Koop

Yeah I'm only going to use those types of devices, I was mostly concerned with the number of devices the Opti-PAC supports being connected to it at the same time. Although, I wouldn't be using the spinners and the trackball at the same time, just the 2 spinners at the same time.

A few questions, if I plan to use an Xbox 360 controller for players 3-4 do I need to include a 3-4 player Insert Coin and Start buttons? I imagine that I could use the Start and Back/Select button on the controllers for those functions. Am I correct? Also does anyone here use the Opti-PAC? http://www.ultimarc.com/optipac1.html I just want to make sure I'm reading this correctly, the Opti-PAC can support 2 trackballs and 4 spinners all at once? I just want 1 trackball and 2 spinners so I'm definitely okay, right? Could I use the extra inputs for anything else? Thanks.

ahh man, no trackball and spinners? That looks sweet though with the automatic color changes per system. For me that would be an upgrade a long way down the road. So I'm guessing your forward and back buttons are just the equivalent of Enter and Backspace in GameEx. The Ultrasticks look pretty cool, especially with the analog features, but I like the on-the-fly switching between 4 and 8 way that the Mag-Stik Plus has.

I have actually already bought some parts when I was doing a trial run of a control panel. I bought the Mag-Stik Plus from Ultimarc (4/8 way switchable from the top) and an IPAC2. Since the IPAC2 supports up to 8 buttons, you're right, I might as well build them. I'm sure they could come in handy and it's not like they would really be in the way. I suppose if I realized that I made a big mistake I could buy different parts, but I plan to use these because I already put the thought into what I wanted before buying them. Yes, Stu, please share a pic of your CP. What are the foward/backward buttons for? Are they for emulation fast forwarding/rewinding? Does nobody use a Pause button? Does anyone utilize save states on their cabinet? Save states is easy with a full keyboard, but has anyone succeeded in an easy implementation on a CP without getting too cluttered?

Thanks, I didn't know about that link to the control listing. That will be helpful. I will be using an IPAC2. I've heard of the X-Arcade, but I'm going to be building my own control panel. I will also be adding Future Pinball and Visual Pinball, just forgot to mention those before. Can you name a game that uses 7 or 8 player buttons? If there is one it must be a fighting game, but I don't know of one so I'm not planning on building those buttons.

For those of you who built an actual arcade cabinet to house their GameEx machine, I was wondering what special "administrative" buttons you included on your control panel (or elsewhere on the cabinet). These are all the buttons that are NOT used during gameplay. Buttons I'm definitely using: Insert Coin 1-4 Start Game 1-4 Exit (quit game) L/R Flippers volume control for speakers (not really a button) I'll also have a wireless keyboard that I can grab while doing heavy duty administering Buttons that I've thought about and are considering: Back (for GameEx menus) Pause 3 Mouse buttons Some sort of button that brings up the emulator menu to access save states (haven't researched if it's possible to standardize all the emulators this way) Some of this depends on what you designed your cabinet to play. I'm not set in stone yet, but my cabinet will primarily be designed for MAME first and foremost. I also want to be able to play Atari 2600 and NES games which I think will be simple considering their simple controllers. Others like SNES and Genesis should be doable, but not a priority. N64 should be playable because I plan to build a 2 player cabinet with 2 USB ports to plug in 2 Xbox 360 controllers, so I can use those controllers for the N64 games. So, any recommendations? I thought about posting this in the BYOAC Forum, but I wanted to get the opinion of someone who is using GameEx. Real quick, this is what I plan to have on my control panel: 2 joysticks (4/8 way switchable) 6 buttons for each player (should I have 7 or 8? I can't think of a game that uses that many) Trackball 2 spinners (I'm assuming these can double as steering wheels) 2 USB ports to add 2 Xbox 360 controllers for the 3rd and 4th players I appreciate the advice.

I'm glad to be joining the group. Happy New Year!

AHH YOU DID IT!! haha, sorry. You fixed the flickering problem with Stella. Thank you so much. I had a feeling at one point that it might have something to do with the command line resetting the config, but I didn't know how to fix it. I'm still learning how GameEx works, but I'm learning fast. I'm really happy because I was just trying MESS and that emulator has problems too. It runs as the correct speed unlike z26, but it's all blurry. I didn't start this post, so I can't mark this as resolved, but I have a feeling this would fix the original poster's problems as well.

