MAMEWAH Bug list.. POST HERE.

[mugwump]

When using the slideshow screensaver option from within MAMEWah all of the MAME snapshot images are about 4 times the size of the screen so only the upper left-hand corner is actually visible on-screen.  The images appear just fine on the main screen using various skins.  Not a big deal but I can't figure out what the problem is.

Also, the exit option "Give Choice" no longer gives a choice but just drops directly to the Windows desktop (Win98).

Thanks.

[Minwah]

When using the slideshow screensaver option from within MAMEWah all of the MAME snapshot images are about 4 times the size of the screen so only the upper left-hand corner is actually visible on-screen.  The images appear just fine on the main screen using various skins.  Not a big deal but I can't figure out what the problem is.

Also, the exit option "Give Choice" no longer gives a choice but just drops directly to the Windows desktop (Win98).

Thanks.

What layout are you using?  Perhaps the creator of the layout did not design the screensaver form properly - open it in the Layout Designer to check.

Not sure about the other one, double check it is set to 'Give Choice' and that you're exiting via the menu (not hitting the quit button).

[mugwump]

Thanks for the quick reply.  For some reason the screensaver form of the 640x480 layout I'm using was at 1024x768.  I couldn't change the size of the screensaver form without it also messing up the main page so I just made a new layout from scratch.

As for the Give Choice upon exit issue, I thought that the choices menu would pop-up when the exit MAMEWah button was pressed but I see now that I have to use the menu to exit this way and not just the one button.

Thanks for the help.

[Minwah]

Thanks for the quick reply.  For some reason the screensaver form of the 640x480 layout I'm using was at 1024x768.  I couldn't change the size of the screensaver form without it also messing up the main page so I just made a new layout from scratch.

As for the Give Choice upon exit issue, I thought that the choices menu would pop-up when the exit MAMEWah button was pressed but I see now that I have to use the menu to exit this way and not just the one button.

Thanks for the help.

Yes I need to add a 'Default Exit Button Action' option or something - some users like to be able to have the escape key do something different to exiting via the menu.

[JackTucky]

Why doesn't Mamewah start?  I installed latest version, it didn't create a files or layout directory.  I don't have a layout.zip.

I used Mamewahsetup to create the files directory.

When I double click mamewah.exe, it doesn't do anything but a quick screen "flash"

Thanks.


Ack.  I reinstalled my video drivers and it's working now.  My fault.

Art

[MadEditor]

Hi,

Just a wierd problem here... Whatever the resolution i choose i get huge text !
The font is so big the list is only 4 or 5 entry long...

I suppose i have a corrupted font file or another problem related to a font but i don't know what.

Could you help ?

Here's a resized screenshot... originally in 1024x768

[MadEditor]

OK got it....

I found out the problems... Seems to be related to the language settings in windows...
The font size is define as 9.75 in most layout file, but in a French windows it should be 9,75 so it assume it a 75 which is pretty big :-)

There's also another problem in the layout designer, again related to the language settings in windows, when the file is saved the labels "True" and "False" are putted in english and in that case apparently the systems want them in FRENCH !!! there's seem to be a little mess in this... but once you find the problem, it's not a problem anymore, right ?

Just wanted to help out a litlle :-)

[Minwah]

OK got it....

I found out the problems... Seems to be related to the language settings in windows...
The font size is define as 9.75 in most layout file, but in a French windows it should be 9,75 so it assume it a 75 which is pretty big :-)

There's also another problem in the layout designer, again related to the language settings in windows, when the file is saved the labels "True" and "False" are putted in english and in that case apparently the systems want them in FRENCH !!! there's seem to be a little mess in this... but once you find the problem, it's not a problem anymore, right ?

Just wanted to help out a litlle :-)

Yes you're right - MAMEWAH likes '.' as a decimal separator and English language settings...it is a know bug that I haven't managed to fix yet...(incidently not entirely really my fault - Windows seems to be inconsistent with how it stores the settings!)

