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Speed up the return from MAME to GameEx?

ilgaspa

By ilgaspa
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ilgaspa Advanced Member

ilgaspa

Posted
Posted

With the help of this forum I've been able to configure GameEx exactly the way I wanted: the frontend now is blazing fast, the transition effects between menus are smooth and the video previews play instantly... however there are still three things that hinders my "cabinet experience", and I hope you can help me with these :)

1) The first thing is the least important: when I launch a mame game, I can see GameEx minimizing (I mean the windows anymation for minimizing windows, the window shrinking to the taskbar) - This is *not* the same problem others on the forum have, as everything works: mame launches, the game plays fine, I play the game fine (eh eh :D) and when exiting mame GameEx maximizes and everything is ok :) I just want to get rid of that minimizing animation, it's really a kick for the "cabinet feeling" :)

2) When I start a game, the control panel is displayed together with the "game launching" information at the bottom of the screen: I noticed that it takes a lot more time (4/5 secs more) for the mame "loading" "initializing" etc messages to be shown when the control panel is displayed that way... How can I disable this thing? I found an option to disable the control panel viewer, but this also removes the option to show it from the game information screen... :'( I want it to be available in the game informations screen, together with flyer, marquee etc, but *not* to be automatically shown when launching a game.

3) And for last, the most annoying: when I exit a mame game, the screen remains black for 5/7 seconds before showing gameex again.... I know it could be faster than that, as everything else is blazing fast (and I mean FAST: no delay in anything else in the frontend, this is really the only slow thing), so it must be something wrong with my settings. With the frontend I used before the return from mame->frontend was istantaneous (you press esc - blam- you see the frontend)... I really can't understand why the same thing in gameex takes 6 secs :(

Please: I can live with [1] and [2], but I beg you help me with [3] :'(

My system specs:

Pentium 4 Core Solo 2,8Ghz

768MB DDR2 266MHz

nVidia 6600GT 120MB VRam

Freshly formatted 80GB drive ;) ;)

Tom Speirs GameEx God (Top Rank)

Tom Speirs

Posted
Posted

I can help with 1 and for 2 ill consider adding an option for that.

1. To fix this you can got into control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance, and either set visualy for best performance or turn off the windo animations.

2. Pressing any key should then bypass this, no?

3. Unfortunatly, there is not much I can do about this. Believe me it used to be a lot slower than this and has been improved over time. Its because GameEx has to reload all the front end graphics again, and yes, some of these are already cached. 5-7 seconds does sound a little long though, it certainly does not take that much on my systems. Can you post your log, although I dont think Ill be able to help.

Stu1983 GameEx God (Top Rank)

Stu1983

Posted
Posted
3. Unfortunatly, there is not much I can do about this. Believe me it used to be a lot slower than this and has been improved over time. Its because GameEx has to reload all the front end graphics again, and yes, some of these are already cached. 5-7 seconds does sound a little long though, it certainly does not take that much on my systems. Can you post your log, although I dont think Ill be able to help.

It's not as long as 5-7 seconds on my system either, it like 3 or so, I've never even noticed it

Sometimes I can see the minimized GameEx window in the bottom left corner of the screen before an emulator appears, is this normal? I think it may be because before I launch GameEx I have it set to close the explorer process so I think this window would normally be behind the taskbar

Stu

ilgaspa Advanced Member

ilgaspa

Posted
  • Author
Posted
1. To fix this you can got into control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance, and either set visualy for best performance or turn off the windo animations.

Thanks! :)

2. Pressing any key should then bypass this, no?

Doh... i feel stupid -_- never tought of being able to skip it by pressing a button :) however if it's not too complex an option to change this beaviour would be good: after all this way I'd be able to check controls for the games from the game info menu only when I need it, or in-game with the hotkey, and not at every launch :)

3. Unfortunatly, there is not much I can do about this. Believe me it used to be a lot slower than this and has been improved over time. Its because GameEx has to reload all the front end graphics again, and yes, some of these are already cached. 5-7 seconds does sound a little long though, it certainly does not take that much on my systems. Can you post your log, although I dont think Ill be able to help.

