Kymaera FE, Version 1.23 now Available!

[PacManFan]

Good to here that is all working now. There was a bug w/ the previous catagory , and a bug that was related to new emulator configs not being saved after they were created. After I fixed that, I think it fixed a few other things. Let me know how the rest of the testing goes.

Yeah, the source and destination game list grids are a real pain in the --I'm attempting to get by the auto-censor and should be beaten after I re-read the rules--. I'm using someone else's code for that, maybe it's got a bug, or maybe I'm not using it right.... I'll have to dig a little deeper.

-PMF

[ErikRuud]

Keep in mind that I have not tested the new version in Win98se yet.  That is the PC that is in my cab.

[PacManFan]

Good luck w/ your 98SE machine, I've really only tested this seriously with XP.

BTW, version 1.21 is up. (Minor annoying bug fixes)

-PMF

[ErikRuud]

Ok, here is an update on things that work and don't work.

This is for Win2k.

I can launch MAME, Daphne, and Visual Pinball.  I'll try O2Em at home tonight.

The Gameplay.ini information was not being added to the gamelist when it is in the Kymaera directory.  If I put GamePlay.ini in a different directory then it works.

It appears that several of the objects in the skinner are not supported yet?  ( Category Index,  )It might make more sense for the text to say "Not Supported et" instead of "Hello World".

[PacManFan]

OK, I just changed the catver.ini and gameplay.ini to be installed in the gamelists directory, that will fixe the ini problems.

I also just fixed the game_index and the catagory_index to display the proper texts.

version 1.22 is now posted.

Thanks for the feedback!

-PMF

[ErikRuud]

I'm at home now on my mame cab.

Version 1.22 is working in Win98se, except for creating a game list from MAME.  I still get the same error.

I can use the gamelist that I created in Win2k, so I'm not dead in the water.

I have discovered a new bug.  If you click on the last emulator in the listbox and then click remove it works just like you would expect.  Click on any other emulator and click remove, and it removes the next emulator in the list as well.  This happens in Win98se and Win2K

[jec993]

here are a few things i've come across while using KymaeraConfig 1.22
i haven't gotten too far into it because i can't seem to get the game list to cooperate with me.

Sound config:
Nothing shows up in the Sound Mappings window.
The browse button for "current sound file" does nothing.

Emulator config:
Art Paths ComboBox shouldn't default to empty.
The Art Paths Combo dropdown could show more than two entries.
Maybe the default browse location for Add Path in Rom Paths should be the same directory as the specified Emu Exe instead of at "My computer"?
The browse for folder dlg should tell me what I'm searching for (rom path, which specific art path,...)
It'd be nice if the Rom Path, Game Category List Files, EMU Launch Commands and ROM extensions by default, if not empty, had the first item in them selected.

Game Category List Creation:
Create MAME Game Database:
Create master list could get the mame executable from the Emulator config. Doesn't it get the rom paths from there?
Database export name. Fixup the extension. If there is no extension, add .xml
All the default browse locations should be at least the kymaera install dir if not the Emu exe path?
It'd be nice if all of the browse dlgs reminded the user know what they were browsing for

When creating the game list from Rom directories I always get two extra entries. Are these entries the directories "." and ".."? If so, they can be removed upon creation.
The listctrl for the src and dest game list just doesn?t work for me. I can click and sometimes things get selected. More often than not nothing happens.
I've gotten some pretty good controls and ideas from here
http://www.codeguru.com/Cpp/controls/

I just cant seem to get the mame master list to create. Nothing ever shows up in my .xml file.

Definitely keep up the good work. I'd like to use this in my cab!

-jimC

[TheOtherBob]

I can launch MAME, Daphne, and Visual Pinball.  I'll try O2Em at home tonight.

I wish I could get Visual Pinball to go.  Any tips?  After I create the emulator entry and the xml list.  Whenever I try and start a table it just gives me a Windows error about not being able to find the file.  I've entered the path for my tables but it doesn't seem to be using it?

Argh....

Thanks for the help!  This frontend is my fav so far.  The others I just can't seem to figure out.....  

Great work so far PacManFan!

[PacManFan]

I'll see if I can address some of those code issues 2morrow and post a new version that defaults to extensions and directories. As far as a game list not coming up, After you create the master game list, you still need to LOAD it into the source grid. Open the XML file up and see if there is anything in it. If so, you should be able to load it.

I'll remove those . and .. entries from the rom directory listing, and fix /improve a few other things.

Has anyone run into any issues with Kymaera? (not KymaeraConfig)

Thanks for all the feedback. I'll make an annoucement after I post the next version.

-PMF

[PacManFan]

I know the game grids in the gamelist creation are a little annoying, sometimes you can click on something, sometimes you can't . A workaround (until I fix it) for this is to click  lower down in the list until you select a field, then you can use your arrow keys to move around and you can use the shift and ctrl keys to select multiple game entries.

