[APP] CPWizard v2.35

[headkaze]

Version 1.76 released

Sorry sbaby I forgot to take a look at the two screen issue. I'll have to remember that one for next release.

[Stub]

Can you expand the size of the templates? Do you think anyone ever uses a four player setup with CPWizard?

[headkaze]

Can you expand the size of the templates? Do you think anyone ever uses a four player setup with CPWizard?

You would have to resize the controls to make them smaller. You can do this in image properties but putting a tick next to Sizable and then drag the corner of the image to make it smaller.

[Robert]

I'm new to the CPWizard (I downloaded and made a donation yesterday). I frustrated that I can't get it to work, because it looks so cool. Here are the problems I'm facing:

1) The program finds all of my mame paths just fine, but when I select "preview," there are are no games listed. (I point to my mame32.exe file).

2) I try it from within mame anyway, but when I hit "L" GhostScript gives an error. Then it just exhibits weird behavior and I have to kill the process in task manager.

Any ideas?

[Tempest]

I'm new to the CPWizard (I downloaded and made a donation yesterday). I frustrated that I can't get it to work, because it looks so cool. Here are the problems I'm facing:

1) The program finds all of my mame paths just fine, but when I select "preview," there are are no games listed. (I point to my mame32.exe file).

2) I try it from within mame anyway, but when I hit "L" GhostScript gives an error. Then it just exhibits weird behavior and I have to kill the process in task manager.

Any ideas?

Well, I'm thinking that the only thing the CPWizard uses ghostscript for is to display Manuals.

Are you trying to view a manual? Do you have the manuals?

Are you showing an error in the CPWizard.log?

BTW: I was going to say that once you've made a donation, that you no longer qualify for support, but some people may not think that's funny.

Don't worry, we'll help!

[Robert]

I do have manuals, and can view them in GameEx without incident (which makes me think, why can't CPWizard view manuals using whatever underlying technology GameEx uses, instead of ghostscipt?). But, in any event, the error is thrown as soon as I hit "L."

Also, before I even launch mame, I have the issue of no games being displayed when I select "preview."

Thanks for helping!

[bkenobi]

So once you donate, you bought it? Once you bought it, it's yours. Once it's yours, it's your problem?

[Tempest]

I do have manuals, and can view them in GameEx without incident (which makes me think, why can't CPWizard view manuals using whatever underlying technology GameEx uses, instead of ghostscipt?). But, in any event, the error is thrown as soon as I hit "L."

Also, before I even launch mame, I have the issue of no games being displayed when I select "preview."

Thanks for helping!

To refresh my memory, I moved my CPWizard.ini out of the CPWizard folder. I then started CPWizard, and it immediately went to the page where you setup your mame path. I set the path for my Mame.exe, and all of the other paths filled themselves in. Then a window popped up, and said "Please Wait". I waited maybe 30 seconds or so, and the default panel in the CPWizard pops up. If I select preview, the games are listed.

Try doing the same thing, and see if the same thing happens for you. If you do not see the same thing, then the only thing I can think of is maybe you have a bad install of the CPWizard, and probably should re-download it, because there is really nothing to it...which is the confusing part. Please let me know...

[Tempest]

So once you donate, you bought it? Once you bought it, it's yours. Once it's yours, it's your problem?

oh no... not my problem, HIS problem! Although it does look like I'm the one trying to fix it!

[headkaze]

Hey Robert

Actually GameEx uses Ghostscript the same way CPWizard does, so we do both use the same underlying technology when it comes to displaying manuals

I'm not sure what error your getting because you haven't specified what it is, and posting your CPWizard.log file should help alot.

Also what version of Mame32 are you using? Perhaps it's an old version that is not compatible with CPWizard?

BTW Thanks for the donation!

[Robert]

I was using mame 111. I upgraded to 125 and everything works perfectly. Sorry for the trouble!

[headkaze]

CPWizard v1.78 Released

- Fixed input with U360's

- Fixed minimizing when starting from GameEx

- Added support for increment/decrement input mappings.

[bkenobi]

Awesome! I'll give this a try ASAP!