I'll post my log as soon as I get home :) Just tell me how to do so ;) By the way, do you think that creating a virtual ramdrive and putting part of gameex data files here would help me speed things up? Also, if this helps you findind if something's wrong, gameex loads really fast when launching... (besides the nag screen, I'm still waiting the arrival of my new credit card to buy it :)

Brian Hoffman GameEx God (Top Rank)

Brian Hoffman

Posted
Posted
With the help of this forum I've been able to configure GameEx exactly the way I wanted: the frontend now is blazing fast, the transition effects between menus are smooth and the video previews play instantly... however there are still three things that hinders my "cabinet experience", and I hope you can help me with these :)

1) The first thing is the least important: when I launch a mame game, I can see GameEx minimizing (I mean the windows anymation for minimizing windows, the window shrinking to the taskbar) - This is *not* the same problem others on the forum have, as everything works: mame launches, the game plays fine, I play the game fine (eh eh :D) and when exiting mame GameEx maximizes and everything is ok :) I just want to get rid of that minimizing animation, it's really a kick for the "cabinet feeling" :)

2) When I start a game, the control panel is displayed together with the "game launching" information at the bottom of the screen: I noticed that it takes a lot more time (4/5 secs more) for the mame "loading" "initializing" etc messages to be shown when the control panel is displayed that way... How can I disable this thing? I found an option to disable the control panel viewer, but this also removes the option to show it from the game information screen... :'( I want it to be available in the game informations screen, together with flyer, marquee etc, but *not* to be automatically shown when launching a game.

3) And for last, the most annoying: when I exit a mame game, the screen remains black for 5/7 seconds before showing gameex again.... I know it could be faster than that, as everything else is blazing fast (and I mean FAST: no delay in anything else in the frontend, this is really the only slow thing), so it must be something wrong with my settings. With the frontend I used before the return from mame->frontend was istantaneous (you press esc - blam- you see the frontend)... I really can't understand why the same thing in gameex takes 6 secs :(

Please: I can live with [1] and [2], but I beg you help me with [3] :'(

My system specs:

Pentium 4 Core Solo 2,8Ghz

768MB DDR2 266MHz

nVidia 6600GT 120MB VRam

Freshly formatted 80GB drive ;) ;)

2) Have you tried HK CPVIEWER? Its really nice and can replace the one you have in Gameex. If Im not mistake it also supports the command.dat.. This way when you are playing Streetfighter or MK and want to bring up the controls it will also show you the MOVES list for the charcters... I mean do you really remember all the fatalitys?--- ID give it a spin

3) There are methods Ive seen talked about here that involve you cleaing your CACHE.. This may help... Also have you played with the Hide desktop option?

ilgaspa Advanced Member

ilgaspa

Posted
  • Author
Posted
The log can be found in the GameEx Start menu or by going to Program Files\GameEx\LOG\log.txt

Here's my log :)

