[PLUGIN] GameEx Hi-Score Snapper

[Adultery]

Hi @smario Try this one please... Although I must warn you, I did quite a bit of optimization to clean up the code some. Hopefully it'll be fine.

The worst thing about being a career programmer is you find better ways to do stuff later and come back to your projects and revise them when you're just supposed to be fixing one tiny thing... All in the name of performance.  

 

 

[smario]

Performance? Does it increase my scores now? 

I am off to work now but will report back later. Thanks for the quick update @Adultery!

[smario]

Hmmm... tried dkong for a starter. Unfortunately where 1.0.6 worked flawlessly I can't get 1.0.7 to work. No shutter sound. I use the exact same cofiguration as with 1.0.6.

I have attached two logs, one with override enabled and one with the default configuration.

 

Snapper override.log

Snapper default.log

Settings.xml

[Adultery]

Can you enable debug logging in the plugin and re-post your log for me?Log looks OK except that it isn't parsing the game check online for some reason.

[smario]

How can I enable debug logging?

[Adultery]

Ahh there's no option in the GUI. I'll add one while I'm looking at the code to see what I may have missed, but I think I have an idea.

Then we can figure out why you can't scrape the Web service. Do you have an Internet connection on your cab?

[Adultery]

It's working for me now, although I'm not able to test Model 2/ZiNc, so if you could confirm those I'd appreciate it.

I also fixed the web service, which was a server side thing unrelated to this plugin. I also added a game count to the GUI and added the option to enable debugging (there was already debug logging in there, just not a user friendly way to enable it).

I did a bit more tweaking in places that were still a little rough around the edges, and got a pretty good performance increase for taking the snap (it used to take a few seconds to snap and render, but now is pretty much instant).

Finally, I switched the screen capture command from Direct Draw to GDI for those if you that don't use the Direct Input method. Direct Draw always looked like rat nuts anyhow, so this is a step up for sure.

@smario, please give this a try and if it works, make sure it disables for Model 2 games

Gracias!

 

[smario]

Nice, @Adultery, really really nice.

So I tested dkong as a Hi Score Comp game, bionicc as a non-Hi Score Comp game and hotd as a Model 2 game. I tested all three games with and without the Force Snap Override option. I have an Internet connection on my laptop.

I got screen shots with both Mame games and House of the Dead did indeed start. So the main mission's accomplished. Yay!!! 

I have a question on Bionic Commando though: I expected it _not_ to take a screenshot with the Force Snap Override option disabled, but it did. Did you remove this option - I noticed it not being in the text overlay on the screenshot? Or is it something I missed?

Anyway, thank you so much for the very quick and thorough upgrade!! And now for the PSB mode...

 

*Personal Score Boost

[Adultery]

Is that happening for all non hiscore games? I run a hotkey monitor in the background when MAME launches a game, and chances are good that when I revised the process that scrapes the Web service I forgot to move the monitor code over too so it's running all the time. I'll take a look, but your results are promising and I appreciate your help!

[Adultery]

@smario I didn't remove the option, just renamed the checkbox for clarity. Should hopefully be all fixed now. Give this one a throw. If it still takes a snap for non-competition games, please post your log. Thanks!

HiScore Snapper.7z

[smario]

Almost there...

 

Tested again with override off. The snapper doesn't take a screenshot of Bionic Commando as expected and does take one in Donkey Kong. When starting Bionic Commando a second time after DK it _does_ take a snap. So it's probably some re-initialization issue? Still all good with model 2 games. (I could't test Zinc since I'm not running it.)

I attached the log of this test.

 

Snapper.log

[Adultery]

A nice little update that makes use of some new MAME functionality to send the F12 key without need of a custom compile, and a bunch of optimizations and code cleanup. Check it out!

[Adultery]

Updated to 1.0.9:

• Updated to be compatible with x32 and x64 versions of GameEx
• Updated .NET Framework version to 3.5
• Minor code fixes due to .NET FW update
• Updated plugin framework to latest version
• Minor code optimizations and stability improvements