ultrastyle v3.0 Released

[ultrastyle]

www.mameworld.net/ultrastyle


One user reported losing focus coming back from a game, if I get more of the same, I can change the code.. Otherwise, enjoy.

Chris

Changed:
- Completely rewritten main code as well as control of 3D objects
- Filter Button now brings you out of category, a second press brings you to 'All Games'
- ultraconfig options condensed to 1 tab and sorted by category
- removed Main options and More options Tabs, Renamed Tweak tab to Favorites/Categories
- In ultraconfig Categories are now checked to enable to fall in line with other lists
- all options in ultraconfig saved in real time, no save buttons
- MyRomConfig.ini and options.ini removed all info now stored in Config.ini
- AutoPlay.txt contains additional settings.
- Background image now draws as image behind wheel instead of texture. ultrastyle must run in the same resolution as desktop.
- in ultrastyle\images the background folders are now called default1024, default800, and default640
- got rid of the 'NO Screenshot' texture that people didn't like and opted for a transparent cube when no screenshot is present.
-Up/Down x# of games buttons switched to be in line with up/down a letter joystick movements
Added:
- Set rotation of Cube art to 2-30 second intervals
- Additional button to bring a dropdown of a CP for button bindings, 5 different CPs based on controls for game
- Marquees without a texture can have a single color for background
- Wheel now lettered in either direction, A->Z clockwise or counterclockwise
- PayPal donation button on help tab (nod, wink, say no more)
- when moving thru the wheel, cube will stay on selected art unless there is none (i.e. titles, flyers, etc)
- support for controls.ini hard coded like NPlayer.ini is
- new subfolder 'Controls'
- images\CP subfolder with CPs in it
- filtering no longer an option, MyRomInfo.exe filters on controller type based on MAME info(i.e. trackball, lightgun, etc)
- In ultraconfig, you can rearrange the categories for the filter wheel.
Fixed:
- blitzMovie.dll no longer causes Illegal Error
- Choosing Plank in marquee style box would come up empty upon re-opening ultraconfig
- moving up/down a letter should jump much faster now
- updating to a new MAME version and not updating NPlayer.ini causes problems when a ROM name is not found, now ignored.
- sets.txt properly displays file size during creation

[Buddabing]

www.mameworld.net/ultrastyle

My directory setup is as follows:

The frontend is installed in c:\frontend\ultrastyle.

My MAME directory is d:\mame. My subdirectories are named the same as the default, except on D instead of C.

My movies are stored in e:\mame\movies.

By default, ultraconfig sets the paths to c:\mame\etc. The first time through, I just edited the paths. It looks like Ultrastyle didn't take the edits, perhaps because I used lower case for the drive letter. Then I navigated to the correct path and it looked then like Ultrastyle took the paths.

Ultrastyle did not find tick.wav or start.wav, even though the sound was set to default. I unchecked the sounds and then Ultrastyle started.

When movies are displayed in the cube, Ultrastyle crashes. My PC is fairly up to date with Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2. Without the movies, it runs fine and the wheel scrolls very quickly.

<pout> But I want my movies to display! </pout>

One other thing is that you might autodetect what version of MAME is running, so you can eliminate the "0.84 or newer" drop box. If you autodetect the version, you can also account for older versions of MAME having slightly different listinfo, so that you can get older versions of MAME to run.

HTH,
Buddabing

[ultrastyle]

Budda,
 You are the ultimate beta tester!

Ok, do you have DX9 installed? I believe that may be your movie issue. I read about it on the BlitzMovie.dll's homepage, and I will add it to the requirements.

Mame paths textboxes are set to save after any change, so I don't know why it wouldn't take your keystrokes. There is a .NET Framework service pack out, but I don't know if it would be a fix for your issues specifically.

I would love to autodetect what version of MAME you are running, but I don't know how to do that before you put the path info in.. The drop box is mostly for what switch to run to get the listinfo. the parsing is done in MyRomInfo.exe..

The sound thing has me baffled..

Chris

[Buddabing]

Budda,
 You are the ultimate beta tester!

