[RESOLVED] I am new to GameEx but a long time user of MAME

[guitarpunk]

I believe I have set up the game directories for roms, emulators but it does not seem to work.  I watched a YouTube video from several years ago that went in detail in the basic setup.  Would it have an issue if I run everything from a external SSD Hard drive.  Oh yes I am running windows in Parallels so I have a MAC OS and it runs Windows 10 like an app.

 

 

and you should be able to see the path is right

[guitarpunk]

Any support?

[Draco1962]

Can you attach copies of your gameex.ini and log.txt files (no copy and paste) please? They are located in the \gameex\config and \gameex\logs paths specifically.

[tthurman]

External drive shouldn't be an issue, at most maybe a little less responsive.

Emulator?  Did you set MAME up as an emulator?

Sounds like you may have watched Simply Austin's video, in which he utilizes integrated MAME support and not via an emulator slot, IIRC.

GameEx requires .NET Framework 2.0, is that supported in Parallels?

[guitarpunk]

 

GameEx.ini log.txt

Edited July 16, 2020 by guitarpunk
Added note

[guitarpunk]

BTW.  Thanks for the assistance

[tthurman]

mamepath=X:\GameEx

This is your MAME path?  unless for some reason you've made it as a shortcut then GameEx doesn't know what to launch.  In a windows environment this would typically be C:\MAME64.exe

VerifyRoms=True  (takes a good bit to verify a set and removes anything that isn't pretty much perfectly emulated)

EnableTouchScreen=True  (unless you are specifically using a touchscreen)

Recommend these to be false

 

Also:

It looks as if you've got MAME, or at least parts of it, configured on emulator slot emu_4.

When running GameEx you basically have two options for MAME, Integrated MAME (which allows for filter use, vector, shooters, etc) or running it as an emulator (which is configured like any other emulator would be in it's respective emulator slot)

DON'T use both,.

 

GameEx intergrated support is the "Setup MAME"  and ADVANCE MAME SETTINGS" that you come across early on during the setup wizard.  Once these paths are pointing to the correct directories, you're done. 

 

Don't keep drilling down and pulling over MAME in a emulator slot and start doing it again, it just confuses matters.

 

[Tom Speirs]

I actually recommend verify for the most part. Its not to do with emulated support but more to do with the user actually having the fikes and they will actually launch. It has nothing to do with perfectly emulated. If they don't verify in GameEx its highly likely they wont launch at all.

In simple terms the op just needs to download mame if not aready and set the path to the exe and roms. I don't know why people get in such a picle with this.

it is all going to really suck running in a virtual machine though. Is there a specific reason for that?

[guitarpunk]

ok.  I re-did everything.  Windows rolled from scratch loaded GameEx and Mame to C Drive and just have media/pictures/Roms on X Drive.  I have tested it in Mame64.exe and all the roms work perfect.  but when I do update list in mame menu it only shows 145 games.  uploading my 2 files again.  btw thanks for the help on moving everything over.  I also went step by step from this forum page to get it all setup.  

I am using the New 16.55 and Mame 0.222 and Mame Roms 0.222 Non Mergered and also placed MAME 0.222 ROMs (bios-devices) in the Roms directory.  I believe that was correct.

 

GameEx.ini log.txt

[tthurman]

Without changing anything else I would follow Tom's advice and toggle "verify roms" back to the default value of "True" and update the list again to evaluate what difference it makes.

We touched on the topic of "verify roms", as it seems perhaps what I'm recalling either isn't correct at all or perhaps was an anomaly of releases from years ago that is no longer relevant.  I mostly use Arcade Edition, in which there is no option to defeat the verify roms setting, so my recommendations certainly don't represent the knowledge and experience that Tom brings to the conversation, as he is the author of the software.

Please give that a go and let us know your results.

 

 

 

 

[Tom Speirs]

You also need to disable touchscreen support as mentioned previously.

[guitarpunk]

ok.  So I am on a MacBook Pro and using Parallels to run windows 10.  So I logged onto my wifes Computer (Dell w/ windows 10) and did the same setup as I did on the MacBook Pro and it worked perfectly on the Dell Windows 10 PC just fine.  So I assume it the issue has to be Parallels 15 software that caused all the problems.  I want to say thanks for all the help and now that it is up and running I love the product.

[tthurman]

Great, glad it's all up and running for you!

Thanks for reporting back news of your successful installation and configuration.

 

[Tom Speirs]

Do me a favour. if you want all games to show in your VM. Go into the Setup Wizard and turn off Touchscreen support. Please.

[Tom Speirs]

Ive disabled the auto touchscreen setting for the next release by the way. That will never happen again

[tthurman]

It would be interesting to see if the behavior is the same, not to mention how this runs on the Mac in a VM environment.

[Draco1962]

I'm also interested in knowing how the touchscreen enabled setting impacts ROM selection during Update List. I know we've encountered other issues over the years with that setting enabled and disabled by default is a good idea.

[guitarpunk]

ok.  I know Tom and others said to disable Touch Screen.  I for the life of me thought I disabled it but I guess when I did the fresh install it got checked again.  Now that I have disabled Touch Screen on both Dell Windows 10/MacBook Pro with Parallels 15 with Windows 10 ver 2004.  That was the fix.  Once I disabled it and everything worked on both stations.  I must say the only problem is still with Parallels 15 it assigns an external drive to a new location almost every-time.  So I just added X, V, Y to the roms list location and now so no matter what drive letter it assigns it will be mapped in Setup Wizard.

 

I am so glad I purchased this platform vs others.  It has so many options/features and blow the others out of the water.

 

 

So to wrap it up all is solved and fixed:  Moved GameEx to C drive, Disabled Touch Screen, Added extra drive locations so if it assigns my external drive to any letter it will find them.

 

[Draco1962]

Thanks for reporting back!

[tthurman]

That's good to know, I honestly had my doubts it would even work, or well enough to be usable.

[guitarpunk]

Give me a couple of weeks and I will do a how to video on YouTube from OS->Parallels->Windows->GameEx/MAME.  Since OpenEmu is horrible.  

 

[Draco1962]

2 hours ago, guitarpunk said:

Give me a couple of weeks and I will do a how to video on YouTube from OS->Parallels->Windows->GameEx/MAME.  Since OpenEmu is horrible.  

 

If you can do a write up alkng with the link to your YouTube video we'll be glad to pin the topic.