Johnny 5 Viewer beta 1.5 released!

[Howard_Casto]

The new Viewer and converter are out!

Get it over at the lazarus homepage
http://www.oscarcontrols.com/lazarus/.

Users of the old style ini ctrlr files please note that you MUST convert your files to use the new viewer.

[mahuti]

Sweet. thanks. This gives me a reason to get my machine up and working again... since my move, all of my machines have been acting a little odd... very disappointing. I've been waiting for something cool to come out to give me a reason to fix at least one of them.

[mccoy178]

This is sweet!  Another good reason by the way, would be the movie previewer(www.emumovies.com) that just came out for some of the systems.  I love these new additions!

[Howard_Casto]

There have been some bugs found.  An official bugfix release won't be out until some more are squashed, however, you can download dailys in this thread.

http://fe.donkeyfly.com/forum/index.php?topic=119.60

I haven't gotten much feedback as to how well this version is working.  I would appreciate some as this version changes a lot of things and it hasn't been beta tested.

[big daddy]

do you have any sort of "newbie" thread about how to get it up and running?  I seem to remember attempting it several months back but couldn't quite get everything working...was wondering if there was a simple thread describing how it works, similar to what's available for the makemovie thread that's out there.

[Tiger-Heli]

Basically, with the docs and the thread linked above on the FE Dev forum, you should be able to get there.

Basically, first you want to get it reading MAME and working with the default layout.  Then you need to create an image of your layout.  Then you need to adjust the labels so they display in the right positions on your layout.

There's other things to do with it beyond that, but that's a starting point.

[Howard_Casto]

The test script has been released to get j5 running in mame.  It's mostly for testing now, but give it a shot.  As usual, go to the lazarus homepage.

[PileDriver]

The link doesn't work for the script.
Target link:
http://www.oscarcontrols.com/lazarus/files/ini2xml%20J5Script.zip

I removed the ini2xml%20 from the address line and it downloaded.
Just an FYI

[2600]

The test script has been released to get j5 running in mame.  It's mostly for testing now, but give it a shot.  As usual, go to the lazarus homepage.

Great, I've been waiting for this part.  Just for a little feedback, I haven't had a problem with J5 and a quick test of the script seems to work nicely.

I know you are looking for people to test this and am really trying to find time to do so.

[Howard_Casto]

I fixed the link, stupid template for my webpage got corrupted.  All is well now though. 

Good to hear about the script.  If mame allowed a quick and easy way to get the parent of a game (i.e. not having to generate a whole listinfo file and parse it)  I think I could do away with the special fe code to launch the viewer all together.  I might see how hard it would be to add a -listparent tag to mame and submit it to the team.  I'm sure this would solve a ton of headaches for other developers as well. 

[mahuti]

So far I'm unable to get Johnny5 to list anything other than the name, stick type, number of players.

Win XP, recent install. I've tried all of the iterations of the mame path & mame name that I can think of, I've also tried with and without ctrlr files specified. I had difficulty getting Johnny5 to work in the past on 2 other machines. It started working at one point on that machine, but it seemed to start working arbitrarily... not because of anything special I had done.

Anyway, I'm going to keep trying.... work through the user-errors.

[Howard_Casto]

Read the top of this post

We are working out bugs with the dailys, you need to go to the thread linked to above and read what others have done there.  Not to mention you need to download a daily exe from said thread.

[mahuti]

Ok. Downloaded the version posted inline in the message board, and that worked like a charm. I'll try the AHK script, and make some ctrlr & lof files next.

[mahuti]

Oh and for anyone else working through problems, I also had absolute paths set up in mame.ini that I had to convert to relative paths. This may not be necessary any longer... you'll have to check the thread at the controls.dat project listed above to confirm.

[Howard_Casto]

Glad to see you got it working.


I am currently in the process of putting together another full release.  Anyone that's noticed any bugs/oddities that are not listed on the wip thread linked to above need to post them there asap. 

[Tiger-Heli]

I fixed the link, stupid template for my webpage got corrupted.  All is well now though. 

Good to hear about the script.  If mame allowed a quick and easy way to get the parent of a game (i.e. not having to generate a whole listinfo file and parse it)  I think I could do away with the special fe code to launch the viewer all together.  I might see how hard it would be to add a -listparent tag to mame and submit it to the team.  I'm sure this would solve a ton of headaches for other developers as well. 

