BGB Pause Issue in GameEx

[kents]

HI Guys

I hope someone can help me with what is sure to be a simple problem I've just been staring at for too long. I'm setting up BGB in GameEx and am running into an issue with "PAUSE" being included in the command line when launching a game. This is what I'm getting with GameEx set to debug mode for the BGB emulator.

C:\GameEx>C

C:\GameEx>CD "C:\emulators\Nintendo Game Boy Color"

Echo is on

bgb.exe "C:\emulators\Nintendo Game Boy Color\ROMS\asteroids.zip"

Echo is on

C;\emulators\nintendo Game Boy Color>PAUSE

press any key to continue..........

Pressing any key then launches the game.

Attached are my log and config files.

Thank you!

Kent

GameEx.ini

log.txt

[nullPointer]

Hi Kents! It looks like you have debug mode enabled for this emulator:

Debug=True

This will trigger the behavior you describe here as it's intended to help you debug your commands in the event that you encounter difficulty. You can disable this setting on the Advanced Emulator Setup Screen in the Setup Wizard. Just change Debug Mode to No.

Good luck man!

[kents]

Thank you for your response. I had the debug mode on to troubleshoot a problem with BGB not launching properly and giving me the error message in attached picture. All of the games in BGB work fine outside of GameEx, and will work without error in GameEx at least once before I get the error message. For example, I launched Space Invaders and it opened fine, I hit escape and then try to launch that same game or any other game and I get the error message. Attached is the most recent log with debug off. Thanks for all your help!

log.txt

[nullPointer]

Your command line matches my working config for BGB so at the very least I think we can rule out a problem with the command line. The strange part is that the error message in your screen shot is a BGB error message (rather than a GameEx error message), which would seem to indicate that the problem resides with BGB.

What happens if you start BGB via Run Last Game?

Start Menu > Program Files > GameEx > Utilities> Run Last Game

Just out of curiosity how are your ROMs structured? Are you running something like a GoodMerge set in which each .zip contains several versions of the same game? Or are you running something like a NoIntro set in which each .zip contains one (and only one) version of the game?

[kents]

I'll try your suggestion of running last game and note what happens. I'll have to verify the ROM file structure this evening when I get home, but I believe each game rom contains only one version.

I wonder if using the escape key within GameEx may be causing my problem. Seems like the escape key in BGB initiates the debugging audit when check in the config settings, (I have it unchecked) I can't recall for sure, but it seems like you have to right click and select "exit" in BGB to exit a game, but I may be thinking of how to exit the emulator itself and not a game.

Thanks for all your help!

Kent

[nullPointer]

I'll try your suggestion of running last game and note what happens.

Just as a general heads up, I predict that the same thing will happen, but it is a good test to determine whether GameEx is somehow triggering unusual behavior when the emulator is launched from GameEx.

I wonder if using the escape key within GameEx may be causing my problem. Seems like the escape key in BGB initiates the debugging audit when check in the config settings, (I have it unchecked) I can't recall for sure, but it seems like you have to right click and select "exit" in BGB to exit a game, but I may be thinking of how to exit the emulator itself and not a game.

This could be a possibility, but it doesn't seem like it would adversely affect the emulator upon launch (something like this would more likely affect the emulator upon exiting I should think). All the same, I'll double check my BGB config to see whether I'm using an alternate Advanced Emulator Config for the purposes of exiting the emulator.

[kents]

I recognize the escape key being the source of my problem might be a stretch, but I think escape in BGB causes the emulator to pause. If that's the case, the first game would play fine but subsequent games may not if the emulator is paused or locked up, which is the symptom I'm experiencing. I'm not that familiar with BGB and just started working with it yesterday, I may be mistaken about the escape key causing the emulator to pause.

Thanks again for all your help!

Kent

[DazzleHP]

Hi kents,

With a very quick read through, it seems that pressing ESC is not exiting your emulator correctly. This is why it probably works ok the first time, and not subsequent launches. This will happen when your emulator process is left running in the background, but GE thinks it has ended. Any launches thereafter will cause issues because it is still running from first launch - so you're trying to launch two instances of the same emu - bad idea.

What you will likely need to do is find out what command/key combination BGB needs to exit cleanly. Once you have this knowledge you can setup an Advanced Config. There are guides on how to use Advanced Configs, so for now just go to GameEx in your Start Menu> Configuration> Advanced Emulator Config. Have a look through the app. This is where you create your advance configs, and very powerful it is. In "keys to send on exit" for instance, you can specify any keys that are sent when you hit ESC. So, if BGB needs Alt+F4 to close properly, enter them keys in that section and ALT+F4 will be sent giving you a clean exit Have a look through it with a keen eye and you can see that it is possible to workaround most situations using an Advanced Config

[nullPointer]

As an update to this you can actually turn off the functionality to launch the debugger using the escape key from directly within BGB itself. While the emulator is running:

Right Click > Options > Debug Tab > Uncheck the checkbox labeled: "pressing Esc shows debugger"

Interestingly enough the checkbox in my version of BGB was still checked, and I don't believe I've encountered this particular issue. Your mileage may vary though, so lets hope that does the trick. Good luck Kents!

[kents]

Quick update.............

I've used the advance config setting in GameEx to send the ALt F4 command to the emulator when pressing escape but the problem persists. Here is the section from the log file related to the launching of BGB. Does this look correct. Attached is the full log file.

16:09:18.4 6/14/2014: Running: cmd.exe /c C: bgb.exe "C:\Emulators\BGB\Nintendo Gameboy Color\ROMS\Star Trek (U) [!].zip"

16:09:18.6 6/14/2014: Shutting down display

16:09:32.5 6/14/2014: Exiting Game

16:09:32.5 6/14/2014: Sending %{F4} to emulator

16:09:34.2 6/14/2014: Exiting Game

16:09:34.2 6/14/2014: Closing Process

16:09:35.6 6/14/2014: Killing Process

16:09:36.8 6/14/2014: Writing Stats

I've been in touch with the author of BGB who suggested, based upon the bgb error, it may be a ghaphics issue.

Any thoughts on this possibility would be most appreciated!

Kent

log w Alt F4.txt