[RESOLVED] New install - GameEx Arcade Edition hangs, never launches MAME

[myztikjenz]

Hi everyone,

I've been trying to install GameEx Arcade Edition for a couple of weeks now and I cannot get this figured out. GameEX appears to hang at a number of different places (starting a game, looking at marquees, just idling...). Trying to start a game has never worked for me. I imagine I'm holding something wrong here, but I'm not seeing what. There's nothing interesting in the logs when this happens.

My setup: Windows 10 (in test mode) with CRT Emudriver for a Radeon HD 5450 graphics card, connected to a 25" K7000. Also have a regular LCD monitor connected. MAME is groovymame 0260.002. GameEx Arcade Edition v18.61 (although this was happening on 18.58 as well).

The only thing I've noticed is that some of the hangs appear to be coming with some network traffic. When GameEx freezes, it isn't busy (<1% CPU) but the network will be downloading 2-20Mbps, but even that slows down after a bit... but the app remains hung.

Adding my ini and log files here. And I saw in another thread that paths are sometimes the cause of hangs... are all MAME paths required even if they are empty?

 

log.txt GameEx.ini

[Tom Speirs]

I don't think that's the normal experience but sorry you are having trouble and thank you for persevering.

i don't see anything specific to troubleshoot there that makes me think. It could be on your end rather than the software. You could also try an older version to see if something was introduced recently when I was working on cross platform in recent months. Although 18.58 might be before that.

Other than that if it is network it will be artwork download or gameex online, so look into that.

Paths should not be an issue. i never heard that. Again artwork download maybe.

[Draco1962]

57 minutes ago, Tom Speirs said:

I don't think that's the normal experience but sorry you are having trouble and thank you for persevering.

i don't see anything specific to troubleshoot there that makes me think. It could be on your end rather than the software. You could also try an older version to see if something was introduced recently when I was working on cross platform in recent months. Although 18.58 might be before that.

Other than that if it is network it will be artwork download or gameex online, so look into that.

Paths should not be an issue. i never heard that. Again artwork download maybe.

From recently triaged issues, I think 15.56 might be a better test and before we encountered recent issues due to cross-platform changes.

[myztikjenz]

3 hours ago, Tom Speirs said:

I don't think that's the normal experience but sorry you are having trouble and thank you for persevering.

i don't see anything specific to troubleshoot there that makes me think. It could be on your end rather than the software. You could also try an older version to see if something was introduced recently when I was working on cross platform in recent months. Although 18.58 might be before that.

Other than that if it is network it will be artwork download or gameex online, so look into that.

Paths should not be an issue. i never heard that. Again artwork download maybe.

I'll give 18.56 a go tonight and report back on what I find. And no need to apologize... being in software development myself, I know these things happen. I'm sure we'll get it figured out. And I appreciate the feedback from both you and Draco1962 that this isn't normal and that there's something off here.

[myztikjenz]

Downgraded to 18.56 and the same problem occurs, no changes to the config file.

Learned a little about troubleshooting Windows programs that are hanging and found a little something about Wait Chains. And a program called "waitingon". Seems GameEx is hung on network I/O, in what appears to be a deadlock between two threads. See the attached image.

I see GameEx get periodic bursts of 10Mb/s downloads from 104.26.13.59 for a few seconds, then it stops and never recovers. I'm guessing there's some resource it's expecting that I don't have then gets hung waiting for a response?

[Draco1962]

Not sure it has anything to do with it but sometimes I get lucky. Is there a reason why you are running Windows in Test Mode? Is it possible that the resource access is being hampered when trying to return, thus hanging? Can you test in normal mode?

[Tom Speirs]

I would suggest trying to run gameex in a window. See if there is an unseen app or window. Also turn off artwork download. its probably that.not sure that is your issue though. could be completely unrelated.

Draco, the test mode is normal for groovymame on crts,

is there an artwork download log?

 

[Tom Speirs]

i rebooted the servers just now to be on the safe side.

