Flags drive me wild

[greatflash]

Think i am going mad..

Im sure that a while ago somewhere on here the was talk about goodmerge/zip support that had a picture showing 4 versions of a game with a diddy little nationality flag next to them. How, what where?

I have looked in one of the default themes and found (U).png, (E).png, etc in the media folder, So - what i wanted to know is how i get them to display?

This would be great (though my roms are not goodmerged) as when I go to a page of roms, I may find 2 games that look identical because i have the 'remove text in brackets' option on for tidyness. It would be G-G-G-G-Great (in the sound of a talking tiger?) to have a Jap and Usa flag next to them. All my roms have (?) after them to indicate region?

Am I mad as a Black & White Tempest Cabinet, or have i missed something, or is it all a dream?

I thought perhaps GameEx would look for bracketed text in the filename and display an icon if the text existed..

I.e. "Sonic the Froghog (J).sms" - Gameex finds (J) and looks in current_theme/Media for "(J).png", if it exists; then display it in the list. If this was the case (scary dream flashbacks!), then also "Sonic the Froghog (J) [HACK].sms" could find "[HACK].png" in the media directory and display that (perhaps at the right hand side of the rom line... This would open all sorts of options for rom display and cover the occurence of (UAE) (5) etc...

Or am I just being silly again Tom?

I think i will have a little lie down and perhaps a cup of tea

p.s. Had a brainstorming session with my 2 year old son and he has drawn a picture to better show what I am trying to say. I hope that helps :)

[Brian Hoffman]

The picture explains it perfectly... For a minute I was having a hard time following..

Serously tho I dont think you saw that here... Although I like the idea. I know alot of rom mamagers do that. like offline list.

[greatflash]

The picture explains it perfectly... For a minute I was having a hard time following..

Serously tho I dont think you saw that here... Although I like the idea. I know alot of rom mamagers do that. like offline list.

Think I found it, cant find the picture though

13th May, 2008 - GameEx 9.26

Fixes .lnk files not working in 9.25

When viewing by system in favorites the system image will now be displayed

For registered users 7-Zip support has been extended to support zip files. Allowing zip support in emulators that don't support zips

Flag ICONS are now shown when listing 7-zip goodmerge files on the game information screen

Fixes memory leak when launching MAME with the Bypass setting turned on. This could stop GameEx working after a couple of days of continuously launching games (eg screensaver). Therefore its recommended to update to this version

The default game pad exit combination has been changed to also include button 1

Seems it only works with 7-zip good merge files.. Bugger! That seems a bit limiting. If the code is there to do it, wouldn't it be better to open it up to all roms using a search for (U), (E), (J), etc in the file name and then displaying the relevent flag. I like to keep different versions of the same rom and sometimes a japanese adventure for example may have a very english name.. With the system as it is, you have no way of knowing what language the rom is until you run it (I like to have the bracketed text of as you end up with "ROMNAME [hack flash] (!) (E)" displayed unless you edit all your roms)

So..... Tom, where are you... OH Tom! (seeing I failed with the alpha channels bribe, can I have a shot at this one?)

[Tempest]

Think i am going mad..

Im sure that a while ago somewhere on here the was talk about goodmerge/zip support that had a picture showing 4 versions of a game with a diddy little nationality flag next to them. How, what where?

I have looked in one of the default themes and found (U).png, (E).png, etc in the media folder, So - what i wanted to know is how i get them to display?

This would be great (though my roms are not goodmerged) as when I go to a page of roms, I may find 2 games that look identical because i have the 'remove text in brackets' option on for tidyness. It would be G-G-G-G-Great (in the sound of a talking tiger?) to have a Jap and Usa flag next to them. All my roms have (?) after them to indicate region?

I saw them once.....on my game cab I mean....

Am I mad as a Black & White Tempest Cabinet, or have i missed something, or is it all a dream?

That Would be mad! (it would make me mad anyway...)

I thought perhaps GameEx would look for bracketed text in the filename and display an icon if the text existed..

I.e. "Sonic the Froghog (J).sms" - Gameex finds (J) and looks in current_theme/Media for "(J).png", if it exists; then display it in the list. If this was the case (scary dream flashbacks!), then also "Sonic the Froghog (J) [HACK].sms" could find "[HACK].png" in the media directory and display that (perhaps at the right hand side of the rom line... This would open all sorts of options for rom display and cover the occurence of (UAE) (5) etc...

