u-man

So I looked at the FTP here at GameEx and i really found "platform" videos, but in case of MAME and Arcade games, there is just only one video here: http://ftpbrowse.gameex.com/-GameEx-/- Emulator Artwork & Videos -/MAME/platform_video/ I dont know, if it is working inside of GameEx, but that would be a example of what I am looking for. This kind of videosnap, but just for the MAME categories like Lightgun, Vector, Trackball, 4 player etc. Also I still dont know, if this is possible to do and moreover how the "naming convention" of those videosnaps would be. I mean for that to work, GameEx would need to search for these videos first and if not found, showing a random videosnap that fits the selected subgenre (this is already the normal case). A proper answer here, would help me a lot .

FEATURE REQUEST: Support of icons based on game type. The icons that exist for MAME games are pretty much useless IMHO. Most of the time, they dont reflect the character or genre of the game and there are ten-thousands of them. Because they are "bound" to the game list, they will look extremely bad on low-res themes and even with hi-res themes, they barely represent something, because they are just to small, if they are "bound" to the game list / font. PLEASE seperate icons from the game list / font and add a extra icon field in the theme-editor for them. So that theme-creators can choose a icon-size (16x16, 32x32 etc.) and where to place them. GameEx can read category lists and therefore it would be way more useful, to show icons that are category based. This way, you would only use a handful of icons, based on game type / genre. It would be also a huge benefit for low-res themes. It would be a lot easier for a user to "read" the game list. Basically Tom did that already for the MAME (genre) selection menue (Lightgun, Trackball, Spinner etc.). Here we have the option to use logos that will do that. However, we dont have that in the game-list. It would be great, if we could see a racing car or wheel icon for a driving game or see a gun / crosshair for lighting gun games etc. That would be a great addition to icons that would make a lot more sense.

FEATURE REQUEST: Support of (Multi) coloured Fonts. Examples: https://www.fontspace.com/search?q=color font https://www.myfonts.com/de/search?query=chromatic&page=1&toggle[has_free]=true Browsers, Photoshop, Font-Editors... they all do support colored fonts (sometimes called chromatic fonts). If GameEx would support them too, theme-creators could use different colors for different things like menue bar, titles etc. This would also solve all this problems and would eliminate extra coding to achieve that:

Yes, i did setup the image field properly. All videos use the same size (1440x1080 4:3 aspect) and GameEx is running at this resolution (see video). Mind you, that the error/bug comes from the background video, where i have no options at all, except telling GameEx, use this video as background for the choosen section. It is the background video, that is oversized and has then bad quality. If i use the same video for the image-field, it looks better and is properly scaled.

Yeah, lets wait and see what Tom will say. I think he will understand the video and if not, i will share the theme, no problem. The bug is not related to my theme. You can repeat the same with any theme, you just need to setup one videofile that is used as background and has the same size/resolution as your theme and use the same video in image-field 1, which is also setup the same size (x=0, y=0, width and height= theme resolution). So basically you have 2 video-layers. Image-field 1 has higher priority and overlays the background, but whenever Image-field 1 is "filled" with a new video and GameEx needs to load the new video, you will see the background video until the new video is loaded, which then overlays the background again. So in the above posted video, whenever you read "update" in the marquee (but without the update icon), you are actually witnessing the background video for the MAME genre menue. Anything else shown in the marquee, are Image-field 1 videos that are loaded. Depending where you are scrolling in the list, a different video is loaded into Image-field 1. In my example, this are fullsized videos for "update game list" and "MAME all games". Thats why i have switched between the two categories all the time. I hope its easier to understand now.

Hello GameEx Staff , The following video will show you the bug. Please pay attention to the corners and the big update title in the marquee. GameEx_Arcade_All Arcade Games_60_60_ 2024-11-06 15-19-59.mp4 I am sorry for the big video, but it is needed to better visually see the bug. So what is happening here: We are in the MAME-Categories-submenu. A video was picked (via Theme-editor and the video-option menu) as background for the MAME-Categories-submenu shown here. The picked video contains all theme elements (arcade cab, menue, bars etc. BUT on a black background). If you now choose a category, then a video is shown that is related to this genre. This video uses image-field 1 from the theme editor and is set to full screen resolution. This video also contains all theme elements, but this time it has a genre related background included. So if you scroll through the list, the entire screen will change and adapt to the choosen genre. So far so good, but if you switch from one genre to another, then there is a time gap, that is filled with the video that we have chosen as the background for the MAME-Categories-submenu and here you will see that this background-video is slightly overscaled, probably just by only 1%, but it is noticeable. It is bigger then the image-field 1 video, which should not be the case. This is also bad for the image-quality of the video, as it is not shown in its native resolution. This results in a slightly blurred video, losing its sharpness and including artefacts. You can notice the degrading in carefully observing the area around the joysticks in the video. Summarize: There is something wrong in the theme-editor video-option menu and it has to do with scaling. Any video you choose here, will be displayed as a full size background, slightly overscaled and not in his native resolution. Any video that you set for the image-field in the theme editor, is properly displayed. If you set the image-field 1 properties to the native resolution of the video, then it is shown as this. Any questions? Feel free to ask . GameEx ini and log files attached. log.txt GameEx.ini

I am sorry for the bad description. The only reason why I mentioned the logos and marquee is because someone could mention those to solve the problem, but I want to know if we have control over the (in my example the game screen of the arcade cab) image field that GameEx uses to show a random videosnap of the selected MAME genre.

