ArcadEPIC version 0.2b First Official Release

[chowny]

First public version of this Windows Multi-emulator Front end is now released, and available for download at

http://www.mameworld.net/arcadepic

Thanks
 Stephen

[maraxle]

What does this new front end offer that makes it different from all the other Windows-based front ends?  

I don't mean that to be a combative question.  I am just curious.

[chowny]

What does this new front end offer that makes it different from all the other Windows-based front ends?  

I don't mean that to be a combative question.  I am just curious.

It offers Innovation.

Made a 1024x768 skin and want to see what it would look like in 320x240 on your cabinet? Just change resolution without leaving the front end and watch it dynamically resize.

Rename your roms, and it'll remember your name preferances when you upgrade mame and generate your lists again.

Automatically detects and sets up MAME and DAPHNE (and VisualBoy Advance, Gens and a few others)

Change most settings from within the front end.

Comes with an configurator thats really easy for a Newb to use.

Uses DirectX9, so no flickering or larking about when you are scrolling up and down lists.

Built in MP3/WMA jukebox.

Built in Videoplayer.

Change Layouts on the fly without leaving the front end.

etc etc.

I really have designed it to be really easy to setup and use, but at the same time powerful for the user that wants to go into more depth.

Give it a try.

Regards
 Stephen

[RacerX]

The autodetection of emulators sounds interesting...  I may have to download this and play with it.

[mahuti]

Definitely the easiest to setup that I've tried. I was up and running in about 2 minutes. Didn't have to type in anything... most of the stuff was automated. The auto find for mame works great. Excellent feature.

3 Things, though.

1. Scroll speed on a 500 mhz pc is a bit odd... if I hold down the joystick for a sec and let go, I've gone like 10 pages without a screen refresh. I'm assuming it's just because I'm running a junker, and not some sort of intended feature. Also the regular scroll is bit slow.

2. Games take a bit longer to load and unload than in MameWah

3. When I try to "add list" the app exits with no warning.

Those minor notes aside, I think this is the most promising of the new 2-d front-ends. Kudos. Good job. I'm seriously considering replacing MameWah with it (if I can figure out how to make custom lists, anyway)

[chowny]

Definitely the easiest to setup that I've tried. I was up and running in about 2 minutes. Didn't have to type in anything... most of the stuff was automated. The auto find for mame works great. Excellent feature.

3 Things, though.

1. Scroll speed on a 500 mhz pc is a bit odd... if I hold down the joystick for a sec and let go, I've gone like 10 pages without a screen refresh. I'm assuming it's just because I'm running a junker, and not some sort of intended feature. Also the regular scroll is bit slow.

2. Games take a bit longer to load and unload than in MameWah

3. When I try to "add list" the app exits with no warning.

Those minor notes aside, I think this is the most promising of the new 2-d front-ends. Kudos. Good job. I'm seriously considering replacing MameWah with it (if I can figure out how to make custom lists, anyway)

Excellent. Thanks for the feedback. Glad my auto-setup works.  

Erm. Scrolling speed. Of course it is loading a snap for each time you go on a menu item. Which on a ninja machine like mine is fine. Perhaps I should have options somewhere to fine tune this for various machines. Look out for it in a release real soon.

As for how lists work...hmmm...you make a new one and move stuff to it. I'll look into this ASAP in case a bug has crept in somewhere. Does it give you my "comedy" catch all error message?

Regards
 Stephen

[Buddabing]

I first tried this on my PC. Setup was flawless and super easy. It works great.

Then I tried it on my cabinet, which uses a low res arcade monitor (it flickers noticibly at 640x480, so I run Windows XP Pro at much lower res) and a considerably slower (900 MHz) computer, with ArcadeVGa. There were a few issues.

Although the FE picked up MAME and Daphne, it didn't take into account my control panel ctrlr file. Not a big deal since I can put a ctrlr entry in the mame.ini.

When the configurator was detecting keypresses, it was way too fast at sensing when I pressed controls on my CP. So it would pick up a joystick down signal two or three times instead of just one.

When the FE runs at low resolutions, it skips too many games when joystick left/right is pressed. It should just skip one page of games, or else have the "skip to the next letter" be selectable to "skip just one page", or even have "skip to the next letter" be a separate, configurable control.

Auto key repeat didn't work on my cabinet, but maybe that's due to my ctrlr file not being loaded.

I think this FE will join the list of great FEs. Nice work, chowny!

[chowny]

Then I tried it on my cabinet, which uses a low res arcade monitor (it flickers noticibly at 640x480, so I run Windows XP Pro at much lower res) and a considerably slower (900 MHz) computer, with ArcadeVGa. There were a few issues.