[headkaze]

CPWizard 1.79 Released

- Fixed Mame.dll memory leak

This is probably a premature release as there are heaps of things I've wanted to do in this next update but just haven't had time. I really want people who had issues with the memory leak to test this new version.

[shaunopp]

Ok, I was finally able to take CPWizard for a thorough spin. Despite the problems I had, I still think this is a really cool little app. Although it doesn't work perfectly for me yet, it's still leaps and bounds above the built in GameEx CP viewer. I can definitely see the potential.

My results are below. Happy to test and give feedback on any changes you're able to make Headkaze.

CONFIGURING CPWIZ

• The wording Color Images-->Enable under Options-->Layout is a bit confusing. This is for RGB LED's only. Having it enabled messes with the 'active' color of your images. If most people are like me they'll look at it and think it's for CP images, enable it and then wonder why the heck the button images turn white when activated.
  
• U360's (as well as any control not in code value list) are tricky to configure with CPWiz. A correct control value sample for U360's is: JOYCODE_1_XAXIS_RIGHT_SWITCH for P1 Right. I like the fact that you have a pulldown list for common code values but there's so many it's confusing to a new user. Why not just use the ... here like you do for the CPWiz Options-->Inputs? Also, on my 800x600 monitor the control values dropdown gets cut off on the right so I have about 20 that say JOYCODE_1_BUTTON and then I can't see the rest. If you don't add a ... to be able to dynamically select your control for the label then you should at least have the ability to manually type it in and not use one of the presets. I had to dig into the CPWiz .ini and manually type them in the right spots to get mine working. Not a huge deal but for someone who's not willing to tinker it's a pain.
  
• Options Menu doesn't prompt you to save before exiting, if you don't hit 'Ok' your changes are lost.
  
• None of the 'Hide Desktop' options seemed to make any difference for me, could be that I'm running Vista. When using CPWiz with mame in GameEx it covers most everything except the start menu which will still show sporadically.
  

USING CPWIZ

• I'm able to use CPWiz by hitting Pause or Escape in Mame but hitting Mame controls like F7 or Shift F7 (save states) and F4 launch CPWiz the same as hitting Pause. sbaby had the same problem, don't think it was resolved.
  
• Every other time I launch CPWiz it takes up only a portion of the screen. This is like sbaby's problem here. I think your analysis that it is a res switch timing problem is correct but it doesn't look fixed. I run GameEx at 800x600 and all of my Mame games switch to a lower res as I use an ArcadeVGA card. I don't have the problem if I run mame 800x600 windowed from the desktop with no res switching. Changing the Display delay under Options didn't make a difference. It's odd, it displays perfectly every other time I use it. For clarity, it goes like this: Hit pause (game pauses & CPWiz shows wrong size); Hit pause again (CPWiz quits, back to game paused);hit pause again (game unpauses);hit pause again (game pauses & CPWiz displays correctly fullscreen).
  
• I'm using U360 Joysticks and when I scroll the list of CPWizard Options (ie. from Control Panel to Game Info, Game History) I have to pull down on the joystick once for every line, there's no 'repeat', I can't just hold the joystick down. This behavior is the same within sections like Game History where I have to move the joystick for every line I want to scroll.
  
• I was unable to get CPWiz to work with any of my non-mame emulators or PC games. It seems fairly easy. For test purposes I just duped and modified the FarCry.xml file under Data-->Profiles and changed the .exe name to my game, in this case Maelstrom.exe. I then changed the game name from Far Cry to Maelstrom in the PC.ini Label file. I didn't care about the mapping, was just trying to get it to display something from within my PC game. I then tried running the game both in and out of Mame and hitting the CPWiz 'Show Key' and got nada. I tried setting up an emulator (nestopia) in a similar way, just changing some of the values of the N64 sample. I could never get anything to happen when I hit the CPWiz 'Show Key' either in GameEx or running the emu by itself.
  

BATCH EXPORT OF CP'S

• Why doesn't batch export have an option for 800x600?
  