The selection works like windows explorer does.

Hope this helps.

-PMF

[PacManFan]

I can launch MAME, Daphne, and Visual Pinball.  I'll try O2Em at home tonight.

I wish I could get Visual Pinball to go.  Any tips?  After I create the emulator entry and the xml list.  Whenever I try and start a table it just gives me a Windows error about not being able to find the file.  I've entered the path for my tables but it doesn't seem to be using it?

Argh....

Thanks for the help!  This frontend is my fav so far.  The others I just can't seem to figure out.....  

Great work so far PacManFan!

For Visual Pinball, does it require you to send the rom path and rom extension?
Are you using a long file name or path with spaces?

Try making your launch command look like

"($ROMPATH)($ROMNAME).(ROMEXT)"

and see if that works. Make sure your roms paths are configured right too.

You can also test by hard-coding in a rom filename using that add text button.

[TheOtherBob]

For Visual Pinball, does it require you to send the rom path and rom extension?
Are you using a long file name or path with spaces?

Try making your launch command look like

"($ROMPATH)($ROMNAME).(ROMEXT)"

and see if that works. Make sure your roms paths are configured right too.

You can also test by hard-coding in a rom filename using that add text button.

Thanks for the tips.  Funny thing, you know in that Launch Command window you have an area where you show an EXAMPLE.  It never does show the ROMPATH from the previous window when I've set it.  It shows it for the mame.emu Launch Command, but not for my custom pinball.emu.  It actually just shows a \ I think.  Can my "roms" folder have any spaces in it?  As in c:\emu\visual pinball\tables?  I'm no expert in Visual Pinball, but I think it's better to just launch the table directly (ie: double clicking the table you want to play from the explorer).  If I include the emu exe, vpinball.exe, it basically just takes me into the pinball designer..... so to get around that in your Launch Command I'd guess I should use the ROMNAME instead.  Correct?  But it still gives me the windows can't find that file.  Interesting enough, the windows box that appears just says the first part of the name of the file as in "Comet MOD" could not be found.  Whereas the filename & path is: c:\emu\visual pinball\tables\comet mod.vpt .  It almost sounds like the path and extension are getting truncated before it gets "launched"??  Sorry for rambling.....  I appreciate your hard work and help.

[jec993]

now both kymaeraconfig and kymaera crash upon execution.

here's the kymaeraconfig game.log
******************
       10 : Log System initted
       10 : Current working directory is c:\emu\Frontends\Kymaera\
      350 : No game catagory files defined, generating from rom directories

here's the kymaera game.log
******************
       10 : Log System initted
       10 : Current working directory is c:\emu\Frontends\Kymaera\
      360 : No game catagory files defined, generating from rom directories

thanks,
-jimC

[ErikRuud]

For Visual Pinball you need to use a command wrapper.

Howard Castro has one on his site.  I had an issue with the way it worked, so I wrote my own using AutoIt.

Here is what my .emu file looks like for VisualPinball

Code: [Select]

<Emulator>
<Version>1</Version>
<RomPaths>
<ListCount>1</ListCount>
<RomPaths0>C:\Pinball\Tables</RomPaths0>
</RomPaths>
<RomExtensions>
<ListCount>2</ListCount>
<RomExtensions0>VPT</RomExtensions0>
<RomExtensions1>vpt</RomExtensions1>
</RomExtensions>
<GameCatagorys>
<ListCount>1</ListCount>
<GameCatagorys0>gamelists\pinball.xml</GameCatagorys0>
</GameCatagorys>
<ArtExtensions>
<ListCount>6</ListCount>
<ArtExtensions0>mpg</ArtExtensions0>
<ArtExtensions1>avi</ArtExtensions1>
<ArtExtensions2>png</ArtExtensions2>
<ArtExtensions3>gif</ArtExtensions3>
<ArtExtensions4>tga</ArtExtensions4>
<ArtExtensions5>bmp</ArtExtensions5>
</ArtExtensions>
<SnapsPath/>
<TitlesPath/>
<MarqueesPath/>
<CabinetsPath/>
<FlyersPath/>
<ControlPanelsPath/>
<BezelsPath/>
<BoxArtsPath/>
<CoversPath/>
<Other1Path/>
<Other2Path/>
<Other3Path/>
<EmulatorDisplayName>Pinball</EmulatorDisplayName>
<EmulatorLogoFile/>
<ExeName>c:\pinball\vp.exe</ExeName>
<Skinfile>skins\Kymaera.skn</Skinfile>
<LastCatagoryFile>skins\Kymaera.skn</LastCatagoryFile>
<LaunchCommands>
<NumberOfCommands>1</NumberOfCommands>
<Command0>
<Title>Launch Command</Title>
<ShowCommands>1</ShowCommands>
<Wait>1</Wait>
<AppPart>
<Part>C:\Pinball\vp.exe</Part>
<Type>4</Type>
</AppPart>
<LaunchParts>
<NumParts>1</NumParts>
<Part0>
<Part>($ROMNAME)</Part>
<Type>1</Type>
</Part0>
</LaunchParts>
</Command0>
</LaunchCommands>
</Emulator>

[TheOtherBob]

For Visual Pinball you need to use a command wrapper.

