NEWS: GameEx 9.30 Released

[Tom Speirs]

21st May, 2008 - GameEx 9.30

New feature to use Ben Bakers CPWizard instead of the in built control panel viewer. Yourll find the settings for this under Advanced MAME settings. Please support Ben and his great software.

When using ZIP support for an emulator, if only one file is matched in the archive the game information page will act as it normally does and will show Play This Game instead of listing the contents of the archive

When browsing folders, you can now show an image for the folder by placing a folder.png or folder.jpg in it

Fixes Karoake and video player in some configurations

Contains Ben Bakers LCD/LED Plugin latest version

Fixes performance issue with videos/snap videos playing as the background image on Vista or with ATI cards when Videos are set to alpha blend

Slightly quicker startup speed

[sbaby]

Wow these are very good features, I download now now now

thanks tom

[fRequEnCy]

Nice! Thanks Tom! Good job.

[sbaby]

I have a problem already mentioned in the thread dedicated to cpwizard, with CPWIZARD feature, sometimes when choose VIEW CONTROLS all programs go to minimized

Sometimes works sometimes no

ALT-TAB and continue

[Cero21]

WOW TOM I (heart) you!!! CPWizard support in GameEx is exactly what I was waiting for! Thanks a bunch!

Sooo.... How bout putting in support to have roms support multiple directories deep??? Wishful thinking perhaps?

[greatflash]

WOW TOM I (heart) you!!! CPWizard support in GameEx is exactly what I was waiting for! Thanks a bunch!

Sooo.... How bout putting in support to have roms support multiple directories deep??? Wishful thinking perhaps?

That would be nice, but only with an option to turn it off. The reason is that i keep a directory within the rom dirs called NOT_WORKING that contain roms that do not work correctly with a current emulator. I can then easily check them when a emulator is updated and in the mean time they donot show on the rom list.

[headkaze]

Tom the CPWizard integration works great! Love it!

Couple of things though, first is I'm still getting "-artwork unknown option" when I turn on "Use Bezel for vertical games". The option has changed to -artpath in newer versions of Mame.

Also I notice with the PluginLCD when you launch a game it will say "Launching game" then show the CPWizard and after CPWizard exits it will say the name of the game. Not sure why it would do that but no biggy.

I can't believe how well the two programs work together, very seamless integration awesome stuff! It also solves that annoying problem people are having when trying to get CPWizard to load on startup when GameEx is set to launch as shell. Makes life alot easier!

sbaby: Not sure why it's not working for you mate, perhaps you should try uninstalling CPWizard and re-installing it. Make sure you back everything up first though. I'm sure it's something relatively easy to fix. I'm going to keep testing it here for a while see if I have any problems.

[Tom Speirs]

Tom the CPWizard integration works great! Love it!

Couple of things though, first is I'm still getting "-artwork unknown option" when I turn on "Use Bezel for vertical games". The option has changed to -artpath in newer versions of Mame.

Also I notice with the PluginLCD when you launch a game it will say "Launching game" then show the CPWizard and after CPWizard exits it will say the name of the game. Not sure why it would do that but no biggy.

I can't believe how well the two programs work together, very seamless integration awesome stuff! It also solves that annoying problem people are having when trying to get CPWizard to load on startup when GameEx is set to launch as shell. Makes life alot easier!

sbaby: Not sure why it's not working for you mate, perhaps you should try uninstalling CPWizard and re-installing it. Make sure you back everything up first though. I'm sure it's something relatively easy to fix. I'm going to keep testing it here for a while see if I have any problems.

Thanks Ben, there really was not much to do for it since you have those nice command line options. I dont know about the speech, the plugin is not waiting for a doevents or anything is it? In regard to -artwork, it means GameEx is not properly detecting the version of MAME, it should use -bezel instead for newer versions. You can manually change it by changing bezelversion in the ini to 2, but ultimatly if its not working for you id like to fix it.

[headkaze]

I think I know why it's not detecting the Mame version correctly. I'm running Mame64 v0.124a and I think the "a" is probably throwing off your version detection. THe output looks like this

M.A.M.E. v0.124a (Apr 14 2008) - Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator

I think CPWizard would have a problem with that version too, because as soon as I try to convert a number with a letter in it, I will get zero. So I believe it will detect that as Mame v0.

