GameEx 9 ETA

[alexdog69]

pardon me if this is a silly question,

is there an ETA for GameEx 9?

[Tom Speirs]

pardon me if this is a silly question,

is there an ETA for GameEx 9?

No, as I dont like to set deadlines as this is supposed to be a hobby. Generally, having pressure kills the fun a bit for me.

Also, 8.89, 8.90 etc will come first.

[Adultery]

I don't think the build number is as important. Tom has always implimented new features as they became available, so there's nothing to stop him from implimenting, say, the search feature in build 8.90 or wha have you.

I don't recall anyone saying anything revolutionary is going to be distributed in build 9...

[bkenobi]

There has been talk lately about v9 as if it's going to be some revolutionary new version rather than the standard incremental feature inclusion/bug fix. Tom does this for fun (I hope it's still fun...) and works on features he likes or others torment him about . Whatever is in the works will be done when it's ready and he will surely release it at that point. I really don't think he would hold onto the next version to include a slew of new stuff just to call it v9.

Basically, nologic, HK and I were the ones who created the v9 buzz I think.

[headkaze]

I've never mentioned "v9" ever

[Nologic]

*hides in corner*

[Tom Speirs]

No big deal, its an easy mistake for someone to make that assumption that GameEx revisions work that way. Its actually a compliment as it implies kind of GameEx is of commercial quailty.

To be honest, I have not done anything since the last release other than bug fixing. I've been busy with work and personal things (good personal things). As well as being on holiday for 10 days, and having some nasty virus that I've only just shifted.

Anyway, its all still good because of the forum and all the cool and new projects etc going on here.

[bkenobi]

No worries. GameEx is in a very usable state right now. The upcoming features (at least those getting a lot of focus) will be very welcome, but they are not required to enjoy the fruits of Tom's labor. On the other hand, I do enjoy cranking up the cab with a message about updates!

[Lord Zog]

Updates are always fun to see whats new, but 8.88 has been more than stable for me and I am happy to be a registered user. The best system out there now. 8.89 is welcomed, but no complaints! Running on 2 machines dedicated and on my HTPC for the wife and her Super Mario World. lol

[enoch]

No worries. GameEx is in a very usable state right now.

Um, I don't wanna bust your balls, very hard, but until Daphne and VP are one-path-click functional, and the audio player doesn't automatically load tracks, as well as stops the ambient track when a track is loaded and starts it back up when stopped (like any other media in GE does), I don't think that statement is accurate.

[Brian Hoffman]

Um, I don't wanna bust your balls, very hard, but until Daphne and VP are one-path-click functional, and the audio player doesn't automatically load tracks, as well as stops the ambient track when a track is loaded and starts it back up when stopped (like any other media in GE does), I don't think that statement is accurate.

To each their own... I totally agree with bkenobi.

And you do want to bust balls... Most replys I see from you are along the same tone.

Which is fine... However I think we can agree to disagree.

I believe it is comments like these that make you feel like the "odd man out"

Take care

Brian Hoffman

[Tom Speirs]

I dont wanna bust your balls. However:

I agree with you on Daphne, but in terms of the others, I believe its a matter of personal choice on those. I dont believe everyone would want it to work that way. If there so important why are they not prominently listed under feature requests?

Even if the majority do feel that way, there certainly not showstoppers, and why arnt people shouting? Im always open to suggestions, and implement anything that makes sense. More than any other software I personally know.

[headkaze]

Um, I don't wanna bust your balls, very hard, but until Daphne and VP are one-path-click functional, and the audio player doesn't automatically load tracks, as well as stops the ambient track when a track is loaded and starts it back up when stopped (like any other media in GE does), I don't think that statement is accurate.

He was talking about stability, not features. Some people have Daphne and VP working in GameEx and the ambient thing is really a feature request.

It's hard to blame a FE for Emulators that arn't command line or "FE friendly". Maybe you sould go ask the Daphne or VP authors to add better support for FE's? We all contribute wrappers and software to help make them work, but you can't possibly expect Tom (who incidently does GameEx for fun) to write all the wrappers and utils needed to get these programs working in GameEx.

If GameEx was fully commercialised like Maximus Arcade you would expect built in support for emulators would be better, but that is simply not the case. An example of this was a MA user coming and leeching one of our wrappers recently. So I would say with some confidence that GameEx actually has better built in emulator support than commercial FE's.

