NEWS: GameEx 10.90 Beta

[Tom Speirs]

New issue - I reverted back to 10.80 and I am unable to see the avi snaps. The logos are loading in the background instead of my background and it appears that the avi snaps are attempting to load (black box flickering in and out). Any suggestions on how to restore to normal?

I guess I should have explained a litle what a Beta is. But basically a Beta is not to be used for a production system if you rely on a production system. Its for testing. I cant think of any reason why it would not revert back, but Id try a fresh install and then copy over the config and data folders.

[Tom Speirs]

Just updated to new beta and now I cant view either preview window (Image 1 & Image 2) just black, but my video thumbs

work fine. I think it maybe a tranparency problem because if goto change view in gamEx menus but not in a rom/emu list as it switches I see my images for 1 second as it fades away too black, if I do the same in an rom/emu menu it fixes the problem until I go back out of menu.

Running Maximus Arcade theme and Windows 7 x64.

All was good on v10.80.

Love GameEx, I applaud your effort.

I breifly tested with the MA theme before. I think the issue is the foreground image. its overlaying the images. This theme may need to be redone. When i looked at the cached foerground image, I see black for where image 1 is and blue over where image 2 goes. Im actually surprised it worked before. Can you post a link to where you got the theme from please. I think I only have an old version. cheers.

[Draco1962]

I guess I should have explained a litle what a Beta is. But basically a Beta is not to be used for a production system if you rely on a production system. Its for testing. I cant think of any reason why it would not revert back, but Id try a fresh install and then copy over the config and data folders.

Thanks, Tom. I hope that you do not see this as a complaint. I have been involved with some betas before so know the risks. I just wanted to see if anyone has encountered similar issues and see what may has been tried to affect a positive resolution. This is not only useful for those whom might encounter similar issues, but for the programmer as well as not all things that have run well in a test scenario will run the same on the myriads of alternate configurations outside of the test systems.

I will give that a try and see if that restores the previous functionality. Overall, I am looking forward to RTM!

UPDATE: I have renistalled the Beta and thus far all seems to be working better now. I think it may have been a caching issue that cleared all previous problem with the exception of List View and my Background not saving as my default view (still showing video snap in background with snaps list instead of text list).

[DJ Infinity]

On my laptop the beta seems not to exit cleanly from Daphne. I'ma try it on my duel boot machine. Howver the writing on my menus is fixed and readable now. I went back to the regular version.

[MooSe]

Thanks for the reply Tom.

I Noticed that the Maximum Arcade theme was created by Headkaze, I remember downloading it as soon as it was available and have never looked for an update and now can't find it again.

I'm gonna look at removing the foreground overlay image.

Anyway, I forgot to mention that GameEx under Direct3D is a fare bit faster & smoother and is a very big leap in the right direction and apart from my foreground issue , No other problems came up. Sadly i'll have to stick with v10.80 untill I have time to edit my theme, unless Headkaze would be kind enough to take a look, I do really like his theme.

Thanks again.

[Tom Speirs]

No problem, and Im going to take a look at it myself, just need to find it!

[Circo]

This is very exciting for me, Direct3D makes it much easier for my to make gameex demo videos I'll give it a minute for bugs to be worked out but count me as excited!

[Tom Speirs]

Ive just released Beta 10.91. Download: http://www.gameex.com/downloadgameexbeta/GameExSetup.exe

I really couldnt find or duplicate any of the launching/returning issues described, but thanks to everyone who has tested so far. Even if its working fine for you please post.

And please continue to test. The way i see we are not far off an RTM, but I do need more reports both posisitve and negative.

[Tom Speirs]

Just updated to new beta and now I cant view either preview window (Image 1 & Image 2) just black, but my video thumbs

work fine. I think it maybe a tranparency problem because if goto change view in gamEx menus but not in a rom/emu list as it switches I see my images for 1 second as it fades away too black, if I do the same in an rom/emu menu it fixes the problem until I go back out of menu.

Running Maximus Arcade theme and Windows 7 x64.

All was good on v10.80.

Love GameEx, I applaud your effort.

Moose, this should be fixed in the latest Beta I just released. Can you confirm please? (You may need to delete the cached foreground PNGs)

[Krakerman]

Well Tom I think I found a bug. When I tired running zDoom thru GameEx latest beta it just sits and freezes the Theme text goes blank and mouse cursor appears but does nothing. I hit the ESC key and everything comes back to GameEx. It doesn't happen on 10.80 at all as it works just fine.