Sorry for the multiple posts. Z26 definitely runs faster. It also seems to jump from time to time, so I'm not really liking it. But guess what, I found out that if I run a Stella game, the flashing starts, then if I run a z26 game the flashing stops! To my knowledge, this is the only emulator that will stop the flashing. I've tried running a MAME game after the flashing started and that doesn't stop it.

I tried setting my desktop, GameEx, and Stella to 800x600 but that didn't help. I don't think it is a resolution issue. But I also tried the emulator z26 and that works and doesn't cause the flashing. Maybe I'll just go with that emulator instead. For some reason it seemed like the z26 emulator was running too fast, but that may have been my imagination. I'll keep testing. Also the z26 says it doesn't support save states. At this point I'm not sure if that's a big deal for me or not. Has anyone done a comparison between Stella, z26, and MESS? Any preferences?

D'oh! I changed it to 800x600 which is my GameEx resolution, but that didn't work. Then I changed it to 1280x720 which is my desktop resolution and that didn't work either. I also upgraded to Stella version 3.5. I'm not so sure it's a Stella problem anymore. Because, even when I exit GameEx after the flashing beings, when I reopen GameEx the flashing continues. When I restart my computer and reopen GameEx sometimes the flashing still continues! But usually this fixes the problem. I haven't tried that many times, but whenever I shut down my computer that always fixes the problem (until I run Stella again). So in other words, when I start GameEx the flashing can start even before I launch Stella. It's like there is something happening with GameEx that doesn't get reset until I restart my computer. Perhaps it is a graphics driver issue. Unfortunately, I don't know if there is a graphics update for my onboard graphics or not. I just bought this motherboard from a friend and he gave me the latest drivers he knew of because you can't find them on the internet very easily. I think it is because this motherboard was originally part of a pre-built system (like a Dell or something like that).

It does seem like a transition problem. Unfortunately, Stella doesn't have a different resolution setting, but there are a few other settings, but I don't know what they mean: Had to convert my GameEx.ini to a .txt to allow me to upload: GameEx.txt Stella config: Console Atari 2600 (Stella).txt Thanks.

DGringo, Did you ever solve this problem? I'm having the exact same symptoms, it's only happening with Stella. Draco, There is no option for DirectDraw. The only other option is "software". When I change it to software I can still run games fine from the emulator. But when I boot up GameEx and run it, I get the same flashing problem. Then when I return and run Stella by itself I notice that the setting has been changed back to OpenGL again! I've attached my log file. log.txt

So I'm guessing you've looked into this and it isn't possible at this time? If so, I guess the request would be to assign each spot for content (upper left, lower left, etc) a number and allow the user to set the precedence for content (snap, video, marquee, etc) to show in those spots if available. For now I will just plan to leave the 3D cabs out.

Thanks, so it looks like I download the dataset from Dat-o-matic and somehow use that with the CLRMame Pro program. Unfortunatly it doesn't look like they have the Atari 2600 system (unless that is contained in the 5200 set?). But it does have NES and SNES! I have no idea how to use CLRMame Pro, but as you said, I should probably get familiar.

I forgot to mention, when I select the "Change View" option, there is no option that doesn't show the 3D cabinets. Except for the one view that only shows the title screen, which I don't like.

I downloaded the 3D cabinet set from the GameEx website. They look great!... but when I'm browsing the list of games I'd rather NOT see the 3D cabinet. I'd rather see the video snap (or photo snap) along with the marquee. The 3D cabinets also slow down the browsing just a tad. And that way I can still view the 3D cabinet by selecting it after I select a particular game. Is there a way to customize what content goes in which slot? I looked in the Setup Wizard settings, but I didn't see anything. I'm using the Default Media Center theme. I haven't actually tried other themes, but I've looked at their screenshots and so far I think I'm okay with the default theme. But, if another theme solves this problem I'd be willing to look at it.

