NEWS: GameEx 9.38

[Tom Speirs]

5th July, 2008 - GameEx 9.38

Includes Ben Baker's (AKA Headkaze) latest LCD/LED Plugin now featuring support for Ultimarcs latest product, the U-HID

Initial support for the new database project. With support for new naming fields, ability to select naming type, and new biography page in GameEx

Emulator list music playlist option now stops playing the music when exiting from browsing the emulator

Fixes issue where reading audio tags information would hang GameEx on Vista. This affected using the Jukebox in file tag mode and when using emulator specific playlists

Fixes issue where zip support would only list more than one game in the same zip if there were three or more separate games

A very special thanks goes out to Headkaze and Greatflash and all involed in the new database project.

[Hunk_4TH]

Thanks for another quick update Tom! Looking forward to trying it later

[greatflash]

5th July, 2008 - GameEx 9.38

Includes Ben Baker's (AKA Headkaze) latest LCD/LED Plugin now featuring support for Ultimarcs latest product, the U-HID

Initial support for the new database project. With support for new naming fields, ability to select naming type, and new biography page in GameEx

Emulator list music playlist option now stops playing the music when exiting from browsing the emulator

Fixes issue where reading audio tags information would hang GameEx on Vista. This affected using the Jukebox in file tag mode and when using emulator specific playlists

Fixes issue where zip support would only list more than one game in the same zip if there were three or more separate games

A very special thanks goes out to Headkaze and Greatflash and all involed in the new database project.

Looking good.

With the new databases, cant it just check against all 3 formats for a match to create the cached db? I only say this as LOTS of naming tools only cover some of the roms, hardly ever all. So, you do tend to end up with a collection either missing lots of roms, or a collection comprising the best of several. With the Saturn db, as it only has a TOSEC and that only contains about 170 games (the list at the moment is 507) I used the other 2 (goodtool and no-intro) to insert names that people may have chosen for roms not present in the tosec (over 330 - and there are MANY more) so that a match should be found. Now? if no name convention is selected for the emu, does it use all 3?

Also, what are the chances of the next release (or just a interim test) of suporting the name field for display rather than displaying tosec, goodtool, or no-intro?

With regards the saturn db, it does not always display the year (though it is present on all in the DB)?

God - don't i go on, I will be wanting blood next

Oh, The history page is wonderful. had a real good read on several of them (But - and you knew that was coming - it does really show the problem of no paragraph breaks )

[Tom Speirs]

Looking good.

With the new databases, cant it just check against all 3 formats for a match to create the cached db? I only say this as LOTS of naming tools only cover some of the roms, hardly ever all. So, you do tend to end up with a collection either missing lots of roms, or a collection comprising the best of several. With the Saturn db, as it only has a TOSEC and that only contains about 170 games (the list at the moment is 507) I used the other 2 (goodtool and no-intro) to insert names that people may have chosen for roms not present in the tosec (over 330 - and there are MANY more) so that a match should be found. Now? if no name convention is selected for the emu, does it use all 3?

Also, what are the chances of the next release (or just a interim test) of suporting the name field for display rather than displaying tosec, goodtool, or no-intro?

With regards the saturn db, it does not always display the year (though it is present on all in the DB)?

God - don't i go on, I will be wanting blood next

Oh, The history page is wonderful. had a real good read on several of them (But - and you knew that was coming - it does really show the problem of no paragraph breaks )

I did actually think about matching all of them, but I didnt because I thought it would do wrong matching. I can relook at that though. How should it work? By default it will use GoodName. Now what you probably should do is populate the missing Tosec field from the other one if it exists. In regard to the name field, Im not really sure what your talking about there. It actually shows the rom name taken from the filename in GameEx, at least so I thought. You cant show the database name field because it will rarely match all games. Are you specifiy a full date for the year? It needs to be a date field.

Like I said we can look at paragraph break again, but for now the issue is the existing database wont look right.

[iano]

Thanks Tom for the update ! Just wondering if the horizontal menu alignment was fixed for this update ?

Thanks,

ian.

