u-man

nullPointer glad and sad in the same time to hear from you , i guess you are right in many points, but as i can remember the most important thing, the speed-control is allready in MAME, it only misses the stuff to individually save the time-records for each game. AdvanceMAME saves this in an internal database. naive as i am, i thought this would work with a slightly different "do this and that while emu is running", kinda the stuff "send keys"+"wait xxxx secs". the whole acceleration would not be such a big problem, as i am not aware of any problems a game would have, as long as you do it only for the starting process. it would be a cool feature anyway..... custom build, yes but how? here is the link for the interested people outthere: http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/doc-advmame.html#5.10

Hello again folks, I dont know where to put this thread, so mods and admins please move it to the right place, if you think it dont belongs here. Yesterday i started to read the docs of advanceMAME and find out a nice feature... Speed Control AdvanceMAME permits a special speed control of the game play. You can play the game in a faster way, change arbitrarily the frame rate, skip the game startup process at the maximum speed, or skip the game animations pressing a key. Press `asterisk_pad' to enable the `turbo' mode. Press `minus_pad' to mark the time of the real game start. The next time the game is started, it will execute very fast until this time. More details are in the description of the `sync_fps', `sync_speed', `sync_turbospeed' and `sync_startuptime' options. The video and audio synchronization uses an advanced algorithm, which ensure always the best performance. The program continuously measures the time required to compute a frame and continuously adapt the number of frame to skip and to draw. If it detects that you have system too slow to play the game at full speed, it automatically disables any frame skipping. If the underline Operand System allows that, AdvanceMAME release the CPU when it isn't used after computing each frame reducing the CPU occupation. the text in bold is the interesting part and the feature i would like to see in GameEx. from my point of understanding, you can fastup the game startup process significantly and save it individually for every MAME game. there are a lot MAME games with a long startup time and testing screens. my question is, could we have a plugin that do nearly the same, unfortunately only AdvanceMAME has such a nice feature, i have no clue why this is not implemented in all the MAME derivates. As i have a Arcade-CRT-monitor, i would like to test the advanceMAME thing, but i would need to rollback my MAME-Roms and to use the real cool features, i need to start this in DOS-Mode , but maybe i didnt understand this correctly. Currently i am sticked with CabMAME and i will test the GroovyMAME next (sad, i have only a nvidia-card). I want to achieve "arcade perfect resolutions" and i am in search for the best solution for my case. so any tips here, would help me a lot. thx in advance, u-man

OMG.... what a great update, over 20 new databases ..... YES . Thanks Tom, Flash, Headkaze and Adultery and this overall coolio community. Man and i thought the new video-alpha-support feature is here , anyway a great, great update. GameEx is the best.

Looks nice and clean, good job. how do you achieved the history text for the nintendo console? what doi need to do, if i want the same?

i think you can do this with Gamebase 64. if you right click on a game and choose GEMUS "key=value" pairs, you can edit how the c64 emu should handle the game. you should be well experienced with the command line parameters, but it will be pain to do this individually. worth a try, in my eyes

you likely use a interlaced resolution. if you use a high contrast i.e. white font on black ground than it tends to jitter. also thin lines with 1-2 pixels are not good for interlaced resolutions. i recommend to use a bigger, good readable font with a light, darker color. turn off outline fonts in the setup-wizard can also help. at least for me it worked. we need to know, what resoultion you are using, cause i dont think you can display 800x600. it sounds like a old-fashioned 15khz CRT, where 640x480 would be the maximum, or 768x576 for PAL. maybe your log-file would help.

ok, that is something, i didnt know. still there is the opportunity to create a quicklaunch-shortcut via installer, where the name is legal to OS. it is not like that, that everyone knows that you cannot put that name in a taskbar. it is just my state as a user... and this is not user-friendly. maybe i am naive to think, that this is easy to be done. i apologize then. you are a ongoing IT, but most of the people are normal users and dont know everything like you and Draco. Myself didnt know this, till yesterday. i thought this is the feature and enhancement thread. for me this would be a enhancement .

Off course it will work, but you need to be aware of that . Thats exactly what i wrote before. Why using a name that the system dont likes? Why a user should be in trouble to rename the SetupWizard? Would it not be nicer, to have the installer to do this job? In fact, i never had a App that needed such a task, thus didnt know first, how to make a shortcut for the taskbar.

