Zips as folders?

[rhijaen]

Is there any way for GameEx to play a cd game without extracting it or any other workaround?

I have some Sega CD files that are zipped. All of them together are about 40gb. That is a lot of space unzipped.

If I had the resources, I would extract them all and play them like that. But, I do not. Also this makes it tough for other things (seeding).

Thanks to anyone who replies.

EDIT: edited for clarity.

[rhijaen]

Really just looking for a quick answer here.

Thanks.

[Nologic]

Well I hope first of all you are talking about each CD image is archived by its self....and not a large collection all in one archive.

That said an AutoIt or like wrapper could be written...however there would be a huge delay while the archive is first decompressed, then the image mounted if required...before the game even fires up...not to mention once you exit the game there would be file clean up involved...which may effect the responsiveness of GameEx for a short time.

So realistically I'd say no...but it could be done...just very ugly and not very enjoyable.

[rhijaen]

EDIT: FIXED

I have made a simple Autoit script. But there is one problem.

It works fine when i launch it via cmd prompt. But through GameEx, it skips extracting the file and goes right to the emulator. This is a problem because it can't play a file that is not there! It just loads the Sega CD bios.

Here is the (fixed) script:

; Check For Valid Commandline
If NOT $CmdLine[0] = 1 Then Exit

; Extract the game into a temp folder
Runwait( 'C:\program files\winrar\winrar.exe x -ibck -y "' & @scriptdir & '\' & $CmdLine[1] & '" "' & @scriptdir & '\temp\"' )

processwaitclose( "winrar.exe" )

;Run a search for any cue files
$search = FileFindFirstFile( @ScriptDir & '\temp\*.cue' )

;Run a search for the first cue file it finds in the temp folder
$game = FileFindNextFile($search) 

;Close the search
fileclose($search)

;Run Fusion
Run ( 'C:\emulation\emulators\fusion\fusion.exe -scd -fullscreen "' & @scriptdir & '\temp\' & $game & '"')

; Wait for Emu to Start
ProcessWait	( "Fusion.exe" )

; Wait for Emu to Exit
ProcessWaitClose( "Fusion.exe" )

;Clean up by deleting all files in the temp folder
FileDelete(@scriptdir & "\temp\*.*")


; Close Wrapper
Exit

BTW: Place the script in the folder with the images

EDIT: placed a processwaitclose( "winrar.exe" ) after running winrar and that fixed it

It takes about a maximum of 1 minute to extract one of these images on this machine. There is almost no delay in deleting the files afterwards and getting back to GameEx.

I wish there was a better way, but this will have to do for now.

[Nologic]

Good to see you came up with a workable solution to your problem.

[rhijaen]

Yep.

Wouldn't have been able to do it without your delta wrapper and autounrar script.

I learned by example from them.

The power of open source

[Nologic]

Its a good thing they came in handy.