[PLUGIN] Xpadder Plugin

[Alan Ribas]

The path I use is: "F:\Programas\GameEx"

It is hard for me to understand a few things too.

It's hard for me to understand some things too. I am Brazilian. I understand a little English. But in most cases, use a translator. Speaking on the subject. There was something I wanted to talk to you about this matter. From what I could see the translation of GAMEEX is made using a translator program. In some situations, at least in the Brazilian language, the translation makes the difficult phrase to understand. In some cases it is simply impossible to understand. I've seen on some sites the program developers looking from the users, who holds the domain of language to help with translations of software that is developed. Sometimes something can be done here. Do not misunderstand me. I love the GAMEX program. But if were to ask my opinion on what could be improved, I would say that.

[Adultery]

Are you offering to help out or merely suggesting?

PS: I have fixed this and will be putting out an update at some point today.

[Alan Ribas]

great news !!!

I am suggesting. I do not have an advanced knowledge of English. Me knowledge is very basic. I studied for a year the English language, I ended up having to leave school in order to work. If I had more knowledge I would help for sure. But if I used my knowledge now, the end result would not be better than is currently translated.

[Adultery]

Here you go, v128 is fixed and ready. Also fixed a small bug in the 5-8 profile display on the config screen for the system. Enjoy and thanks for using this!

[Alan Ribas]

Wonder!

Added the plugin. Now from what I could see everything is working normally.

Just a detail. Again, after adding new plugin, part of the configuration of Xpadder controls disappeared. So I had to set up again.

Thank Adultery !!!!

[helpman]

Here I am again There's something weird on my setup and I still don't know what's it.

Case 1: start the cabinet, only use mame. perfect.

Case 2: start the cabinet, need to display the "wait screen so you can plug your external controller", set to close when pressing "y". mapped "y" on a button on the gameex console interface.

problem 1- you don't connect the controllers, the button works (but as the controller was not connected, no profile was loaded then the keys/gamepad won't work on the emulator).

problem 2- you connect the controllers. the button won't work. so you can pass that warning screen and you can't play. somehow it's not recognising the xpadder profile pressing "y".

Workaround 1 - set xpadder autoprofiles to ON. set the EXE file of the warning to force load the same gameex interface profile so the key is accepted. it works. but then the gamepad won't get the profile when the emulator launches :??????

Bonus problem: the combo to close anything on gameex (' key. press player1 to toggle group 2, then player2 to press that key) used to work great. now it doesn't. Partial fix by setting gameex to close when pressing both buttons together.

Bonus problem after the bonus problem: now when you're pressing buttons like mad on the psx controller you accidentaly can close the emulator pressing those buttons. (launched the emulator AFTER pluging an external keyboard and press the Y key. see problems before this one XD). So I need to set the key combo to close anything on gameex and not just the joystick buttons.

I have the arcade joysticks set as default on the windows settings, and set on xpadder the priority as xin-mo controllers (arcade), then hacked gamepad (coin slot), then the external controller.

On xpadder plugin I have the profiles set on that same order, gameex1 (with the combo keys to close), default2, cajetin (coin slot), psxcontroller (for the psx emulator). mame, gameex interface, gameex screensaver all have the same "gameex, default2, cajetin" profiles loaded.

I just don't know what's happening. Also when I open mame if I have any external controller plugged in it somehow changes my joystick settings on windows (like player 1 was using joy 2 (arcade), if I have any other gamepad attached the same buttons belong to joy 3, so all my controls won't work :?

now I'm puzzled...

[DazzleHP]

I can't answer your Xpadder woes, however:

Also when I open mame if I have any external controller plugged in it somehow changes my joystick settings on windows (like player 1 was using joy 2 (arcade), if I have any other gamepad attached the same buttons belong to joy 3, so all my controls won't work :?