Sorry I didn't reply before, didn't see the post  

[papaschtroumpf]

I set up mamewah to play MP3s while in the screen saver and I eventually get an error along the lines of "end of file while playing" (sorry I don't remember the exact wording). I suspect one of my MP3s might be corrupted?
I have hours worth of arcade "ambience" MP3s it'll take me quite a while to figure it out by trial and error and I can't just sit around waiting for it to crash either.
I assume that mamewah doesn't log the MP3 file it's playing anywhere?
Any idea how I can find out which MP3 is corrupted short of using the trial and error method? I'll post a similar question in the jukebox forum in case someone knows of a utility to detect bad MP3s.

[Harakiri]

Hi!

I'm sorry if this question is dumb or newb but i can't use my sidewinder USB pad with mamewah? Have i gotta option to activate it or it's just disabled as default?

Thks!

[Magnet_Eye]

Hi. I installed MAMEwah a few days ago and have been playing with no problems these past few days. Today when i started up my cab, it gave me "Runtime Error 13"

Any ideas why this happened?

What should I do to fix it?

thanks!

EDIT:

Well, I just reinstalled MAMEwah and its working fine so far... i dunno why it did that.  

[Minwah]

I set up mamewah to play MP3s while in the screen saver and I eventually get an error along the lines of "end of file while playing" (sorry I don't remember the exact wording). I suspect one of my MP3s might be corrupted?
I have hours worth of arcade "ambience" MP3s it'll take me quite a while to figure it out by trial and error and I can't just sit around waiting for it to crash either.
I assume that mamewah doesn't log the MP3 file it's playing anywhere?
Any idea how I can find out which MP3 is corrupted short of using the trial and error method? I'll post a similar question in the jukebox forum in case someone knows of a utility to detect bad MP3s.

The MP3 isn't logged unfortunately...trial and error is probably the only way to detect a bad MP3.  I've had a few reports of MW just being 'picky' about some MP3's, but I haven't figured out why yet

[Minwah]

Hi!

I'm sorry if this question is dumb or newb but i can't use my sidewinder USB pad with mamewah? Have i gotta option to activate it or it's just disabled as default?

Thks!

Well since most people use keyboard encoders, and PC stick support is relatively tricky to add, it doesn't have the feature

But you can use JoyToKey: http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA016823/joytokey/english.html , in my testing it seemed to work very well

[Minwah]

Hi. I installed MAMEwah a few days ago and have been playing with no problems these past few days. Today when i started up my cab, it gave me "Runtime Error 13"

Any ideas why this happened?

What should I do to fix it?

thanks!

EDIT:

Well, I just reinstalled MAMEwah and its working fine so far... i dunno why it did that.  

That's odd, not sure what happened...usually that error applies if either an old config file was used (not the case here) or a config file got corrupted / messed up somehow - either way deleting the \Files\.CFG files usually works if it happens again.

[papaschtroumpf]

I set up mamewah to play MP3s while in the screen saver and I eventually get an error along the lines of "end of file while playing" (sorry I don't remember the exact wording). I suspect one of my MP3s might be corrupted?
I have hours worth of arcade "ambience" MP3s it'll take me quite a while to figure it out by trial and error and I can't just sit around waiting for it to crash either.
I assume that mamewah doesn't log the MP3 file it's playing anywhere?
Any idea how I can find out which MP3 is corrupted short of using the trial and error method? I'll post a similar question in the jukebox forum in case someone knows of a utility to detect bad MP3s.

The MP3 isn't logged unfortunately...trial and error is probably the only way to detect a bad MP3.  I've had a few reports of MW just being 'picky' about some MP3's, but I haven't figured out why yet

FYI, the exact error is Run-Time Error '-2147221493 (8004006) End of file reached while decoding.

I also noticed that when it happened today the music was still playing in the background even though the error message was up. Don't knwo if it means anything. as soon as I clicked OK on the message, mamewah exited. Don't know if it helps. Maybe you could write the current MP3 file to the debug log file if it's trivial to do?

