CPWizard v2.63 Released

[doctorhifi]

attached.
I found no .hi for Simpsons in my hi folder.
I randomly tested a bunch of other games in my favorites list, and the only two I got to glitch were Simpsons and Xmen.  Not exhaustive testing, but hope that helps.

[Fyrecrypts]

attached.
I found no .hi for Simpsons in my hi folder.
I randomly tested a bunch of other games in my favorites list, and the only two I got to glitch were Simpsons and Xmen.  Not exhaustive testing, but hope that helps.

Looks like you're using an outdated hiscore.dat that HiToText does not work with. Pick up the latest version here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=83614

This is even more reasoning for me to get version control into HiToText, so this can't happen.

[doctorhifi]

oops, my bad.
I thought I saw a hiscore.dat in the CPW folder; I must have accidently pointed cpw to grab the hiscore.dat from another folder.

[Fyrecrypts]

oops, my bad.
I thought I saw a hiscore.dat in the CPW folder; I must have accidently pointed cpw to grab the hiscore.dat from another folder.

I am still wondering about The Simpsons though, I can't remember if I made changes to the hiscore.dat for that or not. =/ So if you have any of these .hi files, I'd like to see them too if I could: "simpsons,simps4pa,simpsn2p,simps2pj,simps2pa"

[doctorhifi]

I hate to admit it, but I'm not up on the ins & outs of the whole hiscore thing.
I don't understand the relationship between the hiscore.dat and the hi folder.

I didn't even know for sure where the default location was for the hiscore.dat file but the only place I found it was in the mame root file so I copied the latest version from the link HK posted and put it in the mame root folder.

However, that did not correct the CPW problem I reported so I'll assume I'm still doing something wrong.

Also, Fyrecrypts asked for the .hi files from any of the simpson games but there is no simpson game .hi file in any form in my hi folder.  So I'm curious why the Simpson game shows this error if it is related to a .hi file when one doesnt exist.
Thanks

[headkaze]

Just thought I would reply to this PM so everyone can read it

I was just wondering if there was any progress that I may have missed on having CPwizard show the control panel on a separate display. I want to start a game and have it load the CP layout on a small tv next to my cab, without having to push a button to do so. Is this possible?

It is definately on the cards, I was thinking about it today actually. It's going to be in the next release. It might be a week or so before I get around to it though.

Another feature on the cards is multiple layouts per game, so you can move the joystick left or right to scroll through multiple layouts. This should cater for people with large CP's or like to have a screen for several parts of their CP (Eg. Trackball, Player 1, Player 2, Lightgun etc.)

So yeah got a few things lined up for next release. Stay tuned!

[Ginsu Victim]

Thanks for the reply!

[urbecrisch]

Headkaze, would you so be so very kind and write or link me to a quick tutorial on how to add a new layout and designate it for a specific EMU in CPW?  I had been only using Mame with CPW (and Hyperspin FE) but I just added Future Pinball on my cab and plan on adding a few more EMU's.  I'm not sure where to place the new finished layout so when I pause it will show me the layout for the EMU I'm currently using. 

[Charles4400]

This kind of goes along with urbecrisch question above...

Is it possible to use CPWiz on multiple versions of mame?

I am running mame 127 for most games but am also using Fastmame95 for the troublesome games limited by my PC (all this is also within Hyperspin).

I can't figure out though, how to get CPwiz to work on the Fastmame95 (mame.95) games...tried working with the profiles but can't get cp wiz to show at all on the the other version of mame ...(and don't know if I am doing the profiles corectly)

Thanks!

[TheShanMan]

HK, believe it or not I'm toying with the idea of running CPW for everything but the CP, and using the bezels for the CP because of my preference for the bezels. So I'm thinking of having the menu appear with a different key.

1 question and 1 problem:

Question: I see you added support for firecrypt's high score app, but it's not clear to me how to configure it. I thought perhaps you were actually including a copy of the app with the cpw installer, but I'm not seeing that menu item show up. I might have missed it, but how do I configure this? I haven't ever used the app before but figured this was a good excuse to try it out.

Problem: Using an analog joystick to scroll game info and mame info screens requires you to press, release, press, release. In other words, there's no "repeat" like there is if you're using the down key. Would be nice if I could just hold the joystick down for continual scrolling.

Nice work though! Due to my cab dropping off of my network, I hadn't updated since 1.91 I think, so lots of new goodies.