Ok, do you have DX9 installed? I believe that may be your movie issue. I read about it on the BlitzMovie.dll's homepage, and I will add it to the requirements.

Mame paths textboxes are set to save after any change, so I don't know why it wouldn't take your keystrokes. There is a .NET Framework service pack out, but I don't know if it would be a fix for your issues specifically.

I would love to autodetect what version of MAME you are running, but I don't know how to do that before you put the path info in.. The drop box is mostly for what switch to run to get the listinfo. the parsing is done in MyRomInfo.exe..

The sound thing has me baffled..

Chris

I have DX9 installed, I play DX9 games such as HL2 on it.

Is there a test program for the BlitzMovie dll? Does it have to be in the Windows directory or is it okay for it to be in the ultrastyle directory?

You can detect the MAME version by running mame -version and parsing the text output. I'm not exactly sure how far back the -version flag goes, but it's pretty far. You can run it as part of the list generation process, before sets.txt is generated.

Unfortunately I don't have the disk space on C to put MAME and the movies on it, many tens of gigabytes, so I can't do that.

While I'm at it, I'd like to know exactly what you need to display the game lists. I want to modify my ListGen utility to generate an Ultrastyle game list. I have a mini-li.txt, but it doesn't work exactly right.

[SirPoonga]

- support for controls.ini hard coded like NPlayer.ini is
- new subfolder 'Controls'

I haven't tried your FE in some time.  What do you mean by hardcoded?  As in you expect it in a certain location?

BTW, I hope you take thenumber of players from controls.dat over nplayer since nplayer gets most of it's data directly from mame (which is inaccurate).

Very cool.

[ultrastyle]

Budda,
 BlitzMovie is OK to be in the ultrastyle directory. So far I haven't had any other reports of it being the cause of a crash. I don't think the videos being on another drive is reason for it to have an issue. Detecting the MAME version may be easier by checking the first line of whatsnew.txt (just a thought..) Game info is actually from MyRomInfo.txt. It has game name, cloneof, rom name, control and # of buttons. thats the list of ROMS you own. Mini-LI.txt is all the info I pull out of a -listinfo/ListXML condensed from ~25MB to like 600K.

SirPoonga,
 The controls.ini has to be in the ultrastyle\controls folder. If it's not in there, it doesn't respond to the keystrokes. I do take the player info from NPlayers.ini only because that was the order that I incorporated it into ultrastyle. I only learned about controls.ini last week when JCrouse turned me on to it. I wish I knew about it months ago. I guess I will have to start lurking around here more often..

As a side note, I wanted to tell everyone that I got a job today (after almost a year of being unemployed) as a developer. I credit it to working on the FE more then anything. I do not have any professional coding experience. I still think I don't know that much about coding. It's very cool to think I will actually be getting paid to make something work. It's just very cool.

Chris

[)p(]

As a side note, I wanted to tell everyone that I got a job today (after almost a year of being unemployed) as a developer. I credit it to working on the FE more then anything. I do not have any professional coding experience. I still think I don't know that much about coding. It's very cool to think I will actually be getting paid to make something work. It's just very cool.

Chris

Congratulations Chris!!!!! 

peter

[Lilwolf]

WOOOHOOO!  Congrates!

Nothing like getting that job!  Hope the move to professional geek suites you. 

[3dmacman]

congrats on the new job. I was wondering how to get ultrastyle to show other artwork like flyers and control panels, if I don't have a marquee could I some how get the name of the game to post in the wheel instead?

[ultrastyle]

Thanks guys!

3Dmacman,
 There is a cube art button that will change the cube so you an see the flyers and what not. also there's a cube art rotaion in the hide/show section which will automatically rotate the available art for the given game. As for the marquees, the way you describe it is the way it works, what are you seeing in place of the games name?

Chris

[3dmacman]

That is the problem if a marquee isn't present nothing displays except the wheel button. How do I display the games name? I will check my preferences when I get home tonight. Any help is appreciated.

[ultrastyle]

3D,
Send me a screenshot if possible..

Chris

[3dmacman]

Never mind, reinstalled and redone my lists so all shows up like it should. Thanks for the advice.