Howard Castro has one on his site.  I had an issue with the way it worked, so I wrote my own using AutoIt.

Thanks!  I just found his wrapper and it seems to do the trick for me....

[PacManFan]

now both kymaeraconfig and kymaera crash upon execution.

here's the kymaeraconfig game.log
******************
       10 : Log System initted
       10 : Current working directory is c:\emu\Frontends\Kymaera\
      350 : No game catagory files defined, generating from rom directories

here's the kymaera game.log
******************
       10 : Log System initted
       10 : Current working directory is c:\emu\Frontends\Kymaera\
      360 : No game catagory files defined, generating from rom directories

thanks,
-jimC

Jec993,

It sounds like you need to set up a gamelist for your each of your emulators. In the emulator config screen, Add one of the existing gamelists from the \gamelists directory , and remove that "rom directory" catagory file. That should fix it. Sorry you're having so many problems.
 
-PMF

[ErikRuud]

PacManFan,

Yes, I did find a problem with Kymaera.exe.

Short gamelists are still repeating on the screen.

[PacManFan]

PacManFan,

Yes, I did find a problem with Kymaera.exe.

Short gamelists are still repeating on the screen.

Yeah, I still haven't done anything about that yet. I think the simplist solution may be to put in a flag in the gamelist properties specifying "circular" or "linear". That way, the list will end at the bottom instead of wrapping around to the top.

-PMF

[ErikRuud]

I am going to confirm that the sound mapping portion of the sound config does not work.  The list box is empty and the browse button does not open a file browser.

In the gamelist selection, some sort of wild card support would be nice.  I would like to set a filter where category begins with Sports, instead of having to set up seperate filters for every Sports/****** category.

[jec993]

I'm not sure what I am doing wrong. I'm trying to create a mame game list and I just cannot get any games to show up in the list.

attached are screen shots of my config screens. all the paths are correct and browsed-to.

this is all that is ever in my mamegamemasterlist.xml file

<GameList>
<Catagory_Name>Game Database</Catagory_Name>
<Catagory_Image/>
<Number_Of_Entries>0</Number_Of_Entries>
</GameList>


thanks,
-jimC

[jec993]

in the skinner, when loading the default skin, whenever I single click on the GAME_PREVIEWS layout box I get a crash.

thanks,
-jimC

[ErikRuud]

After you click the create button, you then have to click on the Load Button and load the gamelist that you just created.

[ErikRuud]

We just had by daughters birthday party.  There were 50+ relatives in teh house, with at least a dozen people playng games on the MAME cab.  Kymaera ran well for the whole six hours!

I have noticed that it kind of gets hung up if a rom in a gamelist does not exist!

[jec993]

After you click the create button, you then have to click on the Load Button and load the gamelist that you just created.

the problem is that the gamelist that i just created has zero entries.

this does, however, point out a way to streamline the process. why not automatically load the gamelist after you create it? if you dont want it to automatically load, then at least ask the user if they want to load the newly created gamelist.

thanks,
-jimC

[EtherHawk]

Just tried the first release, looks like it could be great, a few things were painfull for me.
1) Game category list creation dialog is so large that the button to save your list is off the screen in 800x600 mode (highest mode I have w/o virtual desktop).  It took me a while to figure out what was wrong (manual helped).
2) As was mentioned above, selecting things in that game category create screen was challenging at best.  Row 1 & 2 and the last row would all select, but none of the others.  When I CTRL selected multiple items to copy them down to my new list it chose all between them as well, as if I had SHIFT selected.  Enter on that screen also closed the screen without saving anything, which would have been painful if I had been at it very long (I had selected a game name to edit accidently and I hit enter instead of esc, or maybe enter twice).
3) Since Mame32 is what people often start with, would it be possible to import their style of custom lists (which are just text files of rom names).  Seems like it would help people who started their customization in Mame32 before seeing the light and converting to frontend goodness.  Also would mean that people could use Mame32 to create a gamelist, where you can see screens and additional info as you make the list (something you could add to your list create, but might be easier to import them).
4) Last but definitely not least, I love the ability to use a trackball/mouse/spinner, but it would be even better if it were able to be speed sensitive, so that you could move quickly through longer lists, but then fine tune your selection carefully.

