CPMaker GUI Online Tutorial

[Buddabing]

I have started a tutorial page for the GUI for my CPMaker application.

Link

I've just started with creating the tutorial. I would appreciate it if someone, anyone, would look at it and give me some feedback as to what the average user might want in the tutorial.

Has anyone even downloaded and run CPMaker? I'm starting to think that my efforts to help the BYOAC community have been wasted.

Regards,
Buddabing

[thebrownshow]

Might just be me, but none of the images worked in your link there.

[Buddabing]

Might just be me, but none of the images worked in your link there.

Okay, what OS and browser are you using?

[thebrownshow]

Windows XP SP2, Firefox 1.5.0.1

[StormGiant]

Windows XP SP2, Firefox 1.5.0.1

Same specs - no images showing up here either.

[surf]

Looks easier the some of the others...

Will yours read each game and automatically apply the controls for each game, or must it be done manually?

How does it work within mame?  Does a pic come up before the game starts, or do you use a hot key to make the controls show?

Do you have to use your version of mame?

I'm sure I'll have more questions once I try it out!

ps, your page looks fine in IE...

[Buddabing]

Windows XP SP2, Firefox 1.5.0.1

Same specs - no images showing up here either.

Firefox doesn't like backslashes in URL names. Try again and refresh the page.

[Buddabing]

Looks easier the some of the others...

Will yours read each game and automatically apply the controls for each game, or must it be done manually?

How does it work within mame?  Does a pic come up before the game starts, or do you use a hot key to make the controls show?

Do you have to use your version of mame?

I'm sure I'll have more questions once I try it out!

ps, your page looks fine in IE...

CPMaker will read each game and apply the controls to it, provided that the game or its parent is in the controls.xml file. If the game or its parent is not in controls.xml then none of the controls will be dim and there won't be any labels drawn.

You can find more infomation about the controls.dat project here.

You can set up controls display in several ways.
1) The front end can call CPMaker to generate the output and display it before MAME is launched.
2) BuddaMAME can generate controls artwork on the fly and display it when pause is pressed. (This requires my build of MAME)
3) You can launch the CPMaker viewer on a second screen and then launch any flavor of MAME as you would normally.
4) You can launch the CPMaker viewer from your front end and then launch any flavor of MAME. Then use an AHK script to minimize MAME when pause is pressed.

You do not have to use my build of MAME.

[screaming]

oops. nm.

[surf]

Now that I've tried it, a few more stupid questions:

1. I cannot seem to find the player start graphics in the "button" menu.  Should these be part of the background instead of an actual placed button?

2. I'll be using an 800x600 background, do I just make an 800x600 jpg and use that as the background and the program will scale it?

Oh, it didn't come with an installer, will everything save fine just running the program.exe?

Thanks again, I'll have more stupid questions when I get it set up and try to use it with MAMEwah/MAME...

[zaphod]

Has anyone even downloaded and run CPMaker? I'm starting to think that my efforts to help the BYOAC community have been wasted.

Your efforts have not been wasted!  I installed it on my cab quite a while ago and am very happy with it.  It makes it simple to show newbies to the cab what buttons are what for the less obvious game layouts (mainly fighters).   It's also helpful for me when I decide to try a game out for the first time.  You did a great job on CPMaker.

[Buddabing]

Now that I've tried it, a few more stupid questions:

1. I cannot seem to find the player start graphics in the "button" menu.  Should these be part of the background instead of an actual placed button?

Bug. I have a bugfix pending, I'll make sure it is fixed there. You should have an option in the drop-box that says "Player 1 Start Button".

2. I'll be using an 800x600 background, do I just make an 800x600 jpg and use that as the background and the program will scale it?

That should work okay, my template images are only a slight bit larger. If the
buttons appear too large, you might try either expanding your background to the size of my template images, which is 854x640.

Oh, it didn't come with an installer, will everything save fine just running the program.exe?

There actually is an installer application. For version v0.104, I am releasing a version with the installer and without the installer.

Version with installer
Version without installer

[Buddabing]

Has anyone even downloaded and run CPMaker? I'm starting to think that my efforts to help the BYOAC community have been wasted.

