Led-wiz helper app Version 2.0.89 released - Faster

[mahuti]

I did a little work on the not-so-swiftled, and made it a little swifter. The good news is; it's faster. The bad news is, it's not going to get much faster than this, at least for the non-autolighting commands. I still have a few things I can do to the autolighting stuff that should increase the speed. The speed will probably be increased by milliseconds though, not seconds. I'm mostly going to be fine tuning it just to streamline my code and get ready to begin the next round of feature enhancements.

You can download it here.

Other than fine tuning the speed a bit, there are no additional changes or feature enhancements in this version.

[buks]

Excellent news mahuti !

I'm presuming I can just drop the new version ontop of the old ? After backing it up first obviously ! And I'm also presuming that the mamewah command lines will be the same ?

Not really waiting for answers to those Qs as I will find out for myself pretty quickly !

I'll post my findings later - in fact I'll try to remember to use a stopwatch and time the old version V the new version at loading mamewah, running the same game and dropping back to mamewah and then exiting back to windows.

Later dood !

[mahuti]

a. You can just drop the .exe into the old folder.
b. command lines are the same.
c. don't bother stopwatching it. I can get millisecond speed comparisons if you're really interested, but I know for a fact that this version is faster.

The main speed increases here should be;

1. Running of command line parameters, XLEDWIZ, LLEDWIZ, LEDSOFF
2. Running .lwa files.

Random Notes: All of the autolighting stuff will still probably take just as long as it did. I have been continuing to work on streamlining the code for that however, and I've made some improvements. hmmmmm.... just now I thought of another shortcut. Maybe a good one. No matter what, though, this will probably always take a second or 2 to launch. With the new version of MAME supporting single game listouts for listxml, I'll be able to reduce the apps filesize, as well as increase features. Overall runtime probably won't get any better.

Future enhancement ideas....
I may create new commandline parameters or ini parameters to set how the app should autolight. For instance, set the option of lighting the controls & buttons, or just buttons. Not autolighting the controls will probably shave at least 1/2second - 1 second off of the overall time of autolighting. 

I'll be getting to single, double color leds, and support for multiple players soon. Still no support for multiple led-wizzes on the horizon I'm afraid. I looked at the DLL code, and I just have no idea where to start. And even if I did know where to start, it would take some time for me to figure out how to write an efficient set of commands to talk to both of the led-wizzes. This little app is about one step away from a full control panel viewer... complexity that I didn't set out to create.

[buks]

mahuti,

I've backed up my old ledwiz, unzipped the new one and copied over the previous ini folder. When I start mamewah (v162b10) nothing seems to happen - I lose the cursor (which I think is expected behaviour from MW) and windows just sits there doing nothinng (ie MW doesnt start).

I've tried logging out and rebooting but nothing made a difference.

So I decided to just test swiftled on the command line :

swiftled lledwiz - starts the ledwiz resident software

swiftled 3backsweep.lwa - A strange thing happens. The letters "Ple" appear in the middle of the screen in bright green.

swiftled xledwiz - nothing happens.

So, I removed ledwiz with a right click/close and then started it again with lledwiz. Thinking that trying to start an lwa file has *hagged something I immediately ran xledwiz but that then also did the "Ple" thing.

At this point setledwiz.exe is still running in the Task Manager.

I'm going to triple check the ini files but as you said I should be able to drop the exe file in with no other changes.

Any ideas ?

Buks

[buks]

oops - forgot to mention - lledwiz seems to definately be quicker than the previous version !

[buks]

more testing :

firstly - AFAIK my ini files are fine.

When I get the "Ple" message (presumably "Please something or other ?") if I then kill off the swiftled.exe in Task Manager, then run the command again (lledwiz or xledwiz or an lwa file) - it works !

Weird huh ?

Buks

[mahuti]

weird. I'll look into it. I'm about 10 versions beyond the version we're talking about here already, so it may be a bug that I've already fixed.

[mahuti]

I've updated the swiftled link above. The newest version, 2.0.99 hopefully corrects the bug you mentioned. I made one addition to the configuration.ini... added mamepath, but otherwise nothing has change.

Please read the WARNING in the readme if you plan to autolight trackball, joystick, dial controls.... you have to use the included mame.exe for that.. but only for that, autolighting the buttons doesn't require it. (why? because I'm using -listxml gamename parameter passed into mame to discover the control type... which is not supported by any version of mame other than the very, very, newest U version.... previously I just compiled this entire mame version into my app, but I took it out to save load time & file size)

I haven't extensively tested this newest version, but in a number of instances, it worked just fine. Please let me know if you have difficulties. I've been really streamlining the code, and some of it's getting portable enough now that it's reducing the time I need to add new features, or to correct bugs.

[buks]

mahuti,

As usual you are right there with the solution !

Mamewah loads now as do games, lights etc.

Much quicker going from swiftled attract lighting to powermame attract lighting.

Still pretty slow exiting a game and going back to mamewah (although the mamewah menus appear quickly theres a "freeze" until the buttons light up again - about 20 seconds in total). I did only test this once though ! But only because I wanted you to know you'd fixed my problems !!!!


NOTE : I have not tested the included build of mame as I use powermame. But heres a question - if swiftled does all the attract mode stuff AND can light controls (as per powermame) - does this mean I dont need powermame ? I only ask cos thats all I user pmame for - lattract mode lighting and control lighting. I'm not too bothered about having the controls spoken to me (I'm not a huge fan of any of the voices as they aren't quite good enough IMOHO). So does swiftled light the controls as soon as the game loads ? Or does it do what pmame does and run attarct mode lights and only lights the controls when a coin is inserted (the pmame coin flash sequence is pretty cool actually).


BIG BIG BIG thanks for this mahuti !

Buks

[mahuti]

20 seconds. Hm, that's a lot. It takes a few seconds here... not 20. Hm. It must be looking for something & not finding it... I'll run some tests while "missing" stuff and see what happens. 

You don't have to use the included build of mame to actually play mame. It's only there to read out whether a game uses a 2way, 4way, 8way joystick, trackball or spinner. You can set the mamepath to it, which will allow the autolighting to check the control types.... it doesn't do anything else.

Re: Powermame.

Powermame lighting features
1. Responds to in-game lighting events... currently only for a few games AFAIK.
2. lights the controls after a coin is input
3. Supports multiple led-wizes

Swiftled lighting features
1. Autolights the controls based on YOUR CFG setup. If you have not configured a game using the tab menu, this will not autolight the controls. It only works on games that have CFG files associated with them. EVENTUALLY it will read the listxml output of mame and the default.cfg file to autolight, but it does not currently.
2.Swiftled does the autolighting at startup, no attract mode. This can also be used without actually activating mame... to light up controls that a game will use... kind of like a control panel viewer, but with lights.
3. Swiftled will also run .lwa files

It's similar to some of powermame's lighting features, but not better. Powermame has more features that are already fully formed, and it supports multiple led wizes. Powermame also supports multiple players, swiftled does not (yet)

[mahuti]

Started work last night on a major rewrite to accomodate the default.cfg, much cleaner, shorter code, support for multiple players and single or dual color leds. I got about 1/2 done. Maybe I'll have some time tonight to get the rest done. Either way, it'll be at least a week before I get it done, tested & working, and released... if I can keep my progress up.

Really happy with the progress I've made, and all in all, the code feels much better.