Mamehooker 5.1 Released!

[Howard_Casto]

(Taken word for word from my site)

We've been testing this guy for a week or so now and I think it's time to officially release it.

5.1 adds a ton of new stuff, but the main highlights:

Wheel support.

The ability to Load and manipulate FF effect files.

Title Bar Hooking for Unsupported Emulators.

Better DDE Support, which means that Troubleshooter 2 can now send outputs to Mamehooker!

Better Mult-Emulator support, Supermodel, Mame Model 2 and any Others you add now get their own folder.

Brand new tutorials going over all of this stuff.

As usual find the tutorials and download on my website by clicking on the footer below.  Enjoy!

[SegaOutrun]

Thanks for the hard work.

[Sky25es]

Thanks Howard 
I've tested it with a homemade submachine lightgun I've made (I will  post a pic and a por quality video on the main forum) and the recoil worked well so far (at least with operation Wolf)
I'll test it more next week.

[DeLuSioNal29]

If you get me a link to the main MAMEHOOKER topic, I can sticky it and you can simply update that version when you have updates.

Let me know.

DeLuSioNaL29

[Howard_Casto]

Eh I appreciate it but for whatever reason nobody reads the stickies. 

I'll use this one for a while until it gets too long and then dump it if that's alright. 

[Generic Eric]

I am going to read about this soon.  Thank you for continuing to update.

[DeLuSioNal29]

Eh I appreciate it but for whatever reason nobody reads the stickies. 

I'll use this one for a while until it gets too long and then dump it if that's alright.

I check them all the time, especially when I'm "looking" for specific software to re-install, etc.
It still couldn't hurt to do both.

D

[BadMouth]

I intend to make an output/mamehooker sticky in the driving cab subforum in a few weeks (after work lets up and I have time to implement and test everything myself, so I know what I can speak from practical experience and not just regurgitate instructions from elsewhere).

It will be more of a user guide and example script repository rather than a place for posting updates.
Might as well include script examples for things other than driving games, so they're all in one place.

At the beginning of it, I'll put a link to Howard's most current development thread and keep it updated.

[notaburger]

I've gotta say, this thing is awesome.  I used CPWizard to pump out some snazzy control panel images and now I'm using mamehooker to show them on my secondary monitor (in my opinion, mamehooker is much easier to manipulate than CPWizard for this purpose).

I have one question though.  I've got titlebar hooking working fine on nullDC (or so I think), but I don't know how to trigger my control image to come up.  Since I don't care about rom names, I just set it up as a single game program.  I have the following in my debug window:

mame_start

Emulator=nullDC
Game Info:
----------
Rom=default
Parent=default
Driver=
Orientation=na

Which .ini file do I need to update and how do I need to name my image file?  I changed my nullDC default.ini to include "MameStart=lds marquee", put the image in my mame controls folder, and tried names such as nullDC.png, dreamcast.png, and default.png.  None of these worked.

It's worth noting that I got mame working perfect.  It shows my images whenever I load a game.

Thanks for your help!

Dave

[Howard_Casto]

You did it correctly.  A lds at MameStart should work and default.png would be the image to send.  So it could be a bug on my end.... I'll look into it when I get a chance. 

[notaburger]

Thanks for the reply. I'll double check everything on my side again tonight. It is entirely possible that I just made a careless mistake.

[Howard_Casto]

There are a couple of bugs in the title hooking only specific to display files (thus why I never caught them).  I'll release a new version soon.

[notaburger]

That's awesome. Thanks.
FYI, I don't know if it will help with your bug fixes, but last night I tried setting up a dedicated display folder for my console emulators and took the variables out of the equation (so image= just pointed directly to the necessary file, such as Dreamcast.png) and the problem still persisted.

Again, thanks for your hard work. I've got to say that your documentation (inis, tutorials, readmes, etc.) are some of the nicest I've seen in this community.  Super easy to follow and well laid out.

Thanks again.
Dave

[deadmoney5]

Mamehooker...I was thinking of something else

[Howard_Casto]

That's awesome. Thanks.
FYI, I don't know if it will help with your bug fixes, but last night I tried setting up a dedicated display folder for my console emulators and took the variables out of the equation (so image= just pointed directly to the necessary file, such as Dreamcast.png) and the problem still persisted.

Again, thanks for your hard work. I've got to say that your documentation (inis, tutorials, readmes, etc.) are some of the nicest I've seen in this community.  Super easy to follow and well laid out.

Thanks again.
Dave

Yeah it's not that, it's this oddball thing that happens with window detection.  Due to the way I coded it (I had to unfortunately), sometimes things happen out of order, so the display window is initialized AFTER the file has been loaded, meaning it's cleared off before it ever even becomes visible.  There are some other things that need cleaned up as well.

[raph]

Sorry for the necro, but did this bug ever get fixed, or does anyone know of a workaround? I seem to have the exact same situation, only with the ParaJVE emulator. It's set up as a standalone game, because it doesn't display ROMs in the title bar. I have the hook working correctly -- when I click in and out of the emu, I can see the mame_start and mame_stop messages in the debug window. I can manually use the Test menu option to run "lds parajve" and the proper image appears.

But when I click in and out of the emu, I get a black screen. I've double-checked that the ini is pointing at the correct display, and all seems to be in order.

If this bug isn't fixed, does anyone know of an alternative method to display marquees on a second monitor for non-MAME emulators? CPWizard seems to be MAME-only.

[vwalbridge]

Thanks Howard!

Mamehooker works perfectly inside my Qbert cab firing my knocker!

[raph]

I ended up cobbling together a different solution for swapping marquees for other emulators -- basically, a VBS script wrapping a little desktop wallpaper utility. I run it as a precommand and postcommand in Mala, and it works fine. There's only one marquee per emu in those cases right now. MameHooker then takes care of the MAME marquees as usual. A compromise, but it works for now. 

[Sky25es]

Hi Howard, I have just a few questions:

1# I know that the outputs for the G-Loc motor/s are read by mamehooker but they don't work ? Is there something that needs to be configured ? Would be nice if we could use i.e. a Sidewindewinder FF 2 Joystick for real Force Feedback .
2# Any news regarding the outputs for the system22 games in Mame ? Same thing goes for Time Crisis (and similar Lightgun Games). It would be great to use real game driven recoil.

Mamehooker is one of the most important apps in my cab. To have the outputs hooked on makes a world of difference. So thanks for your hard efforts.