MDB's & Sorting Capabilities

[thesampler]

First of all congratulations to Tom on creating such a wonderful app! GameEx is simply 'Brilliant' and the closest I've come yet to finding a media center app that truly suits my needs and that I enjoy using. As soon as the end of month arrives I'll be registering and have already pointed several friends in this direction.

Moving on, I've read quite a lot on here but am still a little unclear on some aspects of configuration, especially for the MDB's so i figured I'd get a post up and hopefully someone can help me. I apologize in advance if that someone has answered all these questions before...

1) I am using the 'Flat' menus option. Is there any way to change the order of and which options are displayed on the main screen?

2) I am not using MAME config. Instead in GameEx.ini I have 'EMU_11' pointed at a dir of shortcuts that execute various emus including my custom MAME build via their command line options. The lines I edited are..

STARTPAGENAME=Video Games

ROMFilter=*.lnk

RomPath=E:\Shortcuts

WorkingPath=E:\Shortcuts

I want GameEx to use my own MDB for the Filtering/Sorting the games available after I select 'Video Games' from main page.

So... I open GameEx.ini and change 'EMU_11_DATABASE=[PC] Microsoft Windows' to 'EMU_11_DATABASE=Games' but it seems this value is always reset to the default when I execute GameEx?

Is there any way to have GameEx use an MDB of my own, named as I want it to be?

3) I initially assumed that the Filter/Sorting fields would be dynamically populated according to the headings found in the MDB but on further investigation I believe this is not the case?

Filter/Sorting options that I get are 'Name', 'Category', 'Manufacturer' and 'Year'.

'Manufacturer' is somehow mapped to 'Publisher'.. I guess that happens on the code side?

'Developer' is a populated field within the MDB but not presnted as a Filter/Sorting option?

'System/Hardware' is a field that is not in the default MDB which I would very much like to have and to be able to Filter/Sort by.

Is there any way for me to add Filter/Sorting options as I desire?

4) I don't understand Favorites. Is it used exclusively for Games content?

After selecting Favorites, the Filter/Sorting options that I get are 'Name', 'Category', 'Manufacturer' and 'System'.

When i choose 'Manufacturer' GameEx simply reports no games found.. The same Filter seems to work fine when I select Video Games instead of Favorites from the main page however.

Back in Favorites, if I choose the Filter options named 'Category' or 'System', I am prompted to select 'Video Games'.

After selecting Favorites, I was expecting my filters to be 'All' 'Video Games' 'Music', 'Movies' 'RSS' etc. with 'Most Played' available as a toggle and the main list showing the Game/Song/Movie/RSS name as applicable. A small version of the main page icons to the left of the names to indicate the type of content.

I expected Name/Artist/Publisher/Year to be shown on the bar at the top for the current selection with times played and last played shown at the bottom. Very similar to the Game Info screen that is in place to confirm launch and provide detailed info.

I'll thank anyone in advance that can help with the questions above. It's tantalizing to be able to configure GameEx but f course when you can... you always want more:)

I'm off to start messing with the screensaver next:)

Cheers again for a great app and web page.

-James

[Tom Speirs]

It sounds like your going against the grain somewhat in your configuration of GameEx. Systems and MAME are meant to be setup individually either using the built in MAME support or seperate emulators. Secondly, you really dont need to edit the ini files directly. The tools included with GameEx to do configuration are highly robust, and tried and tested. However, you can still configure it as you are trying to. If you have created you own access mdb file it should work fine, just select to use it in the configuration rather than manually fiddling with the ini. Yes, in recent versions publisher is now used instead of developer in the code, unless the publisher field is not a field in the table. When in favorites, the category and manufacturer are only for MAME use, however you can filter by system type in favorites. Also for the screensaver you do need an active MAME setup for it to work, but youve given me a few interesting ideas here for improvements, but like I said you are going against the grain a little, and you might want to abandon your current setup shortcuts approach and start over.