NEWS: GameEx 10.10

[Tom Speirs]

31st May, 2009 - GameEx 10.10

A new feature packed release bringing GameEx up to version 10.10.

GameEx now supports a movie database, and there is a new configuration tool included to add custom descriptions and box art for both videos and dvds. You can manually add your own detail and/or automatically download it. The online matching accuracy has been greatly improved also, meaning box art is much more likely to reflect your movies and the automatic download of descriptions is accurate.

Another multimedia enhancment is there is a new a big thumbnail view available.

For MAME support the emu map feature now allows setting game or types of games to run with different command line options avoiding the need to setup another emulator. New games not in MAME can also be added to the GameEx MAME list, and database information and descriptions can also be added. See the exsiting MAME Emu map support for instructions.

This release also contains the new rotate plugin by Headkaze, allowing those of you with hardware rotated monitors to get more use of GameEx.

Headkaze is also busy working on another great feature that should be available soon. This will allow login and logout of GameEx for different users, switchiing settings and data based on who's logged in. There is an initial release on the forum.

[iano]

Cheers Tom / HK !

[headkaze]

I PM'ed the two guys who requested the rotating plugin about the two tutorials on creating the parallel and LED hardware used to rotate a monitor. The documents were in German so I'm hoping they can give us some translated docs so others can build such a system for their own cabs.

[Lawrence]

Woo hoo! Thanks Tom. Yay -- now I can use dice to play pong within the Mame menu.

[Tom Speirs]

Yeah I know, show the love I cant believe people think Maximus Arcade is better on the BYOAC poll

[fRequEnCy]

Thanks Tom and HK!

[Belinda]

Just the feature i've been waiting for cool

[bkenobi]

Cool stuff. I'll have to check out the new MAME emu map features!

[starbuck]

Another great update.

Will future updates allow GameEx to automatically update description on movies like it does boxart and previews without having to run the movie setup app.. Perhaps adding a checkbox in config to allow the user to decide if they want it.

Under videos I have

Movies

karaoke videos

music videos

television series

cartoons

Of course GameEx won't find descriptions or box art for music videos, televsion series, cartoons or karaoke videos but it looks for them when i run the movie database setup. (Takes a long time, as I have about 500 music videos, 250 movies, about 40 complete televison series, 200 plus cartoons and another 100 or so karaoke videos.) Is there a way to only pick one or more of the above for GameEx to search thru. As there is only one setup for videos in GameEx, I have them all under videos.

Another great update.

Thank you Tom

[Tom Speirs]

Dont know yet. you could just temporarly remove the paths for the non movies and run the utility.

[starbuck]

Will do that for future scans. Gonna let the current scan continue. Will be interesting to see what it finds.

[supergojira]

Good man Tom thanks for adding the larger thumbnail support, this should take my TV jukebox one step closer to reality!

[Invincer]

Quick question... where is GameEx pulling the boxart/descriptions from? Thanks

P.S. preview videos for my DVDs on Disk still don't play like they will on avi videos; tried different codecs, out of ideas... at least want to make the boxart and descriptions accurate for the ones that are not, so I can just maybe go online to the site it pulls them from and manually add them (I hope)

[Tempest]

Yeah I know, show the love I cant believe people think Maximus Arcade is better on the BYOAC poll

[Tom Speirs]

Quick question... where is GameEx pulling the boxart/descriptions from? Thanks

P.S. preview videos for my DVDs on Disk still don't play like they will on avi videos; tried different codecs, out of ideas... at least want to make the boxart and descriptions accurate for the ones that are not, so I can just maybe go online to the site it pulls them from and manually add them (I hope)

They come from Amazon. Previews dont work if the DVDs are ISOs, as its not technically viable to do that. Are they ISOs?

With the latest release though, you should see box art. I think yourll find the automatic matching pretty accurate now.

[Lawrence]

It's much better now. It was pretty dreadful at matching before actually (I have no idea how The Matrix got a yoga video cover).

I love the new thumbnails too. Much nicer.

