Plugin Development Guide?

[kris]

Hi, was wondering if there was documentation around for developing plugins, their structure and how they are loaded by GameEx and also what public events & APIs are available?

I was interested in poking around with some sort of integration with IMDB for movie & TV show synopses.

Out of interest where are movie box images loaded from?

Also, great to see things are now working smoothly with the latest version of ffdshow, I can now finally run GameEx and TVersity on the same PC!

[headkaze]

What language do you code in? The best way is to look at the example plugins source code and figure it out from there. They are pretty basic and we have a C# and VB.NET language examples. Take a look in GameEx\PLUGINS folder for the source archives.

I was working with Tom to develop support for native plugins (for languages like Delphi and C++) and while I did pretty much implement the API in the Plugin Manager I don't believe Tom ever got around to adding support in GameEx. The reason for that I believe is lack of interest. I'm sure if there is enough demand for it then Tom will add support.

[bkenobi]

I think part of the reason the interest wasn't as high as it should have been is that there's not a very good source of info for how to code a plugin. Also, I'm not sure what features could be implemented since I don't understand what hooks the plugin system can use. I think if it were better understood, then there would be more interest.

For example, I think a 'password' protected feature would be really nice (think mature games or movie ratings for example). The plugin could simply pop something up and ask for the 'password' which would be a combo on cabinets before letting you procede. That's just my take though...

[kris]

What language do you code in? The best way is to look at the example plugins source code and figure it out from there. They are pretty basic and we have a C# and VB.NET language examples. Take a look in GameEx\PLUGINS folder for the source archives.

This is what I started to do but realised I didn't really understand the full extent of what plugins had access to, what hooks they had into GameEx and what they could modify. Obviously the existing source reveals some information but it would only deal with the subset of whats available that was needed for that particular plugin, and I wanted to establish at least some idea that what I wanted to do was remotely possible before I started.

As bkenobi alluded to, I think there would be a lot more interest in plugin development if there was even a simple guide that listed all public APIs & event hooks available to plugins.

In any case, I'll have a poke around and see what I can accomplish, as I would actually really like to see an IMDB-like plugin in GameEx for my own use.

[jrock2004]

I would like to revive this thread as I have an idea on a nice plugin that I would love to develop. Has any further thought about creating something about this?

[Adultery]

I made a VB.NET template which documents all the plugin calls. You can also run my Function Logger plugin to document what event gets triggered and when. I'm also here to help if you have any questions, as the plugin system is officially my bitch these days.

Always happy to help out. As for your native coding language, I can do C# but I prefer VB.NET. The plugin system supports both of these languages.

If you were to give me a brief mission statement, I'll happily tell you if what you're attempting is possible or not using the plugin interface.

[jrock2004]

I would like to write a plugin that pulls the games that GameEx has and put them in xml format. My main object is to write a hook that a website can pull data from gameex to build on your own mame site. Also I would like to write something so I could write a mobile application to launch games.

I am thinking of so many ideas on what I could do once I could get a web interface to interact with GameEX. Thoughts

[Adultery]

Well...

You can write a standalone app to parse the games if you were wanting to get the XML data. The plugin system doesn't really have any calls that swing through the entire list.

Forcing GameEx to execute commands independent of the actual event being triggered within GameEx currently isn't possible either AFAIK, so hooking in via mobile may not be doable either.

The plugin system recieves events as they occur but doesn't push back events you want to trigger. That is something I want to talk to Ben about though (I want to make a Kinect plugin).

I think that answered your questions but ask away if you need anything further.

[jrock2004]

I would just think it would be cool if I had a friend over and he asked me, oh do you have this game or that, I could pull up a webpage and show him. I think in the data folder I saw something like a gamelist but unsure.

[Adultery]

Well theoretically you could parse the game list if you wrote a hook on the GameSelect event but you'd have to mouse over every one in the list. I mean with some wiggling it can work... you could get all the data for any game once its been selected anyhow.

Not impossible but probably not very practical if you know what I mean.