EmuSaver 2.1 bugfix release...

[Howard_Casto]

This version fixes the restoring sound bug and also checks for a previnstance of the scr before loading it, just in case.

If you don't know where to get it by now then you just aren't paying attention.  

www.oscarcontrols.com/lazarus

[bdp]

Howard,

A few possible enhancement ideas:

1)  Have option to either mute sound or lower sound level when the SS is on, but have it raise the sound to full level (or unmute totally) when a key is pressed to actually play the game (no sound or lowered sound in attract mode.)

2)  Logging option to tell which games it attempts to launch.  I have a full mameset and the SS locks up about 5 times a day on average (with 5 minutes between roms).  I assume it's the rom and not the SS, which leads to my next option

3)  Exclude list.  Ability to EXCLUDE certain roms from the list (ones that prove to lock up the SS because they don't load).  This would also be a great way to test if it's a ROM or a random event locking up the SS screen (it locks on the now loading screen)...CTRL ALT DEL is the only way I can get out.

Thanks for this program, it is REALLY COOL on my cab!

[Lilwolf]

good idea on the filter.

I'm not sure if I could run a screensaver at home that might load some nudie ones.  Kids wouldn't care, but my wife would kill me  

[SirPoonga]

3)  Exclude list.  Ability to EXCLUDE certain roms from the list (ones that prove to lock up the SS because they don't load).  This would also be a great way to test if it's a ROM or a random event locking up the SS screen (it locks on the now loading screen)...CTRL ALT DEL is the only way I can get out.

probably the rom, it could be one of the roms that have a bad rom dump, therefore require you to press any key before teh game loads.  use the lzmame hack I came up with for HC.  It's on his site.  To use something other than lzmame 0.61 you will need to compile your own mame.  It isn't hard to do:)

[Howard_Casto]

sirp is right... it's always the rom as i designed the screensaver in such a way that it's incapable of locking up (now as sure as i said that someone will find a bug)  

it's the press any key... glitch....

regarding filtering..... it's not going to happen

this is just a fun little side project and filtering requires work.... your roms should be pre-filtered anyway in seperate directories....  

i always put the adult roms in a seperate folder

an exclude might happen though, but it can't auto-detect when a rom "locks up" as technically nothing happened, it's just you didn't "press any key" as the command prompt is hidden from you.  

[Minwah]

MAMEWAH has always had the ability to launch the currently selected / random game as a screensaver (of course it has been unable to quit automatically and launch next game etc..)

Anyway, I got around the 'bad dump' problem by doing a 'mame gamename -verifyroms' BEFORE attempting to launch the game.  If it finds that a 'ROM NEEDS REDUMP' then it would not attempt to launch the game.  This will also prevent general bad romsets from being used.

I must say tho that compiling a build to skip this bad rom message is the best idea anyway, to save ANY 'lockup'.

[bdp]

3)  Exclude list.  Ability to EXCLUDE certain roms from the list (ones that prove to lock up the SS because they don't load).  This would also be a great way to test if it's a ROM or a random event locking up the SS screen (it locks on the now loading screen)...CTRL ALT DEL is the only way I can get out.

probably the rom, it could be one of the roms that have a bad rom dump, therefore require you to press any key before teh game loads.  use the lzmame hack I came up with for HC.  It's on his site.  To use something other than lzmame 0.61 you will need to compile your own mame.  It isn't hard to do:)

Actually I compiled my own mame with no nag screens at all and I still get the lockups occasionally.  It would be nice if there was at least a log so I could see which roms were causing this problem and see what happens when I launch them manually.

[SirPoonga]

3)  Exclude list.  Ability to EXCLUDE certain roms from the list (ones that prove to lock up the SS because they don't load).  This would also be a great way to test if it's a ROM or a random event locking up the SS screen (it locks on the now loading screen)...CTRL ALT DEL is the only way I can get out.

probably the rom, it could be one of the roms that have a bad rom dump, therefore require you to press any key before teh game loads.  use the lzmame hack I came up with for HC.  It's on his site.  To use something other than lzmame 0.61 you will need to compile your own mame.  It isn't hard to do:)

Actually I compiled my own mame with no nag screens at all and I still get the lockups occasionally.  It would be nice if there was at least a log so I could see which roms were causing this problem and see what happens when I launch them manually.

There is.  click the view statistics button in the screensaver settings.
Ofcourse if HC doesn't write to the logfile before he actually executes mame I am not sure if what is there is the last rom executed.

[Howard_Casto]

I thought of that one ahead of time... as long as you exit the "lockup" with escape it will write the stats file for you.  It saves the data as it goes....  

Btw bpd commenting out the nag screens isn't enough.  What we are talking about are error messages at the comand prompt, not guied game warnings with "press ok to continue".  Several games with incomplete rom dumps (that ironically enough still run)  cause such errors.  64th street is a prime example.  

I believe sirp has a link to the code switch he implemented. That might be a useful thing to post here. (hint hint)

[SirPoonga]

I thought of that one ahead of time... as long as you exit the "lockup" with escape it will write the stats file for you.  It saves the data as it goes....  

Btw bpd commenting out the nag screens isn't enough.  What we are talking about are error messages at the comand prompt, not guied game warnings with "press ok to continue".  Several games with incomplete rom dumps (that ironically enough still run)  cause such errors.  64th street is a prime example.  

I believe sirp has a link to the code switch he implemented. That might be a useful thing to post here. (hint hint)

actually, I don't, I should put it up on my site.  I just implemented that -skip_baddumps.  otherwise the code changes are in lzmame, right:)

[bdp]

Posting the code changes would be great, since I already have a custom build of MAME .65 I did, I'd hate to have to start over with lzmame and do all the source patching to get it up to .65...