[blind_dado]

When I pause MAME it used to announce the button assignments like this:

Girl: "Player One, Button One" Guy: "Jump"

Now it doesn't do that anymore.  Everything else works.

First, I'm not even sure if CPWizard is what was causing this to happen.  If it is, any ideas as to why it stopped working?

[headkaze]

Sorry I didn't get back sooner been a bit busy.

TheShanMan: Yes HiToText is included with CPW although it's not the latest version I update it everytime I release a new version. You basically need to use the hiscore diff patch (pinned topic in the software forum) and then create a "hi" folder in the Mame directory and place the hiscore.dat file (the one Fryrecrypts has attached to the HiToText topic) into Mame's root folder (ie. don't place the dat file in the "hi" folder). Unfortunately the forum is having troubles with attachements at the moment but they're working on it.

Thanks for the suggestion about analog joystick input, really great idea and I can't believe I missed that! Will definately be in the next update. I do find it annoying having to keep pushing a joystick to browse menus.

blind_dado: That feature has nothing to do with CPWizard. That sounds like PlugInLCD or LEDBlinky. So you need to find out which one your using and start a new topic related to that and I will try to help out from there.

I have a couple of features I've been promising but have been really busy with a game I'm working on with Flash for the Nintendo DS so it's kinda taken backstage a bit for now. But this project will not die anytime soon!

[blind_dado]

Ah, yes, I see now that it is the LCD/LED plugin for GameEx that has the Speak Button function feature.  I'll post over in that forum.

[TheShanMan]

HK, I realized why it wasn't picking up the high score stuff - when I upgraded it didn't automatically populate the "hi" and "nvram" directories, so I had to manually enter them. I'm assuming those are new directories added for hitotext. If possible, you might consider trying to auto-set them on upgrade to avoid people like me bugging you about hitotext not working.

At any rate, CPW has come along quite nicely since my last update!

[Fyrecrypts]

HK, I realized why it wasn't picking up the high score stuff - when I upgraded it didn't automatically populate the "hi" and "nvram" directories, so I had to manually enter them. I'm assuming those are new directories added for hitotext. If possible, you might consider trying to auto-set them on upgrade to avoid people like me bugging you about hitotext not working.

At any rate, CPW has come along quite nicely since my last update!

The hi folder needs to be created for the hi score enabled version of MAME. The .hi files are created/modified any time you play a game that has an entry in the hiscore.dat file. There is a line in MKChamp's sticky about compiling the hi-score enabled MAME. "...and don't forget to create a sub folder under your mame directory named "hi"...that's it!"

The nvram folder is created by any version of MAME where the original game had NVRAM and therefore MAME needs to generate an nvram file.

In short, play the games, and the files will get created.

[TheShanMan]

Oh, I know about that, FC. I've already done all that. It was CPWizard that wasn't configured properly. Thanks though.

One thing I noticed that is unfortunate but not a huge deal is that if you get a high score, then view the hitotext table in CPW, you don't see the score. I realize it's because the .hi file isn't written until you exit mame though, so I'm sure that's something that hitotext and CPW have no control over.

[headkaze]

Oh, I know about that, FC. I've already done all that. It was CPWizard that wasn't configured properly. Thanks though.

One thing I noticed that is unfortunate but not a huge deal is that if you get a high score, then view the hitotext table in CPW, you don't see the score. I realize it's because the .hi file isn't written until you exit mame though, so I'm sure that's something that hitotext and CPW have no control over.

We could of course add an auto save of the .hi/.nvram to the bezel patch so that it saves when you hit pause

[TheShanMan]

Ha ha! One of these days the bezel patch will turn into a rewrite of mame (we'll call it MameHK)!

[TheShanMan]

I think I found a bug with analog joystick support. I believe if you disconnect and reconnect a joystick, it doesn't work with CPWizard anymore (moving up and down through the menus). It could also be if the computer suspends and then resumes. I'm not 100% positive which it is but I believe it's the former. You may recall that I have swappable panels, so my u360's aren't always connected. After using a different panel for a while I came back to the u360 panel and now I can't move around in the menus.

Let me know if you can easily confirm this, or if I need to do a little more investigating.

[jasonbar]

Hi Headkaze-

I'm finally dipping my toes into the cold waters of control panel viewer programs. 