21:06:03.5  09/11/2007:  GameEx: Version 8.94: Starting Log
21:06:03.5  09/11/2007:  Operating System Platform: Win32NT
21:06:03.5  09/11/2007:  Operating System Name: Windows XP
21:06:03.5  09/11/2007:  Operating System Version: 5.1.2600
21:06:03.5  09/11/2007:  Checking for versions of .net Framework installed
21:06:03.5  09/11/2007:  .net Framework 2.0 Installed
21:06:03.5  09/11/2007:  Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 2.53GHz, 767MB
21:06:03.5  09/11/2007:  2,53Ghz
21:06:03.7  09/11/2007:  Running Randomize()
21:06:03.8  09/11/2007:  Loading PlugIns
21:06:03.8  09/11/2007:  Checking for applications to Launch On Startup
21:06:03.8  09/11/2007:  Running Misc startup tasks
21:06:03.8  09/11/2007:  Setting Menu types
21:06:03.8  09/11/2007:  Opening Configuration File
21:06:03.8  09/11/2007:  Getting Configuration Values
21:06:03.9  09/11/2007:  Using Theme: Default - Media Center
21:06:03.9  09/11/2007:  Checking for alternate Image Directory for Theme: Default - Media Center
21:06:03.9  09/11/2007:  Launching HideOS.exe
21:06:03.9  09/11/2007:  Initialising Video/MNG DLL's
21:06:04.5  09/11/2007:  Hiding Taskbar
21:06:04.5  09/11/2007:  Is Media Center running?
21:06:04.5  09/11/2007:  Checking/Creating LCD Registry values
21:06:04.5  09/11/2007:  Check Media Center Exit/Start Mode
21:06:04.5  09/11/2007:  Media Center Mode 0
21:06:04.5  09/11/2007:  Video previews on. Warning: Only recommended on modern systems
21:06:04.6  09/11/2007:  Snap Delay set to: 2
21:06:04.6  09/11/2007:  Get other settings
21:06:04.6  09/11/2007:  Mouse Input is disabled
21:06:04.6  09/11/2007:  Desktop set to Hide ICONS and set Background to Black
21:06:04.6  09/11/2007:  Backing up Registry Wallpaper Settings
21:06:04.6  09/11/2007:  Start work for Form
21:06:04.6  09/11/2007:  Getting Original Screen Size
21:06:04.6  09/11/2007:  Opening Database Connection
21:06:06.2  09/11/2007:  Initializing Component
21:06:06.4  09/11/2007:  Retrieving resolution setting
21:06:06.4  09/11/2007:  MAME Path is: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Emulator
21:06:06.4  09/11/2007:  MAME EXE file is: mame.exe
21:06:06.4  09/11/2007:  ROM Path is: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\roms
21:06:06.5  09/11/2007:  Catver.ini is located at: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\dats_inis\Catver.ini
21:06:06.5  09/11/2007:  controls.ini is located at: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\dats_inis\controls.ini
21:06:06.5  09/11/2007:  History.dat is located at: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\dats_inis\history.dat
21:06:06.5  09/11/2007:  nplayers.ini is located at: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\dats_inis\nplayers.ini
21:06:06.5  09/11/2007:  MAMEinfo.dat is located at: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\dats_inis\mameinfo.dat
21:06:06.5  09/11/2007:  Loading Controls.ini map file
21:06:06.6  09/11/2007:  Snap Path is: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\extras\snap
21:06:06.6  09/11/2007:  AVI Snap Path is: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\xt_extras\avi
21:06:06.6  09/11/2007:  Flyer Path is: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\extras\flyers
21:06:06.6  09/11/2007:  Cabinet Path is: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\extras\cabinets
21:06:06.6  09/11/2007:  Title Path is: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\extras\titles
21:06:06.6  09/11/2007:  PCB Path is: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\xt_extras\pcb
21:06:06.6  09/11/2007:  Artwork Preview Path is: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\xt_extras\artwork preview
21:06:06.6  09/11/2007:  Panel Path is: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\extras\cpanel
21:06:06.6  09/11/2007:  Manual Path is: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\xt_extras\manuals
21:06:06.6  09/11/2007:  Icon Path is: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\extras\icons
21:06:06.6  09/11/2007:  Marquee Path is: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\extras\marquees
21:06:06.7  09/11/2007:  Loading Custom Emulators
21:06:07.0  09/11/2007:  Using 3D Alpha Blended Animations. This could be slow
21:06:07.0  09/11/2007:  Using General Font: Verdana
21:06:07.0  09/11/2007:  Using Title Font: Verdana
21:06:07.0  09/11/2007:  Attempting to load game list
21:06:07.6  09/11/2007:  Initialising DirectDraw
21:06:07.9  09/11/2007:  Creating DirectDraw Device
21:06:07.9  09/11/2007:  Using Device: Driver video primario
21:06:08.9  09/11/2007:  117mb video memory available
21:06:09.6  09/11/2007:  Setting Resolution to 640x480 32 bit color
21:06:10.1  09/11/2007:  Creating DirectDraw Surfaces
21:06:10.1  09/11/2007:  Creating Primary Surface - Full Screen Mode
21:06:10.4  09/11/2007:  Creating Back Buffer
21:06:10.6  09/11/2007:  Loading graphic Surfaces
21:06:10.6  09/11/2007:  Display is running at: 640x480 32bit color, 75hz
21:06:10.8  09/11/2007:  Creating Surfaces Misc and Dialogs
21:06:11.1  09/11/2007:  Creating Surfaces Volume
21:06:11.1  09/11/2007:  Creating Surfaces Arrows
21:06:11.1  09/11/2007:  Creating Surfaces GameEXlogo Text
21:06:11.1  09/11/2007:  Creating Surfaces Toolbar
21:06:11.4  09/11/2007:  Creating Surfaces Backgrounds
21:06:14.7  09/11/2007:  Creating Surfaces Toolbar Controls
21:06:14.8  09/11/2007:  Creating Surfaces GameEx Logo
21:06:14.8  09/11/2007:  Creating Surface Unselected
21:06:14.9  09/11/2007:  Creating Surfaces Home & Exit
21:06:14.9  09/11/2007:  Creating Surfaces Snaps
21:06:14.9  09/11/2007:  Creating Surfaces Menu and List Bars
21:06:15.2  09/11/2007:  Creating Fonts
21:06:15.2  09/11/2007:  Creating Menu Font
21:06:15.3  09/11/2007:  Restoring Menu Font From Cache
21:06:15.9  09/11/2007:  Creating Game Font
21:06:16.5  09/11/2007:  Creating Font Black
21:06:16.7  09/11/2007:  Creating Font Black Small
21:06:16.9  09/11/2007:  Creating Game Font Faded
21:06:18.0  09/11/2007:  Creating Title Font
21:06:18.0  09/11/2007:  Restoring Title Font From Cache
21:06:20.2  09/11/2007:  Fonts Created Succesfully
21:06:20.2  09/11/2007:  85mb video memory left available
21:06:20.2  09/11/2007:  Creating instance of global keyboard hook
21:06:43.3  09/11/2007:  Text/Language: English
21:06:43.3  09/11/2007:  Applying Language/Text
21:06:43.4  09/11/2007:  Initialising Bass Audio Library
21:06:43.6  09/11/2007:  MAME CMD options: -nowindow -joy
21:06:43.6  09/11/2007:  Loading last used Game List
21:06:43.6  09/11/2007:  Setting Music Volume
21:06:43.6  09/11/2007:  Creating DirectSound Device
21:06:43.7  09/11/2007:  Trying: Driver audio principale
21:06:43.7  09/11/2007:  Loading Sound Files
21:06:43.8  09/11/2007:  DirectSound Device Created Successfully
21:06:43.8  09/11/2007:  Creating ICONS
21:06:43.8  09/11/2007:  Recreating ICONS
21:06:44.5  09/11/2007:  Initialising DirectInput for Gamepad support
21:06:44.7  09/11/2007:  Unable to create a joystick device
21:06:44.7  09/11/2007:  Playing intro sound file
21:06:44.7  09/11/2007:  Initializing MCE Remote
21:06:44.7  09/11/2007:  Initialization OK! Starting GameEx!
21:06:44.7  09/11/2007:  Testing Main Loop Once: Processing Frame
21:06:45.4  09/11/2007:  Testing Main Loop Once: Main Loop ran successfully
21:07:02.3  09/11/2007:  Running: cmd.exe /c D: D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Emulator\mame.exe turfmast -rompath D:\Emulatori\M.A.M.E\Data\roms -nowindow -joy
21:08:24.5  09/11/2007:  Exiting GameEx!
21:08:24.6  09/11/2007:  Saving Settings
21:08:27.3  09/11/2007:  Disposing Plugins
21:08:27.4  09/11/2007:  Closing database connection
21:08:27.4  09/11/2007:  Checking for applications to Launch On Exit

