Party On!

[Goose]

I have Party On! in my start up directory so that it starts when windows begins.

[Frobozz]

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is Party On?

[Zipper]

It's a FE.

It sounds like your problem is that something is loading AFTER Party On when you start-up, and that is shifting focus away from it.
Maybe clear any unwanted stuff out of your Start-Up folder and see if that works. Maybe there is a way of re-ordering the sequence in which they load?
Hope this helps.

[Skeleton]

Yep, I had the same problem with PartyOn. I also had trouble getting focus back to PartyOn after launching some programs from it. I solved it was by creating an AutoIt script that restores focus to PartyOn.  You'll need to download AutoIt (great, free, simple to use scripting program for windows) at http://www.hiddensoft.com/AutoIt/  Download the AutoIt script I wrote from the Magma downloads section of my site at http://www.geocities.com/emu_skeleton/  

To use it on startup, launch PartyOn from a batch file along with the script. To use it when launching stuff from PartyOn, launch programs from a batch file with the start /wait option and place the script on the next line of the batch file. Example:
start /wait c:\fido\fido.exe
c:\AutoIt\AutoIt Partyon.aut

When "fido.exe" is done, the batch file will resume and restore focus to PartyOn. The software page on my site may explain this a little better.

This is sort of a clunky way to do it, but it works well for me.

[jginiso]

Did you guys have any luck getting PartyOn to work with other emmulators? I could not get it to work with Mame32 and a few others...

Thanks
James

[Goose]

Thanks Skeleton.  I will try that and let you know how I made out.

James: I have gotten Party On to run quite a few mame32 games.  You just have to be very careful with the code.  One small mistake and it won't work.  I also have Party On running some pc games, arcade jukebox, winamp and some other proggies.  I'm just in the progress of trying to get some other emulators to work with it.  Give us an example of the code that you use to launch a game and then I can compare it with my own.

Regards,

Goose

[jginiso]

Thanks I'll post an example of what Ive got when I get home. Ive gotten some Win/Dos programs to run but not others. IM trying to make it launch the emmulators themselves instead of specific games. According to the docs there is a -menu command that would let you do this but I cant get that to work either.

[Goose]

Well...that AutoIt proggie did the trick.  Thanks Skeleton.

I have another question for you.  I notice on your screenshots of Party On! that at the top of each screen you were able to put Magma.  Party On! defaults by saying Arcade Pc at the top and I have no idea how to change it.  Could you tell me how you did that?

Another question for Skeleton: How did you get your magma logo to shimmer in that Windows startup picture?

Finally a question for everyone: How do you get windows to stop asking for a login and password when it loads up?

Thanks for your help

Goose

[Goose]

James:  Here is an example of some of my code from Party On!  Hopefully some of it will be of use to you.

This is my code to load a single game for mame32.

Outrun|C:\snap\outrun.jpg|E:\My Documents\New Folder\Stretchmame32asm-037b15b| Stretchmame32a outrun -quit

This is my code to load the mame32 emulator frontend and not just a single game.

M.A.M.E|C:\snap\starmame1.jpg|E:\My Documents\New Folder\Stretchmame32asm-037b15b\|mame32.exe

This is my code to load up a winamp playlist.
WinAmp Playlist (new)|C:\snap\winamp1.bmp|c:\games\mame\help\astdelux.hlp|C:\proggies\Winamp\|winamp newmusicplaylist.m3u -quit

[Skeleton]

Well...that AutoIt proggie did the trick.

[jginiso]

Thanks Goose! I knocked my head against this again this weekend for  awhile and got nowhere. I'll try your code tonight and see if I can make it work. Using batch files like skeleton suggests sounds interesting but I have no clue, so one thing at a time...