Lame newbie question #1:

I went through your Quick Install Guide: http://members.iinet.net.au/~freeaxs/cpwizard/quickinstall.shtml & got stuck on step 7.  When I select View/Preview, I get an empty box (see attached pic below).

In step 5, I did select my (primary) MAME Exe folder & it filled in all the rest of the lines (except Manuals, PCB, Previews, & Select), then I got the "Loading.  Please wait." screen, as expected.  Ideas?


Lame newbie question #2:
I have about a dozen games that run on about 4 different mame.exes, each in its own folder.  I also have 2 versions of Daphne in 2 other folders.  Will those games be captured in the CPWizard list?


Thank you very much,
-Jason

[headkaze]

TheShanMan: I haven't looked at adding "hot swap" joystick support. I will take a look next time I do an update.

jasonbar: Are you using an older version of Mame? It needs to be a version that supports xml list output. When it says "Please Wait" should be creating a file called ListInfo.xml and MiniInfo.xml in CPWizard's Data folder.

[jasonbar]

Headkaze.  I'm using .115.

It did indeed create ListInfo.xml & MiniInfo.xml files in c:\Program Files\CPWizard\Data.


Here's how MiniInfi.xml starts (as viewed in MSIE):
  <?xml version="1.0" ?>
- <Mame>
- <Game Name="puckman" SourceFile="pacman.c">
  <Description>PuckMan (Japan set 1, Probably Bootleg)</Description>
  <Year>1980</Year>
  <Manufacturer>Namco</Manufacturer>
  <Display Type="raster" Rotate="90" Width="288" Height="224" Refresh="60.60606" />
  <Chip Type="cpu" Name="Z80" Clock="3072000" />
  <Chip Type="audio" Name="Namco" Clock="96000" />
- <Input Players="2" Buttons="1" Coins="2" Service="False">
  <Control Type="joy4way" />
  </Input>
  <Driver Status="good" Emulation="good" Color="good" Sound="good" Graphic="good" SaveState="supported" PaletteSize="32" />
- <ControlsDat NumPlayers="2" Alternating="1" Mirrored="1" UsesService="0" Tilt="0" Cocktail="1">
  <MiscDetails />
- <Player Number="1" NumButtons="0">
- <Controls>
- <Control Name="4-way Joystick">
  <Constant Name="joy4way" />
  </Control>
  </Controls>
- <Labels>
  <Label Name="P1_JOYSTICK_RIGHT" Value="Right" Color="Red" />
  <Label Name="P1_JOYSTICK_LEFT" Value="Left" Color="Red" />
  <Label Name="P1_JOYSTICK_DOWN" Value="Down" Color="Red" />
  <Label Name="P1_JOYSTICK_UP" Value="Up" Color="Red" />
  </Labels>
  </Player>
  </ControlsDat>
  <CatVer Category="Maze" VerAdded=".002" />
  <NPlayers Type="2P alt" />
  <HallOfFame WeightedAverage="65.3" Votes="267" />
  </Game>


