What happened to GameEX?

[koolmoecraig]

http://www.tomspeirs.com/gameex

Any more details available?

[SavannahLion]

It took me a little while to figure out what GameEX was. I kept trying to search for Gamex.

In any case, I'm confused by the wording on the page. Is he saying that someone cracked his software to charge people for it? I've heard of code theft where someone recompiles open source software then charges for it, but this is the first I've heard of anyone cracking free software to force people to pay. 

[PsychoAU]

The site he links to is a torrent site, so what I gather from it is that someone cracked the software to remove the nag screen and such and posted it to that site. 

But this sort of thing happens every day to a bunch of software, so I think it is really odd that he would react to this by removing the entire site.

On the other hand, a simpler answer is that someone from the linked site hacked Tom's page and removed it while replacing it with a direct link to their page.

Why would a site owner take down their own page and then link directly to the site that supposedly stole his software?

That doesn't make sense, so I'm going to stick with the idea that someone hacked his site and replaced the front page.

[SavannahLion]

Well, I found a Google cache and the software looks free, no mention of nagware anywere. Just a donations link.

The wording is still kind of stange either way. Anybody actually use(d) this software and can clarify things a bit?

[Hoopz]

I have the registered version of GameEx and love it.  Regardless of the nag screen/donation/features argument, I think the big difference here to Tom is that he asks for very little relative to what the software does.  Essentially the entire program is free albeit with a screen when launched asking you to make a donation.  For the vast majority of users, the additional features that you receive after you donate don't mean much.

So for a few dollars, pounds or whatever you get a program that is very actively updated to meet user's needs.  For someone to make it available for free has to be very upsetting for the creator because of the work that goes into it.

Here is a link to the message boards regarding what happened:
http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?showtopic=3747

And yes, I do realize that other front ends are totally free and without a nag screen.  Most of those developers actively update their software to help everyone out also.  I hope this thread doesn't go down that path again comparing GameEx to all the others with the donation/nag screen etc.

[headkaze]

It's not nice to see Indie developers get their software spread on torrent sites. I'm not sure why Tom has removed the website, perhaps he's protesting?

[BobA]

The site is back. Perhaps someone just hacked his site.
It seems to be back to normal now.

[shorthair]

I never encountered this today or yesterday. GameEx is the most-featured FE out there, all accessible from the manager, with generally no need to write files, etc. There are a small few, though glaring, exceptions to this which hopefully will have been addressed in the next release.

[dcsipe]

shorthair,

I'm considering using GameEx as my frontend for my first MAME cabinet.  What are the small, though glaring exceptions with it though?

[shorthair]

Well, Daphne takes more than settings paths. GameEx, for some reason, doesn't automatically recognise all the files, including framefiles. There are two consequences of this: 1) after the first five it sees, you have to go in the manager and rename in the list the ones it missed; 2) you have to re-write the framefile paths in the box for each game. I did all this and still couldn't get it to work.

Another issue is Visual Pinball. I set the paths, but I couldn't get it to work.

Also, if you're wanting to use Advancemame, it says you have to have some supported Mame version. It doesn't tell you why, so this can be misleading. It's pretty obvious if you know that it works this way in GameEx, but I like to know why...however, this isn't the issue that determines if it'll run.

Well, it is...BUT, in addition to that, you have to add to the advancemame options path in the manager indicating where that regular version of mame is. This may be obvious to cmd folk, but I found it by accident; and it's not in the help in GameEx. Although I guess this isn't that big an issue. I guess he expects people who who use Advancemame to know a bit about things. (Advancemame would do well with a gui-type manager...)

Mainly the first two, though.