Author Topic: Zinc Control Config Utility Released! (1.5 now released) (Read 14839 times)

Howard_Casto · « **on:** April 11, 2006, 10:17:25 am »

Details are on the site...as always:

http://www.oscarcontrols.com/lazarus/

Update: The bugs uncovered in this thread have been addressed and a new version, 1.5, is available.

Timoe · « **Reply #1 on:** April 11, 2006, 04:58:53 pm »

No one else has said it so I will. Thank you.

screaming · « **Reply #2 on:** April 11, 2006, 05:07:16 pm »

Quote from: timoe on April 11, 2006, 04:58:53 pm

No one else has said it so I will. Thank you.

uh oh... looks like teknique has some castonian competition!

davieboynj · « **Reply #3 on:** April 11, 2006, 05:17:01 pm »

excellent! I'd been hoping you were going to release it soon!

mccoy178 · « **Reply #4 on:** April 11, 2006, 05:33:12 pm »

Well well well, look at you.

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #5 on:** April 11, 2006, 06:10:15 pm »

Thanks guys, just let me know if it does anything screwy, although honestly I think I'm done with it barring any super major bugs anyone finds.

rockmes · « **Reply #6 on:** April 11, 2006, 08:40:46 pm »

Well done Howard. l think this was required. l wish this was out when l had problem configuring Zinc a year ago.
Anyway l will give it a go.
Once again well done
Cheers

Teknique · « **Reply #7 on:** April 12, 2006, 07:45:30 am »

Brilliant... as usual.

Thanks HC!

Tek

Buddabing · « **Reply #8 on:** April 13, 2006, 05:58:05 pm »

Please post a direct link to the utility so it can go in the wiki.

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #9 on:** April 13, 2006, 10:06:04 pm »

http://www.oscarcontrols.com/lazarus/files/zincconfig1.0.zip

JCKnife · « **Reply #10 on:** April 13, 2006, 11:22:54 pm »

Can't wait to try it--thank you!!!

Space Fractal · « **Reply #11 on:** April 14, 2006, 06:59:50 am »

The gui seem to been wrong, when using the old Windows Theme. Look on the attachments, how it looked.

Zinc have never been the easiest utility to config, so a nice utility.

SlaveUnit · « **Reply #12 on:** April 14, 2006, 11:17:03 am »

Will this work with the way Minwah has his setup (not using Howards wrapper)? Just curious because I see you have to replace the zinc.dat file. And I think that is where Minwah's mappings are. Thanks.

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #13 on:** April 14, 2006, 12:37:24 pm »

You are confused, I mean zinc.dat as in clrmamepro.dat (rom verifier) it has nothing to do with mamewah's settings.

And while I suppose it COULD work with mamewah without my wrapper, you have to have the ability to send a different set of command-line options for each game (to set the controller.cfg) and manually setup the command to send for each game. It's far easier to use my wrapper as it's setup automatically if you drop it in the zinc folder with this utility. My wrapper works just as well in mamewah as it does any other fe.

Why in the world people still add hardcoded support for zinc in their fe's is beyond me considering my wrapper comes PRE-CONFIGURED for zinc and it's been available since zinc's first release. I mean why re-invent the wheel? All any fe needs is a section in their docs that says "for zinc support use HowardC's wrapper found here" and a quick guide on how to use it on that particular fe.

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #14 on:** April 14, 2006, 12:44:41 pm »

Quote from: Space Fractal / Denmark on April 14, 2006, 06:59:50 am

The gui seem to been wrong, when using the old Windows Theme. Look on the attachments, how it looked.

Zinc have never been the easiest utility to config, so a nice utility.

Nope, not a bug... that's intentional. I make the check boxes white to match xp themes, I don't really care what they look like in 9x as any 9x theme is ugly anyway.

I wanted to make the tabs match, but there isn't a way to get/set the tab color in 9x (or xp for that matter).

If you are referring to the over-lapped text in that one check box, again that is a windows thing and I have no control over it. If you have large fonts turned on in your display properites or any kind of text tweaking turned on it changes the size of fonts on all windows apps and the developer has no control over it. I turned off themes on my pc to see if I could get the text to overlap and it doesn't, meaning that you have tweaked the text someway on your pc. Sorry.

However, when I get around to another release I'll make the check box wider, which should help.

