Zinc Options

[bkenobi]

I'm still playing around with Zinc... I found Howard Castro's Zinc Control Config Utility 1.5 which is really cool! It basically helps configure all zinc games to their original control layout in just a few quick steps rather than manually setting up each game one at a time (which is how you would do it with ZincGUI and the WinterBlast plugin).

The utility generates ini files in the ctrlr directory for each game. This is all well and good, but there is a problem. The game needs to be called as follows:

zinc.exe 1 --use-config-file=zinc.cfg --use-controller-cfg-file=c:\emu\zinc\ctrlr\starglad.ini --roms-directory=c:\emu\roms\zinc

So, there are 2 problems that keep this from working...

1) There is apparently no way to use the [romname] variable in the zinc options so I can't specify the controller file in GameEx.

2) The rom path for zinc roms is hard coded as the same path for MAME roms in GameEx. If this were turned off, the path could be specified on the option line or in the zinc.cfg file. This is important because the check sum could be different than what zinc is expecting due to redumps etc. Zinc hasn't been updated in years, so a separate directory for zinc roms is appropriate.

Without these two options, I'm thinking I'll have to put a script together to wrap zinc. This is not a hard wrapper to build, but if these two small things could be included, it would avoid wasted effort. If this isn't something that can be addressed easily, let me know and I'll get something going.

[fRequEnCy]

I say the best option for ZiNc is to set it up as an emulator. I have it setup both ways (GameEx integration and as an emulator) and I find you have more control to just set up as an emulator. It will not give you the great integration as it does in GameEx but it will give you the results you need to make it work the way you're wanting. I always say script it! It's just easy to do and it makes things work. I'm sure Tom can make some of these changes but I personally would just make a wrapper for the time being.

[Tempest]

Why not just add it to your mame_loader script?

[bkenobi]

Actually, that's just what I'm about to do. I realized that it would be a lot easier to just do that than try to make the current system work the way it needs to be done. If Tom gets a chance to fix it, then I can remove it from the script later or just turn "use zinc" back on in GameEx. I don't know if Model2 is needed or not yet as I haven't checked if GameEx hardcodes the rom path. That will be next though.

[bkenobi]

I just wanted to post what I came up with for the new MAME_Loader script. This now includes Zinc. It assumes that you have the rom path specified correctly in your Zinc setup.

I'll give credit to Tempest since I used a couple lines from his Zinc loader script which he modified from my MAME_Loader script

MAME_Loader.ahk.txt

Zinc.txt

[Tempest]

I just wanted to post what I came up with for the new MAME_Loader script. This now includes Zinc. It assumes that you have the rom path specified correctly in your Zinc setup.

I'll give credit to Tempest since I used a couple lines from his Zinc loader script which he modified from my MAME_Loader script

I think the "ExitApp" line was mine....

BTW: Looks good, I was too lazy to edit the text that Zinc dumped... much cleaner, and more accurate!