Hi Tom, it would be nice, if we could rename the "setupwizard". currently it is not possible to drag a shortcut of it to the taskbar, as it is forbidden by the OS to use a shortcut with such a name. if you rename it to lets say "GameExWizard" you can drag that shortcut to the taskbar without problems. if you setup new emulators, you will basically start the setup-wizard very often and then it would be nice to have it in the taskbar. if this is easy to make then please do it (why bothering the OS with critical names ) or give that info at least. . thanks in advance, u-man

"Lagarith offers better compression than codecs like Huffyuv, Alparysoft, and CorePNG. There are a few lossless codecs that can compress better than Lagarith, such as MSU and FFV1 (but they dont support ALPHA); however Lagarith tends to be faster than these codecs. Lagarith is able to operate in several colorspaces - RGB24, RGB32, RGBA, YUY2, and YV12. For DVD video, the compression is typically only 10-30% better than Huffyuv. However, for high static scenes or highly compressible scenes, Lagarith significantly outperforms Huffyuv. Lagarith is able to outperform Huffyuv due to the fact that it uses a much better compression method. Pixel values are first predicted using median prediction (the same method used when "Predict Median" is selected in Huffyuv). This results in a much more compressible data stream. In Huffyuv, this byte stream would then be compress using Huffman compression. In Lagarith, the byte stream may be subjected to a modified Run Length Encoding if it will result in better compression. The resulting byte stream from that is then compressed using Arithmetic compression, which, unlike Huffman compression, can average fractional bits per symbol. This allows the compressed size to be very close to the entropy of the data, and is why Lagarith can compress simple frames much better than Huffyuv, and avoid expanding high static video. Additionally, Lagarith has support for null frames; if the previous frame is mathematically identical to the current, the current frame is discarded and the decoder will simply use the previous frame again." 1.) Yep, thats true. A Alpha-Channel need to be clean, any compression-artefacts could cause a not desireable result . 2.) We could use this for so much more 3.) No prob. Sometimes there is no time for a hobby . The colorkey could work for simple cases. In more complicated cases, it will need a lot of tweaking. Please make this feature available to more than just a intro-video. small alpha-keyed animations could live up a theme so much more than now. jumping marios, street fighter moves, bubble bobble dragons.... all possible if this feature is implemented in GameEx, i would be happy to see links to sites with nice arcade .gif animations

I am really aware of this problem, as there are not many video-codecs supporting a Alpha-Channel and nearly all of them, produce huge sizes. we need to be aware, that future themes created, can easily reach 1GB in size, if we would use uncompressed avi´s or animation-codec...its not only the size, a user would need good hardware, for this to work in realtime and fluently, especially the hard disks need to be fast ... so there are not many alternatives... i wrote it headkaze allready. the only reasonable choices would be to use two movies. one with containing the content and another who has the alpha, but then both movies need to play in sync, which would lead to trouble really fast. as i am very interested to have a option to use a video+alpha in created themes, i found the Lagarith codec accidentally, by trying out the codecs i have. i was suprised of the relative small sizes it produced, thats why i was thinking it would be a good choice for using it with GameEx.

I created a Lagarith version of naborneos PNG-seq. It can be downloaded here: http://www41.zippyshare.com/v/32528903/file.html the resulting movie is 30MB big, so it is nearly twice as small as the ProRes-codec. in the meantime, i will look for a better mac-videocodec with alpha-support .

user naborneo is right. the fire-mov is a .png-mov. i can loop this movie without problems in windows media player and quicktime. maybe the delay has to do with the .png codec, but i think it is another problem. the lagarith-codec is included in shark´s codec pack for windows 7: Package Components: ● ffdshow DirectShow Video Codec 20120109 x86 Revision 4238 by clsid. ● ffdshow DirectShow Video Codec 20120105 x64 Revision 4225 by clsid. ● LAV Video decoder 0.44 x86 & x64. ● XviD Video (Encoder) Codec v1.3.2. ● Lagarith Video (Encoder) Codec v1.3.27 x86 & x64. ● Flash Video Splitter/Decoder v1.5.2.3456 x86 & x64. ● AC3Filter v1.63b AC3/DTS Decoder x86 & x64. ● LAV Audio Decoder 0.44 x86 & x64. ● DivX Audio Decoder 4.1 ● Lame MP3 v3.98.2 ACM Encoder/Decoder Codec. ● DSP-worx Bass Source Filter/Decoder v1.30. ● Haali Media Splitter/Decoder 16/09/11 x86 & x64 – For MP4, MKV, OGM and AVI files. ● LAV Splitter 0.44 x86 & x64. ● VSFilter v2.39.5 x86 & v2.37 x64 – Subtitle Readers. ● CDXA Reader v1.5.2.3456 – Also known as Form 2 Mode 2 CD or XCD x86 & x64. ● GSpot Codec Information Appliance v2.70a. so if you installed shark´s codec pack, you dont need to install it, just grab my movie and try it. i still would prefer Lagarith, cause the size is way smaller than png, pro-res or anything else i have ever seen. the fire movie is not colorful and has a relative small size in pixel (yes it is full HD, but with much black around the fire ). my movie is a 21sec. animation and colorful and takes only 59MB .