• My batch process made 90% of the CP images either Lightgun or Mahjong. I thought maybe this was due to the Mame.xml layout map so I played with some of those values but it seemed to make no difference, almost all of the images are lightgun or mahjong. I can preview the rom in CPWiz and see that CPWiz isn't seeing the roms as a Lightgun or Mahjong game but that's what it creates. When I start the batch processing I can see CPWiz immediately switch to a Lightgun layout.
  
• It would be nice if you could export a single control panel with just custom label text for the games you can't get to work with dynamic control data.
  
• Using CP's as Bezels works ok. Problem is when you're running games at a variety of original arcade resolutions the CP has to share that resolution and the quality becomes a crapshoot, some look ok, others are squashed or the text is barely readable.
  

[headkaze]

shaunopp: Thanks for the feedback. Some of the issues you mention I'm aware of, and some have already been addressed in Version 1.84 which was released yesterday. I will try and go through each of your points.

CONFIGURING CPWIZ

• The wording Color Images-->Enable under Options-->Layout is a bit confusing. This is for RGB LED's only. Having it enabled messes with the 'active' color of your images. If most people are like me they'll look at it and think it's for CP images, enable it and then wonder why the heck the button images turn white when activated.

I think it is explained in the documentation. I should make it more clear, so I think I'll put an explaination in the actual Options menu.

U360's (as well as any control not in code value list) are tricky to configure with CPWiz. A correct control value sample for U360's is: JOYCODE_1_XAXIS_RIGHT_SWITCH for P1 Right. I like the fact that you have a pulldown list for common code values but there's so many it's confusing to a new user. Why not just use the ... here like you do for the CPWiz Options-->Inputs? Also, on my 800x600 monitor the control values dropdown gets cut off on the right so I have about 20 that say JOYCODE_1_BUTTON and then I can't see the rest. If you don't add a ... to be able to dynamically select your control for the label then you should at least have the ability to manually type it in and not use one of the presets. I had to dig into the CPWiz .ini and manually type them in the right spots to get mine working. Not a huge deal but for someone who's not willing to tinker it's a pain.

Okay this was addressed in 1.84 and I realised I should have done this earlier. When you edit the properties of a label and click the "New" button it will open a dialog and allow you to press a key or move the joystick and it will enter the code for you. Should save people alot of time!

Options Menu doesn't prompt you to save before exiting, if you don't hit 'Ok' your changes are lost.

Well most people know that pressing cancel will not save your settings. And in Windows it works like that and doesn't prompt you if you press cancel on any dialogs, so I don't think I will do it differently. And thats not because I'm being lazy

None of the 'Hide Desktop' options seemed to make any difference for me, could be that I'm running Vista. When using CPWiz with mame in GameEx it covers most everything except the start menu which will still show sporadically.
I must admit I haven't tested this a whole lot. All the actual code to do the hiding worked for me, but it might be different on Vista or there might be some other reason. I will have to check it out (adding it to my loooooong list of ToDo's)