Note: Before attempting I ran 2 other emulators before and they worked fine.

[Draco1962]

Anyone that can help. I am wanting to have my latest theme set to load videonaps in the list by default with image1 and image2 showing larger videosnaps and flyer/marquee/cabinet respectively. I am still having an issue with making this happen (program continues to defealt to videosnap in background). I have tried modifying through the setup wizard and advance configuration but to no avail. Also, I have noticed that my settings under tweaks/performance within the setup wizard for fast PC do not stay put and default to Mediuam instead of Very High.

Where can I modify these settings within the gameex.ini file to see of this will remedy how my games are displayed?

[Tom Speirs]

Anyone that can help. I am wanting to have my latest theme set to load videonaps in the list by default with image1 and image2 showing larger videosnaps and flyer/marquee/cabinet respectively. I am still having an issue with making this happen (program continues to defealt to videosnap in background). I have tried modifying through the setup wizard and advance configuration but to no avail. Also, I have noticed that my settings under tweaks/performance within the setup wizard for fast PC do not stay put and default to Mediuam instead of Very High.

Where can I modify these settings within the gameex.ini file to see of this will remedy how my games are displayed?

Can you not just hit change view until you get the view you want? Also you may have disabled the video snap list. The settings should be sticking and can be changed even though the drop down says medium.

[Tom Speirs]

Well Tom I think I found a bug. When I tired running zDoom thru GameEx latest beta it just sits and freezes the Theme text goes blank and mouse cursor appears but does nothing. I hit the ESC key and everything comes back to GameEx. It doesn't happen on 10.80 at all as it works just fine.

Note: Before attempting I ran 2 other emulators before and they worked fine.

Does it happen consistently? Please post your log.

[Draco1962]

Can you not just hit change view until you get the view you want? Also you may have disabled the video snap list. The settings should be sticking and can be changed even though the drop down says medium.

I can hit it (usually takes about 6 or more times) to get to the view that I want. I had an issue initially with 10.80 but cleared the cache and was able to have it view with the games in list view or avisnaps view with my custom background by default. When I went back into the program, the last view I had selected would stick. My thinking is that I should be able to choose the view I want and save that last view as my default. If I were to use this in a game cab it would not work out.

I have chceked and video snaps appear to be enabled.

[Tom Speirs]

It should definitly be sticking. Note though that some screens such as the start dont display image view even if set. Maybe thats where your getting it confused?

[Draco1962]

It should definitly be sticking. Note though that some screens such as the start dont display image view even if set. Maybe thats where your getting it confused?

Not too sure - before the Start would show my custom background and list view. From there, if I click on Mame and select All games, for example, it would retain the list view and custom background (as I had setup for my Brokeh theme).

Now it is defaulting to videosnap as background instead and stays that way until I click Change View 6-8 times. FOr the new theme I am working on I would like to be able to use videosnaps instead of list if it is possible. Oh, one other thing I noticed is that only one size of still or video snaps shows, regardless of whether or not I select Video or Big Video.

If this is not possible per current program design, could I suggest this as an enhancement request - to save last view changed as the defaut view?

[Tom Speirs]

Maybe I misunderstood. It does retain the last view but not for each page/screen only globally. Im not sure how this relates to the Beta?

Also if you have those settings set in theme.ini it will override gameex.ini

[Tom Speirs]

I just saw your feature request. GameEx does definitly save the last view. I just tested to be sure. Maybe your theme is overriding it?

[Draco1962]

I just saw your feature request. GameEx does definitly save the last view. I just tested to be sure. Maybe your theme is overriding it?

I will check the theme.ini file to see if it may not be saving there.

UPDATE: Tom - it appears that the changes would not save to the theme.ini file. I had to manually change "DisplayBackgroundImage=snap" to "DisplayBackgroundImage=True" . Once I saved the change, I then went back into GameEx and it displayed precisely as I needed it to. I was then able to change view, exit, go back in, and the last view would stick until I changed it again. I am not sure why it was not saving before or how it was changed to begin with but it is working now and that is all that matters! Thanks again!

BTW, I am on the 10.91 upgrade. I have to admit that I like the speed!