[Tom Speirs]

Thanks Tom for the update ! Just wondering if the horizontal menu alignment was fixed for this update ?

Thanks,

ian.

The menu is scrollable, so I dont see it as a bug. Sometimes not all the menu items will fit on the screen. Thats just the way it is, or where you referring to something else?

[Tom Speirs]

Looking good.

With the new databases, cant it just check against all 3 formats for a match to create the cached db? I only say this as LOTS of naming tools only cover some of the roms, hardly ever all. So, you do tend to end up with a collection either missing lots of roms, or a collection comprising the best of several. With the Saturn db, as it only has a TOSEC and that only contains about 170 games (the list at the moment is 507) I used the other 2 (goodtool and no-intro) to insert names that people may have chosen for roms not present in the tosec (over 330 - and there are MANY more) so that a match should be found. Now? if no name convention is selected for the emu, does it use all 3?

Also, what are the chances of the next release (or just a interim test) of suporting the name field for display rather than displaying tosec, goodtool, or no-intro?

With regards the saturn db, it does not always display the year (though it is present on all in the DB)?

God - don't i go on, I will be wanting blood next

Oh, The history page is wonderful. had a real good read on several of them (But - and you knew that was coming - it does really show the problem of no paragraph breaks )

Ive just released 9.39 which now does the naming format matching automatically. I agree and like it much better that way.

It checks for a match in the following order: NoIntro, GoodName, Tosec. Seeing as the databases are missing a lot of games currently I dont foresee any problems.

[iano]

The menu is scrollable, so I dont see it as a bug. Sometimes not all the menu items will fit on the screen. Thats just the way it is, or where you referring to something else?

I'm just working from memory here (so excuse me) but i remember the 'Exit' option (is it ?) being at the far right hand side of the horizontal menu that is cut off but if you pulled the horizontal menu to the left it looks as if the entire horizontal menu would fit on the screen.

[greatflash]

I did actually think about matching all of them, but I didnt because I thought it would do wrong matching. I can relook at that though. How should it work? By default it will use GoodName. Now what you probably should do is populate the missing Tosec field from the other one if it exists. In regard to the name field, Im not really sure what your talking about there. It actually shows the rom name taken from the filename in GameEx, at least so I thought. You cant show the database name field because it will rarely match all games. Are you specifiy a full date for the year? It needs to be a date field.

Like I said we can look at paragraph break again, but for now the issue is the existing database wont look right.

What I meant regarding the name field is match (for example) to goodname and instead of displaying the goodname in gameex, display the data from the name field. This way non-dos chars can be displayed. I.e "Sega ages - volume 1" could be displayed as "Sega ages: volume 1", or "100 proof" could show "100% proof" within gameex. I do not mean for you to match to the name field, but to display the name field instead of the matched name in goodtools, tosec, etc. Headkaze could explain it better than I.

With regards the matching of all 3 dats. Check goodname first, if it matches - store in your cache db as the match, if not, move on to No-intro and do the same, until the last. So - only bother with the first match that gets a hit. If none match ignore. I had to use a sytem like this when I was working on database software for offshore operating services to track inventories. Had to do this as the seamen never knew what to look for

With regards populating missing fields with data from other dats. Ie filling the missing entries from tosec with goodname, this has a slight snag. Taking the saturn db as an example; this only contains tosec (there is no goodtool, no-intro), so I had to make names that follow the way the Tosec names files to get them to match. I then used the 2 spare fields to store slight variations on the names. I have made sure that ALL names are differnt across records so that you would have no problems with matching against all 3 Also, some systems have NO dats at all..... and again, other fields would have to be used to match other peoples possible naming conventions.

I hope you can see that this would be an important move to do to make the db's work correctly.

Oh, dates; they are all stored as DD/MM/YYYY (though Headkaze's bd software uses MM/DD/YYYY and scrapes in numerous formats ). I have also changed some to just the year, and they display fine ? From the editor side of it, Headkaze has used an alphanumeric input, whether these are converted to a date string on output to a mdb file - i have no idea!

Pheeeeew!

