CPWizard v2.63 Released

[TheManuel]

Did you link the graphic for each joystick and button to the corresponding labels (double-click each button and use the drop-down menu under label link)

[DCsegaDH]

Did you link the graphic for each joystick and button to the corresponding labels (double-click each button and use the drop-down menu under label link)

I don't think I tried that, thanks I'll try that

[TheManuel]

That's what tells CPWizard that its should fade a particular button if it's not used in MAME.  It will look at your ctrlr and cfg files to determine if it's used or not.

[DCsegaDH]

For some reason only player 2 controls show up, but player 1 side is blank, I'm not sure why

[TheManuel]

Perhaps you are using MAME defaults for P2 and have remapped P1?
If so, make sure you have created input labels for P1 controls in your layout.  You have to specify input labels that match your physical controls and mapping.  Let's say you have a keyboard encoder and have programmed it this way:
P1 Up: I
P1 Down: K
P1 Left: J
P1 Right: L

In that case, you have to create a label for each joystick direction and place them in the appropriate places around the picture of the P1 stick in your layout.  For each of the above, under properties, you have to select "Key Code" under "Code Type" and then KEYCODE_I, KEYCODE_K, and so forth.
Then, you would link your joystick picture to one of those Key Codes, as explained before.

You might already be beyond these basics but I'm throwing it out there, just in case.  I'll try to help you get it running as much as I can.

[DCsegaDH]

Perhaps you are using MAME defaults for P2 and have remapped P1?
If so, make sure you have created input labels for P1 controls in your layout.  You have to specify input labels that match your physical controls and mapping.  Let's say you have a keyboard encoder and have programmed it this way:
P1 Up: I
P1 Down: K
P1 Left: J
P1 Right: L

In that case, you have to create a label for each joystick direction and place them in the appropriate places around the picture of the P1 stick in your layout.  For each of the above, under properties, you have to select "Key Code" under "Code Type" and then KEYCODE_I, KEYCODE_K, and so forth.
Then, you would link your joystick picture to one of those Key Codes, as explained before.

You might already be beyond these basics but I'm throwing it out there, just in case.  I'll try to help you get it running as much as I can.

Thanks so much for telling me this, I'm trying this on just on my office computer. I'm probably going to wait until my Mame cabinet is done to do this, but I think I got it. 

[headkaze]

Thanks for helping out Manuel.

For the users who have reported HiToText crashing please report the bug to this thread.

Also to the guy who asked for more GROUP codes, check CPWizard\Data\InputCodes\GroupCodes.txt. It should be fine to add in more groups there.

[TheManuel]

Feeding from the other discussion, and in an effort to keep things organized and easy to find, I've compiled here a list of the issues, potential bugs or feature suggestions that I've identified (some might be my ignorance of how CPW works), for whenever you find time again to look into them.  Again, not an attempt to prod you on, simple trying to save you the time of going through all the threads.

Possible issues:

1) Mame screenshot feature as background when CPW displays, not working for everybody.
Background info in this post and the 4 that follow it.

2) CPW showing default control layout, rather than neogeo layout when there is a neogeo entry in the ctrlr file but individual NeoGeo game entries in the controls.xml file
Back ground info here, and attached ctrlr.cfg and controls.xml files two posts after that.

3) CPW can't pause MAME when multithreading is enabled in the MAME ini file.
MAME ini file entry:
#
# WINDOWS PERFORMANCE OPTIONS
#
multithreading            1

4) When a game does not have an entry in the controls.xml file, CPW shows buttons with generic labels but does not show anything for joystick directions, so joystick fades, unless linked to PLAYER_1_JOYSTICK.
Linking to PLAYER_1_JOYSTICK has the undesired effect that if MAME has joystick entries for a game that is all buttons, like phoenix or asteroids, then the joystick will be shown by CPW, even if only buttons are mapped in MAME ctrlr or cfg.
Background info here and in the few posts before that one.

5) If easy to implement, please consider adding some sort of key-repeat code for non-USB keyboard users.  I have an old iPac through PS/2, and holding down the down direction in the joystick does not scroll down the lists in CPW's info screens (history.dat, etc.).  However, it works fine in HS.  I've noticed that CPW does not take action on key presses, until the key is let got, which pretty much kills that functionality.

