GameEx zommes in game

[ranzo]

Hello there,

I am just building up my cab and was searching for a good front-end and finally I found one : GameEx, which fascinates me a lot because of all the features !!

Now I am just building up a test system with 1 GB RAM PC 333, Athlon XP 3000+, nvidia Riva TNT2 Modell 64 16 MB AGP graphic card, ASROck Board and I think for most games it should work.

Then I had to find out which version of Mame32 is downloading GameEx : Version 0.109. Mhh, why use such an old version when we are at the moment at version 0.128 ?

Ok, so I used CLRMAME to convert them in the right format, everything is done and works fine...

Then I started the wizard and went through (aaalllllll) these options and finally finished the setup

He found all roms and all games, everything is fine, but one problem is :

Problem : When I start e.g. Mars Matrix, the game is zoomed, which means that about 4 mm to the right and left is missing. Its just out of the screen. And I think this could also be the reason why the intro-movie is not smooth. Now my question : How can I fix this that the game has the correct resolution and is NOT zoomed. I already looked in the FAQ but there stands nothing. I did not activate the setting "Dont switch resolution" -> "GameEx wont change resoltion". When I use mame.exe, everything is perfectly ok, game is completely on screen.

Another point : When I want to use e.g. not mame32.exe but mame.exe (0.128), how can I tell the system, that the beginning should be faster so that I must not see all the copyright stuff as mame32.exe does it ?

Last thing : I just tried to hook up the PCB on my arcade cab with the arcade monitor and when it comes to start Windows XP, I will not see anything, so which settings do I have to use so that I can see something on my arcade monitor ?

Dam ! Found another thing : when I start a game, the whole screen is flickering on my arcade monitor...seems that it has not the right frequency. In the DOS Version of mame, there was a switch :-monitor arcade", but that does not exist in mame32. Anybody can help? This happens only when I start a game...GameEx is just fine...

OK thanks for Your help in advance and again happy new year from germany !!

Ränz

[bkenobi]

You can use any command line version of MAME that you want and it should work fine. The only problem you might run into with older versions is that GameEx needs xml formatted game info. If you use a REALLY old version of MAME, you might only generate the old, non-XML formatted data.

I personally use v0.125, but that's only because I haven't gotten around to compiling v0.128 yet. I personally recommend using the most recent full version of MAME that's available in general. I don't use u builds cause they do have errors introduced by the new trial code. I do NOT recommend using MAME32 or any other GUI version of MAME because it's both unnecessary and can become confusing when it comes to configuration. However, if you can run MAME from a command line with the release, you can use it with GameEx.

Hope that helps more than confuses

[ranzo]

Hi,

Thanks for Your post. Yes, it helps me because I also thought like that, but if You take the command line version, You You start a game, You will have to wait till all the copyright lines are finished and then the game begins. This is not happening in the mame32 version because it boosts the game for 1 second and then switches to normal mode. I did not find out how to do that in the command line version.

But my other problem is much more important : When I start a game, the screen flickers and I can not see anything and it does not matter if its an old or newer game. Plesae help...

Ränz

[ranzo]

Is there really nobody who could help me ?? I am using advancemame and I have a Arcade VGA Monitor : 640*480@60 Hz, and when I start a game, the screen starts to flicker from up to down. How can I change that, e.g. to tell advmame not to use frequencies above that ?? When I press ESC i come back to GameEx and everything is fine. So please help...

Ränz

[Tempest]

I don't have an arcade monitor, so I don't feel I'm qualified to help. First question - Does your video card support the resoution that you are trying to use? Most peole use the card from Ultimarc (Can't remember what it's called) with an arcade monitor.

[bkenobi]

ArcadeVGA

[Tempest]

Yeah, I also remembered that Soft 15 (Google it) may be a solution as well...

[ranzo]

Hi,

I made again some tests and here are the results :

1. If I start advmame with the option "FullScreen", the screen will flcikering

2. If I start advmame with the option "Window", everything is working fine...

Has someone any idea ?

Bye,

Ränz

[IMBerzerk]

Hi,

I made again some tests and here are the results :

1. If I start advmame with the option "FullScreen", the screen will flcikering

2. If I start advmame with the option "Window", everything is working fine...

Has someone any idea ?

Bye,

Ränz

Yes, At one time I was going to install a 19" Wells Garner monitor, with an ArcadeVGA card and all... I dumped it all for a 20" LCD. Problems solved.

You really have to work with the monitor and get the settings correct sometimes using other software. I spent a few hours getting mine setup and it did work, but in the end, it drove me nuts with the resolution changes. Not all games use the same resolutions. Many use 320x240 or 320x200, other are in the 520 range, 750 range... etc.. etc. It's not really cut and dry. You might need more tweaking software, I forgot what it's called. Also, the POTS switches on the monitor are very sensitive. Are you sure you have them correct?

Look it up on Google, and Build Your Own Arcade Controls forum. There is plenty of help out there. This is really not the forum for that. Thankfully some of us have a lot of experience building cabinets, but this is really the place for GameEx related questions.

As far as my WG 19" and VGA card... as soon as I am done building my last cabinet... eBay. I simply could not be bothered with all the extra work involved.

IMBerzerk

[ranzo]

Tx IMBerzerk,

Now I found the problem, related to GameEx : I always had to use advmame because when I am using mame32, the system crashed and I returned back to GameEx. Now I downloaded exact the same version , BUT NOT via the GameEx setup, but from another source on the net, and now, mame32 IS WORKING !!! So all the trouble I had was because of an incorrect version of mame32, which the GameEx wizard downloaded !! E.G. I can start mame32.exe and the system will not crash, I will get the rom list etc...this was crazy !!