snarls

hey adultery, nope I don't have stock in the companies or anything - just was surprised at how incredible the performance boosts to Win 7 were. And i can't tell if youre joking because the actual temperatures of the SSDs are much cooler than the spinning drives and use less energy. Or did you mean in the manufacturing of them? I don't know too much about how much energy is expended in that- a link would be cool if you have one. And I won't get political here for fear of alienating myself from all the helpful people here, but if we're gonna boycott tech for good reasons, there always the reasons (or a main one) we're spending billions over in a war a bit north of india. Yup, the world's biggest concentration of rare earth metals needed for tech is under them there caves... sorry for going off-topic...

thanks krc. I plan to make all the graphics myself but if you have a link to the vector logos of the consoles etc that could be useful.

Draco, if startup speeds and very snappy resposiveness is what you are after you can get that now. You know what I'm going to say. Yes.... an SSD (and extra RAM). I've just upgraded my Dad's old sony vaio all-in-one vista desktop (which used to boot in a good 20-25min (for all services to start and it be idle and ready- and it was a fast machine) putting win 7 64 new ram and a cheap nice Samsung 830 SSD made it boot in 30-37 seconds. Put the same in my gf's HP laptop and its speedy as hell now. I even put a WD hybrid ssd drive in an old gaming Dell XPS machine and it is a demon now- Photoshop CS6 launches instantly now! I highly recommend upgrading your boot drive to a Samsung SSD or of the 480GB Sandisks which are good value on Amazon now. Btw the Samsungs come with Norton Ghost, but I used Acronis True Image to clone the old drives onto the SSD via an $11 Sata USB connector off Amazon and it was super easy and quick to replace the old drives with SSDs...

Draco is right. The WinRT/Metro only apps will only be able to be run on the arm devices and the regular windows mode apps and old win 7 apps won't run on those mobile devices. Personally I will only deal with win 8 on a cursory level with work-related software support. I can tell you from a major client's web stats that up until now windows mobile uptake has been in the very very small fractions of a percent. So much so that even a small $50K project isn't worth them doing because the traffic is so low and not trending up at all. It was so bad, MS themselves offered to pay for & dev a win mobile version of our app just to get some presence. What this means with Win 8 and the new surface tablets I'm not sure - but MS has an opportunity if they significantly drop their prices and undercut the iOS and Android tablets for this Christmas season, they might get enough momentum to survive andmaybe even compete. The landscape has definitely changed and desktop computers (and to some extent laptops) are getting very marginalized (primarily outside of corporates) and becoming niche markets as the mainstream doesn't need a desktop for facebook and webbrowsing. Content creators like myself will soon have to pay more for now "specialized devices" like PCs as the masses just don't use computers the way we do. I personally can't live without highend video editing (upgrading to quadro k5000 soon for 4K video), super low latency audio and multi-cores for vst emulation, and fast fast 3D rendering. Gaming & emulation is just a bonus for me on my htpc and cant see needing win 8 unless i pick up a surface tablet cheap or if (and this is a big IF) it becomes a viable platform for sales like the iOS and Android stores are. So far, win 8 feels like a Vista to me and maybe skippable...? I love win 7 64 and just dont see anything compelling in 8 yet. I want MS to do well, but they seem to be floundering a little playing catchup now. I'll keep an open mind though, but high end content creation doesn't seem very doable in 8 so far. sorry for the long rant

i dont have the link to the forum i found it in, the developer just kicked out a simple util for someone who asked for it. I do have the actual standalone app though and i'm sure the dev wouldnt mind if I redistributed it from what i recall of his post. It's only 80K and doesnt require an install or anything. I use it in conjunction with that JoyIds util posted in this thread. This is what the xbox off util looks like: Clicking a button disconnects that xbox gamepd and "unlights" the green lit quarter on it enabling you to reconnect them in a different order so you don't have to reboot- and sometimes rebooting also doesnt let you reconnect them in a different order because it might remember them which is why this util helps. Also I recall it's a bit better to make your xbox gamepads actually be windows joyids 1-4 -- if you make them say 3-6 and use other non-xbox controllers as 1-2 then they will still work, but the xbox ids 5-6 wont have the green quarter lights on the actual pads themselves. Note that the MS xbox driver may connect an xbox gamepad as xbox#1 (and light up as quarter 1 for example) but that gamepad might actually be connected to Windows as a different numbered joystick- which is why you also need that joyids util too... Let me know where you want me to upload it to.

thanks for the tips guys. i do have a license btw - guess I`ll have a play in photoshop and dive in. I'll probably come back with more questions around performance and animations of the skins...