SlaveUnit · « **Reply #15 on:** April 14, 2006, 01:03:23 pm »

Quote from: Howard_Casto on April 14, 2006, 12:37:24 pm

You are confused, I mean zinc.dat as in clrmamepro.dat (rom verifier) it has nothing to do with mamewah's settings.

And while I suppose it COULD work with mamewah without my wrapper, you have to have the ability to send a different set of command-line options for each game (to set the controller.cfg) and manually setup the command to send for each game. It's far easier to use my wrapper as it's setup automatically if you drop it in the zinc folder with this utility. My wrapper works just as well in mamewah as it does any other fe.

Why in the world people still add hardcoded support for zinc in their fe's is beyond me considering my wrapper comes PRE-CONFIGURED for zinc and it's been available since zinc's first release. I mean why re-invent the wheel? All any fe needs is a section in their docs that says "for zinc support use HowardC's wrapper found here" and a quick guide on how to use it on that particular fe.

I understand it is probably simplier to use your wrapper. But I am trying to use as little resources as possible. Since your wrapper has a variable that sends out a listen command every second or so I would assume that is using up some cpu cycles? Maybe I am wrong here? I would think that hard coding is cleaner.

Space Fractal · « **Reply #16 on:** April 14, 2006, 03:56:16 pm »

Quote from: Howard_Casto on April 14, 2006, 12:44:41 pm

Quote from: Space Fractal / Denmark on April 14, 2006, 06:59:50 am
The gui seem to been wrong, when using the old Windows Theme. Look on the attachments, how it looked.

Zinc have never been the easiest utility to config, so a nice utility.

Nope, not a bug... that's intentional. I make the check boxes white to match xp themes, I don't really care what they look like in 9x as any 9x theme is ugly anyway. I wanted to make the tabs match, but there isn't a way to get/set the tab color in 9x (or xp for that matter).

If you are referring to the over-lapped text in that one check box, again that is a windows thing and I have no control over it. If you have large fonts turned on in your display properites or any kind of text tweaking turned on it changes the size of fonts on all windows apps and the developer has no control over it. I turned off themes on my pc to see if I could get the text to overlap and it doesn't, meaning that you have tweaked the text someway on your pc. Sorry.

However, when I get around to another release I'll make the check box wider, which should help.

It was most the over-lapped and the text I talked about it, and I diddent change or tweeked anything. It the classic standard in Denmark.

I have never liked the Blue Theme, mainly because it may been slowere than the classic theme. But this is the personly taste. I have used WIndows Blinds with a speciel theme.

But again, this utility should only use once, so it very small things.....

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #17 on:** April 14, 2006, 06:23:56 pm »

Well that could be the issue as well. Different reigons use different fonts and font sizes as the system default.

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #18 on:** April 14, 2006, 06:29:21 pm »

Quote from: SlaveUnit on April 14, 2006, 01:03:23 pm

Quote from: Howard_Casto on April 14, 2006, 12:37:24 pm
You are confused, I mean zinc.dat as in clrmamepro.dat (rom verifier) it has nothing to do with mamewah's settings.

And while I suppose it COULD work with mamewah without my wrapper, you have to have the ability to send a different set of command-line options for each game (to set the controller.cfg) and manually setup the command to send for each game. It's far easier to use my wrapper as it's setup automatically if you drop it in the zinc folder with this utility. My wrapper works just as well in mamewah as it does any other fe.

Why in the world people still add hardcoded support for zinc in their fe's is beyond me considering my wrapper comes PRE-CONFIGURED for zinc and it's been available since zinc's first release. I mean why re-invent the wheel? All any fe needs is a section in their docs that says "for zinc support use HowardC's wrapper found here" and a quick guide on how to use it on that particular fe.

I understand it is probably simplier to use your wrapper. But I am trying to use as little resources as possible. Since your wrapper has a variable that sends out a listen command every second or so I would assume that is using up some cpu cycles? Maybe I am wrong here? I would think that hard coding is cleaner.

I can understand that, but even on the slowest of machines, it doesn't take up enough cycles to make any difference. As I said, my wrapper has been around since the initial release, when we were all running 500 mhz cpus.

Hardcoding can be cleaner, but in the case of zinc it doesn't really matter. With the greatest respect to the zinc authors, sometimes zinc seems like it just psudeo crashes itself to shutdown even without my wrapper.

