[NEWS] GameEx 11.94

[Tom Speirs]

• Cosmetic fixes and improvements.
• New theme editor setting to make the foreground image absolute top most.
• The MAME list update now filters out mechanical games.
• Fixes GameEx arcade database download not caching.
• Fixes MAME mdb file creation.
• Updated MAME support files.
• Emulator groups and the all games list now include Daphne. Use emulator number 1000.

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[mesk]

Nice update! thank you Tom!!!

[fRequEnCy]

Thanks Tom!

[Adultery]

Awesome work! Thanks for the _foreground tweak!

Just curious about the "cosmetic fixes", anything in particular?

[Draco1962]

+1 on the curiosity, gonna love the foreground tweak! Will make the themes look even more polished (May even go back and republish some of the more recent submissions as this enhancement will deliver better on the effects I was going for). Thanks, Tom!

[Tom Speirs]

Just curious about the "cosmetic fixes", anything in particular?

Fixes the title text changing when browsing also for other systems and the selection text now does not flicker if showing the same text.

Enhancments: Slight animation on selection text and better fade in. Title text fades in when changing pages. Snap cycle preview in system selection list fades in.

[Adultery]

Cool! Was just wondering if my theme needed any adjusting.

Thanks again Tom!

[hansolo77]

Awesome work as always Tom!

[Draco1962]

@ Tom - I tried the foreground topmost setting and, so far as the text where there are transparencies, this is awesome! The selector bars appear below the frames which eliminates the overlap that sometimes occurs. The only caveat is that in the current theme I am working on, the text is not showing for the scroller, select1 & 2, or toolbar. I know it will show if I "cut through" the foreground images and apply transparency but this will not be optimal for some themes. Will there possibly be future enhancements that will allow for more layering controls for different image and text elements so that we can have some text appear above the foreground, some behind, etc?

[celly]

Thank you Tom.

[ehuonder]

Thanks for another update Tom! I am excited to try out the new foreground feature in my themes! @Draco - Yes... they'll eventually be released! But probably never done...

[starbuck]

Thanks for the update Tom!

Will there be a enhansement down the line to have a different foreground for different games or system. I can see our great community taking a theme like Space Invaders and making hundreds of new forgrounds for that theme. AS you change system or game a different foreground would be used reflecting that game.

[Draco1962]

Actually, Starbuck,, you can have different screens per emulated system, external applications, etc. through the use of Custom Menus and/or within Theme Editor for each system you have installed. Doubtful it would ever occur on a per game basis.

[hansolo77]

Has anybody else noticed the universal gamepad exit buttons stopped working after updating? 2 updates ago, Tom wrote into the setup wizard the option to assign a gamepad combination to act as a universal exit back to GameEx. I was eager to use this, and set it up. It worked fine until last night after I updated.

[Tom Speirs]

Has anybody else noticed the universal gamepad exit buttons stopped working after updating? 2 updates ago, Tom wrote into the setup wizard the option to assign a gamepad combination to act as a universal exit back to GameEx. I was eager to use this, and set it up. It worked fine until last night after I updated.

I cant see anything wrong. Can you post your custominput.ini.

I know Ben sent me an update to the SetupWizard affecting defaults being set for this. It should be in the latest release.

Also I believe an Advanced Emu config overrides the global config. Is that the issue?

[Tom Speirs]

@ Tom - I tried the foreground topmost setting and, so far as the text where there are transparencies, this is awesome! The selector bars appear below the frames which eliminates the overlap that sometimes occurs. The only caveat is that in the current theme I am working on, the text is not showing for the scroller, select1 & 2, or toolbar. I know it will show if I "cut through" the foreground images and apply transparency but this will not be optimal for some themes. Will there possibly be future enhancements that will allow for more layering controls for different image and text elements so that we can have some text appear above the foreground, some behind, etc?

That wont probably come until we develop the new skinning system.

[Draco1962]

Thanks, Tom! Look forward to skinning! I am able to workaround the foreground/text issues for now (just pushing my creativity a bit which isn't a bad thing.. ). I did find a few errors in display that you will probably want to address. I noticed that the gameexis loading.png is and pleasewait.png files load over the foreground image - this is good. GameExLogo.png and dialog.png are popping behind the foreground image - not so good. I will report back with any other issues I come across.

[Tom Speirs]

Can you explain what you mean by GameExLogo.txt and dialog.png?

[hansolo77]

I just rechecked my Advanced Config, and it looks like I had the Joypad exit enabled. I remembered from my other thread that disabling that did the trick. So I just did that again, and will see if it fixed it. It's possible the new update had overwrote the ini for the advanced config, causing it to be reenabled.

[EDIT] Yup, fixed it! Need to have some kinda check or something, so it disables the advanced config editor's joypad exit if using the setup wizard's universal one instead.

[Draco1962]

Can you explain what you mean by GameExLogo.txt and dialog.png?

The dialog.png is the media element that is invoked when an update is available prompt occurs. The GameExLogo.png (not .txt) displays after the loading image.