I hope this helps.

[headkaze]

Yes thanks it does! 

[TheManuel]

At the risk of incurring your Mitsurugi Damascus Sword wrath, I've added yet another request to the list above.

Regards.

[raungst]

I love CPWizard but I'm having a ton of issues with it playing nice with MaLa. Because of this, I'm searching for solutions to use the abilities of CPWizard (mainly the export image feature) to try work around my troubles. Are there any AHK scripts or anything that can display the images with a keypress in or out of MAME? Or is the intention to use them as bezels and access them with tab? I saw that there used to be a bezel diff that would display the images during a pause, but it seems it wasn't updated as MAME progressed. Any ideas?

My issue with MaLa and CPWizard is that it takes CPWizard (or MaLa, I'm not sure) 10 seconds to bring up the control panel after launching a game if I have MaLa as the shell in windows XP. If I run it outside with explorer running, it takes 2 seconds (which still seems a little long). I'm searching for a solution that's somewhat more instant. Even if I can't get it show after launching a game, it would be nice to get it inside MAME with out having to access the tab menu (I don't have Tab on my control panel).

I know that's a lot of questions... I appreciate any input.

Thanks!

[headkaze]

Have you got the "Dynamic Data Loading" option enabled by any chance? That means all data is loaded as needed rather than at first launch.

Also are you launching CPWizard each time or leaving it launched from startup? If you launch it from startup and leave it launched then send it the command line options it should be quicker.

There is also the bezel option which displays your layout inside MAME without the need for CPWizard running.

If these things don't solve your problem you can try exporting images and looking at Marquee Magician.

[raungst]

With MaLa shelled it's difficult to know if it's launching it standalone each time. I've tried having it run it with -minimized first when MaLa loads, but it doesn't change anything. I've tried it with both dynamic and not dynamic. I didn't see a huge difference. Now that I write all this down, it makes me think it's opening new cpwizards each time. I'm not sure how to fix that.

It looks like the bezel patch works in 0137, though on a different line. I'm having issues recompiling it (see mame compiler thread), but if I can get it working I believe my speed issue will be addressed.

Thanks for the quick reply.

[headkaze]

For older machines I recommend the bezel patch method.

[raungst]

It's a core2duo. Not new, but not old per se. I think the bezel patch is the right way for me too, given the issues I seem to be having. I'll keep trying to recompile. Can you take a look at your stickied mame compiler 64 thread. I get an error when I try to recompile version 0.137. Thanks so much for your help.

[Neverending Project]

I'd bet the issue is similar (or the same) as one I and others have seen with Mala. There was a thread here, but nothing got resolved.

Coincidentally, I just looked at this again last week. I think the issue is the way Mala uses a "Starting" window, but I'm not sure. It seems like when you launch MAME from the Mala menu, it shows a "Starting" window, then hides it and launches MAME. Pausing MAME the first time will (in my case) bring up CPWizard right away, as expected. But exiting CPWizard brings you back to a blank Mala window (no menus, no text), with a minimized title bar in the lower left called FORM or something like that. You can hear MAME in the background because it has been un-paused by CPWizard. If you use a keyboard to switch to MAME, you can then exit and you will go back to Mala. But if you then launch MAME again, when you pause it CPWizard doesn't display correctly. And I think you see a second minimized window/form in the lower left. Repeating the above produces more minimized windows, and a real mess.

I'm sure I am not explaining this well enough for HeadKaze or anyone to help trouble-shoot, but I am interested in finding a solution. So if someone has time to help solve this, I can provide whatever details are necessary.

Note that I have tried this with numerous different options, all with the same results. Most recently, I tried using Method 1 from Headkaze's website.

[raungst]

I was able to solve my slow loading issue of the control panel by correctly using MaLa to get CPWizard into its resident mode. HeadKaze was right, it was loading everything from scratch everytime.

I also see exactly what Neverending Project is talking about. Showing the control panel beforehand works fine, but trying to show the menu, whether via detecting the pause or sending the pause renders MaLa unusable. I'm assuming as well, that its based on how MaLa waits for the emulator to return.

