CPWizard Setup Problem

[bkenobi]

cool beans! I'm D/Ling now!

[bkenobi]

After playing with this for a couple days off and on, I wanted to report that the rotary controls show up GREAT! I found 2 things on my setup:

1) I found that when I set things up via remote login (1024x768) and then switching to the cab running with TV resolutions (640x480), the results don't look the same though. I played around for a while trying to fix it and realized I just needed fix it in the correct resolution for it to be right. I don't know if there's something that could be tweaked to fix this, just throwing it out there.

2) When I pause MAME, the CPWizard comes up. When I exit the CPWizard, MAME minimizes. I still need to do more debugging to make sure I don't have something screwed up though. I'll try running outside of GameEx to see if I can figure out where the problem is. I'm running my MAME_Loader script, so perhaps CPWizard is trying to restore the wrong process? Like I said, I'll play around with it a bit more.

Thanks for the fix on the rotary HK!!!

[headkaze]

After playing with this for a couple days off and on, I wanted to report that the rotary controls show up GREAT! I found 2 things on my setup:

Great news

1) I found that when I set things up via remote login (1024x768) and then switching to the cab running with TV resolutions (640x480), the results don't look the same though. I played around for a while trying to fix it and realized I just needed fix it in the correct resolution for it to be right. I don't know if there's something that could be tweaked to fix this, just throwing it out there.

This is a tricky one, since CPWizard displays when an application is minimized, I need to assume the resolution when CPWizard starts is the desktop resolution. I can't simply change the display size of CPWizard when the resolution changes because it might be a game or emulator running at a different resolution so it will be the wrong size when the application is minimized to the desktop.

The only way I can solve this is if I can somehow detect when the desktop resolution changes as opposed to an application changing the resolution. That way I could resize CPWizard correctly. I'll have to research this.

2) When I pause MAME, the CPWizard comes up. When I exit the CPWizard, MAME minimizes. I still need to do more debugging to make sure I don't have something screwed up though. I'll try running outside of GameEx to see if I can figure out where the problem is. I'm running my MAME_Loader script, so perhaps CPWizard is trying to restore the wrong process? Like I said, I'll play around with it a bit more.

Yeah there are some people still having problems like this, and it's a very difficult problem to solve as I can't recreate it on any of my PC's. What I think I will need to do is have a loop that will keep checking if Mame or CPWizard is the topmost window when it's supposed to be and keep trying to bring it forward and maximized. It's really strange how the behaviour of windows can be so different between PC's. I'll come up with something soon and hopefully you'll be around to help me test it.

Thanks for the fix on the rotary HK!!!

No worries

[bkenobi]

Cool. I'm not too worried about it as it's almost there!

[bkenobi]

I was playing around with compiling MAME v0.125 yesterday and ran into a suggestion. When I was working with setting the CPWizard up last week, I had to change the controls on several systems to make it work correctly. If I hit 'TAB' to enter the setup menu, it would pause MAME which brings up the CPWizard bezel (since I have bezel.diff compiled into MAME). This is really freaking obnoxious as I can't think of a time when I would ever want the CPWizard coming up if I am going into the setup menu.

So, I looked through the source files and figured out an extremely easy way to stop this. I haven't checked to see if it works (no time yet), but it compiled just fine, so I expect it to work. All I did was add a check so that it won't bring up the CPWizard when the UI is active. If it turns out this doesn't work, I will look deeper into this.

bezel_0125.zip

[headkaze]

Thanks bkenobi I didn't notice this problem because Mame doesn't pause when I press tab to bring up the UI. So it must be something new. If you could test it for me and let me know if this patch works, I'll put it up on the website.

[bkenobi]

I may have used the wrong exe, but this didn't seem to work. I'll have to work on this some more to see if I can make it work. I suspect that the function I tried to use to determine if the UI is active may not be available to that section of code. Either that, or the UI takes longer to come up than it does for the bezel mod code to run meaning that it's basically a race to see whether you will have the CP display or not.

Also, I was testing with only MAME and CPWizard running (no GameEx, scripts, XPadder, etc). When I exited the CP, it minimized MAME. It looks like there may need to be a tweak in the CPWizard code? If I can do anything to help diagnose the problem, let me know.

[bkenobi]

I just wanted to post an update in my effort to get MAME to NOT pause when you hit tab. I have done a bunch of research into the code and thought I understood what needed to change. I can't seem to figure out what section of code is pausing MAME when you hit TAB though. I'm about to resort to randomly commenting out the pause call to see if I can track it down the hard way.

I also played with adding a check to see if the config menu was active in the code HK created (based on what I posted above), but it doesn't seem like MAME has access to the functions where I am calling them, or they just don't work the way I was expecting. Either way, I've sorta hit a wall.

I'll probably continue playing with it a bit, but I don't know how much more I can really accomplish without talking to someone who knows the MAME code a lot better than me (which is not saying much). So, I guess having a loop in the CPWizard code would probably be the best option? I tried using an AHK script to check MAME for being minimized, but it didn't work (I didn't give it much effort, so I could probably get it to work).

[TimmyB]

Lovin the combo of CPWizard, GameEx and your LED plugin. I just finished setting up a ctrlr cfg file for neogeo as follows:

default:

456

123

neogeo:

123

4

In MAME when I launch a game the buttons work properly. But both the LEDWiz plugin and CPWizard lightup and display the buttons like this:

4

123

Ideas on what I am doing wrong?

[headkaze]

Ideas on what I am doing wrong?

CPWizard reads mame.ini in the same folder as Mame's exe so make sure it's located there and not in the ini folder.

[bkenobi]

I sorta forgot about this thread... Now that it's bumped, I will mention that after a lot of looking, I couldn't figured out how to get MAME to NOT pause when the config menu is raised nor could I figure out how to tell HK's bezel code to NOT call the CPWizard if the config menu was active. I don't know enough about the details of the MAME system, so I'm calling it

If someone else wants to look at this, I can try to explain (via PM probably) what I've looked at so that the same things aren't a waste of time for future effort. The silly thing is, for the right person this is a 2 second task

At the moment, the only problem I'm having is that CPWizard will minimize MAME on exit. I don't know if I need to disable overlays or something (I saw that mentioned in another thread...), but I haven't had a lot of time to play with it recently.

[headkaze]

Overlays are definately problematic, and I'll probably end up removing them some time. I haven't forgotten about your problem with Mame minimizing, as soon as I get the database stuff out the way I'll be working on this one again.

[bkenobi]

That's what I figured. It's not a huge problem (especially since I haven't been able to play with the cab much )

[TimmyB]

CPWizard reads mame.ini in the same folder as Mame's exe so make sure it's located there and not in the ini folder.

Thanks that worked like a charm!