This is a better Idea than a B&W vector game!

Or am I just being silly again Tom?

There is a difference between "again", and "still"

I think i will have a little lie down and perhaps a cup of tea

p.s. Had a brainstorming session with my 2 year old son and he has drawn a picture to better show what I am trying to say. I hope that helps

Can you please tell me what country the flag that your son drew is from?

[greatflash]

Can you please tell me what country the flag that your son drew is from?

I'm not entirely sure it is a flag, I think it is what gameex would look like with flags

I belive it is a good idea thing wot was that i did said!

Seriously, If the rom list display looked for bracketed text in the rom file, when a bracketed text item was found gameex could look in the theme/media directory for a file that matches the bracketed text and display it if present to the left (for regions) and to the right (for crack, hack, demo, prototype, etc)

We could then have icons for what we would like to be displayed.

I.e.

"Bugs Bunny (1983) (Prototype) (U).a26" would locate (1983), (Prototype), and (U) then cross check for files (1983).png, (Prototype).png, and (U).png. For example (1983).png is not present but the other 2 are, resulting in a line in the gameex rom list of:-

<FLAG> Bugs Bunny <PROTOTYPE_ICON>

It would take milliseconds to check and I believe would make no noticable hit on performance. It would be a 10 minute coding job and (I believe) would add a great degree of flexibility to customising your rom lists. Perhaps just a emu flag could indicate whether the advanced list was allowed to be active on a system by system basis??

Tom, if you are reading this then I would love your comments, I believe i have had a good idea! and good ideas are few and far between from me. I usually have bad ideas... like, "let's give the condom a miss, honey", "Let's soften that ice-cream in the microwave", and the classic, "Of course I will sign my name there Mrs. Wedding Registra"..

[starbuck]

Like the idea. Using your idea , it would still show the year, which I like.

<FLAG> Bugs Bunny (1983)<PROTOTYPE_ICON>

Have played with the year field abit and you can arrange by year. Which I believe comes from the database (MDB). Wondered why when you highlight or pick a game it could't then show the flag as you suggest,the year etc, down in the description, or off to the side like you said. Rgardless what you had as your rom name, if it is indeed reading from the database.

[greatflash]

Like the idea. Using your idea , it would still show the year, which I like.

<FLAG> Bugs Bunny (1983)<PROTOTYPE_ICON>

Have played with the year field abit and you can arrange by year. Which I believe comes from the database (MDB). Wondered why when you highlight or pick a game it could't then show the flag as you suggest,the year etc, down in the description, or off to the side like you said. Rgardless what you had as your rom name, if it is indeed reading from the database.

Gameex will take the year data from the mdb database if your rom is named correctly. The database contains no infomation on the region of the game thouh or prototypes etc. Most rom naming tools and dats will add this infomation to the file name. It would be great if this could be used!

[Adultery]

It's a great idea. Like a favicon.ico kind of thing, right?

[Tempest]

The way I took it, Gameex would read any information in (), and display an icon based on user settings. The information inside the () could be anything. This way a person could add any information to the rom names, and display an icon...Maybe it already does this (I don't think so) but Gameex could have an option to not display any information inside () in the gamelist. Woudn't that be nice?

[greatflash]

The way I took it, Gameex would read any information in (), and display an icon based on user settings. The information inside the () could be anything. This way a person could add any information to the rom names, and display an icon...Maybe it already does this (I don't think so) but Gameex could have an option to not display any information inside () in the gamelist. Woudn't that be nice?

That's correct! It could take the bracketed infomation and display an icon only if the relevent icon is available in the theme/media folder, displaying nothing if nothing is present.

This would also add even more flexibility to V3 (V4?) themes.

I think it is a great idea and am glad you agree. As I mentioned earlier, one of the downsides of removing bracketted text (via gameex options) is that you can no-longer tell what region a rom is. your list can sometimes display 3 roms of the same name with no indication of what is what? one may be a usa, one a euro, and the other may be the USA version but a prototype (alway nice to keep in the list). This way you could have a tidy graphical representation of your roms infomation.

I must admit that I am getting a bit of a headache trying to be serious for so long... Be warned that I may explode soon!

What do you think Tom?