GameEx Extender display and GameEx tag

[deadboy]

Now that I'm using the Extender for my second display I was thinking that I'd LOVE to make a GIF or something that would display up there with special moves for fighting games or relevant information.

My questions are these:

1) If I make a .GIF image with a 5-10 second per individual layer display time, even with 2 characters worth of moves per screen, it's going to be approximately 2-3 minutes to go start to finish for some of the bigger games. Will the extender accomodate that or will it's system of switching images just move to the next one 10 or so seconds in?

2) I'd like to basically use screen caps from the display of special moves option in GameEx. Is my best bet to just actually do screen caps of that or is there viewer that I could use to translate that information like GameEx is?

3) Has anyone done anything like this that I could steal from/model after? Where might I find it?

And secondly, as you can see below, since setting up my GameEx gamer tag it doesn't seem to want to update. Where should I look for settings to fix that?

Thanks in advance.

[Adultery]

Firstly GameEx doesn't do GIFs. You'll have to do PNG or JPEG.

Second delete your temp internet files and your tag should update, unless your machine is not connecting to the server.

[Draco1962]

Would be a neat feature if Game Extender could display avi's or mp4s.... feature request maybe for within the user's network?

[Adultery]

+1

[deadboy]

Well, not doing GIFs makes it easier, don't have to make the GIF.

As for connecting to the server would the GameEx log tell me if it is or isn't connecting?

[Adultery]

Best thing to do would be to check your GameEx Live portal and see if that's accurate as far as last played up time and whatnot.

[deadboy]

Well, it's definitely online. I'm a full subscriber and it tells me everytime when I load up if there's an update. It's connecting to that at least. Is the server in this instance what I set up in the second section in the game extender tab?

[Adultery]

No the gamertag should have nothing to do with that. What's the last game you played?

Nevermind. It hadn't updated since you installed it. Gamertags don't show on my mobile. You sure you ran the registry key that came with the email when you got your tag?

[Tom Speirs]

Actually when I added gamebase support I added GIF support. However GameExtender does not currently support animations or videos.

[Adultery]

Wait really? I didn't know that! So what image types are supported now, GIF JPEG and PNG? Animated GIFs for GameEx and just frame 1 for GameExtender? Or no animations in either?

[deadboy]

No the gamertag should have nothing to do with that. What's the last game you played?

Nevermind. It hadn't updated since you installed it. Gamertags don't show on my mobile. You sure you ran the registry key that came with the email when you got your tag?

I just missed the registry key at the end of the message. There were those three long strings of HTML for posting your tag and I just stopped reading after the first one.

I went ahead and actually looked at it and presto!

[deadboy]

Well, maybe I could go about this a different way. Could I request a feature that if there are controls listed that can be seen from the GameEx game info screen there could maybe be an option to display them in Game Extender? I don't know how hard that would be so if it's not possible I'll see what I can figure out with png screenshots or something.

[Adultery]

My cab does this already...

/me puzzled

[deadboy]

You're right. I should be more clear, but there's that aforementioned baby induced lack of sleep. When I say controls I don't mean the button 1 does X, etc. I mean Character Y can be made to the following moves thru this sequence of button presses. It would mostly be for fighting games and the like.

[Adultery]

Got ya!

I would make a custom art path for this and point GameExtender at it. Make sure you name your image the same as your rom, and be advised that roms without matching artwork won't show anything at all.

[deadboy]

I realized after a minute that the requirement for a matching file name was why I wanted an animated gif.

Taking Street Fighter 3 for example. There are more than 16 fighters with say 4-8 moves each. That means there's no way you could legibly put their moves on a single graphic page. With an animated GIF I could take two fighters per page with the appropriate number of frames and make it a single image/file name.

Since Game Extender won't "play" a GIF or any sort of animated file I'm kind of at a loss. Hence my request for a feature that might show the things if they are available for a given game.

[Draco1962]

I would think, however, that you could put together a static image of the buttons that would reflect Forward, Backward, Punch, Block, Kick, Combo buttons, whatever you would need even if you can't do the specifics per character.

[deadboy]

What is the highest number of graphics you could have associated with a particular game?

Marquee

Cabinet

Controls

PCB

...

If I make it 4 fighters per frame with each one replacing a particular type of art maybe I could make it work. Which image types will Extender look for?

[Adultery]

That's not gonna work since you can only assign one image or path for game extender, sorry.

[deadboy]

Poop... Well when I got home I checked and it's the Commands option which I'd like to have the choice to display.

Any ideas?