ilgaspa Advanced Member

ilgaspa

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Haven't heard of CPViewer before: I'll take a look, thanks :)

As for the tip about cleaning the cache, I'll try: however I just freshly installed windows, so a cache problem seems strange O_o I'll just try cleaning, it won't hurt anyway ;) As for hiding the desktop, I was going to shell gameex after completing its configuration, but I'll try that too :)

Tom Speirs GameEx God (Top Rank)

Tom Speirs

Posted
Posted
Sorry :) I wanted to reply to TSpeirs and i clicked on the wrong post -_- Thanks anyway for the tip about the path to the log :)

I can see that the MAME ICONS dont seem to be caching. Try removing the ICON path, see if that makes a difference.

popcorrin Ultimate GameEx Guru!

popcorrin

Posted
Posted
It's not as long as 5-7 seconds on my system either, it like 3 or so, I've never even noticed it

Sometimes I can see the minimized GameEx window in the bottom left corner of the screen before an emulator appears, is this normal? I think it may be because before I launch GameEx I have it set to close the explorer process so I think this window would normally be behind the taskbar

Stu

I run gameex as shell so I have the same issue with the gameex title bar being minimized to the lower left corner of the screen.

ilgaspa Advanced Member

ilgaspa

Posted
  • Author
Posted
I can see that the MAME ICONS dont seem to be caching. Try removing the ICON path, see if that makes a difference.

Tried removing the icon path from settings: the problem remains :'(

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