ultrastyle v2.4 - Released

[ultrastyle]

www.mameworld.net/ultrastyle

Changed:
- if an error is captured and you are kicked out of ultrastyle, the taskbar is no longer hidden
- new background image replaces default
- sped up the wheel animation when going up/down a letter and to sub-wheels, the wheel now snaps into place much quicker
- changed the way favorites were read into ultraconfig to make use of MAME32 Favorites converter
tool
- in ultraconfig, the titles to the groups are now in BOLD so you can spot them better
Added:
- errors are now written to error.txt in the main ultrastyle dir
- setup wizard now gives you 3 choices when starting (new setup, added ROMs, and new MAME ver)
- choose to shutdown or exit immediately instead of shutdown options dialog
- some of the sort by controller code is implemented, but it's not available yet

Chris

[)p(]

Glad to see ultrastyle survived the ultracade mame tm issue   

Great work Chris! 

peter

[ultrastyle]

I haven't been contacted at all. So far so good I guess. I'm sure we all don't know what to make of it yet, so I am reading as much as I can..

Chris

P.S. Thanks Peter!

[Buddabing]

How do you display movies?

[ultrastyle]

Budda.
 What do you mean exactly?

Chris

[Buddabing]

Budda.
 What do you mean exactly?

Chris

I would like video clips (created with my MAME build) to display on the cube or the "phantom zone" instead of static images.

In the Ultraconfig program you have a place to put the path to the movies, so I thought it was possible to do this?

Do the movies play only as a screen saver?

[ultrastyle]

They play as you think they should. Do you have them zipped? The videos directory should be 1 dir with all the .avi's in it. I have recently found out that in Blitz3D, when a video plays, the framerate drops a lot. I didn't realize that it was the case when I was writing it. So while the videos do play ok on the cube, you may get a stutter from time to time. I have seen that videos playing on a non-spinning cube or "phantom zone" seem to be a bit smoother..

Chris

[Buddabing]

They play as you think they should. Do you have them zipped? The videos directory should be 1 dir with all the .avi's in it. I have recently found out that in Blitz3D, when a video plays, the framerate drops a lot. I didn't realize that it was the case when I was writing it. So while the videos do play ok on the cube, you may get a stutter from time to time. I have seen that videos playing on a non-spinning cube or "phantom zone" seem to be a bit smoother..

Chris

It turns out that for some reason my computer wasn't capable of playing the movies. Maybe there should be a warning for that instead of 'no snap found'.

I tried it on a different computer and it works very well. The config program is great, highly idiot-proof. I couldn't break it.

EDIT:
I played with it a bit. Ampersands in game names aren't correct.

It might be good if you disabled the sound to the attract video over the first tenth of a second or so while the wheel is turning. Some games have a bit of static right at the beginning (Battle Rangers) Having to play sound causes the wheel to slow down so that it isn't smooth.

Just a thought.

[ultrastyle]

Unfortunately,
Blitz3D has NO video-sound control. I can play it, stop it, pause it, that's about it.. I realize I am using this language in a way it's not really designed for. And I agree that videos with sound react worse then silent movies do, but I have asked the Blitz community about various video controls in the language and no one seems to have an answer.. The no screenshot is a default texture I made. I guess I could just make the cube semi transparent when theres no screenshot..

Chris

[Scoobie]

Sorry to hijack this thread...but are you able to get Blitz to play in Mame?

[ultrastyle]

Yea, um, I think we are talking about 2 different things..

[Scoobie]

Sorry about that.

Is it possible to display the attract movies as the background, or just in the cube? 

Also, how do I get rid of the constant bleep sounds.  These sound like the default sounds for "Start up", "wheel tick", "run game" etc.  I removed them from my default folder and even unchecked them in the ultraconfig.  But, they're still there.  I also directed the sounds in ulraconfig to a different directory without these files...but they still play in the background.   

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[danny_galaga]

the new set up wizard looks great (",) . the only prob i had was with the catver file. but i got it out of the recycle bin and all is good. ive downloaded the latest version to see if the unsolved problem i was having before has gone away- that is, the first time i use ultrastyle after turning on the pc, it would freeze up and id have to ctrl-alt-del out. not handy for a cab! ill let you know next time i switch on my pc if that problem went away.

i like that the wheel moves faster now too. all it needs now is for any windows traces to move along even quicker!


edit: my other prob was that i couldnt get it to work with win98 in my actual cab. im guessing that will still be the case but ill let you know about that too...

[ultrastyle]

Budda,
 I just came across a BlitzMovie.dll that smooths out the movies a lot. I am re-writing the video code and I think this will solve the issue. It even has video volume settings.. I know the FPS don't drop when the movies play with the .dll

Chris

P.S. Thanks for the ampersand info, got that straight too..

[Buddabing]

Budda,
 I just came across a BlitzMovie.dll that smooths out the movies a lot. I am re-writing the video code and I think this will solve the issue. It even has video volume settings.. I know the FPS don't drop when the movies play with the .dll

Chris

P.S. Thanks for the ampersand info, got that straight too..

Sounds good!

What about what Danny said? Does Ultrastyle not work with Win98?

