[PLUGIN] Virtual Drive Loader

[Adultery]

W00t! Thanks for your help Null!

If you break any more of my plugins over the next few days, let me know... What are we up to now, two? LOL!

[nullPointer]

I know right?! Leave it to me and my crazy configuration ideas to cause chaos. I'm pretty much the personification of those 1-3% edge case scenarios! Thanks for always being the master of your craft as well as for your lightning quick response and turn-around time. Kudos!

[Adultery]

It's the 1-3% that keep it reliable for all users, even in crazy scenarios.

Thanks for helping my plugins achieve that goal, you're a star.

[Adultery]

Updated to 1.1.0, which is a minor update that vastly improves the way I handled command-line triggers and removals/replacements.

Huge shout out to nullPointer for his assistance in fixing this. I'll probably follow this up with an update to other affected plugins (ie MAME Commander, QuickLaunch, Game Info).

You can get it in the usual places.

[nullPointer]

You rock Adultery! Glad I could be of some small assistance to you in testing out some weird configs! Thanks for your continuing devotion to keeping your plugins fresh and cutting edge.

[Lighty]

[nullPointer]

Hi Lighty

Could you do us a couple of favors? Could you please turn on debug mode in the Virtual Drive Loader Plugin? It's the check box seen here in the bottom left:

(You'll need to reload a game through GameEx again for the contents of the log file to refresh). Also your Virtual Drive Loader settings look ... weird. It should be an XML file. Would you mind opening that file with notepad and re-pasting the contents here?

FWIW, I'm not so sure there's something necessarily wrong with the plugin (I've been using it without issue for quite a long time). In your case it does appear that disc images aren't being mounted, but there's definitely something I'm overlooking here. At any rate, that's why I referred you to the master of this particular castle. Best batting average in town!

[Lighty]

[Lighty]

Crap, I don't think they shopwed up right. Let me try again

Virtual Drive Loader settings

-


-

1.1

Monday, December 01, 2014 10:20:45 PM

True

C:\Program Files (x86)\DAEMON Tools Lite\DTLite.exe

Or maybe this?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="true"?>

-<dt_mount>

-<settings>

<xml_ver>1.1</xml_ver>

<created>Monday, December 01, 2014 10:20:45 PM</created>

<debug>True</debug>

<exepath>C:\Program Files (x86)\DAEMON Tools Lite\DTLite.exe</exepath>

</settings>

</dt_mount>

[Adultery]

Hello!

Please try and run this in a command-line window and see if it mounts in DT:

C:\Program Files (x86)\DAEMON Tools Lite\DTLite.exe -mount scsi, 0, "C:\Roms\Sony Playstation\Roms\Alien Trilogy\Alien Trilogy.cue"

I took it straight from your log so that's what I'm passing to DT from the plugin.

[Lighty]

Did you mean the Windows 7 command prompt window? If so, this is what I did.

-First I tried "C:\Program Files (x86)\DAEMON Tools Lite\DTLite.exe -mount scsi, 0, "C:\Roms\Sony Playstation\Roms\Alien Trilogy\Alien Trilogy.cue"" under the C: root directory. That wasn't correct, on my part.

-Then I changed my command prompt directory, so it would say: "C:\Program Files (x86)\DAEMON Tools Lite". Then I typed in: "DTLite.exe -mount scsi, 0, "C:\Roms\Sony Playstation\Roms\Alien Trilogy\Alien Trilogy.cue"".

Now, assuming my second attempt was correct, I hit ENTER, and afterwards it just said the directory "C:\Program Files (x86)\DAEMON Tools Lite". It gave me no error message, so I assumed the procedure was correct. Daemon Tools was open the entire time I did this. Nothing mounted.

I do apologize if this isn't what you meant.

[Adultery]

I'll write you up a batch file when i get home.

I also had the idea i should generate a batch file for debugging on the next release.

Is the rom path correct? Is the exe path correct? Have you verified this?

[Adultery]

Here's the bat file. Extract this and double click it. It should mount your ISO provided the paths are correct.

If it's not working you will need to verify that the ISO path is correct.

[Adultery]

Updated plugin to 1.1.1! Lots of changes including:

Massive rewrite to GameEx core
Many code optimizations to speed up efficiency
New features added to the plugin configuration
New feature to generate batch files after running for troubleshooting
Added much more debug logging
Complete rewrite to the drive operations code

In my run of updating all my plugins to use my new GameEx core, I made some pretty significant changes to this plugin. Let me walk through them for you.

