It's Baaaack! Dragon King 0.99

[Howard_Casto]

Dragon King

What's New .99
=================

General:

Bug fixes galore.... Any minor bugs should now be gone.

Fixed a bug in the new path features.... you should now be able to add spaces to your custom path string.

Volume for each part of the sound engine can now be set at a ratio via the frontend.ini, so you have a mixer of sorts.

A few more misc settings were added to the frontend.ini

Tweaked the default skin some more... adding music and sound effects.

Modified the intro.mpeg to be a little less scary for children/pets/the mother-in-law. ;-)

Various bugs in the info screen have been fixed regarding the artwork search routine.

The same type of bugs were fixed in the general renderer.

Holding down a key while you launch dk will bypass the intro video.

Fixed some bugs involving the recently added cd support.

If you are running noname mame, dk can optionally pass the color scheme of your skin to it and your mame menus will match.


Graphical:

Different skins for each list are now supported!
On a related note... I've already made a few emu-specific skins featuring custom blending effects and custom animations.

Attract Mode videos are now treated as textures, so blending and layering effects are now applied to them.

When a com.mpeg is present, the inteface no longer renders after the video is finished, giving a cleaner look.

Animation folders are no longer pre-cached, which means even lower memory requirements.

Added a new blend mode.... color keyed black. This will be useful for removing backgrounds from cabinet images.



Core:

Fixed a huge memory leak, which will definately improve performance.

Cfg files for each emulator now support a total override of the way dk launches a game,
letting you make your own string via special tags (gamelauncher fans know what I mean about this.)

Cfg files for each emulator now support adding additional command line arguments on a per-game basis,
allowing special configurations for problem games.

The delay before an attract mode video starts is now configurable.

Listinfo, History, and Gamefaq data read in on the info screen are now more accurately formatted.
They should appear nearly identical to how they look if you simply open the files in notepad.

Previous path and Next path buttons now serve as "pageup/pagedown" keys when viewing things in the info screen.

The "print to list" function has been expanded upon.
Now via an optional template, these gamelists can contain whatever you want in whatever format you want,
saved to whatever name you choose.
The sample template is in html, just to demonstrate the power of the new option.


Since you can now have different skins for each list, you can also have different
frontend.ini/dirs.ini options for each skin.
The list of supported options is limited right now, but I will expand upon it.


Skinner:

Updated and fixed bugs as usual. In all honesty, the poor skinner app is showing it's age. A rebuild might be in order.



Things To expect in the next (final??) release:

3d model support.

Full control of the layering of elements, including animations and overlays.

A "random" element that is displayed randomly...for lightning strikes and such.

A video texture element.

Optional treatment of com and end videos as textures (for cool blending effects with the actual skin).

Hardware communication via the parallel port.

[RetroBorg]

You've been a busy boy Howard, I'm downloading it now!  

[Teknique]

holy monkey thats alot.

Thanks Howard!

[JoeB]

Howard.. you probably have the most advanced front end out there!!!    

Before I tackle this puppy, I have a simple question.  Would you recommend Dragon King to run on an arcade monitor at a resolution of ~320x240 ?? Or is it made more for the home user running it on a PC?

I can't seem to find the answer to this anywhere.  

[Lilwolf]

Dragon King

Modified the intro.mpeg to be a little less scary for children/pets/the mother-in-law. ;-)

Is the downsize have anything to do with changing the color of the dragon to purple... and changing the sounds to a song... that goes like "I love you!  You love me!"?

[Howard_Casto]

Dragon King

Modified the intro.mpeg to be a little less scary for children/pets/the mother-in-law. ;-)

Is the downsize have anything to do with changing the color of the dragon to purple... and changing the sounds to a song... that goes like "I love you!  You love me!"?

No it's called I happened to have the cat on my lap one morning while I was working on it and it tried to claw my eyes out!  Didn't realize the sound was so obnoxious until then.  

[Howard_Casto]

Howard.. you probably have the most advanced front end out there!!!    

Before I tackle this puppy, I have a simple question.  Would you recommend Dragon King to run on an arcade monitor at a resolution of ~320x240 ?? Or is it made more for the home user running it on a PC?

I can't seem to find the answer to this anywhere.  

Well yes and no.... the skin format technically can't handle a resolution lower than 640x480 at this point (It will display though, the skin will probably just look funny)....

However, it has been brought to my attention that this version "broke" some of the older skin formats I used to support.  If that's the case, then what the heck.... I'll go ahead and change everything to a percent based ratio upon the next release, so infinate scaling in either direction will be supported.  

[Minwah]

Nice update HC.  Not sure when you added it but I like the dumba prog - good idea

[GSXRMovistar]

Some good updates in there Howard. I've got a quick question, I've been through all the documentation and config files and for the life of me I can't work out how to assign a different skin to each list, what do I need to do to set this up?

