Koop

Ok well thanks. I guess I'll just have to wait until the next time I get enough time/motivation to move the computer out of the cabinet temporarily.

Thanks! Who is Ben and where can I get his MAME compiler?

This topic is a little dated so I was wondering if it is still true that MAME does not accept DirectInput by default and that a re-compile is required to make that change? I just purchased Xpadder with the hope of using Xbox 360 gamepads as my 3rd and 4th player controls in MAME. Unfortunately I can't seem to get it to work with MAME. Finally I came across this thread. I am using the GameEx Xpadder plugin and I was able to successfully test that the plugin works with the GameEx interface (I configured a controller button to skip to the next song) so I'm pretty sure MAME is the problem I'm having. Off the top of my head I don't know what version of MAME I'm running, but I downloaded it around August 2012 timeframe.

Hi, I'm trying to upgrade to the newest version of GameEx which includes new support for Steam. During the installation process it asked me if I wanted to download and install a Steam "wrapper" (I think that was the word). Unfortunately, my arcade computer is not connected to the internet and doing so would be a big hassle. Can I download and install the needed Steam files any other way? I skipped the download step and installation finished fine. Maybe I don't need those files because now when I launch GameEx I noticed that there is an option under Emulated Games for Steam, but it just says there are no games detected. Also, in the GameEx setup there is a page for Steam setup. I entered my username and password there. But that brings me to another question, does the Steam integration work if I am running Steam in "offline" mode? I understand I wouldn't get the videos or screenshots while offline and that is okay, I just want to be able to launch the games. So I'm just not sure if the problem of no games appearing in GameEx under Steam is a problem with not downloading those files during installation or if I'm just setting it up wrong. To be clear, I do have games downloaded and installed in Steam and I have tried to run GameEx both with Steam running in the background and not running. Thanks. Slightly off topic, but something I just though of: People are often asked to post their setup log in order to help troubleshoot. I hope that the Steam username and password is not part of this file. Is that correct?

Congrats. You've helped me out a lot.

Let us know how your upgrade goes. Even if it goes smoothly your input would be valuable to others!

I call it the Koopacade! I built it from scratch using designs from John St.Clair's book Project Arcade. I've got 2 sets of player controls, including 2 spinners, but only 1 trackball. I plan on using the USB ports at the front of the control panel to add player 3-4 gamepads. The joysticks are 4/8-way switchable without opening the control panel. I got all of my controls from Ultimarc. If you want to comment on the cab I've made a topic here: http://www.gameex.info/forums/topic/11136-koopacade-project-announcement/ and here (with more pics): http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=119875.0 Thanks.

Absolutely, I'll do it sometime this week.

Hey GameEx'ers, I just wanted to let you all know that I finished my first cabinet! I posted some pics over at the Arcade Controls forum. I just wanted to thank everyone in the forums for all the help you gave me in setting up GameEx. I love the software, and it is part of the inspiration that drove me to build the cabinet. I'm still tweaking my setup so I'm sure you'll continue to hear from me. Koopacade

excellent. thanks i didnt notice that.

Guess what everyone, Im back which means my cabinet is finished! Pics coming soon. My computer isnt the best which is why I had to get rid of the 3D cabs so the menus would run smoother. So I think it would help if I could disable the mini visualization that shows next to the cover art when a song is playing. Is there a way to do that? If so I cant find it. Thanks.

Nice. Looks like the new Xbox 360 interface. It might have been inspired by that or vice versa. In any case you might check out 360 screenshots for more ideas.

Well that didn't take long. I just added the argument "-artcrop" to the command line (MAME Options under Advanced MAME Settings). From there the default is cropped so you get the full size of the game field and you can always change the settings to FULL, but I imagine that the next time you launch the game it would start out as "cropped" again. So I guess this isn't a complete solution, but it works for me. FYI, this is what gave me the answer: http://mamedev.org/source/docs/config.txt.html

Backgrounds are working, though this has brought up another question. How can I change the default view to be "cropped". According to the guide linked above you can do this on a per game basis, but I'd like the default view for all games to be "cropped" instead of "full". This is because some games like Warrior are very small when all of the surrounding bezel artwork is displayed. I'm going to research that and post the results, but if anyone knows how to it, then let me know.

Thanks everyone. I wasn't thinking of this from the perspective of being solely a MAME issue and not GameEx, but you are correct that it is. I was lumping it in with all the other artwork configuration settings that GameEx has. But thanks for the advice. When I get to my MAME computer later tonight I'll see if I can figure it out, but it sounds like you've answered my question and that guide looks helpful too. I'll report back if I can't get it working.

I just wanted to add that I see the "background snap path " option, but from the description I think that is referring to the background image seen while browsing GameEx, not the background displayed during the game.

