GameEx hotkey

[Noddy]

Ok this should be my last dumb question for awhile promise

I'm still trying to get gameex and my jukebox software working on the cabinet and be able to switch back and forth between them easily.

As far as i can see I have to run the jukebox completely outside of gameex because I don't want to close it to return to games. I like being able to have it run constantly either with selected songs or random and people can just switch over to gameex when they want to play a game. This isn't a problem and I've set up a hotkey that lets me switch back to it ok.

But when I try to add a hotkey to gameex it only opens it if its not running it wont bring it to the front if its in the background. So if I have gameex open I can hit the juke hotkey and it switches to that no problems, if I have the jukebox open and gameex in the background hitting the gameex hotkey wont bring it forward?

Should this be working or is there another way to do what I want with moving between the two programs?

[Brian Hoffman]

Ok this should be my last dumb question for awhile promise

I'm still trying to get gameex and my jukebox software working on the cabinet and be able to switch back and forth between them easily.

As far as i can see I have to run the jukebox completely outside of gameex because I don't want to close it to return to games. I like being able to have it run constantly either with selected songs or random and people can just switch over to gameex when they want to play a game. This isn't a problem and I've set up a hotkey that lets me switch back to it ok.

But when I try to add a hotkey to gameex it only opens it if its not running it wont bring it to the front if its in the background. So if I have gameex open I can hit the juke hotkey and it switches to that no problems, if I have the jukebox open and gameex in the background hitting the gameex hotkey wont bring it forward?

Should this be working or is there another way to do what I want with moving between the two programs?

I dont think its a dumb question.

I think there may be a resolution switching issue. It happens sometimes too when closing certian wmulators. Gameex will have to resize the desktop and such.

Try (if you can) setting the resolution of your jukebox software to the same resolution as your desktop runs, then tell Gameex to run at the same resolution.

That may fix it.

Or perhaps a script can be written that will close each process depending on if a process exists.. EG if your hotkey is P1 and P2 start and Gameex is open have it close Gameex and launch the Jukebox, else close the jukebox and lauch gameex.

[Noddy]

Any chance someone can attach a hotkey to gameex on their set up and try use it to switch between two programs (or let me know if they already use them)?

Like I said above the hotkey works fine for the jukebox software, and if I set one for GameEx it will open it but it won't bring it forward if it's already open and there's another program in front of it. Just want to be sure that it's the way gameex responds to a hotkey and not my set up causing the problem.

[Noddy]

Oops edited my last post rather than adding another bottom line of the deleted post is I tried setting pc/gameex/juke to 800x600 and nothing changed.

[Tempest]

Sometimes GameEx can be a bitch after being minimized. Try using Ctrl-Alt-Del, and closing hideos.exe to see what happens.

[Noddy]

There is no hideos.exe I had to take that out to get the zinc games working

(problem was the same before and after)

The alt+tab shortcut works fine which is what I use now. The reason I wanted to change it is that is a three button combination on my cabinet and I have to tell people to switch to the icons. If I can get the hotkeys working I can just put a sticker on saying hold yellow button (shift) and press p1 for games or p2 for jukebox. Just trying to make my cabinet more user friendly for everyone else.

[Brian Hoffman]

There is no hideos.exe I had to take that out to get the zinc games working

(problem was the same before and after)

The alt+tab shortcut works fine which is what I use now. The reason I wanted to change it is that is a three button combination on my cabinet and I have to tell people to switch to the icons. If I can get the hotkeys working I can just put a sticker on saying hold yellow button (shift) and press p1 for games or p2 for jukebox. Just trying to make my cabinet more user friendly for everyone else.

I made a AHK script that will close one program and open another upon hotkey.. I'm sure it would work fine for what you want, and work better than max and min windows or alt tab.

I placed the file in my Gameex directory, subsitute notepad for your jukebox program, use the fullpath

The + is SHIFT

Hotkey, +1, Jukebox
Hotkey, +2, Gameex
return

Jukebox:
Process, exist, Notepad.exe
if ErrorLevel
{
exit
}
else
Process, Close, Gameex.exe
Run, Notepad.exe
return

Gameex:
Process, exist, Gameex.exe
if ErrorLevel
{
exit
}
else
Process, Close, Notepad.exe
Run, Gameex.exe
return

[Noddy]

Thanks BH but I don't want to close the jukebox to get back to gameex, I can set AJ8 (arcade jukebox 8) up as an emulator and it works but again I have to kill the music to play games. What I can't do is have AJ8 constantly playing and skip back into gameex when people want to play games. Most nights my cabinet gets more use as a jukebox with people occassionally playing games (usually galaga after being knocked out of poker ).