Draco, thanks for your response. One more beginning question, why does Theme Editor require a theme to base yours off of? I mean what if I want my layout different? I'm a bit afraid to paint myself into a corner by picking the wrong theme to start with. I come from an interaction design background and would like to mock stuff up in photoshop as an ideal before exporting to a skin. And is all navigation between screens the same across all themes? i.e. can a screen on one theme dive deeper into the gameex "sitemap" than another, or are there a fixed number of screens that have to have exactly specific buttons and functions on them? thanks

Hey, hope you don't mind this lazy post, but I don't feel like trawling through tons of posts to find the answer. I'd like to create a new 1080 theme for GameEx- while i totally appreciate all the hard work gone into the existing themes, none of the 1080 ones seem to do it for me. I want something elegant and useful created with a designer's eye that is not branded or based on a custom game, something that features big screenshots and logos and is quick to navigate (some of the new themes have flashes or 'please wait' between screens now slowing it all down). So i'd like to contribute to the community, but want an idea of how fiddly it is to make one (assuming graphics are the easy part). What good links or tutorials exist in theme making so i can spit one out with the aesthetic I prefer? The other issue is my htpc has GameEx on it and it's not the same machine as my graphics design station and I'd rather not install GameEx on my work machine and dont wanna go back and forth 100 times when testing the theme. I dont have a ton of time to spend on this, but am confident I can make a good looking useful theme if it's not a major pain to skin. any hints for a first time theme maker? Thanks

Btw i experience no lag at all with any of my 6 controllers in any game either. It all still seems to be working with SSF Mame & the playstation emus. The main problem I get is in organizing enough of my friend's schedules to come over to play at the same time. I'm debating having kids just to get some gaming opponents

hi nullpointer I thought I did, because the scsi option worked for most games, just not a couple unless gameex debug was on - which I found odd?? but they all work without the scsi switch. thanks for your help though

I'm still having problems with these counts not being updated and not working at all. I am using the Blue Glass theme. On closer examination it is possible that it only is broken for any emulator which uses cd images, like gamecube, saturn, playstation etc. Is there any news on this? thx

Actually they didn't unfortunately. None of the bat file things above even worked - though thanks for the suggestions anyway. It was a couple of cds that kept failing because of timing I think. More trial and error for hours and I got this to work for all my images: Run Command: (no arguments on command line) SSF.exe LaunchBefore: ""C:\Program Files (x86)\DAEMON Tools Lite\DTLite.exe" -mount dt,0,"[ROMPATH]\[ROMFILE]"" LaunchAfter: "C:\Program Files (x86)\DAEMON Tools Lite\DTLite.exe" -unmount 0 I have a AMD Phenom 7850 Triple-Core with 4Gb ram on win 7 x64 so it should be fast enough. It seems taking out the scsi option from the Daemon Tools Lite command line did the trick for them all, but with it, several would fail unless in GameEx debug mode... weird?

I was just wondering if there were any settings outside of the GameEx folder like in the registry or AppData or something that I might need to restore my settings if they got lost in anupdate. I guess that means it's all in that one folder- so thats cool. Thanks

Thanks, I'll try that. That was exactly what I was after, I had no idea how to pass in the rompath and file from gameex into a bat file, but your DOS wizardry of %~1 showed me how I appreciate the help from everyone, I expect this will fix it.

whats the best way to ensure Ive backed EVERYTHING up? Is zipping a copy of the gameex folder up enough? thx

Hi, I am getting closer getting my emulators which use cd images to work. For SSF most all work now, however for a couple of them, they say "drive empty" in SSF when launched through gameex. I know the LaunchBefore with DTLite works because other games of the same image type (bin\cue) work. I was never able to get [VIRTUALDRIVE] to work, hence the DTLite. I think it's a timing issue where SSF launches before the cd is loaded to the virtual drive for this game because when I run that emu in Debug mode where gameex shows the bat and pauses, then everything works with that game (the other games for this emu dont need to be in debug to work). how can I add a couple seconds sleep after LaunchBefore and before SSF launches so that this will work? I cant put a bat in there because I dont know how to pass in [ROMPATH]\[ROMFILE] to the bat for the DTLite launch. Any ideas? Or am I doing it all wrong? thanks

i have everything perfect with gameex and am afraid to lose my settings, although I would like to fix the playcount problem too. I just did an ingame update to 12.70 and that didnt fix it. How did you fix it exactly and did you lose anything at all, controller stuff. emulator settings etc? thanks

Another question, as I posted it, I had a look through my Gameex.ini and there was some weird (but probably innocuous) stuff in it which must be in the install, since I don't have an app called mad dog nor an mp3 of 4 non blondes - ;-) but I'm fairly certain those aren't my problems. I'm just not sure why they are in there?

thanks Bigby. Maybe you are right, but what was confusing me is that my emu configs hadnt changed but they stopped loading the cds thru gameex after I changed the theme so those images used to work. Unless it's an intermittent thing? But if you think DTlite is more reliable I'll try that again, I first tried it when I first setup gameex some months ago, but had trouble getting it to work even though my paths were correct...?

