Adultery!

[MNMax21]

Wow, all I can say is wow. Adultery! Your plugin's are sick! I haven't been on here in quite some time. I've been pretty busy (happily busy) with the new addition to our family. An amazing daughter. Once I start playing some arcade again (hoping my daughter will want to play too, specifically Mappy and Mario. Honestly, there are not that many kid friendly games out like there were in the past!!), I am going to really enjoy taking advantage of these new features you have created! I hope they will work with the new Evolution, which I am also excited for. Maybe they will integrate high scores for gameex users right into the front end! haha.

[Adultery]

Thanks!

I try to keep it fresh, glad you enjoy.

I am determined to keep everything working with Evolution, don't worry. It's gonna be sweet!

/side note: we just got fine with an integration project that utilizes GameEx's existing framework, head over to the hi-score forum and check it out. :-)

[MNMax21]

Unreal. The MAP file and the RSS feed. This is truly sweet. I can't wait to get a little free time and work on making my gameex experience that much greater. I may have to ask a few questions as some of it seems over my head. I think I'll be fine though. Thankfully you've added photos for the technologically inept! Haha. I will always miss the old arcades at the malls, pizza places, etc. But the more the hi scores get integrated the less I will miss placing a quarter down to get 'next.' If you went downstairs to my machine right now, you'd see a quarter leaning on the screen!!

[DazzleHP]

Congrats to you and your newborn btw but...

Man you have missed much! Adultery has been on some sort of plugin massacre lately! You are aware of the HighScore Comp? - he got working DB's for Han/GC, from that there is an RSS feed (easily worked in to themes, so people around the world can see our scores), he got individual(!) Steam AND MAME games working with Xpadder now (HELLYEAH!), and probably the most insane GameInfo update you've ever seen (PS to Adultery, it made me secure a second screen!lol). Good to have you back MNMax but you gotta get on this!

[Adultery]

I can't take the credit for the competition, I merely give them the tools to make it work. GimmeClassics abd HanSolo are the real heroes over there. :-)

[hansolo77]

It's a group effort.

[MNMax21]

Yeah, thanks to all you guys. I have free time on Monday. I think I'll tackle these things then and if I'm lucky I'll have some time to go after some hi scores!!

[hansolo77]

Bring it on!

[MNMax21]

Well, I got the second emulator up and running. Now to attack the RSS feed option. It'll still work without a second monitor, correct?

[Adultery]

What will? The RSS feed?

[MNMax21]

Yeah, I have the generic gameex theme with some tweaks. It looks like I have to do something special to have it running on screen. Is there a .exe program that I need to run on the hiscore snapper? I download your plugin downloader, but they snap won't work. I love the map file idea

[MNMax21]

I may ask for ideas on a second monitor. Here's my cab, any ideas on where I could put a second monitor?

[DazzleHP]

It looks like I have to do something special to have it running on screen.

To get the HiScore feed, load your theme in the Theme Editor. Go to (at the top) Edit >Scroller... and choose either MAME or MAME Select (or both) and paste the feed url in the left pane. Click OK then File >Save. I'm assuming at this point you know how themes work and so have the scroller positioned in a nice place

For the Snapper (i love this plugin!) put the .dll in ...\GameEx\PLUGINS then load the Plugin Manager (in Start >GameEx >Plugin Manager), check the box to enable it, select it then click configure

EDIT - SCREEN - Could you fit a tiny one in the lower left of the marquee?? it would have to be quite small though

[MNMax21]

That may work. The speakers are there and I also have the ir sensor for my arcade guns mixed into the crazy bezel above the monitor. Thanks for the info

[DazzleHP]

Yeah now that you mention it i see them! I'm trying to get some perspective using the basketball That's quite the cab you've got there! Don't see many 4player cabs bravo man.

Using the basketball as reference you might be able to fit a cheap 7" tablet directly below your main screen? I dunno how easy it is to get a tab working as a second monitor - i've never tried it hehehe but i'm sure there'll be a way

Of course you could always just be a bit "industrial" and plonk any ol screen on top of your cab, wires n all

[MNMax21]

I have the plugin and I changed the info by way of the manager. But for some reason, it won't take snapshots. I have an IPAC 4, but I'm using the keyboard to hit shift+home. I don't here the snap or see the file. Can I change the default snapshot keys in settings by way of notepad? I'm wondering if a key mapping is messing it up.

[Adultery]

It should work, provided the folder it creates has the game list in it that it needs to download... Can you see the following file?
plugins>HiScore Snapper>gameslist.txt

If it's not there, put this in there:

gameslist.txt

[DazzleHP]

Unfortunately i'm not clued up on the in's n out's of Adultery's magic, so you'll have to converse with the man himself on this. He is considerate and fair though

Go now, and beg for mercy!