By the way when you said save it into the gameex directory did you mean just in the gameex folder or was there a file/document it needed to be attached to? does it matter what it's named?

I saved it as a notepad doc and couldn't get it to work, either after changing it for AJ8 or just leaving it as notepad.

[Noddy]

I didn't think this was worth starting a thread of it's own but should gameex be able to run when windows xp is in safe mode?

Was trying to run it in safe mode to check something with the hotkeys and it crashes, here's the error report.

23:02.4 11/11/2010: Applying GameEx is Loading Image

14:23:03.7 11/11/2010: Setting Resolution to 640x480 32 bit color

14:23:03.9 11/11/2010: Creating Surfaces

14:23:04.6 11/11/2010: --**--

14:23:04.6 11/11/2010: Error: Error in the application.

14:23:05.4 11/11/2010: at Microsoft.DirectX.Direct3D.Manager.GetDeviceCaps(Int32 adapter, DeviceType deviceType)

14:23:05.4 11/11/2010: at n.a(Form A_0, Int32 A_1, Int32 A_2, Boolean A_3, Boolean A_4, Boolean A_5, Boolean A_6)

14:23:05.4 11/11/2010: at n..ctor(Form A_0, Int32 A_1, Int32 A_2, Boolean A_3, Boolean A_4, Boolean A_5, Boolean A_6)

14:23:05.4 11/11/2010: at af.a(Boolean A_0, Boolean A_1, Boolean A_2, Boolean A_3, Boolean A_4, Int32 A_5)

14:23:05.5 11/11/2010: at af.a(Boolean A_0, String A_1, Boolean A_2)

14:23:05.5 11/11/2010: at af..ctor()

14:23:05.5 11/11/2010: Closing database connection

14:23:05.6 11/11/2010: Disposing Plugins

14:23:05.6 11/11/2010: GameEx is exiting with errors

14:23:05.6 11/11/2010: Deleting search cache

14:23:07.3 11/11/2010: ERRORS DETECTED: EXITING

Anyway just curious if Gamex should fail when xp is in safe mode or if I have another bug?

[Tom Speirs]

I dont think DirectX will run in Safe mode.

[Tom Speirs]

I didn't think this was worth starting a thread of it's own but should gameex be able to run when windows xp is in safe mode?

Was trying to run it in safe mode to check something with the hotkeys and it crashes, here's the error report.

23:02.4 11/11/2010: Applying GameEx is Loading Image

14:23:03.7 11/11/2010: Setting Resolution to 640x480 32 bit color

14:23:03.9 11/11/2010: Creating Surfaces

14:23:04.6 11/11/2010: --**--

14:23:04.6 11/11/2010: Error: Error in the application.

14:23:05.4 11/11/2010: at Microsoft.DirectX.Direct3D.Manager.GetDeviceCaps(Int32 adapter, DeviceType deviceType)

14:23:05.4 11/11/2010: at n.a(Form A_0, Int32 A_1, Int32 A_2, Boolean A_3, Boolean A_4, Boolean A_5, Boolean A_6)

14:23:05.4 11/11/2010: at n..ctor(Form A_0, Int32 A_1, Int32 A_2, Boolean A_3, Boolean A_4, Boolean A_5, Boolean A_6)

14:23:05.4 11/11/2010: at af.a(Boolean A_0, Boolean A_1, Boolean A_2, Boolean A_3, Boolean A_4, Int32 A_5)

14:23:05.5 11/11/2010: at af.a(Boolean A_0, String A_1, Boolean A_2)

14:23:05.5 11/11/2010: at af..ctor()

14:23:05.5 11/11/2010: Closing database connection

14:23:05.6 11/11/2010: Disposing Plugins

14:23:05.6 11/11/2010: GameEx is exiting with errors

14:23:05.6 11/11/2010: Deleting search cache

14:23:07.3 11/11/2010: ERRORS DETECTED: EXITING

Anyway just curious if Gamex should fail when xp is in safe mode or if I have another bug?

Are you able to use the GameEx jukebox now? Some of the new features were based on your feedback.

[Noddy]

Almost, it's great that the playlist now clears itself but is there any chance of having it revert back to random songs once its empty? I have it set to play random on start up but once a playlist is cleared it seems to stay silent.

If it can play constantly random and select songs I can ditch the other juke software, the hotkeys, using the ipac via usb (which for some reason my computer doesnt like)and have a gameex only cabinet and that would solve all my problems with making it user friendly.

Thanks for the updates, its an awesome FE .