[drunkatuw]

Configuring mouse buttons in mamewah.  I've hooked up my act-lab guns and the cursors correctly follow the guns, but player 2 can't shoot.  I noticed that player 2 button1 wasn't configured to a mouse button.  So I opened the settings and selected player 2 button 1, but when I pull the trigger nothing happens.  I click the button on the mouse and again nothing happens.  I open the same game in mame32 and I can configure the mouse buttons just fine and play two player gun games great.  But I want to stick with mamewah as a front end.  I have mouse 1 set in the mame.ini file, is there something else I need to configure, or is this a bug in mamewah?

[JoeB]

This isn't really a bug, but rather a really cool feature to make I guess (if possible at all).

I've noticed that if there's a bad ROM or something messed up with the OS, then the launch screen in mamewah sits there forever.

I end up plugging the keyboard, killing the app and restarting MAMEWAH.

Is there a way to program MAMEWAH to listen to the ESC key and see if it's in the forground then stop loading/kill the defined emulator from the process list in windows and gain control of the OS??

This would be one of those ULTIMATE features in a front end! No need for keyboard for emergency!

[Minwah]

FYI, the exact error is Run-Time Error '-2147221493 (8004006) End of file reached while decoding.

I also noticed that when it happened today the music was still playing in the background even though the error message was up. Don't knwo if it means anything. as soon as I clicked OK on the message, mamewah exited. Don't know if it helps. Maybe you could write the current MP3 file to the debug log file if it's trivial to do?

Is the screensaver running when this happened?  It looks like it could be refering to decoding of an image (PNG) - if the slide-show is running then that would probably confirm it...

[Minwah]

Configuring mouse buttons in mamewah.  I've hooked up my act-lab guns and the cursors correctly follow the guns, but player 2 can't shoot.  I noticed that player 2 button1 wasn't configured to a mouse button.  So I opened the settings and selected player 2 button 1, but when I pull the trigger nothing happens.  I click the button on the mouse and again nothing happens.  I open the same game in mame32 and I can configure the mouse buttons just fine and play two player gun games great.  But I want to stick with mamewah as a front end.  I have mouse 1 set in the mame.ini file, is there something else I need to configure, or is this a bug in mamewah?

Input mapping for your games is not handled at all by MAMEWAH.  You need to configure MAME itself for that.  Either use the 'Input' options in the TAB menu, or use ctrlr ini files...then again if you're using MAME32 I'm not sure (I recommend not using MAME32).

[Minwah]

This isn't really a bug, but rather a really cool feature to make I guess (if possible at all).

I've noticed that if there's a bad ROM or something messed up with the OS, then the launch screen in mamewah sits there forever.

I end up plugging the keyboard, killing the app and restarting MAMEWAH.

Is there a way to program MAMEWAH to listen to the ESC key and see if it's in the forground then stop loading/kill the defined emulator from the process list in windows and gain control of the OS??

This would be one of those ULTIMATE features in a front end! No need for keyboard for emergency!

I'm sure it's possible, but not something I can do.  I think Howard does something similar in his wrappers tho.

But if you have 'Show DOS Box' set to Auto-Show, then bad dumps shouldn't cause it to hang.  Also if you use ClrMAMEPro checked roms you shouldn't have any bad sets, so it shouldn't hang due to that.  That just leaves 'something messed up with the OS', but if the OS hangs you'd have to restart anyway.

[Brad Lee]

In .963, i can't find the 'generate custom list by filters' option in the config menus. Its in the docs, and after the first run it creates the filter*.ftr files.

This is a brand new install, never had a mamewah folder before. Command line mame .79 if that makes any difference. Windows 2000 is what Im playing on, but my cabinet is running XP

edit- while not a bug at all, is there a way to use marquees (or other artwork elements) in the game list, or is the game list strictly text?

[Minwah]

In .963, i can't find the 'generate custom list by filters' option in the config menus. Its in the docs, and after the first run it creates the filter*.ftr files.