[bkenobi]

Just to clarify...

Like HK said, I was talking about the stability of the GameEx front end. I think there are an infinite number of enhancements that *could* be implemented, but I think that the FE is perfectly usable as is. In other words, if development stopped today and no more updates were made, we wouldn't be lost waiting for fixes etc.

[enoch]

In general: stability is not usability - though curiously I had the prescience stability was ben's intent. I agree. It's very stable.

Tom: that there isn't massive request for VP as I request, I speculate, is due to a lot of younger attendants, many of whom probly never've even played a pin, and are console junkies. I don't do consoles, and VP is one of only three I care for. However, even with Mame, GameEx is doing something weird with the Mame32 favorites.ini: {I think} it lists all available games in 'Favorites', but not all in each sub-folder. (I admit I'm inflexible in my acceptance of any other game listing format. But as the option is available, I would like it to work properly.) Orthogonally, I do assume the possibility my computer is buggy, though on another system I've had the same troubles.

Brian: oh, it's more than that. Truly.

kaze: "So I would say with some confidence that GameEx actually has better built in emulator support than commercial FE's." The only 'commercial' one I know of is MA - although I would agree GE support exceeds MA's, and at least equals any other fe. I expect nothing. If something is available, I ask for it to be as simple and elegant as possible.

Ben: just for clarity's sake, my tone was neutral except insofar as the first part of the first sentence was of a black humor. Really.

[Tom Speirs]

No worries, we are all here for the same thing.

You know, I do what I can and try to listen, no offence, but I suggest you structure and put across better, any issues you may find.

Here, its he who puts things in a way that get better, and the right kind of attention. I mean try to work with us than against us.

[enoch]

Okay.

My questions are:

1) Is it possible for you to make VP set-one-path functional (and perhaps without the use of vpauto) ?

2) Is it possible for you to make Daphne set-one-path functional ?

3) Do you wish to do so on both?

My issues, in diminishing importance, are:

1) Mame games missing in the lists - favorites, etc. I'm using the Mame32 favorites.ini .

2) vertical bezel not appearing. It's set 'yes' by default, so I don't know what's going on there.

Further request:

- making music files available as folders, same as with pictures. (This has been, repeatedly, requested by at least another.) Of course, with regard to ambience not being turned permanently off, the logistics would need to be hashed out.

[headkaze]

Okay.

My questions are:

1) Is it possible for you to make VP set-one-path functional (and perhaps without the use of vpauto) ?

2) Is it possible for you to make Daphne set-one-path functional ?

3) Do you wish to do so on both?

My issues, in diminishing importance, are:

1) Mame games missing in the lists - favorites, etc. I'm using the Mame32 favorites.ini .

2) vertical bezel not appearing. It's set 'yes' by default, so I don't know what's going on there.

Further request:

- making music files available as folders, same as with pictures. (This has been, repeatedly, requested by at least another.) Of course, with regard to ambience not being turned permanently off, the logistics would need to be hashed out.

No offence enoch and I feel a little bad we all jumped on you for your last post but these are feature requests. Put them in the feature request topic if you havn't already. And if there already in there, be patient and hope it will be attended to at some time.

I think I can answer these on behalf of Tom though anyway.

1. I don't get what you mean about vpauto, its a wrapper required for VP. If you want VP to run nicely ask the authors of VP to make it easier to launch full screen using command line parameters. The fact is about VP, is they DONT WANT VP to run like that. They want warning screens, same goes for Mame except there is no way to compile your own version of VP. Your best bet is asking NoLogic to decompile the current VPAuto script and make it run more reliably.

2. Probably not. It works for most people, so why waste precious time making it a set one path function. All you have to do is edit your Daphne .txt files so they are correct and run fine in Daphne. Sometimes you have to do a little work to get an emulator working but good news is you only have to do it once

3. Probably not. There are so many more features and issues on the plate. The importance and priority of which depend on Tom and public demand.

Part 2

1. Not sure about the favourites issue your experiencing. Perhaps another feature request or bug report? The former goes into the request topic, the latter requires a new post.

2. Not sure why your vertical bezel's arn't showing. But putting bug reports into unrelated threads doesn't really help you. You should start a new thread for bug reports. You also need to give more info. What is the problem, what is the result your getting and the expected result, and any more info you can foster regarding the problem.