• As I mentioned I did a big rewrite of my GameEx core plugin code, which changed everything from how I parse the GameEx.ini to how I pull path and theme data. This adds a lot of reliability, much more refined emulator and system additions (including UPlay and Origin among others), and much more manageable game data retention when GameEx is running.
  I also have new features that will automatically adjust ROM paths based on "zip/7zip/rar" and "Games In Folders" settings, tons of new command line variable replacements, and quite a few other things I don't want to bore you with.
• As for code optimizations, I more or less re-wrote every part of the mounting and unmounting class. There was a bit of redundant code and some stuff that was in bad need of a rewirte anyway. I expect I will be doing a lot of recoding as I update all my plugins to the new core code.
• Added some automation to the settings fields for those who prefer headless mode. Also added a spot to show the last emlator that ran a mount and the game it ran it on.
• I rewrote my logging class from scratch and added a new debug logging feature so I will be adding a lot more debug logging since it's now a single line of code. The way I was doing ot before was sloppy and incredibly inefficient so I wasn't logging all the places I probably should have been.
• There's a new feature that creates a batch file when the mount procedure is run. This is available in the plugin settings folder and can be run from a button press in the configuration. This should greatly improve troubleshooting since it can be copied into the support thread and run by the user to imitate exactly what the plugin is doing.

That should cover it. Since I did so much to this, please put it through its paces and report any bugs you may stumble on and I will fix them as fast as I can. I wasn't able to fully test this the way I would like due to my cabinet being in the early stages of rebuilding.

You can download this plugin from the usual places. Thanks for your support!

Next on the list... Xpadder plugin. But that shouldn't need too much help.

[nullPointer]

Thanks for the awesome update Adultery! I absolutely love this plug-in, both for the flexibility and ease of use that it affords. Keep up the fantastic work!

[Lighty]

Thanks for the update. Also, in regards to the .bat file you sent, it didn't seem to mount anything. I had daemon tools open while I clicked on the .bat file. Then I also opened the .bat file in notepad, and the ISO path was correct.

[Adultery]

Well I'm not sure what to tell you... Are you sure it's an scsi drive? I know that bat works because it mounts files for me just fine.

Right click the bat and select edit, and remove scsi, (including the comma) and save it, then try again.

The plugin isn't going to do you any good if we can't mount via CL anything outside of GameEx. [emoji22]

[Lighty]

Same result. It's gotta be something simple. Maybe the command line in the epsxe game ex settings is incorrect. Or maybe I should burn another iso from scratch then try again. EPSXE is assigned to J: and the drive in daemon tools is "SCSI - 1 (J:)"... Or maybe it's something in windows device manager. This is too strange. I got a feeling it's something I either misspelled or unchecked or hit no instead of yes.

[Lighty]

What's weird is that daemon tools pops it's window up when I click on a game, then goes back to gameex. When it worked, it didn't do that before. Or at least it closed itself by the time I left GameEx and now it doesn't (not sure if that means anything). On top of that, it worked when I had ePSXe listed under "Emulator Selection." in the Setup Wizard. Then I deleted it, since I wanted to try and stick with pSX (which I later found out isn't as compatible.) Then I added a new ePSXe under "Emulator Selection" in setup wizard, and then it didn't work anymore. There's gotta be a command line or setting that's incorrect. I thought my settings were right, but maybe there's a misspelling or incorrect checkmark/selection in emulator setup or advanced emulator setup.

[Adultery]

Just for arguments sake... Did you try running the batch file as administrator just to rule that out?

Maybe grab a confirmed iso like nas4free and see it that mounts via command line?

[Lighty]

You know what? I didn't try running as administrator. I'll try when I get home.

[Lighty]

Same result when running as administrator. I even copy and pasted the address inside the .bat file, and went there to the folder. I'll bet it's an embarrassing punctuation error in settings, lol This is so bizarre.

Now just to clarify, my command line in the setup wizard for ePSXe is EXACTLY as follows:

ePSXe.exe -nogui -slowboot [DTLOADER-SCSI]

Is there a punctuation error? An extra space, or a word missing, or a word that shouldn't be there?

Are there any options in setup wizard I should double check? Something in emulator setup or advanced emulator setup or both?

What should the MOUNT and UNMOUNT fields say in the virtual drive loader window?

[Adultery]

The thing here is that loading from the batch file is the same as loading from command-line, which takes GameEx out of the equation.

We need to get DT to load an iso outside GameEx first.

Do you have more than one virtual drive installed? Try changing the 0 in the mount command to 1. Or try and uninstall DT and reinstall it.

[Lighty]

I only have one virtual drive installed... but it worked when I changed the 0 to 1!! That's good news! What next?

UPDATE: I uninstalled the virtual drive, and put a new one back up, so it has a "0", and everything would be more consistent. Then I changed the .bat file back to "0", and it still worked. So the .bat file works, but it won't launch in GameEx. I'm guessing this will be an easy fix, since we had some good news so far.

[Adultery]

Well the next step is to uninstall DT and reinstall it again, having multiple drives installed will make it not work.

I will add multiple drive support in a future update but it may take a while.