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Author Topic: Kymaera FE, Version 1.23 now Available!  (Read 31000 times)

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Buddabing

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #40 on: January 29, 2004, 06:40:36 pm »
To all who have pm'd me and volunteered to test and generate skins, The inital ALPHA release of Kymaera is now available at the Emutron download page on my web site. The direct link is:

http://www.pacmanfan.com/download/kymaera.zip


This URL is wrong: http://www.pacmanfan.com/download/kymaera_setup.exe

Should be downloads plural.

Quote


Bug Reporting

If you encounter a bug, please post it to this message thread, and I will attempt to resolve it immediately.


The scrolling list looks great. But MAME doesn't launch for me when a game is selected.

There is no help file, as noted. I couldn't create a master game list since I don't know what "gameplay.ini" is.

It'd be nice if you kept old dialog box data around.

Put an error notice if the game list doesn't create.

After a game is played, set the scrolling game list back to where it was before MAME was launched.

If a letter is pressed, skip to games starting with that letter. (?)

Make the "tick-tick" scrolling sound optional. It's not my personal taste to have a sound play unless something important happens.

Support wheelmouse.

Make a cab-friendly option, have games start by pressing 1 as well as enter.

Good work so far!
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PacManFan

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #41 on: January 30, 2004, 09:30:35 am »
Budda-budda-budda-BING

I'm working on some docs now that should help people. Gameplay.ini is included in the distribution, and it's not completely neccessary to make a gamelist. Gameplay.ini provides information from the KLOV site about # of simultaneous players, Max number of players, and a few other things.

If you don't like to hear the sounds when you scroll, take them out, sound is configurable.

If you don't like to keys I've defined to launch a game, change them, all inputs are configurable.

As far as a game not launching, check your rom paths you've defined, and the launch command settings. Try changing some settings, you'll get it to work.

-PMF
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #42 on: January 30, 2004, 09:47:56 am »
Why use klov?  Why not use controls.ini or controls.xml?  We use klov for a base when starting to look up a game for the database and I can tell you first hand, it's horribly inaccurate.  I've found it has about a 50% success rate.  :(

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #43 on: February 02, 2004, 10:07:46 am »

If you don't like to hear the sounds when you scroll, take them out, sound is configurable.


There's no <none> option on what WAV to play when the list scrolls.
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PacManFan

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #44 on: February 02, 2004, 03:47:03 pm »
No, there's not a <none> option for sounds. I suppose you could type in a non-existant filename for none. I'll put a button in that says "Clear" for the next version.

-PMF
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #45 on: February 02, 2004, 07:32:06 pm »
Nice work!
Some questions:

1) U can ad more joystick inputs? some ppl made all cabinet inputs with joystick interface (like me), i think J1,J2,J3 and J4 with 8 buttons each is enough :)

2) The favorites is working? i assigned a key to the favorites, i saw no effect.

3) The XML editor is not working for me, i cant edit or select fields (but sometimes i can), strange..

4) When games starts loading, a gray screen comes, its possible to change it? with a loading.. image (p. example)

4) maybe its tooo early for that, but its possible to make a "on screen" mp3 player? maybe with new skin

5) Continue the nice work, thx

PacManFan

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #46 on: February 03, 2004, 09:36:31 am »

Quote
Nice work!

1) U can ad more joystick inputs? some ppl made all cabinet inputs with joystick interface (like me), i think J1,J2,J3 and J4 with 8 buttons each is enough :)

Currently, I support 2 joysticks with (I think) 4 buttons each. Putting in 2 more shouldn't be too hard.

Quote
2) The favorites is working? i assigned a key to the favorites, i saw no effect.

Nope, the favorites list isn't hooked up yet, It will allow you to add a game from any emulator into a single game list. It's on my to-do list for the next version.

Quote
3) The XML editor is not working for me, i cant edit or select fields (but sometimes i can), strange..

The grid controls on the gamelist generator are a little twitchy. I used a freeware grid control project from source forge for it, and sometimes it doesn't respond to click events. Currently, you cant click on a row to edit it. I plan to put in a single row edit soon for customization of the fields.

Quote
4) When games starts loading, a gray screen comes, its possible to change it? with a loading.. image (p. example)
Sure, I can make that an optional image when launching an emulator's game.