[paigeoliver]

Ok, 3 small issues.

Someone should figure out exactly how far back Ultrastyle is actualy compatible with as far as the setup goes, it definitely won't setup with .55, but you can swap that version in afterwards. This matters because attempting to use a version older than the unmentioned minimum version horks the whole thing over and you have to delete the whole thing and reinstall it again (parameter must be postive).

My monitor is not a 4/3 monitor and it will not stretch out to fill the monitor, while most other apps (including mame, and games) when set to a 4/3 mode such as 1024x768 will stretch out. The only way I can get Ultrastyle to fill the screen is by setting it as the same resolution as my desktop, which horks over the background image, or by setting my desktop resolution to a 4/3 mode (which looks terrible).

Jumping between letters should ideally just be instant, insteadof snapping from one letter to another instead swap the wheel over to a wheel of letters. It takes far too long to navigate the alphabet.

[ultrastyle]

Paige,
 I can see there is a lot of horking going on here..
Here we go, I started ultrastyle almost a year ago around v.70 or so. MAME has to be able to do 2 things -listinfo/-listXML <- 1 of these two, and -verifysets. I don't know what versions these were introduced at, or if in earlier versions the switches had different names. Essentially these are the only restrictions as far as versions go. If you can figure out how to get the output for these 2 switches by other means, then that version of MAME should work fine. Read fileinfo.txt for the proper file names.
As far as the monitor resolution, ultrastyle should be capable of many resolutions, the default wallpaper is 1024x768. If your background looks distorted at the resoultion you prefer, make a new background at the native size of that resoltion and replace the one in the default folder.
Finally, I don't entirely know what you mean about the letters snapping, I did speed up the turning over of the letters in v2.4. Another possibility is you may not have a bulky 3D card in your cab. If you change the marquee folder to c:\ then the marquees will all be text and you may see a speed increase when changing letters, this is the intended speed that a bulky 3D card does turn the wheel over at. I know on my I am using an on-board 8MB video card and the speed using ultrastyle is severely lacking.

[danny_galaga]

P.S. Thanks for the ampersand info, got that straight too..

Sounds good!

What about what Danny said? Does Ultrastyle not work with Win98?

its not necessarily the case that it doesnt work on win98 generally, but i found that there are a lot of things that need to be added or updated (like something called frames? that then needs the latest ie etc...) and since my cab isnt connected to the net i found it too difficult to update those things (microsoft updates werent exes, instead wanted to install straight away to my pc which of course doesnt need any of that being xp! arghhhh!!!)

[danny_galaga]

Someone should figure out exactly how far back Ultrastyle is actualy compatible with as far as the setup goes, it definitely won't setup with .55, but you can swap that version in afterwards. This matters because attempting to use a version older than the unmentioned minimum version horks the whole thing over and you have to delete the whole thing and reinstall it again (parameter must be postive).

good idea. maybe every one thats tried it can post here what version theyve had success with.

i can say that it works with mame32 v 78 on xp.

[Buddabing]

Ok, 3 small issues.

Someone should figure out exactly how far back Ultrastyle is actualy compatible with as far as the setup goes, it definitely won't setup with .55, but you can swap that version in afterwards. This matters because attempting to use a version older than the unmentioned minimum version horks the whole thing over and you have to delete the whole thing and reinstall it again (parameter must be postive).

-verifysets became available at .37b15. That should be the earliest version that works.

The ultraconfig chokes on that, though. I get this "parameter must be positive" error, all the way up to MAME version .74. It may be my computer, though.

I get this other weird thing with ultraconfig that the button text and dialog drop box text isn't there.

[ultrastyle]

Budda, where (on what tabs?) are you not seeing text?

I have put out an update today as well.. There is a full download an a quick patch for people with v2.4

v2.4.6 Released 3.3.05
Added:
- new Blitzmovie.dll smoothes out movies tremendously
Fixed:
- game# 'x of x' was not adding correctly.
- &amps; in game names corrected to just &
- "parameter must be positive" error in MyRomInfo.exe properly trapped

I am interested to see if you (budda) think the movies work better with this version.

Chris

[paigeoliver]

Paige,
 I can see there is a lot of horking going on here..
Here we go, I started ultrastyle almost a year ago around v.70 or so. MAME has to be able to do 2 things -listinfo/-listXML <- 1 of these two, and -verifysets. I don't know what versions these were introduced at, or if in earlier versions the switches had different names. Essentially these are the only restrictions as far as versions go. If you can figure out how to get the output for these 2 switches by other means, then that version of MAME should work fine. Read fileinfo.txt for the proper file names.
As far as the monitor resolution, ultrastyle should be capable of many resolutions, the default wallpaper is 1024x768. If your background looks distorted at the resoultion you prefer, make a new background at the native size of that resoltion and replace the one in the default folder.
Finally, I don't entirely know what you mean about the letters snapping, I did speed up the turning over of the letters in v2.4. Another possibility is you may not have a bulky 3D card in your cab. If you change the marquee folder to c:\ then the marquees will all be text and you may see a speed increase when changing letters, this is the intended speed that a bulky 3D card does turn the wheel over at. I know on my I am using an on-board 8MB video card and the speed using ultrastyle is severely lacking.