[greatflash]

Ive just released 9.39 which now does the naming format matching automatically. I agree and like it much better that way.

It checks for a match in the following order: NoIntro, GoodName, Tosec. Seeing as the databases are missing a lot of games currently I dont foresee any problems.

gosh, and i just did all that typing

ah - but the name field is still relevant.

[Tom Speirs]

What I meant regarding the name field is match (for example) to goodname and instead of displaying the goodname in gameex, display the data from the name field. This way non-dos chars can be displayed. I.e "Sega ages - volume 1" could be displayed as "Sega ages: volume 1", or "100 proof" could show "100% proof" within gameex. I do not mean for you to match to the name field, but to display the name field instead of the matched name in goodtools, tosec, etc. Headkaze could explain it better than I.

With regards the matching of all 3 dats. Check goodname first, if it matches - store in your cache db as the match, if not, move on to No-intro and do the same, until the last. So - only bother with the first match that gets a hit. If none match ignore. I had to use a sytem like this when I was working on database software for offshore operating services to track inventories. Had to do this as the seamen never knew what to look for

With regards populating missing fields with data from other dats. Ie filling the missing entries from tosec with goodname, this has a slight snag. Taking the saturn db as an example; this only contains tosec (there is no goodtool, no-intro), so I had to make names that follow the way the Tosec names files to get them to match. I then used the 2 spare fields to store slight variations on the names. I have made sure that ALL names are differnt across records so that you would have no problems with matching against all 3 Also, some systems have NO dats at all..... and again, other fields would have to be used to match other peoples possible naming conventions.

I hope you can see that this would be an important move to do to make the db's work correctly.

Oh, dates; they are all stored as DD/MM/YYYY (though Headkaze's bd software uses MM/DD/YYYY and scrapes in numerous formats ). I have also changed some to just the year, and they display fine ? From the editor side of it, Headkaze has used an alphanumeric input, whether these are converted to a date string on output to a mdb file - i have no idea!

Pheeeeew!

Not sure about the dates yet, but yes I completely agree on the naming, you must have missed my post above

[greatflash]

gosh, and i just did all that typing

ah - but the name field is still relevant.

Thinking about the name field.

Do the checks as now, but... when a match is found, add not only the matched filename to the cache, but also the name field. Then when the cache is culled matching the cached filename, display the cached name field instead.

[Tom Speirs]

Thinking about the name field.

Do the checks as now, but... when a match is found, add not only the matched filename to the cache, but also the name field. Then when the cache is culled matching the cached filename, display the cached name field instead.

OK. It is actually already reading and saving the name, so it should not be difficult. When I do the online lists it will use the name field for lookups, so it is relevant. However, Im not sure everyone would want it to display the name from the dbase though, and what if people want to see the full filenames with (J) etc? The matching is a great idea, but I think Ill put this one on the backburner for now. Lets think about it some more.

Cheers.

Tom.

[Tom Speirs]

I'm just working from memory here (so excuse me) but i remember the 'Exit' option (is it ?) being at the far right hand side of the horizontal menu that is cut off but if you pulled the horizontal menu to the left it looks as if the entire horizontal menu would fit on the screen.

Yeah, but it wont work in all cases, sometimes it may always fit off the screen, like when 5 menus are shown, and we also have biography menu option now that takes it up to 6. Thanks, but sorry its not going to happen.

[greatflash]

OK. It is actually already reading and saving the name, so it should not be difficult. When I do the online lists it will use the name field for lookups, so it is relevant. However, Im not sure everyone would want it to display the name from the dbase though, and what if people want to see the full filenames with (J) etc? The matching is a great idea, but I think Ill put this one on the backburner for now. Lets think about it some more.

Cheers.

Tom.

All it needs is the option in the emu config. In the list that has remove brackets, underscores, etc - have use gameex name true/false. I think you will find that most people would use it. I certainly would. It does enable a uniform and clean interface. I would like to see it, if only to play with.

[greatflash]

Tom.

Just a quick note. Something is wrong with the way you cache the files for the db. This is not just with the latest release, but also happens with earlier ones.