[Tom Speirs]

If its a thread lock,I think it might be the video rendering which I tried to unify with PinballX. im uploading 18.62. Please see if it is any better.

 

Thanks for your help.

 

[myztikjenz]

Tried to re-run tonight as-is to see if the server reboot had any effect. It did not. Then I tried both running windowed mode and with downloads disabled. While the thread count was a lot less with downloads disabled, it still hung (and with GameEx running in windowed mode, I was able to see the Windows "this app isn't responding" dialog)

Installed 18.63 (noticed it had just been released), verified that windowed mode and downloads were disabled. And I still get the hang. Dropped out of Test Mode just to make sure that wasn't causing something weird to happen. Still hang.

I had been testing trying to launch 1943 (since it was near the top) and thought maybe someone was getting confused about vertical vs horizontal orientation. Launched Choplifter instead and thought it might have been different but it's not, it still hangs. It just takes maybe a little longer? Instead of hanging on the game launch screen, it goes pretty quickly to black after playing the game start sound. 1943 seems to hang on that screen more readily, but even it will go to black eventually.

There is an artwork log but since disabling downloads, it hasn't updated. Happy to upload it if you think it'd help any. Also, I never see MAME in the process list... which is probably obvious, but I'm saying it out loud in case it helps.

Finally, I downgraded to 18.62 on the off-chance that 18.63 had some sort of weird issue and .62 was where the magic was at. Alas, there was no magic there (same hang).

 

[myztikjenz]

There is a difference, although subtle, between launching 1943 and Choplifter. Taking a video was probably the best way to show it. No idea if it's of any value to this investigation.

 

[myztikjenz]

Final note for tonight: I went to "Update the game list" just to see what that would do and... it hangs. Windows doesn't see it as hung, the process is reported as "Running", but the "waitingon" program says there's a similar deadlock to the one I posted tonight. And the GameEx log doesn't appear to have any changes to it either.

Is there some relationship to the fact that I'm not starting from some known-good MAME build-out? I have been piecing this thing together as I learn how it works but I could have done something wrong here. Could it be there's a crapload of missing data someplace that GameEx is expecting?

[Tom Speirs]

I can see its not creating the snap previews. Its that thread that is locking. That will do it. The usual culprit is codecs and we recommend lav filters.

[myztikjenz]

Yup, that was it. Installed v0.78 from here: https://github.com/Nevcairiel/LAVFilters/releases and all appears to be working great! Still need to configure other bits for the monitor, but I'm sure I'll be able to figure that out.

Thank you so much for the continued help @Tom Speirs and @Draco1962, I really appreciate it.

[myztikjenz]

Oh jeez... I only now see the link to download the LAV Filters from here. My apologies for not seeing those sooner.

[Tom Speirs]

No worries. I'm just pleased it wasn't me

I should probably include it with GameEx but I have always tried to be careful with licensing,.

 

[Draco1962]

Glad to see a solution was found. I would not have thought it to be the LAV filters given the errors presented.

2 hours ago, Tom Speirs said:

No worries. I'm just pleased it wasn't me

I should probably include it with GameEx but I have always tried to be careful with licensing,.

 

Since GameEx isn't behind a paywall any longer, I wonder if you could do so without incurring any licensing issues?

[Tom Speirs]

46 minutes ago, Draco1962 said:

Since GameEx isn't behind a paywall any longer, I wonder if you could do so without incurring any licensing issues?

There seems to be little info out there on h264 and h265 decoding licensing and patents. it was my understanding it might break patents even when free and open source. However, I believe even launchbox includes vlc (or did) which would include h264 and h265 decoding. Many free and paid apps including Kodi include h264 and h265 decoding too.

[myztikjenz]

An idea from the customer's perspective: could you add into the Video Setup section some sample of what the main app does that requires the h264/h265 codex? Then you could put a note: "You should see a short snippet of a video here. If you don't, you need to install Lav Filters, get them here: link". I would have definitely seen that as part of the setup process.

[Draco1962]

Always good to get feedback - for enhancement and feature requests, you may want to submit an entry here: