Exiting VMJ in a cab?

[Zathras]

I really like VMJ but my one gripe is that to exit you have to press soooo many buttons.  (9998{select}1) - it would be so much easier to tell people "press the orange button."

Has anyone figured a way around this? or am I missing something?

If not any very VMJ-like jukes that allow you to exit easily?

Thanks!

[Random24]

Why not run it with one of Howards wrappers?  I think they listen for the esc key to shut down the app they are wrapping.

[Zathras]

Ah I looked at Howards site but I couldn't find where it describes which wrapper does what - I guess I'll dig further - thanks for the direction

[zman]

Yea, I too wanted to use VMJ...even paid for the application but can't close it down without opening my cabinet up and pullling out the key board.  I submitted a long expaination and request for a "fullscreen to application exit" option but I haven't heard anything on that front yet.  I pop on their site to check up on it fewer and fewer times.  Considering cutting it out of my cabinet and going with a different software package.
If anyone else reads this and has the same problem, do me a favor and post a "I second this" on my posting on their feature page.

Thanks,
zman

[Zathras]

Actually I just never replied w/ the solution - if you use Howards wrapper you can easily set it to exit using escape and it works fine.  When I get a chance I'll post the way I have everything set.

[unclet]

You could use a Hagstrom keyboard encoder which allows you to assign macros to a key press.   Basically, when you press/release a button, the encoder can send multiple keypresses to simulate a person entering many various keys then hitting enter when completed.

[daveok]

Zathras,

Since you now have it sussed, can you or anyone else explain to me how to get a wrapper to run the exit routine?

I presume that it involves the generic keypress wrapper from http://www.oscarcontrols.com/lazarus but any advice is welcome.

Thanks,

Dave

[Zathras]

I'm not in front of my cab at the moment but I was working on getting it set up on a different machine this weekend so it is fresh on my memory.

What I did was put the files from the wrappers/cmdlaunch/ directory in the same directory as VMJ.   Then you edit the lconfig file to change the executable to virtual music jukebox.exe and the exit mode to 5 (that is what it is set to on my cab but you want to experiment with it).  

You then create a batch file that calls:

cmd-launch7 1

That you can run in MameWah etc.


Now what is weird is on my XP machine this will work all day long - but on my win98 machine (that I was trying to get it working on this weekend) it isn't getting the focus right.  It will launch the program fine but I have to minmize it and click on the black background in order to have ESC exit.  I may just need to play around with it more maybe.


There is a new version of VMJ coming out soon that I haven't been able to install correctly yet (its a beta and a known bug) but I was able to fire it up and saw that "ESC" was configurable - so I don't know if they finally have escape built in to escape yet...  it would be nice that is for sure.

[daveok]

Many thanks. That works perfectly as you describe.

I am also using WinXP with MameWah and so get none of the focus problems you describe you have found with Win98.

Thanks again,

Dave

[Zathras]

Well I figured it out - I'm stupid


I noticed this post from Howard  and tried giving the escape key a good press instead of a tap and it worked - D'oh!   In xp you can just tap iit but in 98 you have to hold it for a second...

Oh well problem solved