I do have DTLite on my machine and ssf and epsxe work outside of gameex if i manually load a cd image into DTLite and run those emus. So how does this work does gameex use its own virtual cd when you use the [VIRTUALDRIVE]:\ and the other option uses LaunchBefore and LaunchAfter calling DTLite to mount and unmount cds? I'm still not sure what the difference between [VIRTUALDRIVE]:\ and [-VIRTUALDRIVE-] is and why some people put the 2nd token here without a space next to the exe as Ive seen in the forum? For Saturn, I have .iso, .cdi, .bin with .cue, and .mdf with .mds files. I checked the cues and they seem to point to the right paths and all of these work outside of gameex. @Adultery can you please post your LaunchBefore and LaunchAfter and I'll try that. @Draco I'm not sure the theme broke things, but it was after I tried a few and then switched to "Blue Glass" that my cd based emus stopped working properly. Also a few other minor weird things started happening, like the additional info per game used to load up in a wider zoomed in notepad thing (easy to read), and now loads in a portrait style notepad zoomed out with smaller text. Also pdf manuals dont seem to load and last played & playcounts for games don't show up on the game page (it just says N/A) though the game plays do show up on the Statistics page? Any ideas? I have 12.68 installed already... Can themes change functionality or are they just graphic skins? thanks everyone for your assistance and patience trying to help me fix my issues... SSF.ini GameEx.ini

Hi, I used to have SSF working fine via gameex but it just magically stopped working in the last couple of days. It all started when I started trying out different themes. I checked the log and see nothing unusual. Though I think it's not loading the disc image via DT Lite as it used to, because SSF says "Drive door open" for the virtual drive. I switched back to Default - New theme and that didn't fix it. I'm running 12.68. I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the tricky/unstable setup for games which require CD images via a virtual drive. What would cause a working SSF to stop loading discs via the gameex launcher if the config hadn't changed?? If I manually load a disc image in DT Lite and run SSF it works - and it used to from gameex. Ive scoured these forums but nothing works anymore (when trying to load an iso/bin etc) - whats the trick? Ive also never been able to get epsxe to work loading discs ever. Any definitive help on this would be greatly appreciated. Does anyone have a definitively working import for SSF & ePSXe? thanks P.S. It was "Blue Glass" that I selected when things stopped working with SSF (all the other non-image emus still work fine) it's a nice practical theme with large screenshot images but I have a feeling it may not be fully working? is that possible? log.txt ssfexport.ini epsxeexport.ini

Thanks! I'll try it out

this is a good idea. Thanks , myonions At the moment I, too, am using an Xbox wireless gamepad and was trying to find the best mapping for all games. Maybe you could share yours? I've made the 'C' buttons be the right joystick. but as you say that doesnt work for some games. Also, in this vein, does anyone have a similar solution for the Sega Saturn emulator SSF? One controller config works for everything except I'd like to use the Left Joystick instead of Dpad for the game Nights, but use Dpad for everything else. I've solved a similar problem with MAME because that emu lets you duplicate control input on a per game basis so I can make the dpad a dupe of the left joystick. I'd be interested to know what other people think works best...

Thank you nullPointer! That was pretty much what I need. If the gamepads are out of order I can switch them around with this - but turns out my other problem was having the F710s in X mode not D mode (there is a switch on them) and if you connect them in X mode (which i assume is XNA xbox mode) then they "steal" a glowing green quadrant from the actual xbox controllers even though all six will be connected. Basically if the Logitech F710s are numbered joys 1-4 then the xbox controllers wont light up even if they are connected. Apparently the green quadrant arc lights on the xbox controllers mean joys ids 1-4 in windows and not xbox controller 1 of 4 etc. I also found an xbox off utility which software disconnects the xbox controllers sync if you want to connect them in a different order which i found in a win 7 forum in case anyone wants it.

Another question... Although I have it working, things get a little confused if i reboot or plug the controllers in a different order or if one of them disconnects from a timeout. Does anybody know of any gamepad management software that lets me dynamically set gamepad id #s? Say if player 2 doesnt touch his controller for like 5min then things can get screwy... There has to be something out there that manages directx or xna connections to gamepads and their controller number to windows, but my Google-fu cant find it... thanks for any help