Keep up the great work, I certainly have not tried all the frontends that are out there, but this one seems like a good balance between features/customizeability and complexity.

[ErikRuud]

I mostly relied on the filters to create my gamelists.

When I needed to pick and choose, I did it the hard way, by clicking on one of the bottom entries and using the arrows keys to get to the game I wanted.  I had to click on the "copy selected game..." button for each game because the Control/Multi select part does not work correctly.

In Kymaera.exe I have also noticed that when when switching categories within an emulator, the screen shot does not refresh to show the game that is now highlighted in the new category.  f you switch emulators, the screen shot does refresh properly.

At the party some people where getting confused by the categories within emulators structure, so I have now setup a copies of the MAME emulator for each category.  This avoids the confusion, and also gets around the snapshot refresh issue.

[ErikRuud]

I decided to try something that is not covered in the current documentation.

The "Add to Favorites" key does not appear to do anything yet, however, I noticed that you can "Set Games in  Dest. to Current Emulator" in the gamelist screen.  At first it did not appear to work, because the list does not update, but I found that if you save the list, and then reload it the emulator column will be filled in.  Next I created a new gamelist, by loading a list of MAME games and copying a few to the destination, then I loaded a Visual Pinball list and copied a few games, then I did the same for Daphne.  I saved this mixed list and added it to one of the emulators.  When I brought this mixed list up in Kymaera, I was able to pick any game and launch it with the correct emulator!

[PacManFan]

Congratulations,

You found the secret hidden feature of Kymaera. I put in the "Add to favorites" feature, and I didn't document it because I needed to do some more testing. Basically, when you create a gamelist, you can assgin all the games in the gamelist to the current emulator and save it out. Then you can add a list called "favorites" to any emulator.

When you are in the FE, You can add a game from any emulator/catagory to the favorites list by using the "Add_to_favorites" key.

Then, you can use the favorites catagory just like any other catagory, except, it'll display games from any emu/catagory, and let you launch the game.

I didn't document it yet because it's still a little buggy. Maybe you could help point out some of the bugs.

-PMF

[ErikRuud]

Ah Ha!!

I did not kno that the Favorites gategory had to added to an emulator to get updated.  

I just created a mixed list manually.

I'll give that a try.

By the way, it is not entirely secret.  It has been discussed earltier in this thread as an upcoming feature.  All I did was try to figure out how it worked.

[ErikRuud]

I tried it out, and the add to favorites key does work if you have a list called favorites assigned to one of the emulators.

[silentmallerick]

I've been messing around with Kymaera but I seem to have one major problem.  When I exit a game I get a black screen.  It doesn't return to the interface or the desktop.  I have to end task to get out.

I'm using mame32 .81, windows xp prof, athlon.

[abrannan]

I've been messing around with Kymaera but I seem to have one major problem.  When I exit a game I get a black screen.  It doesn't return to the interface or the desktop.  I have to end task to get out.

I'm using mame32 .81, windows xp prof, athlon.

Don't use Mame32, use regular Mame.  The "interface" the Mame32 presents is redundant with any front end.  Let me know fi you're still having problems with regular Mame .81

[Fandenivoldsk]

Hi PMF!

Any progress in triggerable animation yet? I hope you'll include it in the next version...

[PacManFan]

Not yet, but I'm working on it....

-PMF

[ErikRuud]

I finally got around to setting up Kymaera to launch O2Em (Odyssey2)games.

O2Em requires the use of the rom path, rom extension and an option for full screen.

"O2EM C:\O2EM\ROMS\UFO.BIN -fullscreen"

I discovered that I have to explicitly add the 'dot' between rom name and rom extension.  (i.e. Click rom_path, click rom_name, tpye a period in thetext box and click add_text, click rom_extension)

I also had to make sure there was a leading space when I entered the text for the -fullscreen option.

It does work now, and it was cool to discover that there was already a logo for Odyssey2 in the distribution.
How come there wasn't one for Daphne?

[PacManFan]

I got the top level logos from stuzza's site. Does he have a Daphne logo? I'll add it to the distribution if he does. Glad to see Kymaera is working well for you. Great things are still to come.

-PMF

[EndTwist]

Any plans to make this rotate vertically? Becuase mine FE obviously doesn't want to become popular.

[PacManFan]

Kymaera can already rotate vertically. You have to set the skin rotation to be 90,180 or 270, and create the skin at resolutions like 480X640 instead of 640x480 and the such.
Try it out! I'm not sure how many Vertical Kymaera users there are yet.

-PMF

[EndTwist]

Doh! Figures I wouldn't notice that. I'm making a vertical cocktail cab, so I'm trying to decide on a good FE.

[ErikRuud]

Is there a way to change the number of games the 'Page Up' and "Page Down' scroll through?  

It appears to skip 50 games in either direction regardless of how many games actually show in the game list.