NEWS: GameEx 9.77 Released

[Tom Speirs]

21st December, 2008 - GameEx 9.77

With perfect timing for the holidays, I am very pleased to release this version of GameEx. It contains two major enhancements and various small fixes and changes that I won't mention here.

First of all image lists have been implemented in GameEx. You can now view game lists and other pages as an image list giving a thumbnail display. To access the image list you need to be running a version 3 or 4 theme, and to access the view either change in the configuration applications or hit the Change View menu item. In this release the view is remembered for restart. I think you will like this new feature, and I think it fits in really well with GameEx. It should work well on both cabs and media centers, and it also looks great when the display is rotated. It will display a thumb of videos, and will cache this but it takes time to get the frame, so I recommend you ensure you also have image based snaps setup for your systems and MAME.

The other improvement is enhanced database support. When on the game information page, you are given menu options to find "more" games with the same developer, year, or category. This effectively links all systems together, and there is also now an All Games list available. Any database caching issues have been resolved, and this really does make GameEx the ultimate repository for when you have many systems.

Here are some notes from Flash on this new feature.

"Along with the new improved game database support much work has been done on the current databases to aid the overal functionality.

These databases have been improved/modified, some more than others.

Atari Jaguar (nearly complete)

Vectrex

Supergrafix

Pc Engine

Nintendo 64 (complete)

Super Nintendo

Nintendo Gameboy

Sega Saturn

Virtual Boy

Commodore 64 (very early stages, 20,000 games)

Sinclir ZX81 and Spectrum.

For these to work correctly they rely on your romsets to follow one of these naming conventions, Tosec, No-Into, GoodName.

To go hand-in-hand with the new "More:" feature, both Publisher and Developer fields have been modified across ALL databases. To make the matching easier certain concessions have been made. Examples are: All Sony subdivisions are listed as "Sony Computer Entertainment", Rockstar is just Rockstar Games (no Rockstar North, Rockstar Tokyo, etc). You will see the reason for this when using GameEx and this does make it a lot easier to bring up a FULL list of games by a favorite Developer (I.e. Rare, Treasure) rather than having several entries for the same developer. I hope this is acceptable to all as we felt that the benefits far outwieghed the loss of software divisions.

You will find that some games may not appear in the More: lists as expected. This is not a fault with GameEx; but rather a problem of incomplete databases. As the databases get more and more complete, the issue will become less and less. When they are all done (and trust me - I am doing my best) all games will match across the board including Publishers, Manufacturers, Years, Genres.

If you do find any genuine miss-information within the databases; please pm me, I won't take offence and any help to get them closer to the overal goal would be deemed a benefit by me.

Remember to download the latest databases!"

Many thanks to flash for his diligent work on the databases, and also for his testing and ensuring the quality of this release.

Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays.

[fRequEnCy]

Thanks Tom! Great release. Works great! Happy Holidays to you as well.

[Tempest]

Thanks to Tom, and GreatFlash for all of the hard work!

Happy Holidays to everyone!

[Lawrence]

Wow! I'm really impressed with this update! The thumbs look awesome.

May I make a suggestion though? Wouldn't using Title snaps (if available) make more sense? Perhaps going through all the extras in an order of priority (much as the secondary preview in V4 themes already works). First a title, then if not available, then the box, etc. I think title screens would be easier (and more fun) to navigate than screenshots.

I guess I really need to get my mysterious "Create Snaps is missing" problem fixed soon now, as many of my emulators lack snaps. Any chance someone could kindly help me in that thread? Thanks.

[Tom Speirs]

Wow! I'm really impressed with this update! The thumbs look awesome.

May I make a suggestion though? Wouldn't using Title snaps (if available) make more sense? Perhaps going through all the extras in an order of priority (much as the secondary preview in V4 themes already works). First a title, then if not available, then the box, etc. I think title screens would be easier (and more fun) to navigate than screenshots.

I guess I really need to get my mysterious "Create Snaps is missing" problem fixed soon now, as many of my emulators lack snaps. Any chance someone could kindly help me in that thread? Thanks.

I will take a look at the issue. I did ponder on doing what you said, for titles at least, in fact nearly did that. What do others think?