Quote
4) maybe its tooo early for that, but its possible to make a "on screen" mp3 player? maybe with new skin
I plan on making Kymaera into a full-fledged mp3 jukebox as well, but that might not happen immediately.

Quote
5) Continue the nice work, thx

Will do,

-PMF
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #47 on: February 03, 2004, 02:19:57 pm »
How do I make different gamelists? Is it possible to navigate between different emulators/gamelists from inside the frontend, or do I have to have a frontend for each emulator?

str1der

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #48 on: February 03, 2004, 03:21:33 pm »
How do I make different gamelists? Is it possible to navigate between different emulators/gamelists from inside the frontend, or do I have to have a frontend for each emulator?

I'm kind of in the same boat. I've never done anything with gamelists but would like to. Is there anykind of tutorial out there?

PacManFan

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #49 on: February 03, 2004, 04:13:33 pm »
How do I make different gamelists? Is it possible to navigate between different emulators/gamelists from inside the frontend, or do I have to have a frontend for each emulator?

I know there is no documentation out there, so I'll try to explain the best I can.
First, a couple of things:

1) Kymaera supports multiple emulators, On the main config screen, You can click "Add New" to create a new emulator settings profile. Then you can click on it and click "edit" to configure it.

2) Kymaera supports re-mappable keys. Some of the keys you can re-map are NEXT_EMULATOR and PREV_EMULATOR. These keys move you in a circular list through the emulators you have configured.

3) You can add / remove gamelists to/from an emulator in the emulator configuration screen. You can change the NEXT_GAMELIST / PREV_GAMELIST keys the same way you changes the NEXT_EMULATOR keys. The NEXT/PREV_GAMELIST keys move you in a circular list through the gamelists you have added to each emulator.

Creating a new gamelist isn't too hard. Inside the emu config screen, click the "create/edit" gamelist button. This will take you to the game list editor screen.

From here, you can perform lots of operations on game lists. The top grid is the source game list, and the bottom grid is the destination game list. To create a "Master" game list of all games for mame, click the "create master list" button, then click "mame". Set your mame exe file, and you can browse for the catver.ini file and gameplay.ini (included with kymaera). Choose a filename with a .xml entension somewhere in your /gamelists directory under kymaera.  (catver.ini and gameplay.ini are optional)

Click "create" and the master list of all mame games for your version of mame will be built and saved.

Now, click the "Load source games list" button and load up the file you just created.

From here, you have a bunch of options,
1)You can select all the games and copy them to a destination list
2) you can sort the games
3) you can create and run inclusionary or exclusionary filters and run them to move games from the source to the destination.
4) you can select and copy single or multiple games from source to destination.

Play around with the filters, they are quite powerful for creating gamelists.

After you create a list of games for a "catagory" you want, You can optionally give it a name and image that is tied to a text control and image control in the skin.

Save you game list out as a .xml file in the gamelist directory, and go back to the emu config screen and add it as a gamelist to use.

You can have as many gamelists for an emulator as you want, and you can cycle between them using the next/prev_gamelist keys you've configured.

I hope this enough to get you guys started.

-PacManFan
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str1der

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #50 on: February 03, 2004, 04:43:50 pm »
Ok I was following your directions but there is no cactver.ini or gameplay.ini with Kymaera

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #51 on: February 03, 2004, 04:53:32 pm »
Another question. I was trying to set up my spinner to cycle through the games. I thought the spinner was based on the mouse axis but assigning the mouse_left, right, up or down only lets my trackball controll the list.

PacManFan

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #52 on: February 03, 2004, 08:15:36 pm »
Another question. I was trying to set up my spinner to cycle through the games. I thought the spinner was based on the mouse axis but assigning the mouse_left, right, up or down only lets my trackball controll the list.


Your spinner must be mouse 2, Currently, I only support 1 mouse. I'll see what I can do about putting another mouse in.
 You can download the latest version of catver.ini from TriggerFin's web site. I don't know the address offhand, I'll check and see if I included gameplay.ini with the last release. If I didn't, I'll be sure to put it back in.

-PMF
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #53 on: February 04, 2004, 09:55:41 am »
PacManFan,

So far I like what I see.

I like that I can assign multiple keys to the same function.  As far as I know, yours is the only frontend that does this.

I have run into the bug where the source and destination lists do not respond to clicking.  Please get this fixed.

Gameplay.ini was not in the release I downloaded.

