MameWah more questions

[unclet]

I have not used this, but I have many emulators on my cabinet, so I am thinking about using it.   I really like Mame32 and how my small kids already understand how to use that frontend, so I might never change, however, I am thinking about it.

I use a Hagstrom KE72 encoder.   This encoder allows me to execute a program which loads a config file (which I create myself) which has all the key mappings.

I currently have one config file for each emulator I have on my computer.  This way, I can remap all of my control panel buttons for a new emulator by running a specific configuration file.   Then I double click on the emulator to start it up and play.   

Rather than going into each emulator and figuring out how to map buttons to certain keys (which is a pain, since each emulator does this a different way), I decided to take the default key mappings which come with the emulator and remap my control panel layout to use those settings.   

Anyway, I was wondering the following:

1) If I set up MameWah to have multiple emulators, then can MameWah be set up so it will execute my configuration program of the emulator I selected to play, then start the actual emulator?

2) Is there a GUI interface to make setting up MameWah easy .... the current INI file "manual" layout seems a bit confusing, although I have not really looked into at all yet, but it does seem involved......     If not, maybe someone can point to a good site which explains how to set up MameWah manually.

3) Also, how does MameWah display the pictures associated with the emulator?  Does the snap file have to share the exact name as the ROM file?  I am trying to determine whether I will need to rename any snap files.

4) Does MameWah support PNG, GIF and JPG pictures?



As an unrelated side note:
The Hagstrom encoder allows changing button key mappings by loading a configuration file (as stated above) and also allows multiple keystrokes to be mapped to a single button press.  This means I can have one button on my control panel (ie: call it the MAME button) which when pressed can be used to execute a BAT file which will remap my entire control panel for Mame.   Another config button can be used to remap my control panel for playing another emulator ... and so on.    You can even remap your control panel to accomodate left-handed players, if they wanted to have the joystick on the right hand side but use the pushbuttons to the "left" of the joystick.   I thought this was a nice feature for the encoder.    Of course I got the encoder a long time ago, when there were really two choices..... but I like it.   

[Brad]

My kids happily use Mamewah no problems. In fact my 3 year old daughter navigates in and out of games using the P1 and P2 button happily. Unfortunately she only really likes N64 games (Sesame St and Mario =( )

1) Okay Mamewah can call a batch file or program easily. In fact wrappers and joy2key etc are commonly used. Check out jcrouses site for all your needs ini wise.

http://home.comcast.net/~cpviewer

2) You can use Mamewah Config but I don't think it's been updated to support Mamewqah 1.62 so use 1.61 as they are vastly different.

http://www.bluecamel.org/?p=10

3) Pictures need to be the same name as the rom to display.

4) jpg, gif, bmp are supported. Cannot remember for png but I  think so.

Cheers,

Brad

[unclet]

Does MameWAH require one INI file for MameWAH and then one additional INI file per emulator?  I am confused.....

I went to http://home.comcast.net/~cpviewer/downloads.htm and if I go under "Consoles" and click a link, then I get an INI file for the console I clicked on.   

How does this differ from going to the site mentioned above and clicking on "MameWAH Emulator INI Files" ........ what are the difference between these INI files and the other ones?

[boykster]

At least for 1.61.......

Yes, there is 1 "master" mamewah ini file (in the root directory) and then 1 primary ini file for each emulator (and 1 or many more "sub" ini files for the same emulator...1 for each "list" of games).

I know there have been some pretty major changes in 1.62, but I'm pretty sure that the info on jcrouse's site is for 1.61 or earlier.

Rich

[rwhip41]

Does MameWAH require one INI file for MameWAH and then one additional INI file per emulator?  I am confused.....

In addition to the above post (answer), Mamewah will keep a .ini file of each emulator. I have 3 emulators, so MAME is 0000, Daphne is 0001, and Z26 (Atari 2600) is 0002. The Mamewah.ini file is in the main Mamewah directory.

Also, for the Mamewah Config program (very useful!), you have an area to point to a controler such as an IPAC or your Hagstrom controller. I think this is for a global control, though. The Mamewah Config also needs Microsoft's .NET to work.

[unclet]

Ok, I got Mamewah working for a couple of emulators .... just the basic setup so I can kind of understand what makes it tick....

Anyway I have more questions:

1) Some emulators comes with screenshot PNG files (which are small), so when Mamewah displays them in it's game selection screen then the picture looks pretty unclear because the PNG was resized larger to fit the display, thus distorting the image quality.   What do people do here?  Do you keep the PNG files and live with the unclear images or do you take the time to regenerate nice JPG screenshots of all your games?

2) I also tried to associated VisualPinball with MameWah, but can not get it to open up a table.    My "ROM path" is set to the VisualPinball\Tables directory and my "ROM extension" is VPT of course.    I generated a game list, and it finds all my tables and displays a nice screenshot as well, however, when I select atable it does not come up.

Currently, my visual pinball executable is set to use the "VPinball.exe" application.   I tried changing that to use my front-end application Vp-Man.exe, but that did not work either.    Must I try VPLauncher.exe?   What special settings must I use to start a Visual Pinball table from Mamewah?

3) I went to the CPViewer website and downloaded the "Mamewah 640x480 layout set" and noticed there are 4 files per layout (art1, message, main, options).  Where are the "lay" files associated to these?

I then discovered how to download the 800x600 layout set individually, and these included 5 files for each layout (art1, message, main, options, lay) files.    Basically, this set contains the "lay" files as well.

When I used the Atari2600 layout, it seems I only really needed to use the "layout.lay" and "main.jpg" files only to have MameWah work with the layout, so what are the "art1", "message" and "options" files all about?

<EDIT> I just noticed that the Mame layout has 2 "art" files ..... Hmmmm?

4) I went to the new location of the "Screenshots Archive" below:

http://localarcade.com/screenshotarchive/screenshots.htm

...  and wanted to download the Atari2600 screenshots.  I noticed there were two sets.   One set says "ALL - 490 games" and the other set says it is an "update pack".    How is there an "update pack" when ALL the games are included in the first set listed?  The "update pack" states it has 327 games only, so it is missing some, but the "update pack" is in the Good2600 format .....

Which pack should I get?