Kymaera 2.0 Released!

[PacManFan]

I have just posted a new version of Kymaera to sourceforge.net/projects/kymaera

This is the Windows version only right now. I plan to post the DOS version in the next day or so after more testing. This version is built on Allegro, the same graphics library that mame uses.

This release has a ton of new features, including a MameWah layout importer.

One note of caution:
The directory structure of this new release of Kymaera is NOT compatible with the previous version. If you have installed Kymaera before, rename your old directory, and install the new version. You'll be able to copy over your gamelists and emulator settings (I think.)

Check it out and let me know what you think!

-PMF

[screaming]

I have just posted a new version of Kymaera to sourceforge.net/projects/kymaera

   SWEET! I can't wait to check it out!!

-Steve

[slycrel]

  Very nice.  Are you using the SDL for the linux port?  Or no?  I wouldn't mind messing around with an OS X port (I use a mac for work) if that's the case.

[PacManFan]

I'm using Allegro for everything. If you'd like, try to compile it for OS X. I'll be releasing the DOS andLinux version shortly. (I hope)

-PMF

[Buddabing]

I have just posted a new version of Kymaera to sourceforge.net/projects/kymaera

This is the Windows version only right now. I plan to post the DOS version in the next day or so after more testing. This version is built on Allegro, the same graphics library that mame uses.

This release has a ton of new features, including a MameWah layout importer.

One note of caution:
The directory structure of this new release of Kymaera is NOT compatible with the previous version. If you have installed Kymaera before, rename your old directory, and install the new version. You'll be able to copy over your gamelists and emulator settings (I think.)

Check it out and let me know what you think!

-PMF

Once you have everything released, I'll try to get a MinGW compile working. For some reason my machine doesn't like djgpp....

[PacManFan]

MinGW does not work. I was having some issues with movies under MinGW, so I'm using Visual Studio .NET 2003. If you comment out the movie player code, you should be able to get it all working under MinGW. Are you running XP? I'm having issues with djgpp also, I can only get it to run under '98.

Let me know if you want to compile, I'll send you a bundle of pre-compiled libraries.

-PMF

[Buddabing]

MinGW does not work. I was having some issues with movies under MinGW, so I'm using Visual Studio .NET 2003. If you comment out the movie player code, you should be able to get it all working under MinGW. Are you running XP? I'm having issues with djgpp also, I can only get it to run under '98.

Let me know if you want to compile, I'll send you a bundle of pre-compiled libraries.

-PMF

I got the core library to compile with mingw. The imagert example program didn't link, it was missing a whole ton of stuff. I think I'll need those precompiled libraries. I already got the latest and greatest Allegro which supports mingw.

Basically I ifdefed out the movie stuff so that it would compile.

If you like, send me the compiled libraries.
Email: buddabing at houston dot rr dot com

I might be busy the next few nights watching baseball

[PacManFan]

I'll email you with the pre-compiled libraries for DOS and Windows. For some reason, I couldn't get MinGW to do a static link with Allegro, it worked for the shared (DLL) version, but the static link keeps coming up with unresolved referances. The ImageRT works under DOS as a command -line app, Under Windows (MSVC .NET) it's a command-line app with no display (because of Allegro).

Let me know if you can get the whole thing to compile. It's a little tricky.

-PMF

[JoyMonkey]

Would it be a huge problem to have the DOS version output native arcade resolutions, like ArcadeOS does? I'd love to use it in a couple of DOS cabs. What would you think the minimum PC specs would be to run DOS Kymaera?

Also, is there an option to adjust the brightness/gamma in the DOS version? I'm suffering from poor video amplification.

[PacManFan]

Currently, Kymaer adoes not natively support 15khz output, however, it's on my to-do list. I've already gotten the code out of ArcadeOS, I just need to figure out how to stick it in Allegro with a little hacking.

As far as the Min. Specs, I've gotten the DOS version to work on a PII 233 64MB fairly nicely.

There is no Gamma adjustment yet, I'll put it on my to-do list.

-PMF

Would it be a huge problem to have the DOS version output native arcade resolutions, like ArcadeOS does? I'd love to use it in a couple of DOS cabs. What would you think the minimum PC specs would be to run DOS Kymaera?

Also, is there an option to adjust the brightness/gamma in the DOS version? I'm suffering from poor video amplification.

[ErikRuud]

PMF,

Are you ready?

So far it looks pretty good.  The gamelist grid problems are indeed fixed. Thank You.

I was setting up a new emu, and I did not set the skinloaction.  I just used the default value.  The default is skins/kymeara.skn but the default skin is actually in skins/default/kymears.skn.  This causes a fatal error in Kymeara with the "this program has caused error..blah,blah,blah" prompt from windows.