This is a brand new install, never had a mamewah folder before. Command line mame .79 if that makes any difference. Windows 2000 is what Im playing on, but my cabinet is running XP

edit- while not a bug at all, is there a way to use marquees (or other artwork elements) in the game list, or is the game list strictly text?

To see that option you need to first select a custom list (using P1 Coin or in Games List Options) - then the option will become available.

The games list is strictly text I'm afraid.

[papaschtroumpf]

I set up mamewah to play MP3s while in the screen saver and I eventually get an error along the lines of "end of file while playing" (sorry I don't remember the exact wording). I suspect one of my MP3s might be corrupted?
I have hours worth of arcade "ambience" MP3s it'll take me quite a while to figure it out by trial and error and I can't just sit around waiting for it to crash either.
I assume that mamewah doesn't log the MP3 file it's playing anywhere?
Any idea how I can find out which MP3 is corrupted short of using the trial and error method? I'll post a similar question in the jukebox forum in case someone knows of a utility to detect bad MP3s.

The MP3 isn't logged unfortunately...trial and error is probably the only way to detect a bad MP3.  I've had a few reports of MW just being 'picky' about some MP3's, but I haven't figured out why yet

FYI, the exact error is Run-Time Error '-2147221493 (8004006) End of file reached while decoding.

I also noticed that when it happened today the music was still playing in the background even though the error message was up. Don't knwo if it means anything. as soon as I clicked OK on the message, mamewah exited. Don't know if it helps. Maybe you could write the current MP3 file to the debug log file if it's trivial to do?

Minwah, after spending countless hours trying to figure out what MP3 file might cause the problem, I gave up and decided to get rid of the music during screen saver.... The problem still occured! this means that this is not music related but screen saver related, maybe an weird/invalid PNG file?
Any idea how I can troubleshoot this?

[Rocky]

the screensaver in Mamewah was hanging on me and I thought it was a bad .png

In reality it was a .txt file  (changes.txt)

There is a game with a rom name of changes.zip   ....hmmm

I removed the .txt file and now everything works. Check your art folders and remove any non-art files

Good luck,
Rocky

[papaschtroumpf]

Thanks, I'll give that a try

[Minwah]

Minwah, after spending countless hours trying to figure out what MP3 file might cause the problem, I gave up and decided to get rid of the music during screen saver.... The problem still occured! this means that this is not music related but screen saver related, maybe an weird/invalid PNG file?
Any idea how I can troubleshoot this?

Looks like you missed my reply to this prob above

But yes, check what Rocky said first...

[papaschtroumpf]

Sorry, I did miss your earlier answer  
I'll try what Rocky suggested (wife's playing on the cab right now, can't check it out right this minute   )
If that's not the problem I'll have to figure out a script to go through all the PNGs, or maybe just redownload the screens that MagnetEye posted on this forum. (Edit: that thread was marquees, but I was thinking about a different thread about the crashtest site)

[papaschtroumpf]

OK, there was no nasty text file in the directory but I went back to CrashTest's site and downloaded all the screenshots again and the can was up overnight without crashing! whoohooo!
Sorry I missed your original suggestion to do just that Minwah.

[Brad Lee]

Ok this may be a dumb one, but......

Ive got 2 emulators setup. If Im viewing #1, and hitthe 'cycle emulator' key, it goes to #2, as expected. If I hit it again it doesnt cyclearound to #1. Am I missing a an option somewhere, is it by design, or is it a bug?

Thanks!

edit- It seems to work if I hit any other key before cycling again, not sure if its my POS keyboard here, or again ifthis is by design

Also, does the debug file only get added to for mame? I have a winamp emulator setup and it doesnt add anythingto the debug.txt file when one is played

[papaschtroumpf]

By default mamewah defines 20 emus, so you have to cycle through all 20 to go back to #1.
Use mamewah setup or manually edit your config file to set the number of emulators to 2.
There is no "previous emulator" key unfortunately so if you have more than 2 you will have to go around to the first one.