I have just used the latest and several games that did match now do-not.

As the cache only matches the files that are present and match the db, it is strange that i have an entry for a game that matches perfectly but has not cached any of the data. It has 100% cached the tosec name (or good, no-intro), but it has not added the name field or any of the data associated with it?

What i can't understand is that it found a match and stored the file name that matched and then went off to the next match?

This has been doing this for quite sone time and I have mentioned it before (problem with databases thread). This is not to do with the "..." problem as these files are not in the rom dir at the moment. Have deleted the cache file also for re-building.

I thought for a minute that the problem may have related to the name field and dat names not matching, have checked and sadly it is not

Here is a part of the dbcache file,

-||-||--||-||--||-||-Akumajo Dracula X - Gekka no Yasoukyoku-||-||--||-||--||-||--||-||-

Role-Playing-||-||-This is a traditional SNES-style RPG for the Sega Saturn. It features menu-driven, turn-based combat and 2d graphics. [-LF-][-LF-]It tells the story of a human boy named Pike who was

As you can see, the data has not been cached, only the DB filename field.

This is the matching filename,

Akumajo Dracula X - Gekka no Yasoukyoku (J).7z

And the same happens here,

Move 2 - Arcade Edition-||-||-Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition-||-||-[2 Players]-||-||-1996-||-||-

-||-||--||-||--||-||-Center Ring Boxing-||-||--||-||--||-||--||-||-

Shooter-||-||-The first Contra game for the 32-bit consoles and released exactly 10 years after the first Contra.[-LF-][-LF-]Unlike the

with the corresponding filename,

Center Ring Boxing (U).7z

I'm wondering if it is to do with the algorthm that removes the brackets? I really don't know.....

EMU_43.zip

[Tom Speirs]

Tom.

Just a quick note. Something is wrong with the way you cache the files for the db. This is not just with the latest release, but also happens with earlier ones.

I have just used the latest and several games that did match now do-not.

As the cache only matches the files that are present and match the db, it is strange that i have an entry for a game that matches perfectly but has not cached any of the data. It has 100% cached the tosec name (or good, no-intro), but it has not added the name field or any of the data associated with it?

What i can't understand is that it found a match and stored the file name that matched and then went off to the next match?

This has been doing this for quite sone time and I have mentioned it before (problem with databases thread). This is not to do with the "..." problem as these files are not in the rom dir at the moment. Have deleted the cache file also for re-building.

I thought for a minute that the problem may have related to the name field and dat names not matching, have checked and sadly it is not

Here is a part of the dbcache file,

-||-||--||-||--||-||-Akumajo Dracula X - Gekka no Yasoukyoku-||-||--||-||--||-||--||-||-

Role-Playing-||-||-This is a traditional SNES-style RPG for the Sega Saturn. It features menu-driven, turn-based combat and 2d graphics. [-LF-][-LF-]It tells the story of a human boy named Pike who was

As you can see, the data has not been cached, only the DB filename field.

This is the matching filename,

Akumajo Dracula X - Gekka no Yasoukyoku (J).7z

And the same happens here,

Move 2 - Arcade Edition-||-||-Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition-||-||-[2 Players]-||-||-1996-||-||-

-||-||--||-||--||-||-Center Ring Boxing-||-||--||-||--||-||--||-||-

Shooter-||-||-The first Contra game for the 32-bit consoles and released exactly 10 years after the first Contra.[-LF-][-LF-]Unlike the

with the corresponding filename,

Center Ring Boxing (U).7z

I'm wondering if it is to do with the algorthm that removes the brackets? I really don't know.....

It was only matching goodname in that last release. Im uploading a new one now. I cant see any other problems at the moment, but let me know what else you find.

[greatflash]

It was only matching goodname in that last release. Im uploading a new one now. I cant see any other problems at the moment, but let me know what else you find.

Thanks for your quick work - it's been really nice having this thing going on

Ok, checked the latest... AND.... wait for it.... stand in line.... deep breath....,

It works again... This is quite strange because the goodname for the 2 roms mentioned is the same as the tosec.. Whatever happened... Leave well alone

Ok, next thing, dates

As i said, some of the dates were not appearing.