[nipson]

Hopefully someone can solve my issue. I've got CPWizard and Maximus Arcade. The only time I want to show the Control Panel is when a game is chosen from the menu in Maximus. I want it to show the controls for about 5 seconds, then go into the game. I don't care about screenshots/artwork/second monitors etc. I just want it to show for those few seconds before the game is started. I've tried passing in this in the command line PreLaunch tab for mame:

-emu mame -game %name -timeout 5000

While this shows the CP, it never goes back into mame. You can here it the sounds running in the background, but focus never switches to mame. Alt + Tab doesn't get me there either.

I've also selected the Enable checkbox under the MAME Tab in the Options menu in the "Auto Show (On Game Start)" panel. I left Show Delay at 2000 ms and Timeout at 5000 ms. This doesn't seem to work for me. What other options should I be checking?

Can you please help me?

[nipson]

Oddly enough, it has now started working as intended. I removed the prelaunch command line a couple of days ago and have just been going without. Last night I rebooted my pc for probably the 10th time since I made the above post. Fire up Maximus Arcade and what do you know? My layout!

[kenshen]

Sorry for thread Resurrection but I'm having a problem with cp wizard and Mala i get the CP wizard screen with info to appear but when i try to hide it and go back to mame it disappears and  all i see is the background image of MaLa help! 

[kenshen]

Bump?

[secret80sman]

I get CPWizard to launch correctly but even though I designed a panel that accurately reflects my control panel on my cabinet the program always reflects MME defaults for the games not the custom assignments that I have made. Any thought on how to solve this? Is there a file I have to manually edit for every game?

[rtkiii]

I get CPWizard to launch correctly but even though I designed a panel that accurately reflects my control panel on my cabinet the program always reflects MME defaults for the games not the custom assignments that I have made. Any thought on how to solve this? Is there a file I have to manually edit for every game?

This maynot be the same issue I was having but anytime I would change the controls for my games(MK example) CPwizard would just remain the same.  I ended up finding that my path to the ctrl folder(or whatever it was called) was set to the wrong mame path inside of the mame options/paths for CPWizard.  Once I changed that I saw the change in CPwizard.  As for the control panel thing the only way I got it to work is a changed the default file to reflect my cabinet.  If I created one from scratch I had issues(probably a user issue) but changing the default to what mine would be worked like a champ.

[Dawgz Rule]

As for the control panel thing the only way I got it to work is a changed the default file to reflect my cabinet

 

Yeah, I saw the same thing when I was first mucking around with CPWizard so I simply modified the default and it works fine.  (I later figure out what I was doing wrong by cannot remember for the life of me what I did to resolve the issue).  On top of double checking folder path, you may find that you have to exit CPWizard and restart it to reflect the changes. 

[Zeenon]

Well spend the better part of the night configuring CPwizard v2.37 to mimic my CP. Only question I have is, I see some screenshots were the unused button are greyed out, how is this done? I currently have 7 blue buttons per player defined in cpwizard, but when I do a preview only the active buttons (for that game) are displayed.

Z

[headkaze]

You need to use a 'label link' to associate a control with a label.

[Zeenon]

Ben,

Not sure if a phrased the question the right way or I still don't know what I'm doing but......

Cpwizard is working as it should, pull up Golden AX and SF and it correctly shows what buttons to use. But I see on other screen shots people have the unused buttons greyed out. for example on the first screen shot below the three buttons UNDER attack/jump/magic would be grey. (In my case I used my adobe illustrator file as the background so their are button holes under the buttons)

Edit: What a minute!!! Did they use smoke and mirrors and embed the grey buttons in the jpg background???





Z

[headkaze]

Yes you need a label link so it knows which controls to dim. See attached screenshot.

[TheManuel]

headkaze:

If you find the motivation and it's simple, could you add an option in the input section (a check box) to prevent the Select Key from bringing you back to cpwizard's menu?  This way the back key would be required to get to the menu when viewing the controls or any other display.

Best regards.