And here's the beginning of ListInfo.xml:
  <?xml version="1.0" ?>
  <!DOCTYPE mame (View Source for full doctype...)>
- <mame build="0.115 (Apr 19 2008)" debug="no">
- <game name="puckman" sourcefile="pacman.c" runnable="yes">
  <description>PuckMan (Japan set 1, Probably Bootleg)</description>
  <year>1980</year>
  <manufacturer>Namco</manufacturer>
  <rom name="namcopac.6e" size="4096" crc="fee263b3" sha1="87117ba5082cd7a615b4ec7c02dd819003fbd669" region="cpu1" offset="0" status="good" dispose="no" />
  <rom name="namcopac.6f" size="4096" crc="39d1fc83" sha1="326dbbf94c6fa2e96613dedb53702f8832b47d59" region="cpu1" offset="1000" status="good" dispose="no" />
  <rom name="namcopac.6h" size="4096" crc="02083b03" sha1="7e1945f6eb51f2e51806d0439f975f7a2889b9b8" region="cpu1" offset="2000" status="good" dispose="no" />
  <rom name="namcopac.6j" size="4096" crc="7a36fe55" sha1="01b4c38108d9dc4e48da4f8d685248e1e6821377" region="cpu1" offset="3000" status="good" dispose="no" />
  <rom name="pacman.5e" size="4096" crc="0c944964" sha1="06ef227747a440831c9a3a613b76693d52a2f0a9" region="gfx1" dispose="yes" offset="0" status="good" />
  <rom name="pacman.5f" size="4096" crc="958fedf9" sha1="4a937ac02216ea8c96477d4a15522070507fb599" region="gfx1" dispose="yes" offset="1000" status="good" />
  <rom name="82s123.7f" size="32" crc="2fc650bd" sha1="8d0268dee78e47c712202b0ec4f1f51109b1f2a5" region="proms" offset="0" status="good" dispose="no" />
  <rom name="82s126.4a" size="256" crc="3eb3a8e4" sha1="19097b5f60d1030f8b82d9f1d3a241f93e5c75d6" region="proms" offset="20" status="good" dispose="no" />
  <rom name="82s126.1m" size="256" crc="a9cc86bf" sha1="bbcec0570aeceb582ff8238a4bc8546a23430081" region="sound1" offset="0" status="good" dispose="no" />
  <rom name="82s126.3m" size="256" crc="77245b66" sha1="0c4d0bee858b97632411c440bea6948a74759746" region="sound1" offset="100" status="good" dispose="no" />
  <chip type="cpu" name="Z80" clock="3072000" />
  <chip type="audio" name="Namco" clock="96000" />
  <display type="raster" rotate="90" width="288" height="224" refresh="60.606061" flipx="no" />
  <sound channels="1" />
- <input players="2" buttons="1" coins="2" service="no" tilt="no">
  <control type="joy4way" reverse="no" />
  </input>
- <dipswitch name="Rack Test (Cheat)">
  <dipvalue name="Off" default="yes" />
  <dipvalue name="On" default="no" />
  </dipswitch>
- <dipswitch name="Service Mode">
  <dipvalue name="Off" default="yes" />
  <dipvalue name="On" default="no" />
  </dipswitch>
- <dipswitch name="Cabinet">
  <dipvalue name="Upright" default="yes" />
  <dipvalue name="Cocktail" default="no" />
  </dipswitch>
- <dipswitch name="Coinage">
  <dipvalue name="2 Coins/1 Credit" default="no" />
  <dipvalue name="1 Coin/1 Credit" default="yes" />
  <dipvalue name="1 Coin/2 Credits" default="no" />
  <dipvalue name="Free Play" default="no" />
  </dipswitch>
- <dipswitch name="Lives">
  <dipvalue name="1" default="no" />
  <dipvalue name="2" default="no" />
  <dipvalue name="3" default="yes" />
  <dipvalue name="5" default="no" />
  </dipswitch>
- <dipswitch name="Bonus Life">
  <dipvalue name="10000" default="yes" />
  <dipvalue name="15000" default="no" />
  <dipvalue name="20000" default="no" />
  <dipvalue name="None" default="no" />
  </dipswitch>
- <dipswitch name="Difficulty">
  <dipvalue name="Normal" default="yes" />
  <dipvalue name="Hard" default="no" />
  </dipswitch>
- <dipswitch name="Ghost Names">
  <dipvalue name="Normal" default="yes" />
  <dipvalue name="Alternate" default="no" />
  </dipswitch>
  <driver status="good" emulation="good" color="good" sound="good" graphic="good" savestate="supported" palettesize="32" />
  </game>


Does that shed any light?

Thanks,
-Jason

[headkaze]

jasonbar: I did find a bug with older versions of Mame which could cause the preview game list not to show. I have fixed this and tested as working in Mame 0.104. So please try CPW v2.15. Let me know how you go. If your still having problems the CPWizard.log file might help.

[jasonbar]

Booya!!!!

Thanks!  I had downloaded CPWizard yesterday & it was 2.14.  Did you *just* put up 2.15 late last night or this morn?  I did an install into the same directory & now the list shows up.  I looked at a couple of previews.  They look OK.

Can't wait to start working on this.


Final (maybe) noob question for a bit.  The button labels are being populated over the control panel image based on what's in the listinfo.xml & miniinfo.xml files, right?  And those files are generated from data in the mame.xml in my mame.exe folder, right?  I know that, in my MaLa front end, I'm showing a text list of controls on one of my info screens, and I think that's fed by controls.ini.  That file is often wrong.

What I'm getting at is, as I painstakingly & meticulously go through the games & fix the ones that need a little fixing, is there somewhere I can upload/share this info so that it get disseminated to the public or put into some future MAME (or other) release?  Is that what the controls.dat project is?