SlaveUnit · « **Reply #19 on:** April 16, 2006, 01:57:21 am »

Heya Howard,
I did get it running the other way without the wrapper. But I want to say thanks for creating your donfig. It really helped me understand the controls much better. I did it use it for all the games then just renamed each .ini file to a number so it corresponds to Minwah's .dat file. Either way...thanks again...it is a great configuring program!

AE35 · « **Reply #20 on:** April 16, 2006, 07:47:56 am »

Sorry for being stupid, but I get the message that it's missing:

comctl32.ocx

Any advice?

Also, do this program(which comes at the rigth time, since I'm building my
second arcade right now

), also work if I'm using a FE?

Thanks!!

Nicholas

JCKnife · « **Reply #21 on:** April 16, 2006, 10:34:10 am »

Looks like I've got the same problem as AE35:

AE35 · « **Reply #22 on:** April 16, 2006, 12:27:32 pm »

I found out, you need to get the files and put them in your system 32 folder.

http://www.devx.com/vb2themax/Tip/18538

...from a place like this.

However, when I start the games through MaLa, the controls still doesn't work....

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #23 on:** April 16, 2006, 10:07:38 pm »

Well if you aren't using my wrapper with mala then they won't.

A different control.cfg is created for each game and the wrapper automatically sends the appropriate cfg option for each game. Like I said above, while you CAN do it without the wrapper it's complicated and you have to have a fe with the ability to send a different command line with each game.

Zinc doesn't magically know which cfg to load... you have to tell it.

JCKnife · « **Reply #24 on:** April 17, 2006, 07:28:55 am »

Where does one get the wrapper?

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #25 on:** April 17, 2006, 11:59:28 am »

lol I literally invented emulator wrappers and people still have to ask that question?

www.oscarcontrols.com/lazarus

Havok · « **Reply #26 on:** April 17, 2006, 02:23:03 pm »

Kids these days with their wrappers!

I remember back in the day when when we just typed command line parameters to run our programs, no front ends, AND WE LIKED IT!

Oh, and of course we walked to school, uphill, in the snow. BOTH WAYS!

Space Fractal · « **Reply #27 on:** April 18, 2006, 05:13:44 am »

Quote from: Howard_Casto on April 14, 2006, 06:23:56 pm

Well that could be the issue as well. Different reigons use different fonts and font sizes as the system default.

If you didden't set the background colors, but let use the windows default, and (as you said) use the button a bit larger, it should works on virtual all themes (includning the great WindowBlinds) and not just the US/Blue XP theme (none of my friends actuelly use the blue theme trouch).

I guess there are a stringwidth function in Visual Basic (I may guessing you use?) to check the width of the font with the string used.

I hope you fix these, than think about it in the feature. This is just a tip.

I have maybe a one real issue:

* It seen it didden't autosave the button configs, when trying to launch a game? Maybe I shuld use a fresh Zinc to test.

NB. THis is not critic your software, because the gui itself is great (setup), and it does what it does!

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #28 on:** April 18, 2006, 12:22:37 pm »

No leaving the colors to their defaults don't work any better. By default, xp tabs are white. Xp frames are grey, it sounds like it'd look fine, but grey frames on white tabs looks awful.

Text width also won't help. While I can get the width of the control and the width of a text string with that font size on it, it doesn't take into account the width of the actual checkbox. And since each theme has a different checkbox style, which is applied on top of the "real" checkbox I have no way or getting their actual width either.

You wonder why m$ only released 3 official xp themes? That's why. Basically, they never really finished the theme framework and it's kinda cludged on top of the old stuff.

You can't test until you save, so launching a seperate zinc process isn't going to change the results on that one. I don't autosave because I'm afraid users will be goofing around in the cfgs, launch a game, and then wonder why thier cfgs are off. Mind you it'd be their own fault, but still.... I think in the future I may add a prompt on that one though.

Space Fractal · « **Reply #29 on:** April 18, 2006, 03:20:01 pm »

A prompt to save is fine when first it launch is fine. It could ask to autosave..... I guess people (like me) would use the launch to test the new layout, and trying to use the new layout have worked or not.