3. Making music files available as folders. Yes, it's been requested but so has alot of other things (see the GameEx Most Wanted thread). It's not on the top of the list but it will get sorted if and when Tom decides.

[headkaze]

Man why do I always get volunteered when it comes to AutoIt...that said I can't seem to decompile it...ether its encrypted or its something else.

I found an interesting thread here

Here is the decompiled script from that thread anyways. Maybe this one is better?

; <AUT2EXE VERSION: 3.1.1.0>

; ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
; <AUT2EXE INCLUDE-START: C:\Shared Documents\3D Arcade\Scripting\VPA.au3>
; ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

; Just a variable that's used repeatedly in dialog boxes, etc.
$title = "Visual Pinball Assistant"

; TESTING
Opt("TrayIconDebug", 1)

; Show oure little balloon
TrayTip($title, $title & " started.", 3, 1)

; Make sure they see it
Sleep(2000)

; Hide our little balloon
TrayTip("", "", 3, 1)

; Search by title exact or class name
Opt("WinTitleMatchMode", 4)

; Now we go into an infinate loop until the user exits from the tray
While 1
; Look for VPinMAME window
	If WinExists("Please answer and press OK...") Then
	; Found VPinMAME

	; Select Yes radio button
		ControlCommand("last", "", 228, "Check", "")

	; Click OK button
		ControlClick("last", "", 1)
	EndIf; VPinMAME window check

; Look for Visual Pinball Player
	$Player = WinGetHandle("classname=VPPlayer")
	If Not @error Then
	; Player found. Check to see if options dialog is open using a partial match anywhere
		Opt("WinTitleMatchMode", 2)
		$Options = WinGetHandle("Options Menu")
		Opt("WinTitleMatchMode", 4)
		If Not @error Then; Options menu is open
		; Close options menu by clicking on the OK button.
			ControlClick($Options, "", 1000)
		EndIf; Options menu check

	; Check to see if player is active
		If WinActive($Player) Then; Player is active
		; User is playing. We don't need to do anything else, but we'll sleep for an extended period
			Sleep(4000)

		Else; Player is NOT active
		; While the player is not the active window, try and make it so
			While Not WinActive($Player)
			; If not active, sleep for a bit in case it's actually loading the table
				Sleep(1000)

			; Try and activate it
				WinActivate($Player)
			WEnd; Trying to make the player active

		EndIf; Player active check

	EndIf; Visual Pinball Player Check

; Let the system breathe before we loop.
; This slows down VPM detection but doesn't steal as much of the CPU.
	Sleep(1000)
WEnd

; ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
; <AUT2EXE INCLUDE-END: C:\Shared Documents\3D Arcade\Scripting\VPA.au3>
; ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[headkaze]

Okay I'll dink around with it later...hehe finally got around to setting up ScummVM.

Just out of curiosity did you try the ScummVM wrapper from here. It basically uses map files and the default ini file for ScummVM.

[Nologic]

nah used that one I did up...got a bunch more games...and I'm more lazy. Other wise I would have used yours....when I started toying with scummvm a while ago I was coming up with non stock names for some reason.

