Dragon King Video Card Poll and Bug Report Thread

[Howard_Casto]

read directly above your post

[PacManFan]

read directly above your post

You are such a child sometimes...
 

-PMF

[SirPeale]

Howard -

It appears that a lot of the comments in "frontend.ini" aren't commented out at all.  Is it supposed to be that way?  

I've noted that the comments more or less indicate that screenshots are supposed to show, but they're not.  I've got an NVidia TNT card, and I've indicated the paths in "dirs.ini" accordingly.  I tried using "RenderMode=128" and 64, but 32 is the only thing that will display anything at all.

Also, I  can't alt-tab to select another window/program after exiting.

[Howard_Casto]

TNT is a very old card... it isn't designed to run with it, so I wouldn't expect it to run in anything but software vertex mode.  

These types of specific problems are most likely configuration errors, not bugs.  Please pm me or start a new thread so I can help you.  (p.s. I'm going to need a screenshot)

[Buddabing]

When running the dumba setup program, if you do not include a drive in the path to mame in the mame.cfg, a runtime error 5 occurs.

Running version 0.9 on Windows XP Professional

A workaround would be to assume that if the user does not include a drive letter in the path, to assume that the drive is the same drive from which the dumba program is running.

Also, you might include a version.txt in the main directory. If the original .zip file has been deleted, then it's easy to tell what version the user is running by just looking at the version.txt.

Thank you for your effort in developing your front end. I know it took a huge time commitment.

[crashwg]

I changed the texformat to 0 (also 22 which works for me) and the rendermode to 32, and it loads up but it appears as if the text is just too small to read.  Where I'm assuming that there is supposed to be text there is just "......" except some of the dots are a little bit bigger.

[Howard_Casto]

Without your systems specs this tells me nothing.

[Halen]

I've got a Rage 128 Pro running in XP.  I've added the rage128=1 option to the frontend.ini file, and the FE will only run in software mode for me (32).  However, even in that mode, all my text shows up as blocks, rather than in a font.  Did I screw something up, or is it time to give my Rage 128 the boot?

I was using Lazarus, but since it bombs out now in the roms scanning process, I thought I'd move on to the current iteration of the modern FE.

[screaming]

Howard,

  I'm starting to evaluate some front ends to use in my cab, and DK is a serious contender. In doing so I'm working on making a new skin to use to help me understand what features are available for each front end.  I'm pretty big on configurability, so that lends a lot in favor of DK. There are just a few more features I would like to see...

I've been testing for a couple days and here's what I've come across. Some of them are bugs, some of them are feature requests and some of them might just be my own ignorance.

My computer is running Windows XP with plenty of free hard drive space and plenty of memory. All of these happen regardless of the resolution I'm running, as far as I've been able to tell.

Anyway, here you are in no particular order:

DK:
  - The list of games lags BIGTIME with the default skin. When I press the down arrow nothing seems to register, so I press it a few more times and then it will jump down a few games.  When I created my own and made a list out of game names instead of marquee images it got better, but still lags enough to make it annoying.

  - What's the 'shift key' in the keyboard input options for? I searched the docs, faq and arcadcontrols and didn't come up with anything.

  - Setting up DK: Some of us that aren't 'in the know' might think that it's okay to take out a whole variable out of a config file if the variable is empty.  Now, *I* know that it's not a good idea to do that just so you can reference it later in case you want to add something, but not everyone else believes that.  Maybe DK should have a set of defaults programmed in case someone does this (or at least won't crash)?

     When you take out 'Additional AW Dirs' line in dir.ini you get 'Run time error '9': subscript out of range' error when you run DK.
     
     When you take out 'roms' line in dir.ini you get 'Run time error '62': Input past end of file' error when you run DK.

      Other lines do this too, but it's either one of these two errors.

- Transparent GIF didnt work for logo (nothing showed up when I ran DK). I HAD to make a transparent PNG.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but docs say transparent GIFs work.  And yes, I changed the logo= line in dirs.ini to reflect the GIF instead of PNG.

- I would like to display a graphic on how to navigate through DK with the joystick and buttons.  In order to save screen real-estate in the main window, having an image display when you open DK would be helpful (sort of like a splash screen). Either that or have a DK info screen to show an image.  The skin I'm working on incorporates such a graphic, but if there were an info screen that was either emulator specific and/or DK specific then I'm sure I could find a use for it.

Most of these below have to do with bugs in the skinner, but some of them might just be limitations in DK and therefore should be considered a feature request.

SKINNER:
- Not in the task order (not in alt-tab list or task bar). I find this extremely annoying.

- Load up default skin, right click 'middle of list', change to normal, re-position, save skin (new format) gives you an error: Run-time error '340': Control array element '1' doesn't exist. Open skin back up again after crash and old list position shows up on the bottom. Right click on it and get ERROR: Run-time error '340': Control array element '105' doesn't exist. You have to check 'list' under view menu to get it back.  I've been able to reproduce this error.