[papaschtroumpf]

I've been having problems lately with the mamewah.cfg file getting corrupted (only keeps the first 12 lines or so). This seems to be new behavior since I upgraded to 0.963. Anyone experiencing similar problems?

[Minwah]

OK, there was no nasty text file in the directory but I went back to CrashTest's site and downloaded all the screenshots again and the can was up overnight without crashing! whoohooo!
Sorry I missed your original suggestion to do just that Minwah.

No worries - glad you fixed it

[Minwah]

Ok this may be a dumb one, but......

Ive got 2 emulators setup. If Im viewing #1, and hitthe 'cycle emulator' key, it goes to #2, as expected. If I hit it again it doesnt cyclearound to #1. Am I missing a an option somewhere, is it by design, or is it a bug?

Thanks!

edit- It seems to work if I hit any other key before cycling again, not sure if its my POS keyboard here, or again ifthis is by design

Also, does the debug file only get added to for mame? I have a winamp emulator setup and it doesnt add anythingto the debug.txt file when one is played

Use the 'Emulator Settings' > 'Misc Settings' > 'No. Emulators to Display' option to set how many emus you have.  What papasch says it correct further to that.

Debug.log should get updated everytime you launch something by hitting '1' (regardless of emulator / app etc).  Check you are looking for debug.log and not debug.txt...

[Minwah]

I've been having problems lately with the mamewah.cfg file getting corrupted (only keeps the first 12 lines or so). This seems to be new behavior since I upgraded to 0.963. Anyone experiencing similar problems?

Hmmm I think a few people were getting this previously (I thought in v0.962 tho).  I never had the problem - could you email me a corrupted .cfg file if it happens again?

Actually, I think the solution some users found was that they were using MAMEWAH as a shell and it caused problems.  I think some of those people may have been using MAMEWAH as shell AND in their Startup folder - this caused 2 instances to be opened and conflict with each other.  Double check this isn't the case here...

[JoeB]

I'm note sure the cause of the corruption, but I can tell you for a fact that you can run multiple instances of MAMEWAH!

I run MAMEWAH @ 368x240 and windows @ 640x480 (on ArcadeVGA card) and in the rare case where MAMEWAH looses focus and window stakes over, MAMEWAH runs in a small window on the a bigger desktop.

I end up starting another instance of MAMEWAH, exiting, and the first instance gets focus again.  I exit that instane, and start a new one.  The new one changes the size back to 368x240.

Hope this makes sense.    

[papaschtroumpf]

I don't run mamewah as a shell and I'm not aware of having ran mutiple instances of mamewah at once, although I will keep an eye on it if the problem ever occurs. I may have left mamewah config open while running mamewah, maybe that's part of it?
I'll post the file next time this happens, but I remember that it looks truncated, if I remember right there are about a dozen lines in it with key definitions and it ends abruptly in the middle of a line.

I also realized that I have been terminating mamewah over XP PRo's remote desktop more often lately: my cab automatically launches mamewah at boot, then I'll use my laptop from another room to log into my cab over the network using XP Pro's remote desktop ability: after I log in I see the mamewah screen, and if I hit escape I don't see mamewah disappear, but if I log out of remote desktop then log back in then mamewah has exited. Maybe this (admitedly unusual) way of doing things causes mamewah to exit improperly? I'll avoid doing that in the future except maybe to test this theory further.

[papaschtroumpf]

I thought this has been mentionned before but I can't find the post: if there a "number of lists to display" setting similar to the "number of emulators to display"? or maybe mamewah should detect that a list is empty and skip over it? I've had users hit the "next list" button accidentally then they complain that "all the games are gone" when they're simply lokoing at the next list (which is empty because atm I only use a single list per emu, although I may change that).