Hi Draco 🙂, I am currently not on my setup, but you can watch the 2nd video from my last post: https://forums.gameex.com/forums/topic/30223-resolved-two-possible-bugs-found-with-gameex-1875/?do=findComment&comment=218914 Just imagine that instead of the game names in the list on the left side, the MAME subcategories would be there. Every subcategory has a own logo-file that would appear in the marquee of the arcade cab. And for every subcategory, GameEx picks randomly a videosnap that fits into this category and is shown as the gamescreen on the arcade cab. The question is now, if we can create a videosnap for these subcategories. For example if lightgun is selected, showing a video containing only lightgun games.

Hello guys 🙂, Tom is right, I am looking for Category/Submenu. If it is possible to have videosnaps for the sub-categories, then how would I need to name them, so that GameEx can identify them? Keep in mind, that I already use all Logo-media provided for the sub-categories. I want to use the „image“ field that GameEx uses to show the random videosnaps. This way I could create my own videos for subcategories, assuming I know the naming for the videos.

At default GameEx randomly picks videos from existing videosnaps that fits into the MAME categories like Lightgun, Multiplayer, Trackball etc. I am curious if any category videos exists 😁 Any help appreciated 🙂

Both bugs seems to be gone with GameEx 18.81. Now i can only ask kindly, if you can make the sorting of the menue different. In that way that after name/title, the year appears. 1. Name / Title 2. Year 3. Category / Genre 4. Publisher 5. Developer Since Publisher and Developer give the same result, i would leave one of them blank, but this results also in cutting off the "year" option. It would be really nice if the sorting would be as shown above 😇☺️

Thank you very much for the fix .

Hi Tom, as far as i can tell, at least one of the two bugs here are gone with the latest 18.80 GameEx version. So the scrolling game info bug is resolved, thank you Tom 👍💖.

Hello gentlemen After updating GameEx yesterday, I am not able to set a specific resolution with the setup wizard in the display settings. GameEx starts, switch to the resolution for a second and then switches back to desktop default resolution and does not start like it should. It runs in the task manager, but beside this, nothing happens. I need to kill the process and tell GameEx with the setup wizard, to not change resolution. After this GameEx will start normally, but will use the native desktop resolution. I did not change anything resolution wise before the update, only working on my 4:3 low-res CRT theme (800x600). If I now want to see, how it will look, i need to manually set the desktop to a 4:3 resolution (800x600, 1440x1080 etc.) prior starting GameEx. I attached log and .ini files, from a "switch" situation. Hope it helps.log.txt GameEx.ini

Hello Draco, Updated to v18.77 and attached all new .ini and log files. Nothing has changed, my previous post still valid GameEx.ini log.txt

Hello Gentlemen , I am sorry for the late reply. I recorded the bugs, so you can have a look for yourself. My Theme.ini is telling me that the theme is a v4 theme. Sadly i forgot what the differences are between all these versions and AFAIK from the past, there was a point where GameEx would support only v4 themes, but i could be very wrong here . Now coming to the first bug: If i sound harsh then i am really sorry, it is not my intention (seriously). So Tom is saying this "bug" has always being the case for "trimming" the menue. If that is the case, i would really be happy, if the sorting of the menue would be different in that way, that the "by manufacturer" and "by developer" options would be the last items in the menue. Currently the "by year" option, is the last item in the menue and if you trim "by manufacturer" or "by developer", you will also automatically trim the "by year" option. At this point i also want to mention that in the case of MAME, the "by manufacturer" or "by developer" options lead to the same result. So I dont see a point, why i need to have both sorting options in the menue. Not only that, it also contains a bug where clicking the "by developer" item, is acting like you have pressed the "Home" button. Just observe carefully the end of the bug 1 clip. It will only show up, if the "game info" menue is enabled. IMHO Tom should rework the "game info" menue. It should not contain any sorting menue items, because it is not really needed (you can always go back one step and do the sorting there.) and should focus more on the "game info". Also the sorting menue that shows up with the "game info" screen cannot be trimmed , no matter what you do, it will show up in its full glory.... eh mmh length . The Bug 2 Clip is showing the "scrolling through game info" bug. The only way to scroll through it, is to enable the loop function (see first post) and do a reverse scroll (from end to start), by pressing the "arrow up" key on the keyboard. Thats all so far GameEx_Bug1_ 2024-09-18.mp4 GameEx_Bug2_ 2024-09-18.mp4 Theme.ini

Ooops, i did not know this. Guess I will try to record the bugs then and post a video .