- Uncheck 'Enable Old Save formats' option doesn't save when you reopen skinner. SIDE NOTE: IMO, the skinner should either save in both formats automatically OR get rid of the old format. I think having the seperate option might confuse people, unless there's a definite need for everyone to have that distinction.

- Title snapshot options don't seem to be loading correctly. I can edit the layout just fine, save it and it will show up in DK, but if I go back into the skinner the title snapshot position and size parameters are set back to 0, 0, 15, 15.

- Path properties:
    - Font size in path not set-able. It's only dynamic based on the size of the window and the amount of text in the Path Caption.
    - Space (%) doesn't work in path caption. For example, '1#6#2%3#3##11##9##' produces '2%3' on the third line when I select a game in DK.
    - Can't do text + variable in path caption. For example, have it output 'Game Name: PacMan' in DK. Having a system similar to audio CD rippers would be cool. Something like '%1\nGame name: %2 (%3)\n\n%11' would be totally workable.
    - Path doesn't show up in Elements menu and is only available when you right click the element in the layout. I assume this is because you can't set transparency options specifically for the path (do they follow the same options as the list options? If so, that should be specified.).
    - Showing what the 0-12 #s mean on the Path properties screen would be helpful instead of having to look it up in the docs.
    - Text alignment setting isn't being restored when I close and open the window.
    - More control over the path would be nice. Instead of just specifying lines in mameinfo.dat, I'd like to be able to specify players, buttons, controls, etc individually.

- 'list' doesn't show up in layering.  The layer order seems to only apply to images, but IMO should apply to all elements.

- Either have the overlay changeable per emulator, or put 'list' in the layer order.

- Text wraps funny on different screens depending on font size in Windows Display properties.  I see this happen a lot with VB programs so I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, but I can provide screen shots if you need them.  I had to mess around and reboot a couple times just to find out that in the Element Options window it says 'Level of Translucency (Only works if Blend Mode is set to Translucent)'. It kept getting cut off by the element right underneath it.

- Font Scheme Options:
  - 'cancel' doesn't close the window OR reset the form.  I would expect that it did one or the other.
  - Non-numerical characters in text fields produce ERROR: Run-time error '13' Type mismatch.  Maybe implement sliders instead of text boxes for fields like this (but show the #).
  - Additional font options would be nice in order to produce output similar to GL's game list (glowing borders around letters, etc). Could you implement the MS's filters here?

- What if the skinner size defaulted to size of loaded skin to get a better idea of what it will look like? Would that work?

That's it so far that I've come across...

/Steve

[Howard_Casto]

Umm I appreciate your feedback but 99% of those "bugs" are user errors.  For example, why would anyone remove portions of the config file?  Dk won't operate properly wihtout them anyway so what's the point of removing them. And for that matter, what's the point of supressing the error when dk would have to shut down anyway? Gif's are intentionly not supported... it's says so in both the faq and the docs.  They will never be supported as they are an inferor (and now proprietary, meaning it costs me money to legally support them)  format.  

You aren't thinking smartly about some of the other things you suggested.  For example you do have a "splash screen", it's the intro.mpeg.  

The zorder for the list is fixed on purpose.... it's possible to alter it, but it'd be silly as the list always needs to be on top.  You can make the overlay go on top of it though.  

The rest of the stuff you mentioned is well documented. There's simply too much for me to go over here though.

You've gotta understand something.... dk is user friendly, but it doesn't handle fatal errors.  The reason for this is so the user understands something is wrong and re-checks their settings, rather than bugging me about a broken feature that would actually work if they set it properly.  All non-fatal errors and handled and fixed accordingly.  

With that being said, I do appreciate your feedback.  This just isn't a commerical program. I do it for free, so don't expect commercial "spit and polish".  

[screaming]

Aaahh, just how I thought you'd reply! At least you're predictable.

  It's your software, man. When I develop software, I want to make it the best it can be even if that means I have to compensate for other people's ignorance. I seem to take pride in catching the dumb things some people can do and handle those things gracefully.

 For example, why would anyone remove portions of the config file?  Dk won't operate properly wihtout them anyway so what's the point of removing them. And for that matter, what's the point of supressing the error when dk would have to shut down anyway?

  When DK crashes and leaves me without my windows taskbar, that's a bug.

Gif's are intentionly not supported... it's says so in both the faq and the docs.

  You're right.  I was looking at the Extra Features for Lazarus.  It's not anywhere in the DK docs, but it is in the FAQ.

You aren't thinking smartly about some of the other things you suggested.  For example you do have a "splash screen", it's the intro.mpeg.  

  It's 10x harder to make a video of a picture instead of just a picture. I thought about making a video to show how my interface works, but I didn't think it was so hard of a thing to implement a splash or an emulator info screen.

  What other things was I not thinking 'smartly' about?

The zorder for the list is fixed on purpose.... it's possible to alter it, but it'd be silly as the list always needs to be on top.  You can make the overlay go on top of it though.  

  In my theme I would like the emulator logo to be on top of the list in the upper right-hand corner partially covering the last few letters of the top couple of lines in my list. So, does that mean you'll have overlays changeable by emulator?