Howard,

Quick question (as I'm too lazy to try it out).

My FE doesn't easily allow parsing and sending data ahead of the MAME launch.

Johnnny 5 wants "gamename -clonneof gamename" but will work with only the gamename for parent games which are mainly what I play.

Is there a way to use the script without FE support if you don't use the -cloneof parts (might bi -clone now)

Thanks.

[Howard_Casto]

Sorta but it requires batch files and a knowledge of them that I don't have (anymore). 

You'd need to make a mame.bat file.

Instead of pointing to the mame exe your fe would need to use the mame.bat

The mame bat should first launch the j5.bat and pass the first command line tag (which with mame will always be the rom name).  the ahk script would have to be modified to skip the second clo and just pass the first.  Now the mame bat needs to launch mame with all command line tags passed to the bat and wait until mame is finished before exiting.  If you don't put in the wait command your fe will assume mame is done and start up again, so that part is especially important.

So that'll do it.  Good luck figuring out how to do it. 

[Howard_Casto]

1.5  has been released.  It fixes all known bugs.

For details go here:
http://fe.donkeyfly.com/forum/index.php?topic=119.90

As usual, you can find the new version here:
http://www.oscarcontrols.com/lazarus/

[Buddabing]

So how does the "Behavior" tag work to display an image instead of text? I don't see a place to put the file name for the image to be displayed. Is that working yet?

Also, it would be nice to be able to right click a label and have an option to delete it. Right now I have to hand edit the .lof file in order to delete labels.

Do you plan on adding any other tags beside the Behavior tag?

EDIT:
I forgot to ask: Is it possible to add support for png background images?

Also, I would like to not have J5 add black at the top and bottom to
make the resulting image have the correct aspect ratio.

[SirPoonga]

Whoa, that thread is getting big.  I haven't been keeping up with it.  Howard, you finally doing the graphics for buttons thing?  Like Ikari Warriors?

[Tiger-Heli]

Whoa, that thread is getting big.  I haven't been keeping up with it.

And only two others posting in it besides Howard and me.

[Howard_Casto]

So how does the "Behavior" tag work to display an image instead of text? I don't see a place to put the file name for the image to be displayed. Is that working yet?

Also, it would be nice to be able to right click a label and have an option to delete it. Right now I have to hand edit the .lof file in order to delete labels.

Do you plan on adding any other tags beside the Behavior tag?

EDIT:
I forgot to ask: Is it possible to add support for png background images?

Also, I would like to not have J5 add black at the top and bottom to
make the resulting image have the correct aspect ratio.

The behavoir tag basically does just that.  Tells a label how to behave.  Any label can be set to automatic (display the image if it exists otherwise display the text), only image or only the text.  You name the gif based on the caption that the button will take and optionally the romname and the caption and dump it in the layouts/images folder.

That stuff is in the docs. 

Yes I plan to add other special tags, but they have nothing to do with the behavior tag, it's more of a setting for the label rather than a true tag (which tells it what data to display)  there are already a bunch at the bottom of the dialog box.


Delete works fine, it's in the menu.

Png background images? Why?  A jpg image of the same size is about 1/5 th the file size and looks exactly the same.  It would be a waste of memory to use png backgrounds.

j5 doesn't add black at the top and bottom that is the background image.  Besides, with the default layout you need that extra space to display game info at the top and mic details at the bottom.  I don't know why in the world you'd want another aspect ratio anyway.  The captions simply aren't visible on an arcade monitor or tv unless the viewer is displayed fullscreen. 

If you must you can override the aspect via command line though.... again, that's in the docs. 

[Howard_Casto]

Whoa, that thread is getting big.

[Buddabing]

Delete works fine, it's in the menu.

It didn't work for me, I get a message:
"Note: due to the complexity of the skin system, I can only delete the last label you made".

Why is it so difficult to add something to the dialog that pops up when a label is right clicked?

Png background images? Why?

[Tiger-Heli]

Where are these docs you speak of? I don't see them on your website or in the distribution. The only thing in your docs folder is the old fudging.txt file.

It's in the readme.txt file in the main Johnny folder (after the changelog stuff).

[Howard_Casto]

Budda... answering your questions in sequence


Yes, that dialog box tells you the last label will be deleted.  Clicking ok deletes it.  That's how delete works.

Making any label deletable requires me to make two buffer arrays to hold all the settings for the labels, resort the labels and put all the settings back.  Until I get further along it ain't happening. 