[fRequEnCy]

I will take a look at the issue. I did ponder on doing what you said, for titles at least, in fact nearly did that. What do others think?

I prefer the title as well. To me it just makes more sense.

[Lawrence]

I will take a look at the issue. I did ponder on doing what you said, for titles at least, in fact nearly did that. What do others think?

Thanks. Greatly appreciated.

[greatflash]

I will take a look at the issue. I did ponder on doing what you said, for titles at least, in fact nearly did that. What do others think?

I like having the game snap as it is quite interesting to see the differend versions side by side in gameplay. Perhaps an option in advanced features to allow the flexiblity to select Snaps, Title, box, etc.

That would allow everyone to have it how they want it!

[Tom Speirs]

Here is gameex.exe that users title.

Everyone agree this is better?

GameEx.7z

[Tom Speirs]

I like having the game snap as it is quite interesting to see the differend versions side by side in gameplay. Perhaps an option in advanced features to allow the flexiblity to select Snaps, Title, box, etc.

That would allow everyone to have it how they want it!

OK Ill make it an option for the next release.

[Lawrence]

I *may* have found a bug. Prior to the update this issue did not occur in any case.

Now, with the wonderful thumbnail option turned on, I occassionally get "mixed up" results. By mixed up, I mean that for example in the Jukebox when I click on many of the albums shown in the thumbnails, I get the Lords of Acid's Lust info page, regardless of what I clicked. Similar for video, and occassionally emulators and Mame as well.

Also -- for video and pictures -- while the new thumbnails ROCK for the videos and pictures themselves, it's not very good for the folders. Everything looks exactly the same, and the folder has to be hovered over to see what it is. Perhaps GameEx could write the folder name overtop the folder picture. Or use a random picture from within the folder and overlay a small folder icon on top?

[Tom Speirs]

I *may* have found a bug. Prior to the update this issue did not occur in any case.

Now, with the wonderful thumbnail option turned on, I occassionally get "mixed up" results. By mixed up, I mean that for example in the Jukebox when I click on many of the albums shown in the thumbnails, I get the Lords of Acid's Lust info page, regardless of what I clicked. Similar for video, and occassionally emulators and Mame as well.

Also -- for video and pictures -- while the new thumbnails ROCK for the videos and pictures themselves, it's not very good for the folders. Everything looks exactly the same, and the folder has to be hovered over to see what it is. Perhaps GameEx could write the folder name overtop the folder picture. Or use a random picture from within the folder and overlay a small folder icon on top?

Whats Lord of Acid's?

EDIT: Do you mean it navigates to the wrong info, or always goes to that page?

What are you using, keyboard or mouse?

[Lawrence]

Whats Lord of Acid's?

EDIT: Do you mean it navigates to the wrong info, or always goes to that page?

What are you using, keyboard or mouse?

It's a band. A large number of album thumbnails I click on, lead to that specific info page. Many others lead to other info pages (but not the band in question). Some do go to the correct page.

Ditto for the videos.

Some roms in the emulators and MAME also exhibit this behaviour. Sometimes the wrong thumb is show (ie going by alphabetical order the rom that should be there is, but the thumb is wrong -- for example Behind Enemy Lines shows Pac-Man as the thumb). Other times the thumb is right but the info page is completely off.

Switching back to the "old view" makes everything work as it should. Only occurs in the thumbnail view.

I'm using a mouse.

[Tom Speirs]

It's a band. A large number of album thumbnails I click on, lead to that specific info page. Many others lead to other info pages (but not the band in question). Some do go to the correct page.

Ditto for the videos.

Some roms in the emulators and MAME also exhibit this behaviour.

I'm using a mouse.

Can you please post your log and ini.

Thanks.

[Lawrence]

Can you please post your log and ini.

Thanks.

Will zip up the log now. My ini is in the other thread about the missing create snaps.

Now the Videos are outright crashing (the animation of the menu transition stops halfway through -- similar to the problems I had with the new video version of GameEx recently -- but that was upon exiting a video, this is upon entering the videos list). Strangely enough it was working okay for a little while after the upgrade (other than it consistently choosing one particular video instead of the ones I clicked, I think GameEx likes porn )

[Lawrence]

Here they are.

log.zip

GameExIni.zip

[Tom Speirs]

Ill take a look at the files in a bit, but I think the video problem has to be a codec issue and not an issue with GameEx. Although could be wrong.