You've gotta understand something.... dk is user friendly, but it doesn't handle fatal errors.  The reason for this is so the user understands something is wrong and re-checks their settings, rather than bugging me about a broken feature that would actually work if they set it properly.  All non-fatal errors and handled and fixed accordingly.  

  So when DK or the DK skinner crashes losing all my work, I'll know that it's all my fault and not worry about 'bugging' you. Gotcha.

With that being said, I do appreciate your feedback.  This just isn't a commerical program. I do it for free, so don't expect commercial "spit and polish".  

  As a developer of open source software, I certainly realize the demand some users can have on a developer, even if that developer is working for free. Please don't consider my bug submittals and feature requests being a demand for anything, but rather helpful suggestions to help you make DK a front end that everyone will want to use.

  I certainly don't expect 'spit and polish' from you. Thanks for the great front end, and I look forward to using DK for a long time.  BTW, are there any plans in the works for either open sourcing DK or otherwise making the source available?

/Steve

[Howard_Casto]

Aaahh, just how I thought you'd reply! At least you're predictable.

  It's your software, man. When I develop software, I want to make it the best it can be even if that means I have to compensate for other people's ignorance. I seem to take pride in catching the dumb things some people can do and handle those things gracefully.

If that's how you thought I'd reply then why did you post all of that crap?  It's very impolite to purposefully "egg somone on".  When a program crashes because a user trys to make it do something it's not supposed to do then it's user error, not a bug.... simple as that.  Now if it crashes for no reason that's a different story.

Don't misunderstand me I'm always welcome to suggestions on things I could do better, but this is the bug report thread, not the suggestion thread.  You have like two pages of info and it's all lumped together.  

Btw the skinner and dk are two different animals.  The skinner is buggy and probably does crash a lot,.... dk, however is uncrashable assuming you haven't deleted lines from the cfg files like you said.  

If you want me to seriously go over your issues then your going to have to filter everything off and make a suggestions post, a bug report post and a questions post.  

Please don't do it in this particular thread though as we've alreayd cluttered it up.  

[Khenemet Heru]

Hey Howard, just wanted to give you some feedback on my issue with DK on my box.

This was a pretty non-standard setup, but I was trying things out on my Mini-ITX Via Nehemiah board before I started building. DK would load, start running, the intro movie would play, and then I'd get black screen and a dead 'puter - had to wait forever for it to force-quit to winXP.

The video card on that board is a built-in S3 with shared RAM, 64MB set in BIOS, which I found makes MAME suck wind anyhow...  but no settings I tried would get me anything but that intro movie then black screen. I've since moved on to other things, but I thought I'd give you the report anyhow. I can get more info on the video chipset if you want it.

[Howard_Casto]

No need.... s3 is an old, dead card.... it'll never be supported.

[nipsmg]

Aaahh, just how I thought you'd reply! At least you're predictable.

  It's your software, man. When I develop software, I want to make it the best it can be even if that means I have to compensate for other people's ignorance. I seem to take pride in catching the dumb things some people can do and handle those things gracefully.

If that's how you thought I'd reply then why did you post all of that crap?  It's very impolite to purposefully "egg somone on".  When a program crashes because a user trys to make it do something it's not supposed to do then it's user error, not a bug.... simple as that.  Now if it crashes for no reason that's a different story.

Don't misunderstand me I'm always welcome to suggestions on things I could do better, but this is the bug report thread, not the suggestion thread.  You have like two pages of info and it's all lumped together.  

Btw the skinner and dk are two different animals.  The skinner is buggy and probably does crash a lot,.... dk, however is uncrashable assuming you haven't deleted lines from the cfg files like you said.  

If you want me to seriously go over your issues then your going to have to filter everything off and make a suggestions post, a bug report post and a questions post.  

Please don't do it in this particular thread though as we've alreayd cluttered it up.  

Errors should be trapped in any program gracefully enough so that if it throws an error and has to shut down, it will show the task-bar, etc.

A crash from an "index out of range" that fully crashes a program is purely and completely a lack of error trapping.. If it's an API error, they're trappable also.

Users are ALWAYS doing what they're not supposed to do.  This usually results in SOME kind of array out of bound error.  Either they're overfilling/draining a stack, or changing things in a way so that data isn't where it's expected.  If there's one thing I've learned, it's NEVER to expect that a registry key/text file/INI key/Array element will actually be where you expect it, and to always error-trap to capture those few cases where it's NOT actually there.  (I write code in a business environment, and we write a lot of our software in-house.  I'm writing, for the most part, for computer illiterate people..  or those who THINK they know what they're doing, and screw more stuff up. Those are the most dangerous, actually.)

This is meant as constructive criticism, not an insult to your programming ability at all, because I love your FE.

--NipsMG

[Howard_Casto]

Errors should be trapped in any program gracefully enough so that if it throws an error and has to shut down, it will show the task-bar, etc.

--NipsMG

Yes, yes they should.... pay me my usual hourly rate and I'll be glad to implement this.  Otherwise I'm not spending all of my free time trapping errors that are the result of the user.  


No offense taken... I'm just telling you straight out.