Can i get some information on how to set up skins?

Thanks.
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #54 on: February 04, 2004, 01:09:27 pm »
I'm thinking of putting together another skin in the same style as the first Kymaera skin, but using the rotating wheel feature. Maybe I should document how it's done while I'm at it.

PMF- will you be adding an X/Y co-ordinate display to the skinner? It would save having to go through the .skn file and manually adjust the object positions.

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #55 on: February 04, 2004, 01:23:58 pm »
PacManFan,
So far I like what I see.
I like that I can assign multiple keys to the same function.  As far as I know, yours is the only frontend that does this.
I have run into the bug where the source and destination lists do not respond to clicking.  Please get this fixed.
Gameplay.ini was not in the release I downloaded.
Can i get some information on how to set up skins?
Thanks.

Thanks for checking out Kymaera, It's still very much a work-in-progress. Yeah, I know I've gotta do something about those grid controls not always responding to clicks, It makes editing gamelists a little annoying.

As far as setting up skins, It's not too difficult.
Go into the EMU config, and where it says "skin file", click "edit"
In the skin editor, you can create an new skin, or edit an existing one.
To create a new skin, clcik file->new skin.

At the new skin dialog box, you can set the skin size like 640x480 or 800x600.
NOTE: if you are making a vertical skin (90 or 270 orientation), you have to type the skin size in reverse like: 480x640 or 600x800.
Also, you should create a skin that is the same resolution you plan to run Kymaera in,  That way,the skin won't have to be stretched at all when it's displayed.

After you create the skin, you can start editing it and laying it out. I would recommend starting off by un-checking everything in the list to the right excpet for the background.

Click on the background in the list, and then click edit. You can set the main background image to whatever you want, just make sure it fits the aspect ratio of the skin.

You can hide / show and text or image by clicking on it's checkmark in the list. the current game images will be displayed in the "SNAPS" "MARQUEES" "CABINETS", etc image controls. You can move the images around, and resize the rectangle they display in.

You can click on the "preview" button to see what the skin will look like during operation.

I would suggest experimenting to see what everything does. Check on a control to make it visible, and then click preview to see what appears in it.

Let me know if you have any specific questions.

-PMF
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PacManFan

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #56 on: February 04, 2004, 01:26:27 pm »
I'm thinking of putting together another skin in the same style as the first Kymaera skin, but using the rotating wheel feature. Maybe I should document how it's done while I'm at it.

PMF- will you be adding an X/Y co-ordinate display to the skinner? It would save having to go through the .skn file and manually adjust the object positions.

JoyMonkey, Yes, It's on my to-do list with a million other things, I'll make sure it gets into the next version. I'd love to see a skin using the rotating wheel previewer. I honestly haven't event played aroud with it too much myself after I coded it. I heard a report that it only works in 16bpp mode. I'll have to make sure it works in 8 and 32bpp as well.

-PMF
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #57 on: February 04, 2004, 11:03:30 pm »
Cool,  I started playing around with the skinner and I discovered the Info screen!  

I like it, but I was experiencing some weird problems when i tried to view it in the frontend.  Some times it would not show when I hit next or previous screen.  Some times it would flicker rapidly betweeen the main screen and the info screen. Sometimes it works perfectly. At one point a flickerin menu drop down was visible at the top left corner.

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #58 on: February 05, 2004, 11:48:56 am »
PMF,
        I'm still having some issues. I downloaded a catver.ini for mame 73 whish is the version I'm using. I've setup all of the proper paths for my roms and supporting files (snaps...). I followed the instructions you left for creating a master list. I put in the path to my mame.exe and catver.ini. I left the gameplay.ini blank since there wasn't any. I then used the save as button to point to the gamelist directory and gave it a name of mame73list . I hit ok then the creatlist button. I get a cmd prompt window for about 30- 60 seconds. I then try to load the list but it isn't there. I've tried this several times with no luck. When I load the list that you included with the install, Kymaera comes up with the scrollable list on the right but I get no snaps/cabs/marquees etc. If I hit enter to launch the selected game Kymaera shuts down but MAME doesn't run. I've triple checked all of my pathing and it appears right. I have MAME.exe in c:\mame073b and my roms,snaps, and other files are in sub directories under there. I left Kymaera in the default install directory.
     Any ideas? I really like the look and feel of this FE but I'm not sure what's wrong? Thanks.