 

Thanks,
-Jason

[TheShanMan]

TheShanMan: I haven't looked at adding "hot swap" joystick support. I will take a look next time I do an update.

Cool. Did it happen to appear in 2.15? I'm guessing that was just a real quick bug fix release.

[headkaze]

Cool. Did it happen to appear in 2.15? I'm guessing that was just a real quick bug fix release.

Yes you were right, but check out 2.16

[TheShanMan]

Great! I'll load it up soon!

[Kayden]

Hi HeadKaze,

I was using your program to pump out some CPs and found myself having a few issues with the interface. 

If I selected multiple labels to move them all the same way at the same time, things like the left/right/center justification would be applied to all the selected labels.  I selected all my labels to apply the same color to them all at once, but it then applied the same justification to all of them without me telling it to.  =(

Another issue I had was with editing the label text.  I set up a few new labels and then went to enter my text.  I clicked on label one and gave it the value "SHIFT" and then I click on label two to edit it... at that point, label 2 was given the value "SHIFT" and label one revered to "New Label".  So I had to open the properties, edit the label, close the properties, click on the next item, open properties, edit it, close properties...

Also, when doing a preview on 6 button games, buttons 5 and 6 for player two don't work.  They show up as unused with no labels.  A workaround I found was to just copy P1 to P2, but that also came with it's own set of issues.  When I pasted the copied layout, the labels from P1 were linked to the buttons for P2 and the P2 labels were unlinked.  A simple solution for that is to just shut off the arrows or remap them all manually.  One time I pasted and all the pasted buttons wound up being linked to one label.     I deleted the paste and pasted again and it worked fine.

Very randomly, clicking on an item will make it jump.  I found this to be highly annoying as I wanted P1 and P2 to be identical, but when I'd click on a P2 button to remap it to the P2 label, the button would, on occasion, jump in a random direction, sometimes up to a quarter inch.  I wasn't clicking and dragging on accident; I was doing this on a laptop with my hand no where near the touch pad and just clicking the button would make seemingly center the picture on the mouse cursor. 

Maybe I'm dumb, but I also couldn't find a way to shrink the work area of the CP.  I have a small background on my CP that uses about 1/3 the work area.  When I go to export my CPs, the image put out is the full size of the work area and is 2/3rds empty space.  It's not a huge deal, but when I go to enter the CP field in the Mala layout editor, I have to make it 3x the size of the CP or else it doesn't fit right.

I had a bit of user error with the preview function as well.  I was setting up my layout and hitting preview, saving when asked, and then being presented with the default layout!  I was becoming irate until I figured out you had to specify the layout to use for mame in the options.  I found it to be kinda counter intuitive.  Would it be possible to make it so that you can preview the active template without configuring it in the options as the mame template?

I also had a bit of a weird error happen with my batch exports.  The first time I exported everything and configured Mala to display it, Mala would crash every time I tried to open it.  After some testing, I found out that it was the CP images.  If I removed them, Mala worked fine.  So I ran a new batch and Mala worked fine... however, half of the templates listed "Rack + Roll" as the game with a 2 button layout.  Running the batch again seems to have fixed it though.

Could I also make a few feature requests?  It'd be nice if, in the editor, it were possible to lock items, or even specific traits of an item (color/justification/link), so they could not be edited or moved.  UNDO would be invaluable as well as being able to set image order.  I wanted to insert and image between my buttons and the CP background and it would only go over everything except the labels.

I'm also having some issues with CPwizard when I pause.  It doesn't always pop up when I pause, but after reading through this thread a bit, I suspect it's because I assigned the same key to close as well as pause.   

[jasonbar]

HeadKaze-

I've started sitting down with CPW to make my control panel, & I'm very impressed!

A couple of quick questions/feature requests:

1 - Is there a way to rotate text on labels?  For crowded panels, it would be nice to have the option to have the text go straight up (rotated 90deg CCW) or uphill (45deg CCW).  I don't think anybody would need infinitely adjustable text angle.  Whatever's easiest for you to implement: enter an angle value or just pick from 0, 45, & 90 radio buttons?

2 - When I edit a label, select the text color, define a custom color, then hit Add to Custom Colors, I see the custom color appear below the grid of standard colors.  But, when I hit OK & then go back to the color swatches, the custom color is no longer there.