Your efforts have not been wasted!  I installed it on my cab quite a while ago and am very happy with it.  It makes it simple to show newbies to the cab what buttons are what for the less obvious game layouts (mainly fighters).   It's also helpful for me when I decide to try a game out for the first time.  You did a great job on CPMaker.

Thank you.

[surf]

I second that on wasted efforts, I'm planning on using this for my cab, I've come to find that it takes a lot to make my cab alot more guest friendly,  but you're going to have to listen to a few (or bunch) of stupid questions from (at least) me...

1. Does each control need to have the keycode assigned to the button/joystick/etc and then have each label applied to each keycode?

2. If I select a config file (ie. slikstik), will that change any control/label that I have put in manually?

3. Is there a way to test the labels with font/color in the program? They just show as black boxes when I put the labels on?

More questions to come, and thanks for contributing to the community. I, for one, am glad to see this type of software being made!

Thanks again...

[Buddabing]

I second that on wasted efforts, I'm planning on using this for my cab, I've come to find that it takes a lot to make my cab alot more guest friendly,  but you're going to have to listen to a few (or bunch) of stupid questions from (at least) me...

1. Does each control need to have the keycode assigned to the button/joystick/etc and then have each label applied to each keycode?

Yes, controls and labels both need keycodes.

2. If I select a config file (ie. slikstik), will that change any control/label that I have put in manually?

Currently, CPMaker does not read per-game controls. I'll have to change that in the next version.

3. Is there a way to test the labels with font/color in the program? They just show as black boxes when I put the labels on?

You can change the default background color by selecting Background Color->Solid Color from the Label menu when no labels are selected. Once you have labels, you can always right click on one and select Background Color->Solid Color.

You can also change background colors en masse by selecting your group of labels and choosing BackgroundColor->Solid Color from the Label menu.

More questions to come, and thanks for contributing to the community. I, for one, am glad to see this type of software being made!

Your questions were quite sound and valid. Please keep them coming. By asking questions, you let me know what parts of the interface need work and what part of the documentation needs work.

[surf]

Uh oh...

Correct me if I'm wrong but does this only use static labels, or will it pull them from the controls.dat and apply them to the approiate key? 

Thanks again...

[Buddabing]

Uh oh...

Correct me if I'm wrong but does this only use static labels, or will it pull them from the controls.dat and apply them to the approiate key? 

Thanks again...

It pulls them from the controls.dat.

[Ninten-doh]

I'm running CPMaker on a Win XP machine, and I'm stuck on the part of the tutorial where I create the PSF file.  When I select "Folder Preference", nothing happens.  I don't get the screen.  So I skipped that and went to "File Preferences".  I typed in the new name for the PSF, but when I closed the dialog box, I didn't get the option to create a new one.

This seems like a great program.  I hope I can get it to work!   

[Buddabing]

I reproduced your error regarding the Folder Preferences dialog not appearing. I think I have it fixed, but I'm still testing.

You should not get a prompt to create a new panel selection file until you select "Panel Selection" from the Edit menu. There is a missing step in the tutorial.

Thank you for your input.

[Ninten-doh]

I tried the "Panel Selection" as well, and I just get a pop-up that asks "Browse for panel selection file?"  It doesn't has the "(or create)" in their.

[mccoy178]

I tried the "Panel Selection" as well, and I just get a pop-up that asks "Browse for panel selection file?"  It doesn't has the "(or create)" in their.

I closed the new one that I was working on and reopened it, and then it was in the list I could choose from.

Question:  When changing the keycode when right clicking, the right hand side of the list is cut off so I couldn't tell what I was assigning using that method.  I had to go into edit all options to see the full text.

[mccoy178]

Budda, could I recommend you adding a little side note about microsoft tools and the command here toy?  I know Tiger had a link to it on the Johnny5 tutorial.  It may be a help to noobs out there.  Thanks for the tutorial!  Making life easier is always a good thing.

[Buddabing]

Budda, could I recommend you adding a little side note about microsoft tools and the command here toy? 

I'm sorry, I didn't understand that.

[mccoy178]

Here is the link to what I was talking about:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

If you download and install the command here toy, it will allow you to just highlight a folder, and if you right click, it will now give you the option to "open command prompt here".  Very handy, especially for non experienced users.

