whoo!
the Layout Designer is cool....but it crashes when minimized (Run-time error '380': Invalid property value)
...and in XP you can't use '/' for paths (also causes a crash)
...and what happened to the 'Display Game Info' option? where can I obtain/how do I create a DAT file to display game info?
:P
Very nice! Thanks for releasing the new version!
Of course, as soon as I started trying to set it up I ended up baffled. I'm going to take a few aspirin and try again.
It looks like there are a lot of great changes, but it also looks like it's going to take some work to figure it all out and get it set up.
I'm going to have to set aside an evening to figure it all out. Should be worth it.
Kevin
I removed the 'Display Game Info' option, as I thought you would hide/show this stuff in the layout...but I suppose it may be nice to be able to show/hide this info whenever you like (?).
just needs some documentation...but if anyones like me, i fiddle first, read docs when i can't figure something out...!
Pardon my ignorance, but what is an NMS file?
- Geoff
Thank You. I have everything setup perfect, no problems, multiple artwork looks great!
Only thing I'm still stuck on the the "renaming" feature for console snapshots. I have the correct path= "C:\nes\snaps\?_02.png" but none of the snaps show up or get renamed.
Keep up the good work!
Oh another tip I forgot: Type the 'Emulator Executable' in first when setting up - it will then try to 'figure' what to use for DAT / NMS / CatVer / ROM path / Snap path / Logo image / No snap image.
Are you using your own layout, or one of the standard 'Classic' ones? If you are using your own, are you using a background image?
How do I get rid of the clones, and the non working parents?
How do I get that cool 'menu locked hold down p2 to unlock' to come on by default?
I can answer this one (sorta) are you using catver.ini or triggerfin's catver.ini. The categories are different but tirggerfin's is far superior as the game cats are more detailed and accurate. In the official catver the adult tag is "adult" (it's never accurate btw and often misses several adult games) but in the catlist it's a normal category with a "*mature*" tacked on the end.
I wonder did you run the setup on your laptop, or just copy the MAMEWAH folder over?Minwah,
If you did not run the install, then a DLL required to display the images will not exist and the images will not display. Actually I did exactly this earlier and the same happened. Just a possibility...
One problem I faced was that running Classic 640x480.lay (on Hantarex 15KHz Mon with ArcadeVGA) displayed O.K. (with slight flickering of course) but the Classic 640x288.lay didn't display anything but black screen.
Seems that I have to twiggle around with some settings tonight.
My wording was a bit confusing:
I get the Run Time Error in MAMEWAH, but the "faultily" LAY-file can be opened without problems in the Layout Designer.
Each time I open and save a LAY file the "."-values are replaced with "," e.g.
...
1024
768
986895
1
10485760
16777215
True
0
8421504
16777215
System
True
False
9,75 <-- HERE
2
...
It definitively comes from the coutry-specific settings.
If I go (in Win2000) Start - Settings - Control Panel - Regional OPtions - Tab. 'Numbers' and change "Decimal Settings" to "." the LAY-file is saved correctly and of course no Run-Time-Error
[But now my Excel fails :-) ]
Howard/Minwah,
Thanks for the suggestion. I was indeed using an old catver.ini file (probably an official one).
I grabbed the latest triggerfish one and overwrote my file but I'm still seeing the same categories as before. Do I need to do something to force a refresh?
Thanks.
-Dave
Thanks, I understand. This bug follows on from the previous version - the problem is I programmed MAMEWAH to expect font sizes to be a 'single' (decimal number). With the decimal symbol set as ',' (Belgium, France & Holland use this too), this is no longer technically a decimal number, rather a string.