What the users want?  ROTFLMAO  remember who you are talking to.   This is my pet project, I do it for fun. 



Yes some people prefer lossless compression.  Some people perfer the likes of Ricky Martin over Metallica as well.  The lossless lovers, like those that yearn to live la vida loca, can bite me.     Besides, jpgs are loseless assuming you save them at 100% quality and aren't stupid enough to actually edit them. (Always save a psd doc of any working image.)  Even at 100% quality they are STILL significantly smaller than pngs.  You of all people should know this....  Pngs = alpha channel, which in this case means 50% of the file size is wasted space.

I'm pretty sure the readme says that pngs aren't supported.  And error handling isn't going to happen.  At least not at this stage.

Those misc details are easy to display and easy to read, assuming they are displayed fullscreen.  Also it isn't one of those things you can ignore.  80% of the misc details contain vital info.  At first I wanted to call the section "important note" but that seemed a little overkill consdering we also add in info about the original controls that isn't always useful to the user.

BuddaMame not displaying images properly has nothing to do with me.  Put some code in to generate a artwork file that uses the screen resolution to resize the area so that it's always in the proper aspect.  Better yet, dump support altogether as everyone will be using the ahk script once it's perfected more. 


I mean no disrespect so I hope it doesn't come out that way.  Just telling it like it is. 

[Veinman]

Why are you so defensive all the time? People asking questions about your admittedly convoluted application shouldn't bother you. If it does, you might want to consider not releasing things that are only meant to please you.

[Tiger-Heli]

Why are you so defensive all the time? People asking questions about your admittedly convoluted application shouldn't bother you. If it does, you might want to consider not releasing things that are only meant to please you.

I have basically ten pages of back and forth with Howard in the fe.dev forum linked above.

People asking questions about the application doesn't bother Howard.  People asking questions that are spelled out in the documentation does (I've done it too.)

Personally, I'm very happy with Johnny5 and the AHK script.  It doesn't directly shade unused buttons, but the labels are nicely positioned, the important info is there, and it looks VERY good, IMHO.  I would like to see both it and AHK working under Win98, but don't know how likely that is - (the viewer is more likely than AHK, I think), and I would like to have the viewer full-screen if MAME and my desktop are at a different resolution (we might not get there either).

But overall, it's a great project.

[zaphod]

I have to agree that Johnny5 is a great little application.  I've used it for a month or so and am quite happy with it.  The AHK script I've yet to get to work but haven't devoted time enough to determine where the error is at (Mamewah, the AHK script, Johnny 5 setup, or my other .inis).  As far as not asking questions or raising bug issues publicly, I have remained silent primarily due to my inability to formulate intelligent questions.

[Tiger-Heli]

The AHK script I've yet to get to work but haven't devoted time enough to determine where the error is at (Mamewah, the AHK script, Johnny 5 setup, or my other .inis).  As far as not asking questions or raising bug issues publicly, I have remained silent primarily due to my inability to formulate intelligent questions.

AHK Troubleshooting - See http://fe.donkeyfly.com/forum/index.php?topic=162.0 and the end of the Johnny5 WIP thread above.

If you are running Win98, that's probably your problem.  I have had no luck with it in 98, but would like confirmation of others having problems, or anyone that might know of a solution.

Otherwise, like anything else, I recommend setting up a program in manual mode first and then automating things later.  For example - First make sure you have the latest Johnny (or maybe the one or two day old one from the thread above.)

Open a command prompt and Navigate to the Johnny directory and run "Johnny5 1942 -clone 1942" - this verifies that Johnny5 works and is the call made in the script.

Now, I like to install the script in the same folder as Johnny, but it doesn't matter.  Modify the AHK file to point to the folder where Johnny is installed and save it.

Open a command prompt and navigate to the script directory and type "J5 1942 1942".  You should see the AHK "H" logo in the taskbar.  Now press the P key.  Johnny should come up.  You have now verified that the script is working and Johnny is working.  Hit P again and the script should stay loaded (until you press Escape).

Now navigate to your MAME folder and launch MAME.  Press P and Johnny should come up after a short delay (it will show the controls for 1942, but that's expected).  You have now verified that Johnny and MAME and the AHK script is working.

Okay, the above is as far as I have taken this, b/c my arcade computer currently uses 98, so the AHK script won't work, and my frontend currently can't really launch batch files, so there's not much point going further, but the next steps are:  Create a file called mame.bat (parameters will be -gamename and -clone of).