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #59 on: February 05, 2004, 12:36:27 pm »
Let's see if I can help.
One thing I should have told you, You need to manually enter a ".xml" extension to the game list you create when you choose the filename  to save the list as, otherwise it won't show up in the open file box.

I'm not sure why the snaps, etc.. are not appearing. Just go back and triple check your paths again. In the emu config screen, set your mame exe, and then click the "quick mame setup" button to automagically set your art paths if they are the mame defualt subdirectories.

Next, go into the skin in the skin editor, and make sure the images are visible (checked next to thier names).

As far as the roms not launching, first check and make sure you have set your rom path under the "Rom Paths" list,
Next, go into the launch command for the emu.

The settings that I have for mame are :

The Program to launch is ($EMUEXE) , click the "EMU EXE" button.
The Program parameters are ($ROMPATH)($ROMNAME)

You may or may not need to send the extension for the rom.

I hope some of this helps. Let me know if it works for you.

-PacManFan
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #60 on: February 05, 2004, 01:37:52 pm »
Thanks, I'll try adding the XML extension manually. Just a note though I went to that directory through explorer and the file wasn't there with or without the extension.

I'll check all of that stuff again but I did check all of the paths and the skin editor to make sure they were being displayed. I did use the "quick mame setup" and it grabbed the correct paths. I'll just keep checking. Looking at some of the other posts it looks like some others are having an issue with mame not launching. Thanks again.

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #61 on: February 05, 2004, 06:44:31 pm »
I tried launching games by pressing ENTER, and Kymaera exits for me too.  Games launch fine pressing SPACEBAR.  I don't know why, I was pressing random keys trying to launch, and that is what worked.

Paul

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #62 on: February 05, 2004, 09:35:52 pm »
I'm putting together a Kymaera skinning guide at http://mame.joymonkey.com/kymaera

It's not too detailed yet, more of a beginners guide to the essentials. I still need to write descriptions of the default skin objects and I haven't even mentioned font properties... etc etc.
There's too many options to document in one sitting, when I went to write the skinning guide I realised just how much work has gone into Kymaera.

PMF- how much time would you say you've already put into making Kymaera? Well done again.  :o

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #63 on: February 05, 2004, 09:39:56 pm »
Ok update time. I believe I got everything working except the spinner being on mouse 2. Let me know if you add that support. I would really like to use it instead of the track ball for scrolling through the list.

1. Manually putting the XML extension took care of my master list creation problem.
2. Didn't realize that you had spacebar set as the default load command and enter causes the FE to exit.
3. I also had to remove the ROM Extension from the load command.
4. I didn't know that Kymaera couldn't read the snaps and other graphics from a single zip file.

Hopefully this will help others

Is there a way to press a hot key to add a game to a custom (favorites) list?
Thanks again.

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #64 on: February 06, 2004, 08:13:05 am »
Instead of having to cycle through each emulator with the NEXT_EMULATOR and PREV_EMULATOR keys, would it be possible to add an option to have a list/menu to select from? It would be nice to be able to have a fancy skin for choosing emulator/game system...

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #65 on: February 06, 2004, 09:45:33 am »
Instead of having to cycle through each emulator with the NEXT_EMULATOR and PREV_EMULATOR keys, would it be possible to add an option to have a list/menu to select from? It would be nice to be able to have a fancy skin for choosing emulator/game system...

I'm putting something like that in now, If you've noticed, I have multiple "Screens" in each skin, The main screen, and info screen, and the screensaver screen. I'm also going to put in a "EMU Select" screen, and put some optional configurations for it. This way, you can either start at the emu select screen, and choose the emulator you want with a list like the gamelist, or you can start directly at an emulator like you do now, and cycle through the emulators.

     I tested out the enter key, and yes, it does make the FE exit for some reason. I need to override the default windows key handler to stop that. That should be in the next release. Also on the horizon is going to be the ability to read art files directly from zip archives.


Thanks for all the feedback people, Keep it coming!

-PacManFan.
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PacManFan

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #66 on: February 06, 2004, 09:54:06 am »
I'm putting together a Kymaera skinning guide at http://mame.joymonkey.com/kymaera

It's not too detailed yet, more of a beginners guide to the essentials. I still need to write descriptions of the default skin objects and I haven't even mentioned font properties... etc etc.
There's too many options to document in one sitting, when I went to write the skinning guide I realised just how much work has gone into Kymaera.