3 - Also, another non-big deal, but I put down my 800x600 background image (http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff97/infernolab/Arcade%20Game/24controlpanelviewer.jpg) & some of the objects got "lost" off the right side of my image, where I couldn't see them or drag them back.  No biggie, I just edited the layout's .xml file in notepad to reign in the X value on those items & then manipulate them as needed.


Thanks--this is fun! 

-Jason

[TheShanMan]

Also, when doing a preview on 6 button games, buttons 5 and 6 for player two don't work.  They show up as unused with no labels.  A workaround I found was to just copy P1 to P2, but that also came with it's own set of issues.  When I pasted the copied layout, the labels from P1 were linked to the buttons for P2 and the P2 labels were unlinked.  A simple solution for that is to just shut off the arrows or remap them all manually.  One time I pasted and all the pasted buttons wound up being linked to one label.     I deleted the paste and pasted again and it worked fine.

I recall this issue vaguely. It works fine for me though. IIRC the issue is that by default, mame only maps buttons 1-4 for player 2. You'll need to map buttons 5 and 6 to see them properly in CPW. In other words, CPW is only as accurate as your mame mappings!

[Kayden]

Funny you should say that.  I went through and defined my buttons as they are in Mame and then nothing worked.  The labels only work if I use the defaults.

[TheShanMan]

You must be doing something wrong then because I use many non-default key mappings and CPW works flawlessly.

[jasonbar]

HeadKaze-

Sorry for the barrage of n00b posts, but I'm trying to get a feel for the inner workings of CPWizard so that I can debug some inconsistencies that I'm finding in the display of certain games.

As best I can tell, here's how MAME determines what button does what:
- controls.ini lists the joystick buttons & labels (example: Asteroids shows joystick left & right are "Rotate Left" & "Rotate Right" & P1 Buttons 1-3 are fire, thrust & hyperspace)
- the .cfg files in mame/config show overrides for specific games (example: to make Asteroids more like the arcade 5-button layout & to ditch the 2-way stick, I use P1B1=LAlt, P1B2=Space, P1B3=Mouse1B2, P1B4=Mouse1B1, P1B5=N)

Then, when I launch CPWizard & tell it where my mame.exe is, it finds controls.ini & mame.xml & generates MiniList.xml & ListInfo.xml

Example 1: '99: The Last War (rom name 99lstwar).  CPWizard displays buttons 1 & 2 as "1" & "2", because there's no <Labels> entry under this rom name in MiniList.xml.  Using rom asteroid as inspiration, I "fixed" this game to show "Fire" & "Shield" in CPWizard.  This much I understand.

Example 2: Asteroids (rom name asteroid).  CPWizard displays "Rotate Left" & "Rotate Right" next to my P1 stick.  I edited MiniList.xml to show "Left" & "Right" because of overcrowding issues on my Frankenpanel.  This is straightforward.

Example 3: X-Men (rom name xmen, 4P version).  To somewhat maintain the chevron layout of the 3 buttons per player in this game, I'm using my Neo Geo dangly left button & its 2 neighbors, instead of the standard 3-in-a-row default buttons used in most games for P1B1, P1B2, & P1B3.  These display just fine in CPWizard, even though MiniInfo.xml doesn't contain this remapping info.  So, it appears that CPWizard goes out to xmen.cfg in mame/cfg & updates the keys accordingly.  That's great--that means that CPWizard will stay udpated if I tinker w/ individual games--cool!

Example 4: Asteroids (rom name asteroid).  This display is very funked up in CPWizard.  See above for my remapping scheme.  This displays with "Left" & "Right" still on the joystick (but with my edited, shortened text labels, which is good), and then "Thrust", "Fire", & "Hyperspace" are all incorrect.  What should be "Left" & "Right" are labeled "Fire" & "Thrust", respectively, the buttons that should be "Thrust" & "Hyperspace" are blank, & "Fire" is mistakenly labeled "Hyperspace".  So, is there some code in one of these files that's overriding my reassigned keys & reverting back to what it thinks should be used for Asteroids (that yucky left-right stick control)?

Example 5: Daphne games & spinner hack games.  I have many Daphne games & a handful of "duplicate" games that I emulate normally in 115 & also with the spinner hack in 105.  I edited my mame.xml file to include the extra names, so the Daphne games appear normally in MaLa in my main game list.  And I use dummy entries in MaLa's game list to make the spinner hack games appear.  These don't show up in MiniList.info or ListInfo.xml.  How can I edit these xml files to make them appear?  Or, how can I alter whatever source file CPWizard uses so that it generates these extra games into its files?


