase to a kaymapping file...

Excuse me for double posting, but just in case you have all the stuff mentioned above and just want to know how to install the whole thing, here is a summary of the procedure: 1) Create a Commodore64 folder in a directory of your choice, it's convenient to do so in order to have all the stuff in the same place. 2) Put the emulators in this folder. Maybe it's convenient to make a subdirectory like \Commodore64\Emulators\ and put the emulators folders inside, but it's up to you. 3) Configure the emulators with the settings you prefer, in this way they will be ready when you will launch the games. 4) Put the whole Gamebase64 v0.7 romset folder in the Commodore 64 folder. You can change the name of the main GB v0.7 directory, but don't touch nor modify its subdirectories (I mean Extras, Games, Photos and Screenshots). 5) Install the Gamebase Universal emulator frontend. Again, it's convenient to install it in a subdirectory of the main Commodore 64 folder. 6) Install the GB64 Database v0.7. Don't change the name of the database (it should be GBC_v07) or the frontend won't recognise it. (I found a way to rename it and keep it working but I will explain it later). 7) Launch the Gamebase frontend. If everything has gone well, the GB64 database should appear. Let me know if things are proceeding well... Regards, Alpha.

Ok guys, I hope I will be of help. Catch these things and take them apart, for the moment. First thing, try to get a full Gamebase64 v0.7 (5 GB). It contains all the roms, screenshots, music, adverts, extras. It amounts 20000 games! Google is your friend. This version is pre-configured to work with the latest version of Gamebase. Then, go to http://www.bu22.com/ and download the latest version of Gamebase (v 1.3). Gamebase is a general (or better: universal) emulator frontend that you can configure and use to manage potentially any existing emulator. GameEx will interact with it to launch games. Once a database is installed, the frontend will display all sort of information and images about games: well-known databases for Gamebase are Gamebase64, Gamebase Amiga and Gamebase Vic20. Since (I suppose) we are interested in C64 stuff, let'go to http://www.gamebase64.com/, open the download tab, and download the GB v07 Database. It comes with its own installer, so it won't be an hassle to install. This database contains all the stuff regarding roms and extras, already configured to work with the big package of roms and extras you have downloaded. At this point, you should have: 1 - The big package of roms and extras: Gamebase 64 v0.7 2 - The universal emulator frontend Gamebase 2 - The specific database for C64: Gamebase64. At this point, take this stuff apart: since you ask even for what emulator to choose, I suppose you are completely new to this system emulation. So I suggest to familiarize and configure emulators first, and try a couple of games, just to start. In the past there were six or seven C64 emulators, but in the present time only two "survive": CCS64 and WinVICE. Both emulate the inner working of C64 perfectly, almost all games work well with both. But the general opinion (and mine) promotes CCS64 as the best C64 emulator. Give both a try and decide which suit your taste. Since you can configure both for use with Gamebase, I suggest to keep both in your C64 folder. GameEx will launch games with the default one. Get CCS64 from here. The author says it's shareware, but not in the common sense. In fact the program is free to use without limitations at all - the author only invites to buy the program, but it's not necessary, trust me. Get WinVICE from here. Download a couple of your favourite games from http://www.c64.com/, just to do some experience on how this emulators work. Please begin to familiarize with this system, read the documentation and configure the emulators. This is not for "educative" purposes, it's part of the setting-up process. Ok, let me know what you are doing and post any questions you could have. Regards, Alpha.

Hello Adultery! No, with the ESC key you will close the game, no problem. The problem for sprudel was that he/she wasn't able to change this behaviour. And in fact it can't be changed, but if you like the ESC key for closing your games.. GameEx does this. When you will decide to install Gamebase please open a new thread, it will be a pleasure for me to guide you if you will encounter any problem. Regards, Alpha.

Hi sprudel! Unfortunately Gamebase support in GameEx follows its own rules, all you can do is enable/disable it. All the settings are pre-configured.

New Italian language file for the next version, Tom. New changes have been made to multimedia section (jukebox, video, multimedia).... Please include the file in the next GameEx version... EDIT: Sorry for double posting, now the file is attached! Italian.zip