Although the FE picked up MAME and Daphne, it didn't take into account my control panel ctrlr file. Not a big deal since I can put a ctrlr entry in the mame.ini.

When the configurator was detecting keypresses, it was way too fast at sensing when I pressed controls on my CP. So it would pick up a joystick down signal two or three times instead of just one.

When the FE runs at low resolutions, it skips too many games when joystick left/right is pressed. It should just skip one page of games, or else have the "skip to the next letter" be selectable to "skip just one page", or even have "skip to the next letter" be a separate, configurable control.

Auto key repeat didn't work on my cabinet, but maybe that's due to my ctrlr file not being loaded.

I think this FE will join the list of great FEs. Nice work, chowny!

I'll look into all these control issues as soon as Burnout 3 allows.  

Erm. There are two rapid scroll modes (for left and right), Alphabet and Page. If you switched to page (its under Scroll Mode on the INTEFACE popup menu), it'll do exactly what you're asking.

Thanks for the kind words.

Regards
 Stephen

[mahuti]

No comedy error. Just an exit of the app. I select "add new list" and abracadabra the app is gone.

[Scoobie]

Well, I must be the only one not to get this FE setup.  Mame doesn't show up at all, and my Gens games show...but when a game is selected I can hear it running, but can't see it.

I ran the Configurator and Mame List builder.  All the paths look right from within the configurator and the .ini file.

What am I missing?

[chowny]

No comedy error. Just an exit of the app. I select "add new list" and abracadabra the app is gone.

Okidokes. Will look into it.

[chowny]

Well, I must be the only one not to get this FE setup.  Mame doesn't show up at all, and my Gens games show...but when a game is selected I can hear it running, but can't see it.

I ran the Configurator and Mame List builder.  All the paths look right from within the configurator and the .ini file.

What am I missing?

Oh dear. What version build of MAME are you running? AdvMAME, MAME32 ?

Whats the actual EXE filename?

Regards
 Stephen

[Scoobie]

I'm running official Mame v 0.83 (before xml and dats came into play).  The version I am testing this on is mamepp.exe on my Pentium 4 machine.  I checked, and the FE does list this exact file name from it's current place: c:/mame/mamepp.exe

[chowny]

I'm running official Mame v 0.83 (before xml and dats came into play).  The version I am testing this on is mamepp.exe on my Pentium 4 machine.  I checked, and the FE does list this exact file name from it's current place: c:/mame/mamepp.exe

Aaaaaaaaaaah. XML only in this version sorry.

If enough people want it I'll support legacy versions of mame.

Regards
 Stephen

[pointdablame]

ahhh, so that's why I couldn't get this up and running.  mame .83 here too

This FE looks really promising, but I'm not ready to update mame for it, heh.  I'll have to give it another look whenever I update next.  Keep up the good work.

And by the way, isn't Burnout 3 just awesome??  I'm addicted....  so very, very addicted.

[Scoobie]

Aaaaaaaaaaah. XML only in this version sorry.

If enough people want it I'll support legacy versions of mame.

Regards
 Stephen

If you do update for legacy versions, any thougts on adding trackball/mouse support?

[chowny]

If you do update for legacy versions, any thougts on adding trackball/mouse support?

Already working on it! (mouse/trackball support)

Regards
 Stephen

[Buddabing]

Erm. There are two rapid scroll modes (for left and right), Alphabet and Page. If you switched to page (its under Scroll Mode on the INTEFACE popup menu), it'll do exactly what you're asking.

I found the scroll mode in the main.ini. I don't get any pop-up menus, must be my config.

I found a couple more things. One is that the FE doesn't handle ALT-TAB very well. The other is that I'd like the FE to start up at the last game played, or at least have it selectable. If I last played Zookeeper, I don't want to have to scroll all the way through the game list again.

[EDIT] I also got an "Oh Dear"... exception when I pressed ESC during the screen saver. A game may or may not have been running at the time.

Also, I don't want to see the Windows desktop at any time during the running of the front end. On your FE, I can see the task bar when a game is launched. On MAMEWah, I can see the desktop when a game ends. On Dragon King, it is seamless.

[SirPoonga]

Ok, I get a blank list  It was cool to see it find my emulators...

[SirPoonga]

What xml engine do you use, it's fast.

[chowny]

What xml engine do you use, it's fast.

I wrote my own from scratch! The first time I wrote it, it took 20 minutes! But with a bit of optimization, I had it working pretty quickly.

Did you get your gamelist up in the end?

Regards
 Stephen

[SirPoonga]

no, I am still at the above screen.  I am also getting rendering errors in the jukebox.