The file should have the following commands:

call J5 %1 %2
Mame %1
exit

It may be necessary to add paths, such as:

C:\
cd\
cd johnny
call j5 %1 %2
cd\
cd mame
mame %1
exit

Now open a command prompt, navigate to the folder that contains mame.bat, and experiment with different games and clone of games, ie "mame 1942 1942"  "mame gyrussce gyruss", etc.  Verify MAME launches the correct game and johnny displays the correct labels.

Now you just have to modify your frontend to call mamebat followed by the gamename and parent name, rather than mame.exe.

Post back where you are getting hung up and we'll try to work you through it.

[zaphod]

WOW!  It seems I should actually ask  questions.

I'm on Win2000 and have tried everything in your reply down to the batch file commands.  Everything did work that way.  It appears that I am only missing the batch file and telling Mamewah to execute it rather than Mame.exe.  I will confirm this late tonight or tomorrow morning and let you know the results.

Thank you for the very detailed instructions.  I greatly appreciate it!

[Tiger-Heli]

The test computer I'm using is runnig Win2k.  I just created and tested the batch file and it works like a charm for me.

To get it working in MAMEwah, search for the automode switching 49-way thread in this forum.  You are doing something similar but with a different executable, if that made sense.

[Popcorrin]

I'm actually working on getting both the automode 49way switching and johnny5.  I don't think it should take too much just some minor changes to the batch file for the 49way switching.

[Howard_Casto]

Why are you so defensive all the time? People asking questions about your admittedly convoluted application shouldn't bother you. If it does, you might want to consider not releasing things that are only meant to please you.

I've never referred to my viewer as "convoluted"  if anything it's pretty much automatic at this point.  If you are running Xp and have a fairly new version of mame, almost no setup is invloved and it works right out of the box.  The only problems we've ran into so far are special case ones  (running in 98, running with really old versions of mame, ect). 

The problems we are having with the ahk script don't really have anything to do with me.  I didn't write ahk, I just wrote the script for the application.  So what I can do is limited.  When I learn more about the language perhaps I can fix some of the oddities, but atm it's a low priority.

Also what tiger-heli said. 

And finally if people that wrote stuff just for themselves didn't release things publically we wouldn't have mame, zinc, arcadeos... I can go on.  Just because I'm not willing to bend over and add every little feature a particular user wants (for free in my spare time I might add) doesn't mean that I'm not willing to add some things and try to get things fairly user friendly. 

Ending on an upbeat..... you know the 49-way auto switching thing?  If someone were to work with me I would be willing to add support.  I don't know how it works though and I don't have one so needless to say whoever wants it is going to have to work with me.

[Popcorrin]

RandyT made the auto modeswitching fairly simple.  There are 8 separate modes.  Raw, progressive, 8-way, 4-way, diagonals, 2-way-horizontal, 2-way-vertical, and 16-way.  The program used to switch the modes is gpwiz49.exe and the command is very simple.  Each mode is represented by a number from 1-8.
 
For instance,
GPWIZ49.exe 1  switches the stick to raw 49
GPWIZ49.exe 4  switches the stick to 4-way

The modes and their representative numbers are as follows.

1= Raw49
2= Progressive49
3= 8-Way
4= 4-Way
5= Diagonals
6= 2-Way Horizontal
7= 2-Way Vertical
8= 16-Way

I don't believe there is a program that parses the controls.ini and then is able to switch the stick automatically but mrsalty created a batch file that would switch alot of the games automatically and screaming created a program that switches the stick based off of a file that can be created with his listgen utility.
  I thought I read somewhere that the gameex frontend was able to switch modes based off of controls.ini but I don't use that frontend so I am not sure.

[Popcorrin]

By the way I have been playing around with the AHK script and I noticed that it will pull up contol panel with labels but when returning to mame it sometimes does not unpause mame so when you hit p again it takes you back to your control panel image.

[Howard_Casto]

By the way I have been playing around with the AHK script and I noticed that it will pull up contol panel with labels but when returning to mame it sometimes does not unpause mame so when you hit p again it takes you back to your control panel image.

That's the only real bug at this point.

I think I'm going to have to put a wait command in to fix it. 

