Relative paths and animated backgrounds and a few others

[Pod]

Hello everyone. 

I'm trying to setup gameex after an 8 year break! It's running on an arcade monitor but I have the whole install (fronted, roms, emu, assets) on a removable drive. 

I've plugged that into my main pc so I can get everything updated (much easier than on the cab) but had a few questions. Sorry if these are answered elsewhere already. 

 

1) can I use relative paths? I tried using

../game ex emulators/etc

This morning before work but the verify tool came back with errors. Does each path need to be relative to the emulator it's related too? Does Windows allow something like

Currentdrive/etc

? 

If I can get this working I can test on my main pc before putting it back in my cab. 

2) I don't remember seeing all the fancy animated backgrounds for every single game back when I originally set this up. Is that part of a theme? Or is it stuff from emu movies? Or from the mame pack on the ftp? Is it difficult to get working? Does it look good on an arcade monitors' low resolution? 

 

3) I haven't yet installed an updated version of gameex. Would people recommend getting the latest gameex or gameex arcade instead? I only use it for emulators (mame, daphne, snes, md, amiga, c64, zinc, model2 , model3) 

 

4) is there a difference between the mame pack on the ftp, the data on emu movies and the data on game base? I'm new to the latter as well so assume I know very little

 

Cheers so much

 

Pod

[Draco1962]

Hi Pod - I use GameEx Arcade almost exclusively. Fortunately, it installs separately from GameEx in it's own path.

I will answer question 1 to the best of my ability. I do not believe that relative paths are supported. If I am wrong, hopefully someone will correct me and provide good instructions or examples of how they accomplished the task.

As for #2, you will find most of your answers in my Draconus theme thread: 

The only thing I didn't address the logo files as Tom has added new separate paths for the integrated systems as well as emulators for the wheel logos. Those files you can probably find via many collections searched via Google using keywords [EMULATOR or SYSTEM NAME] and wheel or logo.

The video backgrounds reside in their own path (I am not at my PC to look up the names nor can I remember off the top of my head at the moment).

To answer #3, I suggest installing GameEx Arcade and trying it out for yourself.

[Pod]

Cool thanks for the replies. 

I'll take a look at that thread and will come back if any thing confuses me. 

Also I remembered that just a / will count as start from root for things like cd so I'll give that a go tonight. 

[Pod]

Hey,

 

So I installed the arcade edition and set it up as best I could but upon launching it counts down the nag screen to 0 and then nothing happened. I had to use task manager to shut it down (Luckily that appears on my second monitor or I'd be screwed since I cant alt-tab away).  Once closed I can see that In the background it was trying to extract mame32 for some reason. 

Turns out it had automatically found the first exe when setting up mame and that was the self extracting archive

One for the faq/troubleshooting page perhaps?

 

Pod

[Draco1962]

Nag screen means you do not have a registration key. You will need to purchase at least an annual membership in order to eliminate that and open any registered features. Applies to regular Gameex.

[Pod]

Yeah I know that. Once I changed my mame exe to not be the installer everything started working as expected.

Once I've got everything setup and I'm happy ill buy a licence. 

[Pod]

Btw. Can anyone tell me where it gets the little game summary that appears when you select a game? 

 

Is that being grabbed from the net in real time? I.e once installed in my cab, which doesn't currently have Internet, is it going to fail to show? 

Cheers

 

Pod

[Draco1962]

It is pulled from the database locally for whatever system you are emulating.

[Pod]

Ah perfect. Cheers

[Pod]

Right. So got everything working 100% on my win 10 pc. Have now moved it over to my cab which is running xp64 lite and the themes aren't working. I've verified the paths and I think it's running the main theme because I get the correct music. 

I considered it might be a codex issue but the themes run fine in media player classic. (that might not rule it out though). 

I'm also now running at the same res as an arcade vga (640x228 or maybe 288.i forget) but I'd be surprised if that was the issue given arcade game ex was designed for cabs. 

 

Any thoughts? I've just turned in for the night so I can't post my ini right now but I can do tomorrow if that'll help narrow the issue down. 

 

Cheers all. 

[Draco1962]

XP64 lite or other inlited  OSs are not supported. Too much trouble trying to figure out what needs to be installed or what's missing. Sorry.

The recommended codecs are LAV, but you may still have issues going back so far with your choice of OS. 

[Pod]

Ah cool. I'll try that tonight. I can move back to normal xp64 if I I'm really fussed but I can't go further forward as I only have lcd top gun 1 and I'm using catalysts drivers with a radeon 4xxx so I'd lose quite a lot of stuff if I did as they don't work post xp. 

I would gain newer emus on the flip side at least

[Pod]

No go on the Codec front. Tried lav 70.0.2 which appears to be the last one that worked on xp64. The one here appears to be for a later windows. Also tried ffdshow linked from pinballx.com

Nether seemed to work. The log says it failed to open the mp4s. Path is correct and I can can open them in normal media player as well as classic. I also tried running gameex on 640x480 to rule that out.

Last thing I can try is to use the avi versions instead I guess but will have to wait a while. 

Cheers for the help though. I understand its not supported. Can I check. Do people have themes running using game ex arcade in normal Windows xp64? 

Cheers 

Paul

P. S are there more logging options that might further reveal where its failing? 

[Draco1962]

You may want to attach copies of your latest gameex.ini and log.txt files. Again, if you have a full install of XP, I would encourage installing it 

Second, if you are installing the x64 version of GameEx Arcade, try the x86 version instead. Install both x64 an x86 versions of your codecs.

There are only two themes available for Arcade, the default-default and Draconus themes.

[Pod]

Ah that's a good idea that's easy to do. Will try next time I get some free time. 

 

I am tempted to do a full install of xp but to the 32bit version instead as my lighguns only allow 2 player in that (something I didn't know when I installed 64bit).

 

Cheers