[Belinda]

It's much better now. It was pretty dreadful at matching before actually (I have no idea how The Matrix got a yoga video cover).

I love the new thumbnails too. Much nicer.

lol thats nothing one of my Queen music vids came up with some ad for bottled water.

[Invincer]

They come from Amazon. Previews dont work if the DVDs are ISOs, as its not technically viable to do that. Are they ISOs?

With the latest release though, you should see box art. I think yourll find the automatic matching pretty accurate now.

That is the problem then, they are ISOs in the "DVDs on Disk" category. Is there a way then to make the DVDs on disk pick up two images like in the emulators? I could download previews and use them if I know where I can put them where they can be picked up by GameEx.

The boxart is a bit better, about 50% I am finding (The incredibles returned an Incredible Hulk box and if I rename some things I don't expect it to find them ie renamed all Lord of the Rings movies to start with just LotR since the titles are so long). No big deal though, Knowing where the boxart is picked up at I can just download the appropriate ones from Amazon so they match correctly.

As a sidenote, what about previews of eBooks? I have tons of comics in crb and crz formats and it would be great if GameEx could pick up the first image as the cover for displaying. If there is a folder it will recognize I could store an image of the cover for GameEx if needed; if so, where should the folder be?

Thanks Tom! I do not understand at ALL how Maximus Arcade could get a higher ranking. Although I would bet it is because many of the Maximus Arcade users either have never bothered trying GameEx, or they don't like change and are stuck in their ways, or they need their heads examined.

I could see how HyperSpin gets so many votes for style, but not for substance. I have been making my own theme in GameEx over the last few weeks which I really like. Lots of animations on custom menus that in my mind stands up fairly well to HyperSpin but this way I get the full features of GameEx.

[Tom Speirs]

The boxart is a bit better, about 50% I am finding (The incredibles returned an Incredible Hulk box and if I rename some things I don't expect it to find them ie renamed all Lord of the Rings movies to start with just LotR since the titles are so long). No big deal though, Knowing where the boxart is picked up at I can just download the appropriate ones from Amazon so they match correctly.

Thats what the movie database tool is for. It has a search feature if GameEx cant find the match. I am actually quite surprised it matched the indreibles with the hulk. As far as I know ti shouldnt do that, as it now should only return an exact name match, hence why your lotr arnt matched. Are you sure about that?

[Lawrence]

All my biographies (every system) have now become Sega Dreamcast. This happening for anyone else with the new update?

[celly]

All my biographies (every system) have now become Sega Dreamcast. This happening for anyone else with the new update?

No, but my MAME list when haywire. Went from 6680 games to 3000.

EDIT: Nevermind. My dumbace didn't change the advanced configuration for GameEx. All good now. Thanks Tom/Headkaze

[Invincer]

Thats what the movie database tool is for. It has a search feature if GameEx cant find the match. I am actually quite surprised it matched the indreibles with the hulk. As far as I know ti shouldnt do that, as it now should only return an exact name match, hence why your lotr arnt matched. Are you sure about that?

Yep, this is what it automatically gave me for "The Incredibles". Not a big deal though since I know where it is and can sinply replace it manually...

[daweinst]

The movie database feature is great. It worked well when I used it with DVDs that were on my machine, but I'm having problems when the DVDs are on a shared network drive. I've about filled up the hard drive on my computer that runs GameEx, so I put all my movies on a different computer, shared the folder they're in, and pointed GameEx to the networked folder as my folder for on-disk DVDs. The DVDs play fine, and the movie database sees them and can update their info. But when I run GameEx, it doesn't show any of the information that the movie database added. All the movies are listed, but there is no image or description. Is there any way I can fix this?

Also, a suggested feature for the database: When we hit the search button to look up a title that wasn't automatically found, the search field is blank. It would be nice if this field was automatically populated by the current title. For example, I have the movie Role Models titled Role_Models. the movie database couldn't find the information for that title automatically, but when I hit search, and entered "Role Models", it found it fine. If the search field was automatically populated with the current title, all I'd have to do is delete the "_". With large libraries it could save some time.

Thanks!