USING CPWIZ
I'm able to use CPWiz by hitting Pause or Escape in Mame but hitting Mame controls like F7 or Shift F7 (save states) and F4 launch CPWiz the same as hitting Pause. sbaby had the same problem, don't think it was resolved.
Yeah this ones is really annoying. I asked the Mame developers if they could change Mame to have different "states" of pause so I can tell if it's a user initiated pause or Mame pausing during savestate etc. Unfortunately the only way around this would be for me to add this function to Mame itself via a diff. Shouldn't be too hard to do, everything just takes time. I encourage others to help out by investigating these things. A user on BYOAC updated my diff to unpause Mame on exit recently, and that helps.
[*]Every other time I launch CPWiz it takes up only a portion of the screen. This is like sbaby's problem here. I think your analysis that it is a res switch timing problem is correct but it doesn't look fixed. I run GameEx at 800x600 and all of my Mame games switch to a lower res as I use an ArcadeVGA card. I don't have the problem if I run mame 800x600 windowed from the desktop with no res switching. Changing the Display delay under Options didn't  make a difference. It's odd, it displays perfectly every other time I use it. For clarity, it goes like this: Hit pause (game pauses & CPWiz shows wrong size); Hit pause again (CPWiz quits, back to game paused);hit pause again (game unpauses);hit pause again (game pauses & CPWiz displays correctly fullscreen).
You got that problem too huh? Yeah I gotta get that sorted some time. AFAIK it is caused by changing resolution in Mame and when the desktop shows it changes back to desktop resolution. I added a "Show Delay" in the Options to help address this but it doesn't seem to work. Can you try it with a delay, and verbose logging on, and it should show in the log when the resolution is changed and when the waiting is occuring. It might help me track down the problem.
[*]I'm using U360 Joysticks and when I scroll the list of CPWizard Options (ie. from Control Panel to Game Info, Game History) I have to pull down on the joystick once for every line, there's no 'repeat', I can't just hold the joystick down. This behavior is the same within sections like Game History where I have to move the joystick for every line I want to scroll.
The old no repeat problem. Yes this is a common request and a problem that was cause by legacy code. In fact it's a problem cause by a "design flaw" that is inherit in CPWizard. I wanted to support DirectDraw overlays (bad idea) which is a special method of overlaying graphics over anything. My idea was to enable the CP to appear over the game screen. But DirectDraw overlays are problematic and work differently depending on video card. The problem they have caused now is because of DD overlays I had to design CPWizard to update the entire screen when the display changes. Because DD overlays require one large bitmap to overlay and this whole bitmap needs to be updated when a change occurs. This means that changing graphics is slow and so having a repeat works really badly on something that is so slow to update.
What I'd like to do is remove DD overlay support which has caused more problems that it was worth, and which I don't think anyone even uses anyway. But it will require a huge rewrite of sections of code so that graphics only update the changes instead of the whole display. This will have the benefit of speeding up CPWizard as well as enabling me to have key repeat. Yeah its a long story, but there it is.
[*]I was unable to get CPWiz to work with any of my non-mame emulators or PC games. It seems fairly easy. For test purposes I just duped and modified the FarCry.xml file under Data-->Profiles and changed the .exe name to my game, in this case Maelstrom.exe. I then changed the game name from Far Cry to Maelstrom in the PC.ini Label file. I didn't care about the mapping, was just trying to get it to display something from within my PC game. I then tried running the game both in and out of Mame and hitting the CPWiz 'Show Key' and got nada. I tried setting up an emulator (nestopia) in a similar way, just changing some of the values of the N64 sample. I could never get anything to happen when I hit the CPWiz 'Show Key' either in GameEx or running the emu by itself.
Well FarCry works okay for me, but I must admit I haven't tested this a whole lot. CPWizard is a monster of a program, one of the largest I've ever coded, so I rely alot on feedback to fix bugs. I think alot of people try things and when it doesn't work they think they've done something wrong. Sometimes it's actually a bug because I don't have alot of time to test all the features! Feeback it really important to get bugs fixed.
So in this case, best thing to do is turn on "Verbose Logging" in the options and take a look in the CPWizard.log. Post it here with as much additional info you can gather, and I will attempt to fix it in the time I have. The more info you can find out saves time and also helps me identify where the problem is. The quicker I can do that the quicker I can fix it and the more likely it will be fixed. If I have to spend hours finding the bug or can't reproduce it myself the chances of a fix are much less.
BTW The "Show Key" can be a source of confusion. For Mame it's usualy "P" becauase it detects pause, and for others it defaults to "L". That can confuse people, so if you are pressing the "L" key and it's not showing then there is possibly a problem. The log might help find out what it is.

[headkaze]

Had to split this up into two posts because I reached the maximum number of quotes! Lol (phew that's a loooong reply)

BATCH EXPORT OF CP'S

• Why doesn't batch export have an option for 800x600?

It does now Check Version 1.84 it was a recent request by a user on BYOAC.

My batch process made 90% of the CP images either Lightgun or Mahjong. I thought maybe this was due to the Mame.xml layout map so I played with some of those values but it seemed to make no difference, almost all of the images are lightgun or mahjong. I can preview the rom in CPWiz and see that CPWiz isn't seeing the roms as a Lightgun or Mahjong game but that's what it creates. When I start the batch processing I can see CPWiz immediately switch to a Lightgun layout.