[emphatic]

Thanks for this. Happy Holidays.

Emph

[Tom Speirs]

Here they are.

Can you try turning off the friendly cabinet controls option, and see if that fixes it.

[Tom Speirs]

Can you try turning off the friendly cabinet controls option, and see if that fixes it.

Also try turning off the Ultrastick plugin, see if that makes a difference.

[Lawrence]

Also try turning off the Ultrastick plugin, see if that makes a difference.

I have now turned both off. Still the same behaviour -- in the Jukebox various thumbnails for albums lead to other bands.

As for the video being a codec issue -- I'm not sure about that. It works smoothly in the "old style" view -- only dies in thumbnail mode and in the Video menu. In the library menu they seem to work fine as well.

Another thing I just noticed -- the last played feature is just dumped in with the rest of the ROMs for emulators in which it is turned on. That's a bit confusing. Any chance of breaking those out from the rest of the thumbnail list?

[Tom Speirs]

I have now turned both off. Still the same behaviour -- in the Jukebox various thumbnails for albums lead to other bands.

As for the video being a codec issue -- I'm not sure about that. It works smoothly in the "old style" view -- only dies in thumbnail mode and in the Video menu. In the library menu they seem to work fine as well.

Another thing I just noticed -- the last played feature is just dumped in with the rest of the ROMs for emulators in which it is turned on. That's a bit confusing. Any chance of breaking those out from the rest of the thumbnail list?

Im a little confused about that last comment as the last played emu games arnt available in thumb mode, I just checked and its disabled. For the videos, im thinking its erroring out on one of your videos, that would be the most likely cause. Since the thumb mode loads the videos and takes a snbapshot you wouldnt notice in list mode.

[Lawrence]

Im a little confused about that last comment as the last played emu games arnt available in thumb mode, I just checked and its disabled. For the videos, im thinking its erroring out on one of your videos, that would be the most likely cause. Since the thumb mode loads the videos and takes a snbapshot you wouldnt notice in list mode.

Regarding the last played emu games... If, for example, I go into Atari 2600 the very first thumbnail shown is Demon Attack (which is the last game I played), then Communist Mutants from Space, then the regular ROMs list starts with the numbers. In list mode, the last played games break out from the rest of the list with a space. I think thumbnail mode needs the same to avoid confusion.

For the videos -- wouldn't the same video error out in list mode when I am hovering over it? (I have video snaps turned on). And why wouldn't the video hang in the library in thumbnail mode but only in Videos in thumbnail mode?

[Tom Speirs]

Regarding the last played emu games... If, for example, I go into Atari 2600 the very first thumbnail shown is Demon Attack (which is the last game I played), then Communist Mutants from Space, then the regular ROMs list starts with the numbers. In list mode, the last played games break out from the rest of the list with a space. I think thumbnail mode needs the same to avoid confusion.

For the videos -- wouldn't the same video error out in list mode when I am hovering over it? (I have video snaps turned on). And why wouldn't the video hang in the library in thumbnail mode but only in Videos in thumbnail mode?

Last played should be disabled in image mode, or are you loading it then changing views?

Are you viewing the same folder in library mode?

What files are in the folder?

[Lawrence]

Last played should be disabled in image mode, or are you loading it then changing views?

Are you viewing the same folder in library mode?

What files are in the folder?

Ah... You're right -- if I change views while in an emulator list it'll insert the last played roms into the top of the thumbnails, otherwise they're not there. My bad. Still it might be an idea to include last played and break them out of the regular thumbs. The last played feature is handy. Saves me from scrolling down to Demon Attack all the time.

In library, yes. Same folder.

Third question -- I'm not sure how you want me to answer? The whole folder is pr0n. All videos after "Where the Boys Aren't 9" (cough... cough...) show the correct thumbnails but on the info page shows that video and plays that video when clicked.

I found one more thing... I'm sure it's not me this time either. Try clicking on "Biography" in any emulator in thumbnail mode. Rather funky result.