Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum

Front End Support => MaLa Frontend => Topic started by: chucklepie on May 13, 2013, 04:04:11 am

Title: No focus on boot, cannot use.
Post by: chucklepie on May 13, 2013, 04:04:11 am
Hello,
I have MaLa set to start on boot. When it does it does not have focus and so the front-end does not work :(

Anyone got a clue what's wrong? I have no other programs starting up and the only other thing running on boot is CPWizard.

If I start MaLa from the desktop it's fine.

Thanks for any help.
Title: Re: No focus on boot, cannot use.
Post by: chopperthedog on May 13, 2013, 09:27:59 am
Try putting a short cut of mala.exe here: C:\Users\(User-Name)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup and untick the start with windows options in mala config.



good day.
Title: Re: No focus on boot, cannot use.
Post by: chucklepie on May 13, 2013, 11:16:53 am
Will do, thanks, I'll be trying it when I get home.

btw, does anyone know how to disable the (I think) screen capture within mala. Sometimes when I'm pressing buttons on my CP I get a messagebox popup saying things like 'c:\xxx.jpg' not found but I've checked everywhere in MaLa config and can't find any option that looks like it's doing this. I'm sure it's the mapped ALT key or ALT plus another button mapping causing it but I could be wrong. Unless this is part of CPWizard...
Title: Re: No focus on boot, cannot use.
Post by: Vigo on May 13, 2013, 03:29:25 pm
My guess is you are pulling up the mala info box. It is designed to list additional art, information, snaps, etc on the game title when demanded. If you want to disable it, I think it is just under the controls tab in the advanced section. Just clear out the control listed for info screen in the advanced settings.
Title: Re: No focus on boot, cannot use.
Post by: chucklepie on May 13, 2013, 06:38:36 pm
Thanks for the help, it made me look at everything and I finally found the problem. It got quite strange when I enabled the mouse for MaLa and it worked but the focus was still gone for joysticks/buttons.

Anyway, in CP Wizard disabling the option 'disable mouse for desktop' (or something like that) fixed it. I guess when CPWizard started it must have done something in windows to take control.

Hope this helps somebody :)
Title: Re: No focus on boot, cannot use.
Post by: wcndave on May 14, 2013, 04:47:06 am
I don't use CP and have the same problem 30% of the time.  You just see the windows start button on top of the skin and no focus.

For some reason the lack of focus when exiting a game seems to have just gone away, when it was happening all the time, and I have updated nothing!

To help with this for those who can't / haven't resolved it, when doing your control buttons consider an alt+tab mapping, which can be generally handy.

I have

start 1, coin1, pause, coin 2, start 2.

then holding start 1, the buttons shift to
coin1 = alt+tab, pause = tab, coin2 = enter, start2=escape

then with a trackball and two concealed mouse buttons under the control panel, they means you can pretty much control every operation one needs to do without an excess of buttons; i think 5 admin buttons is reasonable on a 2-player.

Title: Re: No focus on boot, cannot use.
Post by: chucklepie on May 16, 2013, 12:25:44 pm
I've been using the 1.75 beta and it's still doing it (plus giving me more errors), I had a look at the malafe website and there's a plugin called something like focus change, so I'll give that a go and see if it works.

btw, to help me with half the problem I get I have ctrl-alt-del, tab, enter, alt-f4 mapped to the shift keys in my minipac.
Title: Re: No focus on boot, cannot use.
Post by: chucklepie on May 17, 2013, 01:48:41 am
I found/fixed one problem. In the Controller option there is an extra section where you can specify to run/assign three programs. These were all blank but assigned to the ALT key. When I pressed ALT it was looking for a PNG file of the same name as the application. Absolutely no idea why as there was no program assigned, no way of turning it off. I changed it to a random key not used on my CP and all is well now.

Yet again reason why we need MaLa actively developed.......