Questions about Steam and Grouping & Check for CD

[sty151]

Hello, I've recently tried to get my cabinet back up to date and have to say all the things done to/with GameEx is exciting. Couple of quick questions:

1. I've added my Steam games and they look great. Is there a way to group them with another emulator (I would like to group them with my PC/Windows games).
   
2. I've got a PC game that requires the disk to be in the drive to play. I found the option to check for CD but what file do most of you use? And after setting it to look for the autorun file on the cd now all games look for that. Am I supposed to set up a separate emulator for each game that requries physical media in the drive and then group them with the other games? Just looking to see what others have done.
   
3. I set up a free account at EmuMovies and told GameEx to auto download art. I haven't really noticed a difference. I had artwork before. Does it only add artwork if none was there before or does it overwrite or put it in a new directory?
   

Thanks in advance for your advice/knowledge. Let me know if I need to submit any of this as a request or if I need to clarify anything. And of course I want to say what a great piece of software GameEx is.

[Draco1962]

I am not sure what the # is that you would need in the gameex.ini file to create an emulator group to make the grouping of PC games seamless, however, if you are still desiring to have them grouped together, yet separate based upon Steam, All other PC games, ScummVM, etc., then Custom Menus is the way to go.

[nullPointer]

Hi sty!

I've added my Steam games and they look great. Is there a way to group them with another emulator (I would like to group them with my PC/Windows games).’

You can certainly do this, but it will currently require the use of custom menus. Custom menus are pretty easy to master though, and it’s highly rewarding to organize everything as you see fit. Refer here for further details:

Accessing Steam plugin from CustomMenu.ini

I've got a PC game that requires the disk to be in the drive to play. I found the option to check for CD but what file do most of you use? And after setting it to look for the autorun file on the cd now all games look for that. Am I supposed to set up a separate emulator for each game that requries physical media in the drive and then group them with the other games? Just looking to see what others have done.

I recently had an adventure coaxing PS2 games to play in this fashion. Long story short, you can pick any file on the CD to verify via the check process. But if you intend to group multiple games in this fashion you’ll need to find an identically named file (in the same disc location) for every game in the list. Chances are you’ll be able to find at least a few games with identically named files but you’ll likely end up with a couple of different PC game entries which can subsequently be grouped together in the menu. See here for further info:

[RESOLVED] PCSX2 direct from original PS2 disks

I set up a free account at EmuMovies and told GameEx to auto download art. I haven't really noticed a difference. I had artwork before. Does it only add artwork if none was there before or does it overwrite or put it in a new directory?

I don’t believe the artwork downloader will overwrite existing artwork (the stand alone utility requires an explicit directive to do so), but I’m not 100% certain.

[sty151]

Thanks, I'll play around with custom menus. There's so many features and ways to customize GameEx. I wonder how many other cool things I'm missing. If I can't put all the games in one place I'll put in a request for a number for Steam like 0 for MAME or 1000 for Daphne to use in Emulator Groups in the wizard.

[Tom Speirs]

Sorry for only partially helping but the emulator number for Steam is: 1002

[sty151]

Hello, thought I'd report back. I got a mixed bag. First good news, I was able to combine the PC games that don't require a CD/DVD along with the ones that do without setting up a separate emulator for each game that required a CD like nullPointer thought. All of the games I checked had a file called setup.ini on the disk. Now I only checked 4 commercial games but they range from 2-9 years old. Second I added 1002 to my group and Steam was not included. It was still a separate emulator.

Oh, and for the games that require a CD, GameEx didn't say anything when I started the game without the disk. Just went black. Once I put a disk in it worked. Am I supposed to include the instructions? The wizard help button made it sound like something would be displayed.

[Tom Speirs]

I just fixed the steam emulator group issue for the next release and the CD black screen issue was already fixed.

[nullPointer]

Oh, and for the games that require a CD, GameEx didn't say anything when I started the game without the disk. Just went black. Once I put a disk in it worked. Am I supposed to include the instructions? The wizard help button made it sound like something would be displayed.

Hi sty

I’m hesitant to suggest a workaround for this issue as Tom has already fixed this issue for the next release, but there is in fact a workaround available for this issue. If you enter something in the Help Text field for the applicable emulator entry, it helps in a big way with the black screen issue. I went with something along the lines of, “Please insert your game disc into the DVD-ROM drive.” When the help text fades GameEx will prompt for the game disc as expected (if necessary). That’s been my experience at any rate.

[sty151]

Well it sounds like everything is groovy. Thanks everyone for your advice/help. I would have changed the title to "resolved", and still can, but my thinkging was I was asking questions rather than reporting an issue.

[Draco1962]

Not a problem - glad you got answers to your questions none-the-less!

Edited October 4, 2012 by Draco1962
This thread is now closed. If the problem re-occurs, please start a new thread.