NEWS: GameEx 8.73

[Tom Speirs]

16th August, 2008 - GameEx 8.73

Stability and performance improvements to snap videos, background videos, and videos in screensaver. (Including MNG)

[Nologic]

Sweet thanks for the update I'll be jumping right on it.

Blah...where do I download it from...guess I'll turn on Auto Update for the time being.

[headkaze]

Yeah the link on the website must be down. Trying auto-update... Cheers Tom

[Tom Speirs]

There's a small bug with the site, in that some or all of the top menus dissapear every now and then, requiring a restart of IIS to fix.

This update is fairly significant in terms of the video playback. I've been working on this for quite a while. GameEx would eventually crash playing only MNG videos in the screensaver, and continuously playing the same MNG when the screensaver was turned off would also crash. This probably also affected mpegs and avi's

The alpha blending of videos was causing this due to a bug, and additionally, and stupidly the screensaver videos where also alpha blending. I was also using StretchBlt instead BitBlt when there was no need to use StretchBlt.

So it all should run much faster now, and GameEx should never crash, ever. lol

[headkaze]

Thanks Tom

Did you know that the TransparentBlt API function had a GDI leak in it? I remember that from back when I was coding in VB6 and had to write my own custom method. Just a bit of trivia

I did an auto-update and I still seem to get an error message after the download has finished (it's just a .NET broadcast message with no info), but the install continues and works fine.

I'll have to try adding videos back to attract mode because last few times I ran my cab in attract it would crash to a black screen. Turning off videos seemed to fix it. I'll add back videos and let you know if there are any problems.

[Tom Speirs]

  headkaze said:

I'll have to try adding videos back to attract mode because last few times I ran my cab in attract it would crash to a black screen. Turning off videos seemed to fix it. I'll add back videos and let you know if there are any problems.

That was fixed a few versions back.

[retroone]

  headkaze said:

I'll have to try adding videos back to attract mode because last few times I ran my cab in attract it would crash to a black screen. Turning off videos seemed to fix it. I'll add back videos and let you know if there are any problems.

I have the same issue, but I had videos off. If I have a video in the root folder of a drive then GameEx will automatically play it and crash. I have to end the process to get GameEx to exit and then restart the PC. Once I moved the videos from the root directory everything is fine.

Retro One

[iano]

  TSpeirs said:

16th August, 2008 - GameEx 8.73

Stability and performance improvements to snap videos, background videos, and videos in screensaver. (Including MNG)

Thanks for the 8.74 (&8.73) update Tom ! My AVI backgrounds are noticeably much smoother.

[Smiff]

there is no news topic for 8.75?

3d transitions are much slower since upgrading 8.69 (i think?) to 8.75

i can see the big pixels of text on the zoom in, they're on screen for so long.

tried disabling avi backgrounds, still slow. vsync is on btw.

ATI Radeon 9600. drivers are a bit old (Sep06, not sure which cat ver it is) but i have a rule about not f**ing with the htpc since its working and this was never slow until this gameex ver.

thought i should let you know

otherwise all good.

shall i try rolling back to 8.72 to confirm? (Which i downloaded but did not install)

[Tom Speirs]

  Smiff said:

there is no news topic for 8.75?

3d transitions are much slower since upgrading 8.69 (i think?) to 8.75

i can see the big pixels of text on the zoom in, they're on screen for so long.

tried disabling avi backgrounds, still slow. vsync is on btw.

ATI Radeon 9600. drivers are a bit old (Sep06, not sure which cat ver it is) but i have a rule about not f**ing with the htpc since its working and this was never slow until this gameex ver.

thought i should let you know

otherwise all good.

shall i try rolling back to 8.72 to confirm? (Which i downloaded but did not install)

This is due to the ATI fix in 8.74. Its meant to help with the drivers since sept 06 which are a bit buggered. GameEx does the transition in software for ATI cards now which is slower, but better than 5 seconds a frame which was happening with the newer drivers.

I also did extend the amount of time for the transition, there slower on purpose. Is it chugging or is the transition just longer.

Ill add an option for slow or fast for next release, since you mentioned you dont like it.

What do others think?

PS: As per usual, no release notes normally implies single bug fix to something. This time something that I found through the error reporting.

[stephenp1983]

Tom, I just downloaded 8.75 and am setting it up on a new project I'm working on. I tried to import my emulator configs manually and get an error that causes the configuration to crash. I'll post a screen shot in just a second

[stephenp1983]

here is the screen shot

[Tom Speirs]

Its nothing to do with this particular version. you need to click the drop down, and select an emu, or click browse for file at the top of list

[stephenp1983]

I see where my problem was. I was trying to import configs that were not stored in the gameex configs folder, but elsewhere. Thanks Tom its working fine now.

[Tom Speirs]

  stephenp1983 said:

I see where my problem was. I was trying to import configs that were not stored in the gameex configs folder, but elsewhere. Thanks Tom its working fine now.

You can import from other locations, select the first item in the drop down Box.

[stephenp1983]

  TSpeirs said:

You can import from other locations, select the first item in the drop down Box.

Yes I see that as well now too lol thanks again