[capitaineflam25]

Hi,

i'm facing a bug when batch exporting my panels to png (using CPWizard 2.39)

Many images exported are a clone of one game image, for ex. i will get many images containing the controls and the title of "Keks" whereas the games are not this one (see attached examples)
It seems that CPWizard isn't able to generate some images after a certain time of batch conversion, and it is writing a previous succesfully generating image for the currently exported game.
The bug seems to occur randomly after a certain image count, so a workaround is to delete the cloned images and to batch export again with "skip existing" option.
In order to export a full Mame panels set, you have to do that many times to avoid cloned images.

Anybody has faced this issue ? found a better workaround ?
Is there something i can do to help finding the origin of this bug ?

Regards

[jasonbar]

Howdy headkaze-

I'm revisiting CPWizard after several years.

I'm using 2.21 on my MAME cabinet.

I just downloaded 2.39.

What's the most elegant means of updating CPWizard without losing my settings, layout, etc. That is, can I just copy over the newer CPWizard.exe file into my current installation? Ought I copy any other files too?

Thank you,
-Jason

[headkaze]

What's the most elegant means of updating CPWizard without losing my settings, layout, etc. That is, can I just copy over the newer CPWizard.exe file into my current installation? Ought I copy any other files too?

Sorry for the late reply. You should be able to install CPWizard without it effecting any of your settings or layouts although I would backup your CPWizard Data folder just in case.

[greggooch]

Sorry, I created a new thread for this a moment ago but just realized this thread might be the best place for this question.

I am trying to get Layout Mappings to work for CPWizard, where a "constant" such as lightgun, dial, or trackball would bring up a different layout than the default.  The problem I am having is that the sub screen only loads if there is no mapping.  I can get games like Tempest or World Class Bowling Deluxe to display the sub screen only if I uncheck the box in the CPWizard mapping section, but it displays the default mapping in that case.

I have tried reinstalling CPWizard (backing up my CPWizard config folder first), rebooting, and it still does not work even with the default settings from the installer.  I have tried mapping with "Control" vs. "Constant" and even tried both.

I should also mention that the preview tool in CPWizard itself displays the correct layout with no problem.  This is just when I am trying to get it to work with MAME.

[knightrdrx]

it just showed up at game launch without me even finishing setting it up...then i did something and i don't see it anymore (i tried to design my own layout) but regardless..i had to exit manually ...couldn't it just show up for 10 seconds and then the game title screen comes up?
If not I think I'd rather have it on the pause setting if i cian figure that out.

[jaharr01]

Hey I was wondering is there any way to get CPwizard to work with a GGG GP40 controller without using joy2key?

[isolt]

Hi guys I'm having a problem with slow display times in CP when I run it with MALA. Launches fine the first time, then slow.
I see in this thread http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=98573.0 that V2.21 didn't have this issue. Does anyone have a copy of this version? I am currently running the latest version.
I'm running using the recommended display key method, this works fine when running MAME without MALA.
Log http://pastebin.com/bgt5fHZ5
Fresh Restart, CPwizard is running in the taskbar
18:06:13 CP wizard launches quickly, Very slow to close though
18:06:50 Launched for the second time, 44 second delay between show and force.
[3572] 04/02/2015 18:06:56: Show (frmLayout) -> frmLayout hWnd: 0x263302
[3572] 04/02/2015 18:07:40: ForceForegroundWindow (HideDesktop) -> Foreground hWnd: 0x263302
Slow to close again then identical slowness on next try.

Any Ideas guys, or anyone have an older version?

Cheers

[tony.silveira]

same slow display issues on this end, anyone have any ideas?

[knightrdrx]

I'm running 2.40 with mame .155.
Anyone know what that hitotext error message is that locks it up? I got rid of it before I can read it.
Also I don't know why sometimes when i hit pause and cpwizard pops up like it should I can't get rid of it and return to the game . It freezes and I can't unpause.
I have it so that you have to hit the send or show key or whatever and then hit pause again.

Is the send key used to manually minimize it instead of waiting for the countdown?

[empardopo]

Please, where can I download CPWizard?
Thanks in advance.

[knightrdrx]

headsoftware.net