After fixing the skin location, I setup a couple of gamelists and started trying to navigate through them.  Apparently a I had a few corrupt .png's in my snaps directory.  These caused Kymaera to shutdown with no warning or message of any kind.  My task bar was not restored when this happened.  Deleting the bad png files stops this from happening.

I also see that the short gamelist issue has not been resolved.

How are movies supported in Kymaera?

[PacManFan]

Erik,

Thanks for reporting. That bad path to the defualt skin was caused by me putting in the MameWah import at the last minute. I'll be sure to fix it for the next release. I've known about Kymaera crashing when loading up bad png files, although, I'm not quite sure how to fix it at this point, Allegro does the image file loading, so it's crashing somewhere in Allegro.

Yeah, I was hesitant to put in that code for hiding the task bar, because I knew that if Kymaera ever crashes, the task bar will be gone. It's an option though, you can turn that off.

Movie are supported in the Windows version of Kymaera through the DirectX9 media layer hooking into windows media player codecs, passing through Kymaera's COM system and movie manager to prevent duplicate streams, and then being blitted to a Allegro bitmap.
I'm still lokking for a good cross-platform movie playing library. I think MPlayer may be the winner, but there is no DOS port that I can find. The movies are the only reason that this can't compile under MinGW.


Thanks for reporting, keep it coming..
-PMF

PMF,

Are you ready?

So far it looks pretty good.  The gamelist grid problems are indeed fixed. Thank You.

I was setting up a new emu, and I did not set the skinloaction.  I just used the default value.  The default is skins/kymeara.skn but the default skin is actually in skins/default/kymears.skn.  This causes a fatal error in Kymeara with the "this program has caused error..blah,blah,blah" prompt from windows.

After fixing the skin location, I setup a couple of gamelists and started trying to navigate through them.  Apparently a I had a few corrupt .png's in my snaps directory.  These caused Kymaera to shutdown with no warning or message of any kind.  My task bar was not restored when this happened.  Deleting the bad png files stops this from happening.

I also see that the short gamelist issue has not been resolved.

How are movies supported in Kymaera?

[ErikRuud]

Let me rephrase the question.

How do I as a Kymaera user implement movies?

[PacManFan]

Oh, you put them in your artwork directorys. Try putting them in your mame/snaps directory. Kymaera will handle them automatically. Sometimes movies have issues running at 32bpp screen depth, so if that doesn' t work, try 16bpp.

-PMF

Let me rephrase the question.

How do I as a Kymaera user implement movies?

[bdsjake]

hey, does your frontend support soft windows shutdown on exit/esc?  (have an older computer that does not shut down windows with press of power button).

thanks,

[ErikRuud]

So the movies then appear in the snap shots box?

[screaming]

So the movies then appear in the snap shots box?

  I think what he means is, and correct me if I'm wrong, that movies are used like any other image in Kymaera.  If you have snapshots showing in your layout and you have a dkong.mpg in your snapshots directory, it will play it when Donkey Kong is selected in the game list. The same thing holds true for marquees, cabinets, titles, etc.

-Steve

[PacManFan]

That's exactly right. Kymaera will looks for files in this order
avi
mpg
png
tga
bmp
gif
lbm

It will stop when it find the first one, So if you have movies, It'll load them first.

-PMF

So the movies then appear in the snap shots box?

  I think what he means is, and correct me if I'm wrong, that movies are used like any other image in Kymaera.  If you have snapshots showing in your layout and you have a dkong.mpg in your snapshots directory, it will play it when Donkey Kong is selected in the game list. The same thing holds true for marquees, cabinets, titles, etc.

-Steve

[ErikRuud]

I tested it out, it seems to work fine.

Just to let others know, it does not recognise .mpeg as a move, it must be .mpg

PMF,

I have a question though.

I added an mpg for asteroid and it worked, but the same mpg played for asterock as well.  It did not show the mpg for asteroi1.  What is happening with this?

[PacManFan]

It's looking first for the movie with the same name as the rom, if it can't find it, It's looking for it's parent's rom's movie. Maybe asteriod is not asteroi1's parent. Can someone verify?

-PMF

PS. check out the DOS version of Kymaera if you can..

[ErikRuud]

OK, I got it.

Kymeara was finding the asteroi1.png file, so it did not search for the parent rom mpg.

[slycrel]

  I've looked into this a bit, but I can't get allegro to compile under OS X.  Additionally, it's not a "native" port either, it's using X11.  I'll let you know if I get anything going.

edit:  doh.  Apparently the stable release of allegro does NOT have native OS X support, but the unstable one does.  Playing with that this afternoon.  Assuming all goes well (and that I have all the other dependencies I need) I'll have a build later today to play with for OS X.