[Minwah]

I don't run mamewah as a shell and I'm not aware of having ran mutiple instances of mamewah at once, although I will keep an eye on it if the problem ever occurs. I may have left mamewah config open while running mamewah, maybe that's part of it?
I'll post the file next time this happens, but I remember that it looks truncated, if I remember right there are about a dozen lines in it with key definitions and it ends abruptly in the middle of a line.

I also realized that I have been terminating mamewah over XP PRo's remote desktop more often lately: my cab automatically launches mamewah at boot, then I'll use my laptop from another room to log into my cab over the network using XP Pro's remote desktop ability: after I log in I see the mamewah screen, and if I hit escape I don't see mamewah disappear, but if I log out of remote desktop then log back in then mamewah has exited. Maybe this (admitedly unusual) way of doing things causes mamewah to exit improperly? I'll avoid doing that in the future except maybe to test this theory further.

Leaving a CFG file open while running MW could be bad...also I have no way of saying 100% if it causes any harm but I would recommend against closing MW remotely if possible...

[Minwah]

I thought this has been mentionned before but I can't find the post: if there a "number of lists to display" setting similar to the "number of emulators to display"? or maybe mamewah should detect that a list is empty and skip over it? I've had users hit the "next list" button accidentally then they complain that "all the games are gone" when they're simply lokoing at the next list (which is empty because atm I only use a single list per emu, although I may change that).

It used to do this automatically, but at some point I added the 'Select Custom Lists to Cycle' option (within Games List Options) - that should do what you need

[Calawala]

First off, I want to thank you Minwah for your time and effort.  I have tried out a number of frontends, around 6 or 7, and Mamewah is by far my favorite.  Easy to set up, easy to navigate, looks great, and is easy to customize.

A little info about my system:
WinXP sp1
AMD Athlon XP 1900+ (1.6Ghz)
512 MB ram
GeForce3 Ti 500  v. 53.03 drivers
DirectX 9.0b


A couple of bugs that I have run into with version 0.963

- I have run into the focus problem that a few above have described.  On occasion when I start Mamewah, the windows taskbar stays visible.  Note that the first time Mamewah starts after booting up a PC never has this problem for me.   This only seems to happen after I have quit Mamewah to windows, then start it up again.    
- A related problem is multitasking with Mamewah.  If I switch to the desktop while Mamewah is running, sometimes Mamewah has trouble regaining focus.  The only way I can get it back is to open the task manager and manually switch to the Mamewah task.  Then sometimes (read once or twice) after I exit from a mame game, only half of Mamewah appears.

Both of these problems don't concern me much as when I finaly set up my cab, I don't plan on multitasking or quiting to the desktop.

- If I set up a custum list to generate from filters, that works great.  But, then I cannot use the Next List key to cycle through my other custom lists, unless the other lists were also set up to generate from filters.  The Main list, and both the Longest Played and Most Freq Played lists are unavailable, unless I navigate to them through the menus.

- I was playing around with veritcal layouts.  Rotating the screen resolution with the Geforce drivers and then creating a layout that matched (600x800), which worked fine.  The only problem I had was with the image aspect ratio of the snapshots.  I attached 2 picts (at least I will try, first time attaching a pict) to better illustrate what I mean.  One for vertical games, one for horizontal


Future feature wish list  
- a shortcut key for selecting custom game lists from a menu
- ditto, but with selecting emulators from a menu
- a key for cycling to the previous custum game list
- ditto, but with emulators
- 2 exit keys (as suggested in another post).  one for exit to windows, another for exit and shutdown.  Or perhaps just a key to exit and shutdown and leave a menu option to exit to windows?  Maybe this is posible already /em scratches head - I'll go look again
- EDIT:  add in a key that will pop up a smallish blank form(like the options menu window) that can be custumized (i.e. a help screen image background).  If you wanna go crazy, add in a number of these blank form windows that can be popped up from a key.  That way I could put in additional art images, gameinfo, history, etc that I couldn't normaly fit into the layout.
- EDIT2:  more custom games lists    (sorry, getting carried away here)

Calawala