The reason is that mine are entered in british standard and you are reading them in american standard. This is fine, i will amend.

so, the roms with a date of 30/01/1996 were marked as invalid and skipped. Though a lot of my roms were 07/11/1995 (though still DD/MM/YYYY) they would appear as valid and work. If you only enter the year, this works fine also. So, (for reference to other db creators) valid dates are MM/DD/YYYY or if day/month (month/day ) is not known, just entering the 4 digit year is valid.

I will go through the db and re-do the release dates (is the full day month important? will it be used?)

Again, thanks for your sterling work... (oops, too many full stops again )

[headkaze]

The reason why GameEx DBM works in the US date format is because they are scraped from Moby in US format. So I decided to keep it that way and have a standard across the board. The way C# keeps dates internally depends on your region, so I decided to write them in US format.

If there is a problem converting the dates to mdb, let me know perhaps I need to fix a problem in GameEx DBM?

Fantastic update Tom, I love the way it trys all three naming conventions when creating a game list, that is great. That will save people having to guess which naming convention their filenames are in.

[greatflash]

The reason why GameEx DBM works in the US date format is because they are scraped from Moby in US format. So I decided to keep it that way and have a standard across the board. The way C# keeps dates internally depends on your region, so I decided to write them in US format.

If there is a problem converting the dates to mdb, let me know perhaps I need to fix a problem in GameEx DBM?

Fantastic update Tom, I love the way it trys all three naming conventions when creating a game list, that is great. That will save people having to guess which naming convention their filenames are in.

Yes, that was a great idea

[TimmyB]

I may have encounted a major problem with this release. Yesterday I had some guests over and the autoupdate ran. After that the GameEx UI would not return after exiting a mame game. Task manager shows that the process is still running. I have to kill it then restart GameEx after each game played.

I had also updated CPWizard the night before, but it ran fine after that.

I am running Vista64, everything else is running pretty smoothly.

Here are the last two lines from my GameEx Log:

13:45:53.8  7/6/2008:  Running: cmd.exe /c G: G:\mame\vmame64.exe sf2ce -rompath 
G:\mame\roms -triplebuffer -nowindow -joy -skip_gameinfo
13:45:54.3  7/6/2008:  Launching CPWizard: "C:\Program Files (x86)\CPWizard\CPWizard.exe" -emu 
mame -game sf2ce -timeout 9000

[Tom Speirs]

I may have encounted a major problem with this release. Yesterday I had some guests over and the autoupdate ran. After that the GameEx UI would not return after exiting a mame game. Task manager shows that the process is still running. I have to kill it then restart GameEx after each game played.

I had also updated CPWizard the night before, but it ran fine after that.

I am running Vista64, everything else is running pretty smoothly.

Here are the last two lines from my GameEx Log:

13:45:53.8  7/6/2008:  Running: cmd.exe /c G: G:\mame\vmame64.exe sf2ce -rompath G:\mame\roms -triplebuffer -nowindow -joy -skip_gameinfo
13:45:54.3  7/6/2008:  Launching CPWizard: "C:\Program Files (x86)\CPWizard\CPWizard.exe" -emu mame -game sf2ce -timeout 9000

Im not sure wha the problem is but nothing has changed in recent releases in that area of GameEx so im pretty certain its not related to the latest gameex release.

[Tom Speirs]

Im not sure wha the problem is but nothing has changed in recent releases in that area of GameEx so im pretty certain its not related to the latest gameex release.

Also, how are you trying to exit mame, escape key or something else?

[greatflash]

In between the last few QUICK updates, I have just noticed that lots of my setup emulators have vanished - AGAIN..

This has happened a few times with updates (non automatic), random ones vanish.

Just thought i would mention it!

[Tom Speirs]

In between the last few QUICK updates, I have just noticed that lots of my setup emulators have vanished - AGAIN..

This has happened a few times with updates (non automatic), random ones vanish.

Just thought i would mention it!

Cab you provide any useful info that would actually let me fix the problem?