This is actually a known problem with MAME and has been around for as long as i can remember. In fact i make a habit of making all important controller configs (in <your mame>\cfg\ folder, in particular default.cfg) as Read Only once i have i have set them for the first time. I've experienced too many times in the past when i might have a different controller attached, to launch MAME and it decides to completely overwrite my configs - even if i have no/zero controllers attached it will do it!

[Adultery]

And for the bonus point...

Here's what's happening internally:

1. You select the game.

2. Xpadder launches the profiles.

3. Your wait screen pops up and you plug in the controller

4. Your process completes and the emulator loads up

If the controller isn't loaded or plugged in when the game is actually run, your profiles won't be loaded at all since they weren't there when you launched the game.

The only solution really is to make a bat file that loads the wait screen, waits for confirmation, then loads the Xpadder profiles, then the emulator.

The whole thing gets hairy when you have controller that don't remain plugged in... IDs change, load orders change, etc.

Sadly this is really an edge case and there isn't much I can do about it.

[helpman]

Hi there! I think I just like to make things difficult to make them more interesting lol... I might try to use full xpadder profiles for mame and just map mame default key según then relay everything on xpadder... I'll keep trying whatever comes to my mind just in case

[DazzleHP]

Plugin isn't working anymore with todays update (14.06).

Again all i did was update through GameEx to 14.06 and no profiles work any more. Interestingly, the "Specify Game Specific Options" was unchecked after update, when it normally is checked.

Also, the plugin still remembered which profiles are associated with which games, but they just don't work.

I tried 3 games: Metal Slug, 1944 and Strikers 1945, i also re-associated the 1944 profile in case that was the problem but no dice.

The log seems to indicate something is amiss (attached).

xpadder.txt

[Adultery]

I hate to ask a silly question, but did you check the box?

That was a bug I fixed where unchecking the box wasn't disabling game profiles, so you'll need to check it. If the setting isn't found it defaults to not enabling game profiles.

So, check game specific setting box and the check box next to the game also.

If it still doesn't work please pm me your settings xml.

[DazzleHP]

I did check the box yes that's how i know it still remembered my profiles. Also, once i check the "Specify Game Specific Options" box, not only are the right profiles with the games, the check box next to them is also enabled automatically.

I PM the settings now.

[DazzleHP]

I just did a reboot out of curiosity, and guess what - the Game Specific box is back to unchecked. I don't think it is saving, which would explain why the individual profiles that i normally use aren't being loaded.

[Adultery]

Funny how you can throw a plugin into a tussle with the lack of 6 chars:

save() !!

Here you go Dazz.

[DazzleHP]

I think we got it! Nice job man - and so fast!!

[Adultery]

Updated to 1.2.9 which fixes some bugs.

Get it here: http://www.gameex.info/forums/files/file/17-xpadder-plugin/

[Adultery]

Updated to 1.3.0

• Fixed bug where GameEx menu wasn't being loaded for new installations
• Optimized XML reading/writing
• Removed a bug where data was not saving to XML if GameEx didn't close gracefully
• Removed old debugging code
• Optimized the plugin configuration code

Since I changed the way I build my datasets for the emulators when the backend got a rewrite, the code was not looking for "GameEx Menu" (it was looking for "GameEx Interface" instead). This only reared its head to anyone who had the menu controls set up prior to 1.2.4.

I also built a function that fixes the node name for existing users so there will be no issues moving forward. I also did some other stuff too.

Thanks to Chaos.Tiki for reporting this bug and helping/remaining patient with the testing! Get it from the usual places.

[drmean]

I'm new to GameEx and have a quick question about the Xpadder plugin if I may. I have GameEx installed and all the basics seem to be working. I have Xpadder setup and working fine with Rocketlauncher and Hyperspin. Now I would to try to get it working with GameEx so I can use the Xpadder profiles I already made.

I opened up the "GameEx Plugin Manager" program, clicked on the "Xpadder Plugin", clicked the "Configure" button, and received the following message: "Could not find the file 'C:\GameEx\PLUGINS\Xpadder\settings.xml'.