I have only had the (white) color problems with this utility, so this is why I call this "bug" or a minor issue. The text wrapper problem could easily fixed to just make them about 10-20 pixels wider (as you said). The text wrapped also in the blue theme too.

About the officiel themes: Maybe Windowblinds "took" the theme market, there are bunch of very professionel XP themes (that allways works on Win 98 as well), using it?

PS. Just tested it: On my own config utility, the XP theme was disabled, but it still look fine on the blue theme without any other issues. I mind I never have tested on the blue theme before, or maybe only tested once.

jmelan · « **Reply #30 on:** April 21, 2006, 02:22:20 am »

I am new at zinc, so please excuse my question if it makes no sense.

My button configurations initially worked well with the launcher out of zincconfig.exe, but not when I used the wrapper (with mamewah)

I think this is because when I save and "configure" the wrapper, the lconfig.ini file does not have the "--use-controller-cfg-file=?" line added to each of the entries.

I manually added the "--use-controller-cfg-file=?" to each entry in lconfig.ini and now mamewah works perfectly (controls are what I specified).

before: starglad;1 --use-config-file=zinc.cfg

after: starglad;1 --use-config-file=zinc.cfg --use-controller-cfg-file=d:\zinc\ctrlr\starglad.ini

Is this what I am supposed to do, or did I mess something up while using the program?

Thanks

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #31 on:** April 21, 2006, 05:15:55 pm »

You don't configure the wrapper, this app configures the wrapper for you. If you go in and mess with the lconfig.ini after zincconfig has ran, of course it isn't going to work. This one is obvious, but it only works with my wrapper and the latest version at that.

And yes, the --use-controller-cfg-file= line must be in place. As I said, if you have the wrapper (and lconfig.ini) in place prior to saving in zincconfig, it'll do all of this for you. Every time you save in zincconfig and have "Configure Wrapper when Zinc Changes are Saved" checked it overwrites the lconfig.ini with the proper settings.

update:

Well crap, debug was on in the wrapper section of my code and it isn't working properly. Thanks for catching it jmelan and shame on the other 527 of you who didn't. Guess I'll have to do a release now.

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #32 on:** April 21, 2006, 07:23:53 pm »

Ok version 1.5 is up, it fixes the issues brought up in this thread.

thanks

HAC

iamnaeth · « **Reply #33 on:** April 23, 2006, 05:42:05 pm »

For you lazy people! (myself included)

http://www.oscarcontrols.com/lazarus/files/zincconfig1.5.zip

Thanks Howard, maybe I can get this working!

Mr. Dude · « **Reply #34 on:** April 23, 2006, 07:14:49 pm »

Bravo Howard! This is a great service to these forums.

Bub&Bob · « **Reply #35 on:** May 07, 2006, 10:04:33 pm »

For anyone like myself that is setting up Zinc for the first time on your cabinet, make sure you get a copy of Winterblast's input plugin before trying to use the Control Config util.

http://www.emulator-zone.com/download.php/emulators/arcade/zinc/plugins/winterblast_inp_controller.zip

The default controller.znc that comes with ZiNc 1.1 from emuhype will not work.

-Bub&Bob

releasedtruth · « **Reply #36 on:** November 30, 2006, 12:44:26 pm »

Howard, this may be a retarded Q, but I got your config working real nice with the config launcher, but I don't know how to pass the controller .ini name through GameEx as a variable or the like so I lose the sweet controller config in the front end. Any thoughts?

GT

Havok · « **Reply #37 on:** November 30, 2006, 04:15:06 pm »

Nice! Thanks Howard!

Releasedtruth: your question is more for the GameEx guys, I would think. If Headkaze doesn't chime in, check out their support forum - http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?showforum=2

headkaze · « **Reply #38 on:** November 30, 2006, 04:31:33 pm »

Quote from: releasedtruth on November 30, 2006, 12:44:26 pm

Howard, this may be a retarded Q, but I got your config working real nice with the config launcher, but I don't know how to pass the controller .ini name through GameEx as a variable or the like so I lose the sweet controller config in the front end. Any thoughts?

GT

Just place [ROMFile].ini in the command line and GameEx will replace [ROMFile] with the name of ROM.

releasedtruth · « **Reply #39 on:** November 30, 2006, 05:41:34 pm »

Ben, you're the man. I knew it had to be that simple. I've just been thinking about it at work today.

GT


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