Okay, I've got a bug that's driving me nuts...I've tried this on 3 cabs now, 2 with XP one with ME. If mamewah goes into screensaver (such as slideshow), when you return to the game selection screen, selecting a game locks mamewah up, although it does launch the game in the background. So if you use taskmanager to shut down mamewah, the game runs. When you exit the game, mamewah is gone, so you get dumped to desktop. Trying to set the screensaver type to 'blackscreen' gets me a runtime error (9??), and crashes to desktop (although I've only tested this error on one system). If mamewah doesn't go into any kind of screensaver, or mp3 background music, I don't get the error....any ideas?
now, Minwah, what happened to my old Favs list? Did it write over it? I would be down and out if it did (I had ~300 games on it).
Hmmm... would it be possible to make it so the MP3 player thing for navigation et al to be able to browse sub-directorys?
I was setting up a custom list and found a bug that is reproducible. I'm not at the machine right now so I'm going by memory and I'm probably mangling the names of the menu selections, but hopefully you can figure out what I'm talking about.
1) Select a game on the Main List
2) Bring up the Game Lists submenu and select "Add Selection to Custom List"
3) When it prompts you to select the list to add the game to, select the Main List
MameWah will report an error since I'm trying to add an item to the main list but it will then lock up, forcing you to kill the process to get out.
I realize you shouldn't be trying to do this, but I have a problem where sometimes a single button press registers as two key presses, so when I select "Add Selection to Custom List" the second keypress picks the first item in the list (which is Main List).
Perhaps you should remove the "current" list from the "available" lists on that page, since that is never allowed.
By the way, still loving MameWah 0.95b. I'm setting up custom lists for both of my kids and they are thrilled to not have to wade through 2000+ titles to find their favorite games.
-Dave
1) Select a game on the Main List
2) Bring up the Game Lists submenu and select "Add Selection to Custom List"
3) When it prompts you to select the list to add the game to, select the Main List
MameWah will report an error since I'm trying to add an item to the main list but it will then lock up, forcing you to kill the process to get out.
1) Select a game on the Main List
2) Bring up the Game Lists submenu and select "Add Selection to Custom List"
3) When it prompts you to select the list to add the game to, select the Main List
MameWah will report an error since I'm trying to add an item to the main list but it will then lock up, forcing you to kill the process to get out.
When you say it reports an error, does it crash or is it a 'nice' error? It should say something like '[gamename] already exists in Main List'. (I noticed it still says 'Favorites [NOT] Changed').
It just displays this message and doesn't crash on my system...
I think he means run time error.
I have a bug that probably only exists on my system (more than likely); when I try to use the Catlist game sorting features, it crashs with a run time error exits me... and then when I get back in; the list is complete (well sort of).
Did you figure out how to code to browse sub-directories?
Assuming that the bugs can be worked out of this version of MAMEWAH... I think it is just about done! I really can't see what to add... maybe a clock option like MyHTPC, that would be way cool..., but yeah, maybe MAMEWAH could be complete for the version 1.0
is this version of Mamewah stable enough to install and set up ,or should i wait for bug fix version....shouldent be too long would it if i hold off a bit?
When you say it reports an error, does it crash or is it a 'nice' error? It should say something like '[gamename] already exists in Main List'. (I noticed it still says 'Favorites [NOT] Changed').
It just displays this message and doesn't crash on my system...
It is a 'nice' error that says something followed by "press and button to continue". At this point it is locked up.
FYI, I'm running on Win98SE and I did a clean install (didn't overwrite an old version of MameWah).
I'll check it again this evening and try to get some more specifics of what causes the problem.
OK I think I have got to the bottom of this after trying it on a Win98 system...
It doesn't actually crash! The problem is after you press a key, it just takes a LONG time to hide the message and continue...this big delay makes it appear to hang.
This is a Windows 98 problem that crops up a few times in this version, switching emulators/lists can also cause a big delay. The problem seems to be when I clear the lists held in memory - it just takes ages under '98, under XP is very quick. Since all my programming was done under XP, I did not forsee this problem.
I am unsure what to do about this atm - I need to have a fiddle around (!). It seems like the kind of thing that will be difficult to eradicate altogether, but hopefully I can improve it...