I'm not afraid of plugging through my 2245 games & checking/fixing the anomalies, but I want to make sure that I know how to do it correctly.  Better yet, since I generally can't offer much software technical support to all these cool development projects like CPWizard, I'd much rather use my brute force patience to see that the appropriate files get updated correctly for everybody's benefit (like '99: The Last War & it's unlabeled buttons).


Thank you very much,
-Jason

[TheShanMan]

Tried the new version and have a couple of comments:

I read that you added "wrap around" support for the menus (going from bottom to top or vice versa), but this is also "afflicting" the info screens. It's disconcerting to read through the info screen and then all of a sudden have it pop back up to the top again.

"Scroll repeat" (for analog joysticks, analogous to "key repeat") seems to kick in quicker than in prior versions. I have to make sure I do a very quick tap if I only want the menu selection to move up or down 1, otherwise I end up overshooting easily.

Haven't gotten around to swapping my panels so I can't comment on the analog joystick hot swap support yet.

[headkaze]

TheShanMan: The key repeat for input was way too fast for GDI+ slow graphics so I have slowed it down. Not sure what you mean by joystick repeat "seems to kick in quicker than in prior versions". There never was a joystick repeat in prior versions. But anyway I have improved that to match the new key repeat. I think I have it working perfect now (hopefully). I also agree with you about the wrap around in text view being annoying so I removed it but kept it for the menu's.

[TheShanMan]

Well that's why the joystick repeat was quicker: "too fast" > ∞  Thanks headkaze!

[Tiger-Heli]

I have about a dozen games that run on about 4 different mame.exes, each in its own folder.  I also have 2 versions of Daphne in 2 other folders.  Will those games be captured in the CPWizard list?

This question has come up a lot and I am new to CP Wizard, but I'll try to answer it ...

On Page 1, HK says there are about 4 critical MAME milestones -

Pre-108
108-before 112
112-122u1
122u2-present

As long as your MAME.exe's are all within one of the brackets above I think all should work fine.

If you let's say primarily use 0.127, but for a few games you use 109 - I think you could do the following but haven't veryified it:

Copy your CPWizard files to a new /Program Files/CPWizard109 folder.
Set that up to work with 109.

Modify whatever batchfile you use to launch your game in 109 to
-taskkill the current CPWizard version
Launch the version in CPWizard109
Launch MAME
-taskkill the CPW109 program
Launch the default CPWizard program.

I could be wrong, though ...

[headkaze]

Actually it should work with all versions of Mame using the one program. It detects Mame running using different methods.

The only problem I can see is if you turn on the Mame Input System for Mame >= 112 then it will not search for Mame < 112 using the window title so then it won't find it. But I could add another option to force it to search using the windows title as well as use the Mame Input System. That way you could run both < 112 and >=  112. You would then set the Mame paths in CPW to the latest version your using and it should cover all the information for the older version(s) aswell.

If there is a demand to support Mame < 112 and Mame >= 112 at the same time I will add the option. But if all your versions are Mame < 112 or >= 112 then they will all work already. Daphne is not supported.

[jasonbar]

Thanks, HK & TH-

I'm running 115 for 99% of my games.  115u2 for 4 games, 82 for 1, 108 for 2, 105 spinner hack for 5, & 63 rotary hack for 4.  I should get around to consolidating some of those one of these days, but that's another story...

So, I do fall into that category of using <112 & >=112.  Hope I'm not the only one, though!   


Understood that Daphne's not supported, hence my previous question about wanting to put "dummy" entries in one of the files that CPW uses, to trick it into displaying the controls....hmmmm....or maybe I could take one of the many many ROMs that I'm not using, manually update mame.xml & its .cfg file, & use some batch file to redirect CPW to a valid (but faked) MAME game when I'm actually launching a Daphne game...?   

Thanks,
-Jason

[Tiger-Heli]

Before HK does anything - I am running MAME 0.114 for 98% of my games, MAME 0.8x (something) for one, and MAME 0.123 for one.

Let me see where I get with it and report back - might be Monday though.

I think you could create a controls.xml type file for Daphne (surprised nobody has) and use that with it (someone did previously for MESS and I don't see why this would work differently).