[Lilwolf]

Great idea checking it before hand.  

I might just check each one in the verify roms before I run it now to get ready to run.

I currently keep track of the status of the game.  Then add them all together (sound/video or whatever the groups are) and keep track if any of the parents/clones have a better status (lower).  Then run them.  So if you tried to run popeye in non-clones view, it would run one of the clones automatically.  But that only worked if one of the clones where better then the parent.  

[SirPoonga]

Goto
http://free.hostdepartment.com/S/SirPoonga/hacks.html

[Howard_Casto]

Minwah... I really like the idea of verifying roms prior to launch....

Could you give me an example of a game that doesn't work, but a clone does so I can use it as an example to setup the code.

There is also one other alternative, but it's the holy grail of programming.  I have no clue how, but there is a way to print the text outputted to the screen on any command line app via api (i think it's an api anyway).  I've seen it doen before but the programmer was unwilling to share the source.  Do any of you guys have a clue how that could be done?

If you do then it could revolutionize the fe scene as could error parse for EVERY command line emulator... including daphne, raine, mess.... ect.. by searching for bad keywords during the launch sequence.....  

[Howard_Casto]

SirP your a moderator... so moderate yourself.... I beleive you wished to respond to my other thread.    This one is about command line parsing.  

[SirPoonga]

SirP your a moderator... so moderate yourself.... I beleive you wished to respond to my other thread.    This one is about command line parsing.  

AHHH CRAP!  Two windows open at once!

[SirPoonga]

I've seen it doen before but the programmer was unwilling to share the source.  Do any of you guys have a clue how that could be done?

Hehe, I know who you are talking about, I could just go up to him and @#%$^#$ slap him!

[Minwah]

Minwah... I really like the idea of verifying roms prior to launch....

Could you give me an example of a game that doesn't work, but a clone does so I can use it as an example to setup the code.

There is also one other alternative, but it's the holy grail of programming.  I have no clue how, but there is a way to print the text outputted to the screen on any command line app via api (i think it's an api anyway).  I've seen it doen before but the programmer was unwilling to share the source.  Do any of you guys have a clue how that could be done?

If you do then it could revolutionize the fe scene as could error parse for EVERY command line emulator... including daphne, raine, mess.... ect.. by searching for bad keywords during the launch sequence.....  

Well Moon Walker springs to mind.  The parent (Set 1) doesn't work but the (bootleg) clone does.

My FE only checks for better clones when filtering the list by clones.  The option 'Display Clones' has the choices 'Yes', 'No' and 'Only if parent is broken' - eg Moon Walker (bootleg) would show up but Moon Walker (Set 1) would not.  I do not check when a game is launched.

I'm afraid I've no idea about the API thing.  I simply make a batch file to do something like 'MAME game -verifyroms > verify' and then open verify etc.  Not great but it works.

On a kinda similar note me FE also has the option to 'Verify ROMs before Playing' which basically does the MAME blah -verifyroms every time when launching a game, so if you do not have a special build you can still prevent 'bad dump' games from hanging your system.  I thought about removing this option tho since it slows launching down a bit and I doubt anyone uses it (actually I've already removed it in my re-write and can't be bothered to put it back )  Anyone think this is a good option to have?

[Howard_Casto]

Well that's the approach I'm going to have......  Checking prior to launch.  You see users are a crazy lot...  if you do something nice like check their roms for "goodness" before you add them to the list they'll complain that some of thier roms didn't show up.  

I think the best approach is to check prior to launch and ask them if they want to continue, or launch the clone...ect....

Plus that reduces the time to scan for roms dramatically.  

[SirPoonga]

C:\mame>mamepp -verifyroms pacman
OK.
1 romsets found, 1 were OK.

C:\mame>mamepp -verifyroms 64street
OK.
64street: prom             512 bytes NO GOOD DUMP KNOWN
romset 64street is best available
1 romsets found, 1 were OK.

Nice

[almightyjustin]

The ONLY way you will exit the screensaver is to hold down the exit key (escape by default) the refresh time that's defined in the lconfig.ini (or a little more, generally about a second will do it)  Since I want to give you the option of playing these games, mouse and other key presses don't effect the screensaver.

It would be nice if playing the games was indeed an "option" - that is, it should be possible to optionally have the screen saver quit on mouse movement/clicking or any keypress. If there's a technical reason why this won't work I'll understand but I don't like running screen savers that are hard to quit

[Howard_Casto]

There are technical reasons, and besides the whole point of the screensaver is the fact that you can play the games.  If you want a screensaver that's non interactive then just download a avi screensaver and add the hundreds to mame attract screens that have already been captured and are available on variious sites.

Besides that would be a lot of work to get it working halfway decent.  Read above.... this is a fun little project I'm not about to put a great deal of time into it.    

I'm real glad that everyone is so interested in it, but quite frankly it's on the bottom of my list in terms of my projects.

[SirPoonga]

The ONLY way you will exit the screensaver is to hold down the exit key (escape by default) the refresh time that's defined in the lconfig.ini (or a little more, generally about a second will do it)  Since I want to give you the option of playing these games, mouse and other key presses don't effect the screensaver.

It would be nice if playing the games was indeed an "option" - that is, it should be possible to optionally have the screen saver quit on mouse movement/clicking or any keypress. If there's a technical reason why this won't work I'll understand but I don't like running screen savers that are hard to quit

Reason, what happens if a trackball games comes up???  On mouse movement, bye bye game.