That's really strange. All I can say to that is make sure you try this with the latest version and get back to me.

It would be nice if you could export a single control panel with just custom label text for the games you can't get to work with dynamic control data.

Good idea Actually another user requested that the Export Bezel have export for a single game. So I might look into something like this.

Using CP's as Bezels works ok. Problem is when you're running games at a variety of original arcade resolutions the CP has to share that resolution and the quality becomes a crapshoot, some look ok, others are squashed or the text is barely readable.

Hopefully sorted in 1.84, so get back to me if there are still any problems with this.

It's a shame people are having to use the bezels because of the problems with showing the CP. I will have to look into it some time; time being the thing I seem to be lacking lately.

[shaunopp]

Thanks for the status report on the CPWiz issues and quick update Headkaze.

The new label function works great, took me a sec to realize I had to use the 'New' option instead of modifying the existing control code. This is way better/faster than digging around in the .ini! I did notice that if you modify an existing label it will remove rather than update the link to the image, easy enough to restore.

I think I've found what's the root of the batch export problem, having anything but the layout you want in your layouts folder, especially Lightgun, Default or Mame. I noticed that when I dupe the Default layout, rename it, add my controls and then try and Preview it, CPWiz will automatically change back to the Default or Mame layout. The only way I've found around this is to hide or delete the Default and Mame layouts. Similarly, when I batch export if I have one of those layouts in the layouts folder CPWiz starts applying them to all of the images it's exporting. I was able to get around it by having only my layout in the layout folder but of course then you can't have separate layouts by control type. It must be something with the Layout mapping, I think maybe since control type for lightguns is set to a wildcard '*' it's loooking at anything with a control and applying the Lightgun layout to it? Another way around this I guess would be the ability to select the roms you want to run the batch for, then just run it once with Lightgun roms and layout, one with regular etc. Could probably do this now just by changing the mame rom path and putting lightgun only roms in a separate folder.

I'll try some more pc games and upload my cpwizard log. Just for clarity, I don't have to run a pc or emulator game through GameEx to use CPWizard correct? Just boot up the game and hit the CPWiz 'Show' key right? I tried a variety of show keys including the default 'L'. Also, does naming for the emu setup or labels have to match the emu name in GameEx or is it just based off of the .exe file you tell it to look for in the data file?

Going out of town today, I'll do some more experimenting and report back.

[headkaze]

I see whats happening now, you need to go into Options->Mame and set "Mame Layout" to the one you want for Mame. You shouldn't need to delete layouts. Now when you preview your layout it will load the "Mame layout". The reason it works this way is because you may be editing a different layout. You have to assign the layout you want to use for Mame.

As for the PC games you only have to have the correct exe, but with Emulators you have to have the exe and you must send CPWizard the game name via command line.

[headkaze]

Version 1.85 Released

- Secondary controls for alternating games now won't light

Tempest can you test the new version?

[headkaze]

CPWizard v1.90 Released

- Now supports dual monitor games and resolution change. Added support for source, cloneof, romof & parent to Mame's layout override. Fixed Export Bezel option not saving

[Stub]

Can you make CPWiz display on the Primary monitor? My Primary is monitor 2, and CPW is showing up on Monitor 1.

[headkaze]

Can you make CPWiz display on the Primary monitor? My Primary is monitor 2, and CPW is showing up on Monitor 1.

Take a look in Edit->Options->Display and change the Screen option.

[Stub]

Yes, I saw that, it allows you to select a monitor, but does not allow you to set it to just the primary monitor. When my secondary monitor is active it becomes Monitor 1, and the correct monitor to display CPW on becomes 2.

[bkenobi]

The display number shouldn't change. Windows sets the display number based on the hardware connector it's plugged into...physically. The primary display can be switched, but the display number can't AFAIK. I haven't looked at how HK coded CPWizard in this respect, so maybe what you are saying is that he has it set to either the primary or secondary display rather then display 1 or display 2.