Certain MAME games utilize or even require a background image while playing. I am referring to the artwork that is displayed beneath the computer generated graphics of some games. It was used to enhance the look of the game by providing an interesting background image that didn't need to be rendered by the computer. I think Asteroids was a game that used one. Warriors is an example of one that is "required" because without it you cannot see the pits of the game playfield that you need to avoid. I asked over at EmuMovies where to download these backgrounds and I was told that it is contained in the "artwork" packages. However, I'm unclear where I need to put these files in order for GameEx to utilize them. It setup under Mame Settings there is a place to put in the path for the "artwork preview", but not for the normal Artwork. I can't seem to find a setting for that. Anyone know how to handle these files? Thanks.

after some searching I figured it out. I can use the "move" command to cut and paste the files I want to remove from a directory. I just tested it out and it works. This should allow me to get what I want done pretty easy. If anything goes wrong I'll report back, but this topic should be considered resolved.

Hey, I got it to work. Just needed to make a post about it before the solution would present itself. I could have sworn that last night I was doing a search for 'mature' (single quotes). But today it is only accepting "mature" (double quotes). So anyway, I created the batch file, added the quotes as you suggested and it worked! So now that I know how to work ROMLister I need to figure out how exactly to move the offending "mature" files out of the folder, rather than copying. I'll do a search for Batch commands and figure out if I can do a 'cut' or something like that. Thanks for the help!

Now I can't get the -find function to return any results for 'mature'! Clicking "list all ROMs" gives me a large list and even doing a search for 'adult' gives me a few results. But for some reason now I get 0 results back when searching for mature. So I can't create the batch file to try your suggestion, Tempest. But I'm going to keep working on it. Grrr. Draco, I don't have a folder named "ini" in my MAME folder. In fact there is no controls.xml in my MAME folder. Is that what you meant?

I'm having trouble with the last step of using ROMLister (executing the batch file). The output from the command line window keeps saying "The system cannot find the file specified". First a little background. In setting up ROMLister the tutorial says to use the controls.xml file in the GameEx\DATA folder. The only controls.xml file I found was in the GameEx\PLUGINS\PluginLCD folder. It seemed to be the right kind of file so I choose that. I did find a controls.ini file in the GameEx\DATA folder, but I wasn't sure how to convert it. Both the controls.ini and the controls.xml file that I found seemed to have roughly the same content. Next, I was unable to choose Merge until I selected a nplayers.ini file even though the program says that file is "optional". Then I did a search command (-find) for 'mature' and it came back with a list of 559 roms. I saved that list to a batch file with this command line: copy C:\Program Files\games\emulators\Assets\MAME\videos\%ROM%.mp4 C:\Program Files\games\ROMLister\temp files folder So it should look through my videos folder for the .mp4 files and copy them to the other temp folder. The batch file runs and finished very quickly. When I pause the process midway, I can see why it only takes a few seconds to run: it cannot find any of the files to copy. But upon close inspection I see lines that say it is attempting to copy a file that I DO have, and says it cannot find it! I've double checked and the paths are typed correctly so it's not looking in the wrong folder. Any ideas what's going on? Thanks.

Tempest, that really is a great tutorial. That sounds like it will do exactly what I want it to do. One question though, can I use the "cut" command instead of the "copy" command? And just so I'm understanding this correctly, after ROMLister creates the batch file, I move the batch file to my ROM directory and double click it to run and carry out its intended operation? Great!

Alright, well thanks Tempest. Since I didn't know exactly what ROMLister or batch files were, I interpreted Draco1962's response to your post as meaning it wouldn't actually accomplish was I was setting out to do, or at least it didn't make it any easier. But I found your ROMLister tutorial now, going through it, thanks. So anyway, there used to be over 2 pages of comments here. They must have moved all of those posts to another topic or something. Tempest, I only have a "like this" button. That's probably what you're looking for.

I believe I've created a monster here! Anyway, I found the catver.ini file (although I found it under GameEx/DATA, not in the MAME folder). Doing a "find" search for "mature" shows me all the games with the "mature" label. From there I can manually delete the videos from my assets folder. It's a painful process, but it's not beyond the scope of doing it manually (as long as I only have to do it once). I'll just have to be sure to also delete the ROMs in case I ever use the EmuMovies service again to update my assets library. Does anyone have a good suggestion to make this manual process a little bit easier? Depending on what comes out of this discussion I'm not sure how long it would take to develop a solution, so I'm going to assume it would be a while. Thanks, and good luck with the new idea!

wow, thanks for all the thought you are putting into this. In the end I'm okay with manually deleting the files if I have to, I just need that list. I know it exists somewhere since the filter does work. I'm going to check out that Catver.ini file that GIMP mentioned when I get a chance later today.