I am on a PIII 500 with an ATI128.

[chowny]

Look in the directory you unzipped ArcadEPIC to and see if there is a file called GameList.txt. Open it up. If its full of data, then at least the gamelist is being generated correctly.

Then look at the end of each line in that file. If they all end with FALSE then it can't find your ROMS.

Do you store your ROMS as ZIPS? Can you check in the "Configurator" program that your Rom Path is correct?

Regards
 Stephen

[Buddabing]

What xml engine do you use, it's fast.

I wrote my own from scratch! The first time I wrote it, it took 20 minutes! But with a bit of optimization, I had it working pretty quickly.

Did you get your gamelist up in the end?

Regards
 Stephen

Did you use flex/bison? You can get a very fast XML scanner/parser that way. I've developed three XML parsers with flex/bison, for parsing listxml output, ctrlr files, and controls.xml. I'd be happy to share the work I did with you.

[SirPoonga]

Do you store your ROMS as ZIPS? Can you check in the "Configurator" program that your Rom Path is correct?

ah ha!
I figured it grabbed the info from the mamepp.ini file since it auto found mame.  I had to change the rom path.

[slycrel]

  I'll put one more vote in for legacy MAME support.  not only for those of us who are lazy, but it would be good for those people who want to run earlier versions of MAME because fo speed issues on older hardware.  Looking forward to it...

[cdbrown]

Great front end - took me no time at all to setup and play a game.  I agree that the removal of the windows task bar when changing from the FE to the game would be great but in the meantime the user could always shrink the bar manually before starting the FE.

With the snaps I noticed that the snapshots are being resized incorrectly.
The size of the png files are
bomberman world 320x240
crude buster 256x240
digger 224x256
warrior blade 640x240
all games get stretched to the same height and width except for digger as I guess it knows its a vertical game and doesn't stretch it out?  So warrior blade looks squished.  Any way to allow it to resize the image without stretching out of shape?

Cheers
-cdbrown


Edit - coming up with an error - if I'm in the FE and click the mouse button, the mouse cursor appears.  If I press up or down arrow to go to the next game it crashes.  If I press enter to start the game it's ok.  I then exit out back to FE and the mouse cursor is still there, but pressing up or down doesn't cause it to crash.

[SirPoonga]

I am still getting render errors witht he jukebox though

[chowny]

I'm releasing a new version that has some of the issues above addressed in it.

Mahuti : Scroll Speed has been addressed for older PCs.

mahuti : Fixed some bugs in Custom Lists. Hopefully this will fix your problem.

Buddabing : configurator was detecting keypresses too fast. This is fixed.

Buddabing : Page/Alphabet scrolling is definitely on the menu. You probably couldn't get the menu up due to the keys and the error above.

Scoobie : Added the ability to mouse/trackball up and down the lists and menus. Added mouse button support. Left button selects, Right button brings up menu.

Buddabing : At your suggestion ArcdadEPIC now remembers your last rom selection.

cdbrown : Fixed bug with clicking mouse button causing the program to crash. This was my most embaressing bug, as what I had done was link the mouse click event to the event that clears up all the memory when you close the program...ooops.

New release is already up at http://www.mameworld.net/arcadepic.

A few other notes.

I'll work on the snap stretching for you cdbrown. It should be an easy fix.

SirPoonga. If you can email me your MAIN.INI and Jukebox.INI files from the ArcadEPIC directory to sdchown@yahoo.com, I am sure I can figure out why your Jukebox doesn't render.

Legacy Mame users rest assured that Legacy Mame Support is on its way. I was just worn out at having to code my own XML decoder, and didn't feel like decoding the old file formats too. But I've had coffee, and I'm all fired up!

Thanks to everybody for your great feedback.

Regards
 Stephen

[cdbrown]

It pleases me to find out I was the one to discover your most embaressing bug.  This could get filthy real quick so I shall stop now  

Great news on the update.  Will try it out now and reply any issues in the other thread you have started.

Cheers
-cdbrown

[chowny]

Auto-Mame-Version-Detecting Legacy support has been coded and will be in 0.23b.

When running the MAMEListbuilder now, it will try generate an XML list info, if that fails to return anything it will try the Legacy list method.

This way you will always get your game list, and never have to worry about setting a flag or something to tell it what version of mame you've got! Its all invisible to the user!

I'm a fecking genius! (...imo...)

Regards
 Stephen

[Zedders]

I'm a fecking genius! (...imo...)

Regards
 Stephen

PFFFFT

Im the bloody genius, its me prodding you with the large stick ya lazy sod, now wheres PINBALL support!  

(Ps...Im the the original untrained hamster of this frontends testing)