i want to contribute to this too. here is my MAME-animation with alpha. it uses the Lagarith Lossless Codec in an .AVI container. Superb Quality and small size... in my case for a 21sec. 800x310 pixel animation, took about only 59MB . This codec is incredible regarding compression. i would prefer this codec over all others, but see for yourself. here is the link: http://www8.zippyshare.com/v/11933270/file.html you can find the codec here: http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html Try it Headkaze and tell us your results... as soon as we got a supported video+alpha codec, i will contribute much more.

i am not sure, with what you mean with "displaying videos on the system select", but you can display system-videos if you put them in the Logo folder of your theme folder. you need to give them the same name as the corresponding logo.png file.... i.e. 2600.avi vs. 2600.png. you can download system-movies at emumovies.com in the download section. you will find a system-movie for nearly every system. put this into your Logo folder in your them-folder and when you setup a emulator in the setup-wizard, go to the emulator setup- section and under "Logo", choose your system movie. "Ok but now my logo doesnt show more..... " ... here you need a trick. you take your logo-picture and integrate it in your theme-background. if you do this for each system, you can use the pictures afterwards in the theme-editor, by choosing the right back- or foreground for the selected emulator. worth a try, i did it that way. downside is, you create a lot of images, which look nearly the same, with the only difference in showing the logo.... who cares .

GameEx will always prioritize Movies vs. Images. That means if GameEx find a movie with the same name, it will use the movie instead of the image. To solve your problem, it is only neccessary to change the name of the movie, but remember that your movie will probably never be shown then. Try this and let us know, if this resolved your problem.

thats a dream come true.... man !!! AWESOME, awesome, news..... instant Lifetime license if that happens (maybe a little corruption helps in this process )

That are even more better news !!! Its not the problem to play a movie with alpha-channel. The problem is, you can not use a movie+alpha channel as a Foreground-Layer. All Videos are on the Background-Layer, exception would be the videos you use as Logo, Image1 or Image2. But they are also not on top. I can not wait to see this new features for theme-creators. sounds very promising, keep up the brilliant work. I can imagine, that with these features, GameEx will be the best Front-End AND the most beautiful one .

You can use Movies with Alphachannel.... but the downside is, only as a Background. Therefore a Alpha-Channel becomes useless, as you can not put something under your Background-Movie. The thing is, we cannot choose or have a Video as a Foreground-Layer, only pictures.... at least i dont know how . Hope that helps.... and yes Headkaze new Program sounds promising

i think you dont get me Draco , If you use a movie for GameExIsLoading instead of the .png, then if GameEx starts, your movie will play first, like intended, BUT you need to wait until your movie is played to the end and THEN GameEx will start loading stuff. So you basically produce a step, where GameEx is taking a LONGER time to load as it would normally do. And this is something, i cant imagine, that this is intended. Thats the thing i meant as i said, this would be a feature request. IMHO, Game Ex should load all the stuff in the background, while the GameExIsLoading-Movie is playing, but it doesnt, get what i mean? PS: can you tell us, what codec you used for your movie, or even better load it up here and i will try it too.

Ah ok, i understand now. mmmh.. works for me, but i wouldnt recommend to use a movie for that, because you will have to wait that movie till the end, before it goes further. no matter if GameEx allready loaded the stuff. And somehow, GameEx will start to load, AFTER the movie NOT WHILE the movie is playing, thats sad, as the movie is useless in this manner. this would be a feature request, as this is not logical imho. maybe your movie is to short, see what happens if the movie is at least 10sec. long. i used a H264 codec in a avi-container, and it worked.

Hi Draco, start your theme-editor and choose for the "Start" your video. select "start" under the templates and go under edit--->video... and choose your video. this should work for you, good luck Draco .

can not wait to see this.... its not that we can use movies with alpha right now, but the codecs that support alpha, are very high in datasize, rendering it nearly useless, especially if you go HDTV with your theme. but this sounds very, very promising. if this happen, it will be a huge step forward for theme-creators and many themes will have some "live" .... just great Headkaze. many, many thanks for this nice feature. happy u-man, dancing around

absolutely true

fantastic work..... congratulations on this !! ps: somehow first link doesnt work