I dont use Windows 11 for many obvious reasons, including this "feature", but thanks anyway . If you know any else free to use screen capturing software, let me know it. For the second bug, yeah please try it. For this, you only need to be sure that "Show Game Information" is enabled in the setup wizard of the "Enable / Disable Feature" section. Can not imagine, that this is done on purpose to minimize latency.

Hello Draco , thanks for looking into this. First I am sure, that I use the latest version of GameEx, as i do the "automatic" updates. I just did not look into the download section to know what the latest version is, instead looked in the forum news section for it . Any good way to know which version is GameEx running on? Second, gameex.ini and log.txt files attached. Third, any good and easy to (de)-install screen capturing software recommended? I did find out the cause of the first bug. Remember that in my last thread I wanted to remove the "Sort by Developer" option? The solution was to leave the developer line in the English.ini blank . In the current version of GameEx, doing this has a downside, because it removes everything that comes after the "Sort by Developer" too which includes the "Sort by year" option. If for example you leave the "Sort by Name" line blank, then you would have removed the "Sort by..." menue entirely 🤪. I am almost sure, this behaviour was not the case with my older version of GameEx. The second bug, is still the same. Cheers! GameEx.ini log.txt

Hello folks 😇 , After taking a break creating my theme and getting back after holidays, I did update GameEx to version 18.75. However it seems that this version introduced two possible bugs. To better replicate the problems, I will try to explain it as this: The first bug is, that the "Sort by: Year" option in the MAME menue is not showing up anymore. However it shows up, if "Show Game Information" is enabled in the setup wizard of the "Enable / Disable Feature" section AND you clicked on a MAME game from your game list. For proof I attached my English.ini and i also enabled "English" as language in the setup wizard. Just to be sure it is not my mistake. This brings me to the second bug. You cant completely scroll through the game info list and therefore can not read any game info. Lets say for example, you click on Donkey Kong, then you should see a "Game Information" in your list field. How many lines to scroll it has, depends on your list field size. Lets assume my list field contains 90 lines of "Game Information", but the list field shows only the MAME extras, that are enabled in the "MAME Settings" of the setup wizard. Like the Flyer, Marquee, 3D cabinet etc. This means you can only scroll about 10 lines of the 90 lines from the "Game Information". It misses the entire history and mameinfo lines or better said you can not reach them, because you get stuck after about 10 lines of scrolling. A workaround for this, is to enable the "Loop" option in the "Input Settings" from the setup wizard. Afterwards you can scroll backwards (like scrolling from line 0 to line 90 in one step), then the "Game Information" will finally show up, but you will need to read it from bottom to top which is confusing. I hope I was clear enough, but it should be easy to replicate i think. Thx in advance, for anyone trying. English.ini

First of all, everything you wrote is true / right, but you will not find "by developer" in the setup wizard, which was my point and why i could not change that. You will find it only in the language .ini files . So it might be something for Tom to consider. It is not available in the setup wizard. I am happy for your find out, especially to have the options for entirely removing "sorting" stuff. Great find, Draco 👍. Any GameEx Update will overwrite the .ini file. I remember this, because i did every update manually in the past. I dont know what happens if the .ini file is "read only" , it was something i never tried, because I wanted to avoid any errors during the update. Instead I manually replaced the language.ini file. Aaah memories are coming back . It is also better, to do changes with the language.ini files, because you have at least a file to look at, which with "custom" is not the case.

Yeah, I am a complete idiot . Ok, my approach was to use the setup wizard, choose "custom" language and then change the text inside the setup wizard. Now I see, i should just use "english" as language and then edit the English.ini . Sorry guys, really, it was years ago doing these stuff. I feel ashamed . Guess this is solved too .

Ok, thanks for the answer(s) Tom . If it can not be removed (which i fully understand), can it be changed into something shorter, i.e. devs? Also it would be then the only text, that cant be changed with "custom" language for the "sort menue". For all other "sort" menue options, i can decide what text should be showed and for "by developer" it is not possible? How the hell did I do that, with my old theme 😃😜 (hammering my head) Guess I will need to experiment a little with this.

I dont have anything from my old theme anymore, except the artwork. I was dumb and did not think about such stuff and that I will needed again . Now I realize that there was a lot of things to think about BEFORE emptying the trash can. I attached my new theme.ini , if that helps any. Reading it, I did not found anything useful regarding the topic here. Theme.ini

Thank you Draco for looking into this. I know it worked in my old theme, but I cant remember how this was done. The only thing I know, it is possible, without changing something hardcoded. I also think to remember that to change "by developer", I needed to change some custom text, that did not had "developer" in it, i.e. changing "artist" would change/influence that "by developer" thing. This screenshot was from my old theme and as you can see, there is no developer item in the top menue, so there must be some way.