Just to clarify, now that I've relooked at my files: The videos just show picture of a red triangle with an exclamation point on it and the words "This game is not playable" appear on that screen. They are 96KB in size for the high quality set and 29KB for the low quality set. In the photo snaps (not video) there are many snaps that simply say "Mechanical This set has no InGame snapshot". Probably the best solution is to make it so that GameEx filters out ROMs that don't work or are "mechanical" ROMs (what does mechanical mean?). But, I'm still working on that part and I'll make a separate post for that kind of help when I'm ready. In the meantime, I think I am going to delete the video snaps that say "this game is not playable". I want to do this so they don't randomly get played on the main GameEx screen and so they don't randomly get played during the screensaver mode (my screensaver are the videos, not actually running MAME). Since I have videos, the mechanical ROM snaps don't show up on the main GameEx screen, and they don't get played in the screensaver. The only time I see them is when I'm browsing the game list. So I'm not worried about those right now. Those will go away when I solve the GameEx filter problem. Thanks for the advice.

Well I haven't completely resolved it as I thought I had. Upon restarting my computer the flickering didn't come back when I restarted GameEx. But, it does start flickering again when I quit an Atari game and won't stop until a computer reboot. I'll look into it a little bit later, not too worried about Atari games right now. I'll also try another emulator (using Stella right now).

great thanks. I'll search the internet for ROM managers. This site seems like a good start: http://www.romcenter.com/

Good point about creating your own and giving back. When you say there are only 2 ways, are you saying that manually deleting the file would not work for some reason? One reason I would like to delete the "blank" video files is that I may have a valid regular snap instead. GameEx seems to only display the video snap if one is available, and hides the regular snap. So by deleting the video, I would then be able to browse using the regular snap (I think).

I'm still new to the emulating community, but from what I can tell the file naming of MAME ROMs is very important so that they can be recognized correctly and so forth. Do ROMs for other systems follow the same strict rules? I'm asking because I have a set of ROMs for a console that do not seem to be named correctly. I think some are named correctly, while others look like they're definitely wrong (the title is correct, but doesn't seem to follow any naming standard). In fact, I believe this to be true because when I use the EmuMovies download utility to download snaps for the ROMs I have it often does not download snaps for many of these games (probably because they are incorrectly named). Does anyone know of a list of correct ROM names for consoles? Does anyone know of a program that can help me recognize and automatically rename ROMs? Thanks.

I'm a subscriber to EmuMovies and I have downloaded the sets of video snaps (and regular snaps) for my MAME ROMs. EmuMovies is great, but they have provided me with a bunch of "blank" videos. What I mean by "blank" is not that they don't display anything, but they display a short message saying "a video does not exist" or "this is a mechanical ROM and cannot be played" (not exact verbiage). I'm wondering what everyone else does with these videos (and photos). Currently, there are many of these "blank" videos (and snaps) in my ROM list when I select "All MAME ROMs". Therefore, when I am viewing the main GameEx menu it shows random videos and snaps which is often one of these silly/annoying "blank" videos. So I could approach this problem in 2 ways: 1) Filter my ROM list to get rid of the mechanical ROMs. I would like to do this anyway, but currently I'm having trouble accomplishing this without also removing the different versions of other ROMs (i.e. I want to have all versions of "X-men" available to choose from). But that is a different problem and I'm going to create a separate post for that. Still, this option would not get rid of the many videos and snaps that say "a video does not exist". 2) Manually delete these "blank" videos and snaps. I think I can do this easily. If I arrange the files my file size then all of the blank ones should group together and I can delete them easily. The problem with this is that I use the Downloader Utility from EmuGames. This utility (I believe) will detect missing files and re-download them. So, at some point in the future I'll have to manually delete them again. Still, I think this is my best option. Does anyone know of a better option? Has someone figured out how to keep these videos from showing up in the main GameEx menu?

I'm trying to mark this as resolved. Can't find the option to edit the title...

well I guess I'm being impatient right now because I'm excited to get this working, so I installed the Shark007 codecs. It has worked so far. However, just before installing the codecs I started having problems with a constant flickering of the menu screens. At first it only happened once in a while after exiting and Atari 2600 game, now it is constant and comes back even after restarting GameEx. So the flickering is making it hard to tell if the video performance is doing good or not. It is stuttering, but that could be because of the flickering. So I'm going to try to fix the flickering problem now, and I may try downloading the low-res versions of the video snaps.