[Adultery]

Ironically, after GameEx crashed on me for some unknown reason (the JIT debugger window came up when MAME launched NBA Hangtime which always ran albeit choppy and slow due to my slow machine in my cabinet), it crashed my entire computer. When I rebooted, for some reason my desktop looked exactly like it does when you boot Windows XP for the first time... All my desktop icons were gone, my shortcut menu icons disappeared, and even the little "Take a tour of Windows XP" balloon popped up in my taskbar. Ironically, all my programs were still installed and seem to run just fine, except uTorrent which I had to go and find in the Program Files folder. Crazy huh? Hell, even the wallpaper reverted back to the factory wallpaper and the screen saver switched to the stupid default XP one (I disable my screen saver so that was also freakishly unusual)!!!

To twist the lime a little further, it still worked exactly as it should, and my desktop resolution on my WS HP LCD monitor didn't change at all. Nor did my power save settings, and no issues with lost drivers. GameEx ran like new right off the bat without a need to reinstall anything. I did however install a new firewall so I can keep a close eye on it just in case.

I'm downloading the newest beta right now, and hopefully that was just a freak occurrence. All my years of computer IT work and such, I can honestly say I've never seen anything like this happen before. I actually own my own small repair business, so my computer *should* be locked down and protected like a virtual Fort Knox, so it couldn't have been due to intrusion or anything of that nature. GameEx seemed to be randomly crashing before that too, but since it happened it seems to be running like a top. The way GameEx was crashing leading up to this also puzzled me, because my computer would still run but not output any kind of visuals, like the monitor was turned off and I could still hear it running.

Who knows.

PS: I would have saved and posted the log file, but the only thing I noticed was that it spit out the usual array error I see whenever GameEx crashes (which in itself is rare).

[headkaze]

Adultery: That does not sound like something caused by GameEx, infact it sounds more like a hard disk error. Are you sure you didn't log in under a different user, since that is the only way for everything to be back to default like that (unless there was some corruption due to hard disk error). It also sounded a bit like a video card failure but because it changed your desktop wallpaper it's more likely to be a hard disk problem. Do a full scan disk of C drive (the one that requires a reboot to scan).

[Adultery]

Thanks for the quick response HK!

I actually did a chkdsk /f immediately afterwards, so that ruled that out. I should also note that I only have one account on the cabinet, and it's set to bypass the welcome/login screen (I built my own PC so there's no recovery partition on it or hidden administrator account, or guest account for that matter). The dead monitor thing could very well have been a video card issue, because heavy games like that have crashed my monitor before (but the JIT debugger wouldn't have come up for me if that was the case, the monitor would have just went into sleep mode... I've had similar problems with some process heavy N64 games so I'm all too familiar with the way it acts leading up to a video card crash). Since I changed the power supply to a beefier one, I haven't really seen it do that at all, even with the game that killed it every time (N64's Ogre Battle).

I will search more extensively for bad clusters in the HDD, since I really have no other leads at this point.

It will drive me nuts until I figure this thing out... It's just hard to swallow that I installed the new BETA and all these problems just kind of hit me. I did have a file I thought might be involved somehow on the root of the HDD left over from a ZiNc wrapper I installed and removed at least a year ago (pr1data.8k which I think was for Tekken's MAME set), but I deleted it promptly after the first crash occurred.

Ahh well... It's time to do some backing up I suppose.

[Adultery]

Hmm... This is curious...

I'm using Greatflash's BlueBox theme. When I load up an emulator that has more than one layer, like NES for example, I can see the top layer of images but the background turns black. I'll screen cap it and post it here to help you understand what I mean. Hold on while I log in through the cab.

Here's what I mean:

And here's a cap of the screen when it doesn't have a second layer:

.:EDIT:. Looks like the same problem as the Maximus Arcade theme has, because I launched a game and saw the complete background for a split second, and this time I could only see the bottom layer instead of only the top layer. Like the whole page was there but most of the content faded out and only the blue background remained. How weird is that?

[Tom Speirs]

I think Ive ironed out all remaining issues now, and have released Beta 10.92

Download: http://www.gameex.com/downloadgameexbeta/GameExSetup.exe

[Tom Speirs]

Hmm... This is curious...

I'm using Greatflash's BlueBox theme. When I load up an emulator that has more than one layer, like NES for example, I can see the top layer of images but the background turns black. I'll screen cap it and post it here to help you understand what I mean. Hold on while I log in through the cab.

Here's what I mean:

And here's a cap of the screen when it doesn't have a second layer:

.:EDIT:. Looks like the same problem as the Maximus Arcade theme has, because I launched a game and saw the complete background for a split second, and this time I could only see the bottom layer instead of only the top layer. Like the whole page was there but most of the content faded out and only the blue background remained. How weird is that?

Im pretty sure I fixed that in the latest Beta. Can you install and cofirm?