[PacManFan]

Right on, let me know how it goes.

-PMF

[slycrel]

  Well, I did get allegro installed and have an xcode project set up for the port.  I'm working through the list of dependencies.  I have yet to find the source for loadpng anywhere, all the links I found are dead...  if you know of somewhere please let me know.  I've (hopefully) recompiled the almp3.lib for OS X though it doesn't have an official port.  I'm headed down the list from there.  Wish me luck.  =)

[SirPeale]

Currently, Kymaer adoes not natively support 15khz output, however, it's on my to-do list. I've already gotten the code out of ArcadeOS, I just need to figure out how to stick it in Allegro with a little hacking.

Ooh, this would be AWESOME.  The only thing I don't like about AOS is it's not skinable.

[liquid8]

Ok, setting up Kymaera from scratch, I have tried before, but did not put much effort into it after many troubles.

When creating a new emulator in cfg, i had to type 'snes.emu', just typing 'snes' crashes out.

Two things happened because of the skin path bug.

I deleted the mame.cfg, as I was not setting this up yet, and kymaera just crashed out. I then added mame.cfg back in, but could not change emulators. This was because the other emu I setup had the bad skin path, I just had to change the skn path, and it works correctly.

Now trying to import a mamewah skin. It seems like it is pulling information from other .lay files in the same layout folder. for instance, I imported the snes skin I have, and the background was the CPS1 skin background, the artwork was the NES artwork.. so it seems a bit off.

Thought I would share some of my problems to help you and everyone else out. Mamewah skin importer is a nice plus for me, checking some of the other features out now, and will add any other issues I find.

LiQuiD8

[slycrel]

  Well, I gave it a go.  it's not a simple couple hour port.  Maybe if I get some time in the near future I'll give it another crack.  Thanks for the effort PacManFan, I like Kymaera.

[rbmjedi]

Everything looks very good.

However, how do you set up the intro/exit videos? When I run ky_cfg.exe, the intro/exit movie config button is disabled.

Thanks

[rbmjedi]

Is there newer documentation listing the changes that have been made since the last version?

[PacManFan]

I haven't had too much time to document it. The docs.zip package on sourceforge has most of the changes made, along with the changes.txt file.

BTW,
 Intro/exit/launch movies are disabled for now, I'm still working out how to handle them.

Also,
I just successfully compiled in support for arcade monitors in the DOS and LINUX versions, Now I just need to test.

-PMF

[SirPeale]

I just successfully compiled in support for arcade monitors in the DOS and LINUX versions, Now I just need to test.

*eyes wide*

Coooooooool!

[PacManFan]

Initial tests for arcade monitors look good. I was able to test 15khz successfully on my VGA multiscan monitor at home. Now I just need to test on a "real" arcade monitor.  Instead of using ArcadeOS routines, I pulled a lot of source code from DMame. So I've got all the arcade "tweaked" modes as well.

If someone would like to help test out Kymaera DOS version in a cabinet with an arcade monitor not using ArcadeVGA, I would really appreciate it.

-PMF

[papaschtroumpf]

Is there a web page on kymaera with screenshots and lists of features?

[PacManFan]

Is there a web page on kymaera with screenshots and lists of features?

There is a web page for the OLD 1.23 version of kymaera at www.pacmanfan.com

There's not too much there besides 2 screen shots and the download. The new page for Kymaera is www.sourceforge.net/projects/kymaera

but I haven't updated the personal web page there yet, just the project page.

As far as features, here's a brief list of some of the major features:
Full screen
Fully re-mappable inputs
Joystick,keyboard and mouse input
Multiple emulator support
Skinnable
Supports Windows, DOS, and Linux
New DOS version supports arcade monitors
Supports vertical and cocktail machines
Image types supported: png,tga,bmp,gif,lbm
Video type supported: mpg,avi
Audio files supported: wav,mp3,ogg,cd,xm,it
Multiple gamelists
Multi-emulator gamelists
External configuration tool (no manual editing of files)

I'm probably forgetting a few things, but you get the idea.

[SirPeale]

If someone would like to help test out Kymaera DOS version in a cabinet with an arcade monitor not using ArcadeVGA, I would really appreciate it.

Let me think...um...yeah.

[rbmjedi]

I've noticed that if I attempt to use the "Next Song" button in the latest version of Kymaera that a new mp3 begins playing on top of the current one. Is this aproble with the latest version or an issue on my computer?

[PacManFan]

It's a bug, I'll fix it for the next release.

-PMF

[KHAN]

I am at the sourcefoge download page now.
where to get kymeara DOS version?
i am waiting since a month for official realease of kymaera dos.

hope that you have successfully tested it.