This is a Windows 98 problem that crops up a few times in this version, switching emulators/lists can also cause a big delay. The problem seems to be when I clear the lists held in memory - it just takes ages under '98, under XP is very quick. Since all my programming was done under XP, I did not forsee this problem.
...
I agree. Having a command line emulator front end that does not work at decent speed on anything other than XP is a big problem.
If the bugs can't be worked out is it possible to implement some of the new features in the old version. Ie links to 'PC' games, and the layout editor?
Maybe you could post some more details what is going on...would make it easier to give suggestions...as i can't see how dumping the memory itself should be the problem.
Maybe you could post some more details what is going on...would make it easier to give suggestions...as i can't see how dumping the memory itself should be the problem.
Excuse my vagueness, since I have not tracked the problem exactly...I am partly basing my earlier statement on some previous experience....
The part that I *think* is causing the problem is when I clear the variable arrays containing the game info: I use 13 arrays for various info (romname, description, year etc.). Now when I re-generate or swap lists, I clear these arrays by doing either 'Redim romname (0)' or 'Erase romname' depending on the situation. After these are cleared it either generates new or reads from a list (file) stuff to re-populate the arrays.
I believe (99% sure) it is the actual 'Redim blahblah (0)' that is causing the delay. I recall hitting on this problem when writing the previous version (but it only happened when generating a list, so wasn't as noticable). I found clearing some of the arrays with values of "" in code prior to the Redims made *some* difference.
I cannot explain why this is such a major problem in '98 and not a problem at all in XP. Presumably due to the different way the two OS's work.
Any help would be very much appreciated, in the meantime I'll see what I can do...
Posted this question outside this thread and it was suggested I post it here as well. Is there anyway to control Mamewah funciton using a gamepad/joystick/etc. without mapping keystrokes to individual buttons.
Using multiple Gravis USB Gamepad Pros, if that helps any.
GoldenBear
ah multiple arrays in vb...you should definately talk to hc he is the expert when it comes to vp arrays
I don't know vb so this could be totally wrong ;-)...instead of clearing the items in the array object... why not destroy the object completely at once. And create an new array object for the new list. That is more or less how i cleanup when switching lists.
Hmm...Well, when I try to configure Mamewah controls, I push enter on P1 Up, it says enter key, I push up on my gamepad and nothing. Seems it doesn't recognize my gamepad or I can't assign Mamewah controls directly to Gamepad buttons. ???
Am I missing something, or is it not possible to do what I am trying to do? Keeping in mind that I'd like to avoid assigning keyboard keys to the buttons as a workaround. ;D
GoldenBear
Anyone have ePSXe working using iso images with MAMEWAH 0.95b? I set a general option of '-loadiso' and enabled the 'show dos box' option which ePSXe seems to need... ePSXe starts but doesn't load the image. I'm suspecting the command line order may be messed up. Does MAMEWAH allow you to specify command line order like Game Launcher does?
I could probably fix it by running it via a script/batch file, but figured someone probably has already gotten it working since both MW and ePSXe are pretty popular.
Thanks for any tips.
MinWah, so chances of seeing direct joystick control are slim to nill?
Crap.
Anyone know of anyother windows frontends that allow direct joystick control?
I have this problem too using controls mapped to the keyboard - or using a keyboard for that matter. My sense is it won't be fixed by direct joystick input. What is actually happening is the MAMEWAH "Window" is moving to the background and simply needs to be re-selected, alt-tab usually works as you have found. Clicking the mouse may work too. Me I usually just shoot the screen with my lightgun to fix it.
I do not get this problem that often because I have made sure all my games are told to "close on exit" in their own executable properties. Otherwise some of them particularly DOS based remain in the front (even though they may be minimized) thus taking control away from MAMEWAH.
What might work the rest of the time and I have been meaning to try is if you setup a shortcut to MAMEWAH and specify in its properties that you want MAMEWAH to run fullscreen perhaps that will cause it to retain foreground priority.