PMF- how much time would you say you've already put into making Kymaera? Well done again.  :o

Joymonkey,
That sounds great! Thanks a lot for all your help through this. One thing to note, When you change a font for a text control, It doesn't change until you re-load the skin.  :'(  I noticed this the other day when I was setting up a skin on my new mame cab. I'll be sure to fix it by the next release along with a million other little things.

It's hard to say how long I've been working on Kymaera. I started coding it in October, but I had taken the screen functions, and video core out of EmuTron. When I originally wrote EmuTron, I think those functions took me about 2 months to get working right. So all in all, about 6 months working about 1-3 hours a day in my spare time.

-PMF
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #67 on: February 09, 2004, 01:14:41 pm »
There appears to be a problem with short game lists.

If the list does not have enough games to fill the box, then the lsit starts to repeat itself.
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #68 on: February 09, 2004, 01:15:28 pm »
Whoops, no screen shot.
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #69 on: February 09, 2004, 01:24:41 pm »
Yeah, I built the game list so it is "circular" instead of linear. That way, it 'll wrap around at the bottom to the top. That was one of my biggest pet peeves about some other FE's I checked out.

There are 2 things you can do:

1) Make the gamelist rectangle smaller so it lists fewer games (move top donw a little and bottom up a little)
2) Bump up the font size

-PMF
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #70 on: February 09, 2004, 01:44:27 pm »
Niether of those solutions is really practical for me.

I have some gamelists that only have 4 games in them and others have hundreds.

It is possible to make a list that is circular without haveing it display multiple times.  I have done it in Java apps and even in COBOL.

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #71 on: February 09, 2004, 01:46:50 pm »
Really, How?
Artificially inserting blank entries?

Or did you have something else in mind? I'm open to suggestion.

-PMF
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #72 on: February 09, 2004, 02:10:34 pm »
Ok update time. I believe I got everything working except the spinner being on mouse 2. Let me know if you add that support. I would really like to use it instead of the track ball for scrolling through the list.

1. Manually putting the XML extension took care of my master list creation problem.
2. Didn't realize that you had spacebar set as the default load command and enter causes the FE to exit.
3. I also had to remove the ROM Extension from the load command.
4. I didn't know that Kymaera couldn't read the snaps and other graphics from a single zip file.

Hopefully this will help others

Is there a way to press a hot key to add a game to a custom (favorites) list?
Thanks again.

Hey PAC,
            I never did see an answer to the favorites list hot key question. Any word on whether or not you'll be able to support Mouse 2?

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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #73 on: February 09, 2004, 02:12:51 pm »
There are a couple things I can think of.

You have the scrolling setup so the highlighted game is always in the middle of the list. The highlighting does not move, the list does.  

When your list is shorter than the box, you should switch to have the highlight move instead of the list.

When I display the game list with only four entries, you can see the whole list 4 times, and the selected game is highlighted in all 4 repetitions.  This tells me you have most of the logic in there already.


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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #74 on: February 09, 2004, 02:29:13 pm »
hmmmm,
I'll have to think about that one and see what I can do.

-PMF
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #75 on: February 09, 2004, 02:40:32 pm »
Inserting blank lines might work, as long as it does not try to scroll through them.
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #76 on: February 09, 2004, 03:40:14 pm »
Maybe I should report some of my success as well.

I have been able to set up and run MAME, Visual Pinball, and Daphne.  Visual Pinball and Daphne each use one gamelist.  Mame has several and I will be adding more.

Can I manually edit the .xml files to get around some of the problems with the grid selection.  
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #77 on: February 09, 2004, 03:50:42 pm »
Yup, you can use any standard XML editor, or import into Access, Good to hear you've had some success.

-PMF
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #78 on: February 09, 2004, 03:57:01 pm »
Yeah, I like it and I am probably going to put it in both of the cabs I have built.

By the way, can you post the gameplay.ini file for those of that did not get it in the distribution?
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Re:Kymaera FE, new Beta now Available
« Reply #79 on: February 10, 2004, 02:09:04 am »
ErikRuud-
Would you mind posting a walkthru for setting up Visual Pinball?  I'm having a hard time getting it to work.

Thanks,
Paul