I'm joking of course he wants as many bugs on the bottom of his shoe as the rest of us.

EDIT - and he ninja's me again! *bows, exits, disappears*

[Adultery]

[MNMax21]

Yeah, the file is there and I also have the download going for mapping. I can see the window populate right before gameex starts up.

Edit: I am not at home now, but I am pretty sure there were three files in that location. The gameslist and settings were two, but I can't recall the third file. I made hot keys on my arcade controls to make the Player 1 button act as a shift key so I can both exit and pause by hitting and holding that P1 button and then pressing the next button to either exit or pause. Obviously, you cannot have a player pushbutton dedicated to pause or exit, so I made it a little bit more difficult to hit. I read about that on BYOAC, so you can hide your keyboard. I am wondering if by using my gameex/iPac mapped keys, that is making my shift key turn into the number 1 button, that corresponds with Player 1 on the iPac program. I think then I could just hit Player 1 and then home. Who knows.. I'll check when I get home. I feel like even when you dedicate a button, it still stays the same on the keyboard and has no affect there...

Is there a print out or anything I can post that would make my rambling more understandable? hehe. For example, the log file..

I like the idea of a tablet. I am wondering if I don't just remove one of the Mario characters on the front and mount in a cheap LCD monitor. I believe you could then make it show the RSS feed as well as the controls for the games while playing, correct?

OH MAN!!! I'm losing it. My wife is going to kill me if I start working on the cabinet again! hahahah It's a good hobby. Thanks for all the help so far!

[Adultery]

You could post the log file if you have one on that folder. I'll have a look.

When you launch the configuration for the plugin, does it properly list your mame version on the bottom?

[MNMax21]

Yes, I remember it listing .143 on the bottom, which is correct. I'll see if I can get a log file to you. Is it the gameex log file or a different log file. Sorry for the 30 questions, I appreciate your help.

[Adultery]

The log file in the snapper folder, if you have one. :-)

Is it possible you could hook up a keyboard and try the combo just to rule out the iPac?

[MNMax21]

Well, it's saying I am not allowed to post the file. So I'll type contents. (From snapper file)

1/21/2014 10:09:21 PM : Hi-Score Snapper (Version:1.0.2)

1/21/2014 10:09:21 PM : 13.21 INITIALIZED OK!: GameEx

1/21/2014 10:09:21 PM : INIT PLUGIN: Initialization completed!

1/21/2014 10:09:21 PM : MAME version: 0.143u9

1/21/2014 10:09:21 PM : MAME check complete!

1/21/2014 10:09:21 PM : Getting game list...

1/21/2014 10:09:21 PM : Fetching games list from DracLabs...

1/21/2014 10:09:21 PM : HiScore list download complete!

1/21/2014 10:09:21 PM : Saving XML...

1/21/2014 10:10:56 PM : Hasta la vista... Baby.

I enjoy the end line, it was a nice touch. I tried multiple times to take a snapshot from Mario in the High Score Competition Emulator with no success(Shift+home). I do have an error occurring in the MAME wizard under Tweaks that I noticed. It says the following:

Verifying Tweaks / Performance...

Launch On Startup: ""C:\HiScoreUpdater\HiScoreUpdater.exe." -type 0 -mappath "C:\GameEx\Map Files\HiScore Competition.map"" does not exist.

Finished!

The program does launch and the file does exist. It is also updating it in the file too, as I can see the dates and times change for the map file. It also has a little key lock on it. The only thing I can think of is the type or path are off, which I do not have a great deal of experience in.

Here is the file path in the plug in for snapper:

C:\GameEx\PLUGINS\HiScore Snapper

I posted a couple of other files. Thanks in advance if you can help my error. haha

log.txt

GameEx.ini

[Adultery]

Ok for the updater, you need to take off the extra quotes around the whole line. You don't need to encompass the whole thing in quotes or it won't launch properly. Try this:

"C:\HiScoreUpdater\HiScoreUpdater.exe" -type 0 -mfile "C:\GameEx\Map Files\HiScore Competition.map"

Double check and make sure you installed the updater software to that path, and change it if need be. That should do it...

Note also that the hi-score snapper plugin currently doesn't work on standalone emulator setups, it's designed to only work on GameEx's integrated MAME setups.

To use the snapper plugin, go to the integrated MAME menu and select a game in the competition. Remember, it only takes snaps of games that are part of the competition. Try running Shinobi in MAME and taking a snapshot. :-)