Question:  I can't get the labels to show up on the cpmaker.  The controls are working just fine, but do I need to assign a keystroke to the labels?  The only options I have when selecting a key stroke for a label is:
KEYCODE_A
KEYCODE_B
KEYCODE_C
KEYCODE_D
KEYCODE_E

I will take another look in the tutorial, but I didn't find it the first couple times around.  I believe I'm just confused.

[mccoy178]

Okay, I figured out this.  If I right click on the label and select keycode, I have no issues.  It's in the main form that I only have the five options.  Whew, thought I was going crazy for a second there.

[Ninten-doh]

I tried the "Panel Selection" as well, and I just get a pop-up that asks "Browse for panel selection file?"  It doesn't have the "(or create)" in their.

I closed the new one that I was working on and reopened it, and then it was in the list I could choose from.

Mccoy, Budda - I didn't have such luck when I did that.   

[Buddabing]

Okay, I believe I have fixed the folder preferences dialog not showing up. I also made a small change to the tutorial and I've added a link to the self-extracting archive on the BuddaMAME home page.

[Buddabing]

I've added mccoy178's command prompt tip to the tutorial. Thanks, man!

[Ninten-doh]

Budda, thanks for fixing the bugs.  Working great now!

Question...I might want to use static images of the controls in my FE (Mamewah).  What's the most straightforward way to create all those individual PNG files?  I'm guessing some sort of BAT file.

[Buddabing]

Budda, thanks for fixing the bugs.  Working great now!

Question...I might want to use static images of the controls in my FE (Mamewah).  What's the most straightforward way to create all those individual PNG files?  I'm guessing some sort of BAT file.

Use the -justprint command line option in a batch file to just create artwork.

Code: [Select]

rem save this as batch.bat
@cpmaker.exe %1 %2 -justprint
@ren controls.png %1.png


Code: [Select]

rem save this as makeart.bat
@call batch pacman puckman
@call batch mk mk

Or, to generate the makeart.bat automatically, use my ListGen utility.

You would need to change the filter.sql to read:

Code: [Select]

-- put a single space between the quotes in the .separator statement
-- put two single quotes with no spaces in the "when cloneof='' "
.separator ' '
select 'call batch', romname, CASE WHEN cloneof ='' THEN romname ELSE cloneof END from gamedata;

Then change your listgen.ini to read:

Code: [Select]

# lines starting with # are comments
# change your path names accordingly
#rompath ..\mame\roms
#mamepath ..\mame
frontend moviebatch
#verbose 0
#silent 0
audit_roms 0
#us_version_priority 0
#world_version_priority 0
#strip_description 0
#japan_version_priority -1
#reuse_mame_data 0
#output batch2.bat
#force_uppercase_romnames 0
#skip_final_step 1
#boundary_path .
#boundary_file ssf.txt
#frontend romlist
rompath ..\mame\roms
mamepath ..\mame\v0.104
use_clones 1
unique 0
reuse_mame_data 1
output makeart.bat
skip_final_step 1


[Ninten-doh]

Budda,
I'm confused about the batch files (forgive me, it's been awhile since my DOS days!).  I understand what batch.bat is doing...running cpmaker for each rom, creating the control.png, then renaming the file.  But what is makeart.bat doing and do I need to run that as well, or just the batch.bat?  Thanks again for your software and your patience in explaining it.

[Buddabing]

Budda,
I'm confused about the batch files (forgive me, it's been awhile since my DOS days!).  I understand what batch.bat is doing...running cpmaker for each rom, creating the control.png, then renaming the file.  But what is makeart.bat doing and do I need to run that as well, or just the batch.bat?  Thanks again for your software and your patience in explaining it.

In my example, makeart.bat calls batch.bat, you don't run batch.bat manually.

Makeart.bat runs batch.bat for each rom. I don't think you want to run batch.bat by hand 5000+ times. That's why I wrote it that way.

If you are unfamiliar with command prompts, try the ListGen.NET program.

[Ninten-doh]

Thanks Budda.  So in the makeart.bat file, you're just using pacman and mk as examples. Is the call for mk missing the "batch"?  Meaning, should it read "@call batch mk mk" ?

[Buddabing]

Yes, fixed.