Also I've noticed a small bug/feature, if you have joystick support enabled but then start DK without a joystick plugged in it craps out. It would be handy if DK still loaded so that the standard key input could be used.

Oh and btw, thanks again for a great frontend.  

[Howard_Casto]

If you read above the skin refresh style entry in the frontend.ini it explains that you either name the caption of the list or the logo for the list after the folder name of the skin.  

Yeah I know about that, it's a directinput thing.  I haven't bothered to fix it yet because the feature is more for hard-wired setups (cabinets that use joystick input)  I'll put a call in later on.  

Let me know if there's anything else.  

HAC

[Random24]

Hey Howard,

I sent you an e-mail on this issue but then I thought that there might be some people here might be curious about the same thing so I'll ask here as well.

In the new skinner under "Path Caption", what do the numbers 0 -  12 correspond to?  I suspect that 1 is the rom name but that is just a guess.  I am almost done with a new skin, which I'll send to you when it's done, but this is the only part I can't figure out.

Thanks for any info.

[GSXRMovistar]

If you read above the skin refresh style entry in the frontend.ini it explains that you either name the caption of the list or the logo for the list after the folder name of the skin.  

Yeah I know about that, it's a directinput thing.  I haven't bothered to fix it yet because the feature is more for hard-wired setups (cabinets that use joystick input)  I'll put a call in later on.  

Let me know if there's anything else.  

HAC

Cheers Howard, all sorted now.

[Howard_Casto]

Hey Howard,

I sent you an e-mail on this issue but then I thought that there might be some people here might be curious about the same thing so I'll ask here as well.

In the new skinner under "Path Caption", what do the numbers 0 -  12 correspond to?  I suspect that 1 is the rom name but that is just a guess.  I am almost done with a new skin, which I'll send to you when it's done, but this is the only part I can't figure out.

Thanks for any info.

0-12 are slots 0-12 in the masterlist file.... their specific data types are mentioned somewhere in the online docs.  Actually 0 is the rom name if I'm not mistaken, you aren't thinking like a programmer, we always start with 0, not 1  

Slots are seperated by a "|" so open it up and look for yourself if you can't find it.  I rarely list them all because I don't know all 12 myself without looking.

[Random24]

Thanks for the info.  The reason I thought that 1 was the rom name was because that is the only field used in the new NES skin and I had thought that was what was displayed in the skin.

I definitely understand the concept of counting from 0.

[GSXRMovistar]

Howard, a couple more questions regarding joystick input, hope you don't mind  

1) I have the info command (uiInfo) configured as
      keyboard 86 (V key)
      joypad b0 = 86
If I press b0 on my pad it does display the info screen but pressing it a second time does not exit it (or pressing b9=27=Esc=uiExit). But if I press either Esc or V on the keyboard both exit the info screen. How come the joypad input does not work?

2) I seem unable to map
      uiNext50=75=j,
      uiPrev50=74=k
      SuiPrevLet=77=m
      SuiNextLet=78=n
to buttons b2 or b3 although these appear fine when mapped to say Xaxis+.  Any ideas?

BTW I'm using a PS2 pad hooked up via USB convertor. Again thanks for your help with all this.

[Howard_Casto]

Probably because the joypad remapping feature only works for dk itself, not the menus.  

Annoying for you I'm sure... but it's even more annoying for me because the menus are gdi based (use vb input) and dk is directx based (uses directx for input).  For me to transfer the joystick and mouse inputs to the gdi menus I have to change the parent handle, which may or many not crash the input scheme if it's doen really quickly.  So for now it's disabled in the menus, but in the future I'll work on it.  

[GSXRMovistar]

Thanks Howard, at least I know its not me going crazy then. I can live with this until the next version  

Next job for this evening then is going to be setting up DK with VisualboyAdvanceSDL, never ending this config lark!

[GSXRMovistar]

Me again  .  Two things.

Firstly a small one, I've found that when you load up DK the pop.mp3 file plays fine when moveing through the menus but once you play a game then return to DK the sound no longer plays.

Secondly I can't work out that the hell causes this one but sometimes (quite often) when I exit out of a game (Mame and various emulators) instead of returning to the DK menu screens all I get is a black screen, can't exit or anything. Bringing up task manager shows DK running at 95% (no idea what its doing).

I've tested this on two different systems and get the same thing, any ideas?

Cheers.

[GSXRMovistar]

DK is no longer returning from a played game at all now  , Haven't got a clue what to try,  may have to resort to trying a different frontend  .

[Floyd10]

  OH NO!!

[GSXRMovistar]

Okay I

[Howard_Casto]

The issue is actually far less complex than you think.  I looked into it... the window just isn't getting focus.  If you were to press alt-tab you'd see the window again.  



The bug is squashed and will be gone in the next release.  Thanks for your input.  

[GSXRMovistar]

Doh! Can't believe all the messing about I did I never checked alt-tab!  

Cheers Howard.