This is actually on my laptop, I have never had any problems other than "parameter must be positive" on an actual cabinet.

My laptop actually DOES have a bulky 3D card, Radeon 9600 with 64MB ram.

The problem with setting 1280x800 resolution is that it won't stretch the default backgrounds to that resolution properly (cuts them off at top and bottom), and it does the same thing if you make a 1280x800 background.

But those aren't really all that important, as this is just my laptop.

What I meant about the wheel is this. Even with hardcore 3D cards navigating to the middle of the alphabet still takes too long, instead of having the wheel zoom in and then zoom out, why not immediately replace the names of the marquees with the names of letters, A, B, C, D, E and so on, so you can rotate through the alphabet by holding up or down, instead of having it replace all the marquees over and over and over again.

[thedyingmatt]

So I d/l ultrastyle 2.4.6 and I go to ultraconfig and it doesn't have the setup wizard, it just isn't there.  Instead when clicked the ultraconfig.exe goes straight to the main option screen, and has the settings of what looks to be Chris himself.  So I'm wondering, has anyone else had this problem and if so, how to fix it???

Right now I'm running on 2.3 and am trying to find an upgrade to 2.4, but cannot find one.  So is there anyone that has this and would want to throw it my way??

thanks in advance,

[Buddabing]

Budda, where (on what tabs?) are you not seeing text?

I have put out an update today as well.. There is a full download an a quick patch for people with v2.4

v2.4.6 Released 3.3.05
Added:
- new Blitzmovie.dll smoothes out movies tremendously
Fixed:
- game# 'x of x' was not adding correctly.
- &amps; in game names corrected to just &
- "parameter must be positive" error in MyRomInfo.exe properly trapped

I am interested to see if you (budda) think the movies work better with this version.

Chris

I tried the new patch on my two computers, crappy 1Ghz laptop and modern PC. Both run XP. The laptop is the computer with the missing text on buttons and dialog box list items (not on the tabs) on the config program.

On my regular PC, the config program works fine. The new patched Ultrastyle crashes when scrolling, it's unstable and unusable.

[danny_galaga]

ive downloaded the latest version to see if the unsolved problem i was having before has gone away- that is, the first time i use ultrastyle after turning on the pc, it would freeze up and id have to ctrl-alt-del out. not handy for a cab! ill let you know next time i switch on my pc if that problem went away.

nope. still same prob  . maybe a reformat but it could be a long time before i do that...

[ultrastyle]

Budda,
 Is there a specific spot you lock up on? scrolling up/down games, or to the next/previous letter?

Matt,
Sorry about the config mixup, if you go to the help tab and uncheck the box, the Wizard will come back. I will replace the download right now..

Paige,
I think I may be able to give the end user a choice between the way it works now and your idea..

Windows98,
I have virtual PC, and when I made the setup wizard, I made sure that the wizard worked with it. The real issue is just trying to make the sets.txt and -listinfo/-listXML. In order to do this in win98, different shell commands are needed. And win98 needs the .NET Framework v1.1. It's ~25MB and available as a single EXE download from MS or my D/L Page.

Older Versions of MAME,
I am guessing that even though these switches go back to .37b15, the output may not be the same format that it is now. I cut up the strings based on things I see, if they are not in that string, your going to get the parameter error. I'm sure -verifysets is pretty close to the same. But, I am sure -Listinfo/-ListXML has chaged a bit over the years. I know through the course of the FE, they added a new line in there that gave me a headache for a while until I noticed it.
As far as switching versions, If rom names are different then your not going to see those games. Out of curiosity, Why do you run v.55?

Chris

[Buddabing]

Budda,
 Is there a specific spot you lock up on? scrolling up/down games, or to the next/previous letter?

On my desktop it crashes scrolling up/down games. On my laptop it runs but much slower than it ran before the last patch. Movies didn't play on my laptop in either version.

People run old versions of mame because they old versions are faster and run 95%+ of games in current versions.

[nipsmg]

I just installed ultrastyle 2.4.6 from scratch.  This is the first time I've played with it, and I jsut want to say, I'm very impressed.  I love this fronted, and I think I'm switching

[ultrastyle]

I have found that there is an error with the BlitzMovie.dll that comes with v2.4.6. You should not run videos because of the crashing (this is the unstable part). Since this thread began, I have re-written (and am still not finished) ultrastyle. The code is much more solid then in prevoius versions. Many of the textures were lost in memory because I was just learning the lanuage, and 3D programming. You may not be aware of this, but the current version is quite a memory hog. The new version is very stable. Tests I have done stay under 30MB, while the current version can run up to 75MB+. I am also adding in a few more options. I have been in contact with the BlitzMovie.dll and he has fixed the error, and supplied me with an updated .dll. I can't give an exact esitmate of when the new ultrastyle will be out, but hopefully it will be soon. Check out www.mameworld.net\ultrastyle for daily details.

Chris

[Silver]

It looks real good.

That link should be: www.mameworld.net/ultrastyle