See when you press "esc" or "p" while in the viewer, it blocks that keypress, exits the viewer and presses the "p" key when mame comes back up, thus unpausing the game.  Sometimes I think it presses "p" too quickly though and it doesn't register.  Like I've said, the ahk is still touchy and I haven't really gotten around to perfecting it yet.


I still need more data on the gpwhiz though....

Mostly.  What is the difference between raw and progressive mode?  Is it just personal preference?

Wtf uses a 16-way stick? I've heard of some football games using such a stick, but it was my understanding that it was actually a 49-way that ignored the other directions.

Other than that, all of these stick types can be detected in the viewer quite easily.

[2600]

I still need more data on the gpwhiz though....

Mostly.  What is the difference between raw and progressive mode?  Is it just personal preference?

Wtf uses a 16-way stick? I've heard of some football games using such a stick, but it was my understanding that it was actually a 49-way that ignored the other directions.

Other than that, all of these stick types can be detected in the viewer quite easily.

My understanding:
RAW is a linear "analog".
Progressive uses more of an exponential or logarithmic "analog".  (I believe the only game people are using this on is Sinistar)
16WAY was a customer asked feature for 720, Turns out RAW works better.


If someone wanted to be really clever, instead of sending a command to the GPWIZ software they'd do it themselves.  Although, I'd get permission from RANDYT first.

[Tiger-Heli]

Howard,

I would like to see the GP-Wiz49 stuff added also.  (Even though I don't have one).

It would be nice if the GP-Wiz49 stuff were incorporated independently, (maybe by an ini flag), so users could either use Johnny for the CP layouts without the GP-Wiz functionality, for the GP-Wiz support without the viewer, or for both.

Data on what Mr. Salty and Screaming did is available here:  http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=35927.0

GP-Wiz49 software is available here:  http://www.groovygamegear.com/GPWIZ49.zip  (The docs explain how to set it up and use it.  Gosh, I sounded like you, then)  BTW, you can run the software without a GP-Wiz49 connected, doesn't do anything except show the screen images, but it works.

Toonces did most of the work on adding support to GameEx, but this was using a parallel port relay board, before RandyT supported software switching.

Some more clarification:

Raw and Progressive mode - If you're familiar with Daveb's SJC, http://dave.bit2000.com/SJCdoc.html  I believe raw mode is equivalent to linear scaling and progressive mode is equivalent to exponential scaling.  As I understand it, raw 49-mode is directly what the joystick outputs, progressive is set so that the software outputs Normal, faster, and fastest.  Sinistar uses it, I'm not sure what is best for the other true 49-way games.

Also, there was some game (Wizard of WOR, maybe) that used a joystick with two leaf (?) switches were the joystick would contact the first leaf and then when moved further would contact the second leaf.  Someone mentioned progressive would be useful for this, but I think the analog joystick section of the MAME driver would need to be updated before it could be used.  Might have been a different game, as well.

16-way mode was actually added for Intellivision console emulation, but Kremmit thought it might work well for 720, but it turns out it doesn't.  I don't think there are any arcade games that need it.

If someone wanted to be really clever, instead of sending a command to the GPWIZ software they'd do it themselves.  Although, I'd get permission from RANDYT first.

I didn't follow you here - they would do what themselves - send the codes to change the stick modes?  You could do this b/c the interface supports mode switching through hardware as well (basically what Toonces was doing through a relay board connected to the parallel port), but you would have to do some complicated wiring and send simulated keypresses, etc.  I don't think you would need RandyT's permission, but I don't see what you would gain since the software switching is much easier.

[Howard_Casto]

Well I can add support for this quite easily.  The only problem I'm seeing is the whole raw/progressive thing.  It's the only data that the controls.dat project doesn't already collect.  I can easily do a special check for sinsitar, but my guess is it's not the only game that uses it. 

I'll simply add a -gpwhiz tag to the viewer.

Send -gpwhiz 1 and it runs the viewer normally and also changes the joystick mode when it's finished rendering. 

Send -gpwhiz 2 and It'll bypass the rendering, set the joy mode asap and dump itself back out, setting the joystick to 8-way if a entry isn't found. 

I might even make a little stand alone utility to make it possible to manually set the modes without the use of a mouse.  Sometimes randyt amazes me in the way he misses a key opportunity to make things easier.  I'm extremely impressed by the utility, but interactive mode is mouse controlled? ??  Wouldn't it make more sense to have it controllable by the actual joystick and a user defined button?  I think so anyway.