Another thing I noticed is when running GameEx with "Set Resolution to below" setting. When GameEx first launches it will change resolution then launch CPWizard. CPWizard assumes the resolution it detects upon launching is the desktop resolution. It has to do this because minimizing a game will restore the resolution back to the desktop res which is where CPWizard displays. So I'm noticing that sometimes it's showing in a small section of the screen instead of fullscreen. I'm not sure how to overcome this, I guess you could launch CPWizard before you change res or something or if I need to make a change to CPWizard let me know.

Other than those minor things, so far the integration seems to work really well.

[headkaze]

sbaby: I forgot to mention the latest version of CPWizard has a new option called "Verbose" logging. If you turn that option on it should give more info in the CPWizard.log file to help me debug what is happening when it's not working. So I would try turning it on then getting CPWizard to fail, and then post your CPWizard.log file in it's thread for me to check out.

[sbaby]

sbaby_log.zip

[Tom Speirs]

I think I know why it's not detecting the Mame version correctly. I'm running Mame64 v0.124a and I think the "a" is probably throwing off your version detection. THe output looks like this

I think CPWizard would have a problem with that version too, because as soon as I try to convert a number with a letter in it, I will get zero. So I believe it will detect that as Mame v0.

Another thing I noticed is when running GameEx with "Set Resolution to below" setting. When GameEx first launches it will change resolution then launch CPWizard. CPWizard assumes the resolution it detects upon launching is the desktop resolution. It has to do this because minimizing a game will restore the resolution back to the desktop res which is where CPWizard displays. So I'm noticing that sometimes it's showing in a small section of the screen instead of fullscreen. I'm not sure how to overcome this, I guess you could launch CPWizard before you change res or something or if I need to make a change to CPWizard let me know.

Other than those minor things, so far the integration seems to work really well.

I guess that would explain it. Should be able to fix that. In terms of the res issue, the only thing I can think to do is add a pause after launching cpwizarrd, the only other thing I can suggest is if CPWizartd checks the desktop resolution as one of the first things it does. It does actually launch it before changing res, but its the delay of it starting up thats the issue.

[headkaze]

sbaby_log.zip

Is this the same problem you were having with dual monitor games in Mame? I haven't looked into that problem yet.

Tom: Good idea I'll change CPWizard to get the desktop resolution earlier in the initialization process

[sbaby]

yes, it is the same problem, compared to yesterday, tonight I had only problems with mame and super punchout; yesterday I had the same problem even within gameex without starting mame.

Yesterday I had the version 1.74, today I have the 1.76, I do not know if it is the reason or it was a case, I think in the second hypothesis...

I also have the usual problem that I have to start cpwizard with windows, with the gameex-start-option actived it start minimized

[Stub]

Since you have added support I decided to give CPWiz a go. It looks to have great potential.

I spend a few days working through setup issues. The program minimizing gameex on launch because it was opening the cp edit window eluded me for a while.

Now I am having an issue getting cpwiz to see my joystick inputs. I Have set up Joystick 1 up down left and right and buttons 1 and 2 in addition to the standard keys. I had a very odd behavior. down would work intermittently and up did not. The buttons also were intermittent. Now the stick and buttons is not work in CPwiz at all. My u360 works flawlessly in the games. Has anyone else had this issue?

I am thinking the joy1 and buttons ( in in addition to the keys ), and minimize on start should be in the default settings when downloaded.

Second question. The input list has Right and Left listed. Is there any RL functionality in CPWiz? If not I will set Joy1 let to the up function and Joy1 Right to down. This will allow it to work in my 2way horz games. Come to think of it, I should set it up with my TT high low too.

[Stub]

Found LR functionality. The controls section uses LR to navigate trees.

[Tom Speirs]

I forgot to mention in the release notes, but GameEx now also supports UNC paths throughout the application.

[Brian Hoffman]

I forgot to mention in the release notes, but GameEx now also supports UNC paths throughout the application.

Holy shit...Thats a big one

Great work Tom.

[Tempest]

I'm setting up some more emulators today. I notice that when I click on a blank slot (emulator 25 for example), and then import a config, that the name of the slot doesn't change until I close Advanced Configuration, and then open it up again. It's not a big deal, but if it's not difficult to do, it would be nice if the Name changed when you cick on "save" (refresh advanced configuration). I hope this is clear, I find it difficult to explain what I mean sometimes....