Game Launcher, ugly resolution switching!

[Justin]

When  glaunch switches to MAME, I can clearly see the monitor switching either resolution or bit-depth, and in the process it shows the Windows task bar at the bottom a few times.

Since I am running on a cabinet, this is not the most elegant 'effect'.  In my case, the point of having a frontend is to 'hide' the underlying OS.  (In my case, Windows XP)

In an attempt to fix this issue, I tried setting the desktop's resolution to 800x600, and I set glaunch to the same resolution through the cgf file.  Additionally, to make sure MAME didn't attempt any switching, I set MAME ini to never switch resolutions (so it will keep whatever is in use at launch).
Well, I thought this would work, but it did not.. I can still see the taskbar etc etc when running a game.  (also when exiting the game)

Can someone please help me out here?
       using:
   glaunch for Windows
   Windows XP Pro
   Windows command line version of MAME 0.65.

thanks!

[)p(]

most fe's now have a function to hide the taskbar. if gamelauncher does not have that yet there are little proggies floating around the net that can do that..do a google search for hide taskbar...

for example see the download section of the magma cab site that uses gamelauncher:
http://www.geocities.com/emu_skeleton/magma__downloads.htm
shellhide.zip is what you are looking for there...

peter

[Howard_Casto]

Actually this is a issue that isn't easily fixed....  You see whenever you chagne resolutions widnows wants to rescale everything, including the taskbar.... even if the taskbar is turned off via api, it can sometimes come back for a split second when you change the res...  

Your best solution, turn auto res off in your mame settings and set the res to the maximum your screen can allow and turn on hardware stretch.  

[Justin]

While on the topic, I wanted to mention that at first I could not get GL to run under WinXP.  Although properly configured, as soon as I double clicked the gl icon, I would get a black window (with the greyish border and window bar) filling the screen.   In the title bar it reads: _GL32.exe.   Only way out is to END TASK.

The only work around I have found , is to launch command first (i.e. start up a DOS command prompt), set full screen (alt-enter) and then launch GL by typing glaunch.exe.  All works perfectly this way...

I imagine glaunch was never tested for XP?  Anyone having this problem?

[Howard_Casto]

GameLauncher is a very aged fe and was originally designed for dos believe it or not.  

Dave does his best to keep it up, but with his limited time he simply can't work on it that much anymore.   Although it was recently ported to xp, numerous xp related bugs/errors have been reported.  If these are user errors or bugs I don't know, but I do know that getting gl to run in xp is difficult at this point.  

[jets]

It can be diffuicult but I like using GL. I have it running very smooth right now. I know there was one FE I tried and it had the option of running the command window 'silently' as in no visible command window at any time. Perhaps it wouldn't be hard to get that feature in there?I only see it for a second and thats ok with with me. Maybe it's because I have a fast computer running it and its pretty quick switching resolutions.

[Jakobud]

You don't really see the taskbar because it's switching resolutions, you see it whenever Mame is loading up and it's loading the roms.  So depending on your processor and what mame game you are loading up, you will see the taskbar for different periods of time.  GameLauncher already has some sort of code that blacks out everything on the screen (except taskbar) when you choose a game to play and it loads it up.  Hopefully it won't be too difficult for Dave Drib. to get rid of that task bar.  

Geez I hate having to run Winbloz in my cabinet  Too bad it provides the best performance for mame.

[Justin]

You don't really see the taskbar because it's switching resolutions, you see it whenever Mame is loading up and it's loading the roms.  So depending on your processor and what mame game you are loading up, you will see the taskbar for different periods of time.  GameLauncher already has some sort of code that blacks out everything on the screen (except taskbar) when you choose a game to play and it loads it up.  Hopefully it won't be too difficult for Dave Drib. to get rid of that task bar.  

Geez I hate having to run Winbloz in my cabinet  Too bad it provides the best performance for mame.

I'll have to test that; I don't quite remember seeing that effect when running mame w/out glaunch

Also, I thought running dmame in a pure DOS environment (DOS 7?) was slightly faster than running mame over Windows.  

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah if you have a pc that was new when dos 7 was new.   Dos can't manage high amounts of memory and has trouble with big processors and large harddrives.  In other words modern pcs.  

[Dave Dribin]

While on the topic, I wanted to mention that at first I could not get GL to run under WinXP.  Although properly configured, as soon as I double clicked the gl icon, I would get a black window (with the greyish border and window bar) filling the screen.   In the title bar it reads: _GL32.exe.   Only way out is to END TASK.

The only work around I have found , is to launch command first (i.e. start up a DOS command prompt), set full screen (alt-enter) and then launch GL by typing glaunch.exe.  All works perfectly this way...

I imagine glaunch was never tested for XP?  Anyone having this problem?

Are you *sure* you are running the Win32 version?  It almost sounds as if you are trying to run the DOS version on XP.  Don't do that.  The Win32 *should* work right from Explorer (i.e. double click on it).  I personally have tried this under Win2K (though I don't run that config much), so I see no reason why it shouldn't work just fine uder XP.

-Dave

[Dave Dribin]

In regards to the task bar not hiding....

I don't know how to fix it.  I horked the code right from one of MS's Knowledge Base articles:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q179363&ID=kb;en-us;Q179363

GL opens a full-screen black window right at launch time.  According to this doc, this full screen window *should* cover the task bar.  I thought this worked pretty well in Win98, actually, when I tested it.  Apparantly MS's own docs are full of ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.  I'm no windows programmer, so if someone knows a better way of hiding the task bar, I'm all ears.

-Dave

[Howard_Casto]

First off, don't dis the m$ documentation. Although it's often confusing, it's still the most well-documented os out there.  There's far to much stuff to cover it all 100% of the time.  

Secondly, yes that's the call you use. If anybody knows of a better one please enlighten us.
 

Third, read above... I already went over this issue...

Whenever windows screen resolution changes the taskbar re-initalizes, which means it will appear every time (I beleive it's a bug in windows). As far as I know the only way to change this is to constantly hide the taskbar again and again until the res changes, and even then it doesn't work 100% of the time.  

[)p(]

Whenever windows screen resolution changes the taskbar re-initalizes, which means it will appear every time (I beleive it's a bug in windows). As far as I know the only way to change this is to constantly hide the taskbar again and again until the res changes, and even then it doesn't work 100% of the time.  

Are you sure i have never seen the taskbar reappear with my fe both under win 9x and xp?

peter

[Howard_Casto]

that's because of two things.....

A. you have a fast machine...
B. your not using a m$ coding language

;-)  

Seriously though, director and flash applications seem to be immune.  Why I have no clue.