Contents of my map file

freddi-win|Freddi Fish 1: The Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds (Windows)
maze-us|Freddi Fish and Luther's Maze Madness (English (US))
freddi3|Freddi Fish 3: The Case of the Stolen Conch Shell
freddi4|Freddi Fish 4: The Case of the Hogfish Rustlers of Briny Gulch
pajama-us|Pajama Sam 1: No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside (Updated/English (US))
freddicove|Freddi Fish 5: The Case of the Creature of Coral Cave
freddi2-win|Freddi Fish 2: The Case of the Haunted Schoolhouse (Windows)
loom-vga|Loom (VGA/DOS/English)
indy3-fm|Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (FM-TOWNS/English)
balloon|Putt-Putt and Pep's Balloon-O-Rama (English)
puttmoon-win|Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon (Windows/English)
PuttTime|Putt-Putt Travels Through Time (English)
puttzoo-win|Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo (Windows)
monkey2|Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (DOS/English)
spyfox-win|SPY Fox 1: Dry Cereal (Windows)
puttrace-us|Putt-Putt Enters the Race (English (US))
atlantis|Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (CD/DOS/English)
maniac-v2|Maniac Mansion (V2/DOS/English)
dig|The Dig
tentacle|Day of the Tentacle (CD/English)
comi|The Curse of Monkey Island (Windows/English)
pass|Passport to Adventure (DOS/English)
samnmax|Sam & Max Hit the Road (CD/English)
puttputt-win|Putt-Putt Joins the Parade (Windows/English)
spyfox2-mac|SPY Fox 2: Some Assembly Required (Macintosh/English)
pajama2-us|Pajama Sam 2: Thunder and Lightning Aren't so Frightening (English (US))
ft|Full Throttle (Version B/English)
pajama3-us|Pajama Sam 3: You Are What You Eat From Your Head to Your Feet (English (US))
zak-fm|Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (FM-TOWNS/English)
sky|Beneath a Steel Sky (v0.0372 cd)
elvira2|Elvira II - The Jaws of Cerberus (Floppy/DOS/English)
queen|Flight of the Amazon Queen (Talkie/DOS/English)
fw|Future Wars (DOS/English)
monkey|The Secret of Monkey Island (CD/DOS/English)
bargon|Bargon Attack (DOS)
sword1|Broken Sword 1: The Shadow of the Templars
sword2|Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror
feeble-win|The Feeble Files (2CD/Windows/English)
sq2|Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge (2.0F 1989-01-05 3.5"/DOS/English)
simon2-win|Simon the Sorcerer 2 (CD/Windows/English)
pq1|Police Quest I: In Pursuit of the Death Angel (2.0A 1987-10-23/DOS/English)
kyra1|The Legend of Kyrandia (CD/DOS/English)
kyra3|The Legend of Kyrandia: Malcolm's Revenge (DOS/English)
nippon|Nippon Safes Inc. (DOS/English)
simon1-win|Simon the Sorcerer 1 (CD/Windows/English)
ite-win|Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb (CD Version/Windows/English)
bc|The Black Cauldron (2.00 1987-06-14/DOS/English)
gob1cd-us|Gobliiins CD (v1.02/DOS/English (US))
ween-us|Ween: The Prophecy (DOS/English (US))
mixedup|Mixed-Up Mother Goose (1987-11-10/DOS/English)
mh1|Manhunter 1: New York (1.22 1988-08-31/DOS/English)
mh2|Manhunter 2: San Francisco (3.02 1989-07-26 3.5"/DOS/English)
kq1|King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown (2.0F 1987-05-05 5.25"/3.5"/DOS/English)
kq2|King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne (2.2 1987-05-07 5.25"/3.5"/DOS/English)
kq3|King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human (1.01 1986-11-08/DOS/English)
lsl1|Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (1.00 1987-06-01 5.25"/3.5"/DOS/English)
gob2-us|Gobliins 2 (DOS/English (US))
gob3-us|Goblins Quest 3 (DOS/English (US))
sq1|Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter (2.2 1987-05-07 5.25"/3.5"/DOS/English)

LOL doh! just realized the ID's could be altered....blah...f*ck.

Guess I get to chalk that one up as another blond moment.

[Tom Speirs]

Its a version "2" auto it script.

Source attached:

vpauto.zip

[enoch]

Hey, kaze, I don't mind you being very blunt/telling me what to do/whatever. I like organisation and I have no problem with authority. As for putting those in the thread, it wasn't my initial intention. At the beginning, I was just giving an opinion based on certain criteria. Since Tom seemed to then want to know what my gripe was, I put those in there. Will carry on as instructed, elsewhere.

[headkaze]

Hey, kaze, I don't mind you being very blunt/telling me what to do/whatever. I like organisation and I have no problem with authority. As for putting those in the thread, it wasn't my initial intention. At the beginning, I was just giving an opinion based on certain criteria. Since Tom seemed to then want to know what my gripe was, I put those in there. Will carry on as instructed, elsewhere.

Hey it's not all bad, NoLogic might be looking at that VPAuto script for you. Or maybe you could try the one attached and let us know if it works better for you. BTW I'm all about helping people get their issues solved, it's just my job to help people understand how things are organised here, I don't mean to sound pushy or blunt but I do tend to get straight to the point. I didn't realise Tom was asking you to put your requests in this thread, so if that's the case I apologise for confusing you with conflicting info.

If you could let me know if this wrapper works better than the default one in GameEx that would be appreciated. I'm a big fan of pinball (even installed two side buttons on my CP for it) so would be interested to know myself.

vpauto.zip

[enoch]

Am I trippin, or did the last two posts (Tom, then kaze) disappear?