Do I need to manually create that file or am I supposed to copy it to that folder from some other location?

I've been looking around for a while now and just can't find anything on creating that file. Any pointers to it would be appreciated.

[Adultery]

Sorry about that drmean. Yeah you can just go ahead and put a blank settings file in GameEx > Plugins > Xpadder > settings.xml

I'll fix that for the next release.

[drmean]

Thanks Adultery. I knew it had to be something simple since I couldn't find anything on it. From the screenshots, it looks like it will be super easy to get everything set up with existing profiles. I'm still setting everything up, but I'm really liking what I've seen of GameEx so far. HS can be a "bit much" at times. It will be nice to have two different systems like that set up and then just choose the best one for a given use.

[Adultery]

Unfortunately I must have added a small bug with the last release. If that doesn't work, I'll hand you over an xml file, but it should do the trick.

Well we're glad to see ya around, we don't discriminate!

Lots of helpful people around if ya get stuck, don't be afraid to ask. We've all been there!

[Adultery]

Updated to 1.3.1

• Fixed a bug introduced in 1.3.0 where new installations were not creating the settings XML file before it was loaded
• Added much better exception handling to keep the plugin running even if there's an issue
• Added a check and refresh for the Xpadder.exe in the configuration
• Set the profile section to be disabled if there was no exe set
• Moved some code to debug mode to produce a cleaner log during normal use
• Minor plugin framework code improvements and/or enhancements

Special thanks to drmean for the heads up on the bug!

[drmean]

Thanks for the update, and shoutout , Adultery. It worked great and I was able to get my controller working with everything with no problem.

I've got to say that after spending more time with GameEx, getting it fixed up with all the art and everything, and finding the right Theme, it is definitely the way to go for me. I'm really loving the simple list view after being bombarded with 1000's of giant game logos on HS. It is just so much easier to find games in the list view and there are more filters. Also like seeing the control panel for the games before the game launches.

Now the fun part of going through the forums here and seeing all the things to add to the basic set up. Like all those plugins I saw in the plugin manager.

[Adultery]

Version 1.3.2 is out!

• Added controller detection support
• Supports plugging in controllers for specific systems before the emulator launches
• If no controllers are detected Xpadder will not launch
• Updated plugin framweork to latest base code

So as it says I added the ground work for controller specific mapping. Step one is to enumerate the number of game pads and only apply profiles if they're connected. So for example, I have 8 profiles set up but only 3 game pads are currently plugged in. Previously it would still push all 8 profiles, so Controller 1 and 2 would be fine but 3 would end up getting profile 8 since all the rest are applied to the last controller. So now it will quit after 3 instead.

It should also be noted that it re-pools the enumeration right before the emulator/game launches. If you only keep one controller plugged in and then company comes by, just plug that sucker in and load up your game. Easy enough.

Coming soon (if I can get the time together) I may set profiles specific to the Device ID/GUID. So you can set Profile 1 to your specific controller and then it will only apply that profile if it finds that specific controller. I guess that would be "Phase 2" of dedicated controller support. Imagine being able to specify a profile just for that NES Advantage but you only plug it in for Super Dodge Ball. Slap that bad boy on Game Profile #8 and it'll look at all your profiles and see if there's a match before applying the profile.

I also updated all my plugin framework code to the latest versions which only adds a big efficiency bump thanks to an overhaul of some important base code I put out for QuickLaunch.

More to come in the next release! Stay tuned!

[Adultery]

Updated to 1.3.3:

• Added backup and restore options for your configuration
• Added automatic backup option: Plugin can now backup your settings file each time GameEx launches
• Added option to disable controller enumeration

There is a new backup and restore button for backing up and restoring your plugin settings... I lost my config and was annoyed that I had to spend ten minutes of game time fixing them.

Now you can either manually back up your settings or let it happen automatically everytime GameEx runs. Your choice (I prefer option B personally).

Get it from the usual places.