CPWizard v0.97 Beta 1 - Public beta release

[headkaze]

CPWizard Homepage

[headkaze]

Here is a picture of Colors.ini support and label grouping.

[mccoy178]

Is there anyway to run this on my second monitor while using mame?  I know Howard always had issues getting it to work with mame.

[headkaze]

Is there anyway to run this on my second monitor while using mame?  I know Howard always had issues getting it to work with mame.

Have you tried it? It should work fine running on second monitor with Mame. I need to add an option that will run it perminately on second monitor though for those with two screens. Will happen in a future release though.

BTW It's making me laugh all the people joining IRC and then leaving. I try to say hello but they leave too soon. Guys if your going to test this for me at least say hello on the IRC channel so I can see it's working

[Howard_Casto]

Looks good man!  I'll play with this this week and see what I think.

McCoy I used to have dual display issues but that was ages ago.  Your really outta check in more than once a year. 

With that being said, for dual displays in particular, this upcoming release should make life easier.  It should be out sometime this week.

[2600]

Been meaning to take a look at it, but I thought you mentioned you were going to change the name.  If not, you should to avoid confusion with the other program called CPViewer.

[mccoy178]

Thanks fellas.  I'm about to make the big switch to mala, but I'm having a hard time getting up the nerve to start the conversion.

[Space Fractal]

I DW this and testing this later day or week. It seen a nice application to tryout in my cab (using mame .114).

You do need to change your its name (as 2600 wrote) to avoid confusion with cpviewer which is also a very respected application.... Maybe Stickviewer or such?

[headkaze]

I DW this and testing this later day or week. It seen a nice application to tryout in my cab (using mame .114).

You do need to change your its name (as 2600 wrote) to avoid confusion with cpviewer which is also a very respected application.... Maybe Stickviewer or such?

It's a beta release so there is still time to change the name. I just havn't thought of one better than CPViewer yet. It's pretty much a generic name for a program like this. Maybe I should call it Short Circuit after Johnny 5? hehe I really have no idea, the best I've thought of so far is Control Freak. But I don't really like it much.

[SGT]

Been meaning to take a look at it, but I thought you mentioned you were going to change the name.  If not, you should to avoid confusion with the other program called CPViewer.

Yep that had me totally confused.  Definitely needs to be changed since the other guys use it.  I don't think of it as a generic name.

[Organic Jerk]

It's pretty much a generic name for a program like this.

That may be true, but then what you're saying is you don't mind giving your program an already used generic sounding name "because it's just a generic application, anyway"...


Not only that, but it confuses people and leads them to start thinking in terms of "genuine" and "clone"..


It's always good to give your work a name that is it's own, especially when you want people to consider it exemplary.


NOTE:  I also thought that this was connected with the other CPViewer up until a few posts ago..

[headkaze]

Okay I changed the name to CPWizard. New version uploaded.

[Howard_Casto]

Man, I hate to burst yoru bubble, but you've got to lay off the generic names.  I can't sware to it, but you remember that flash-based app that let you design control panels?  Pretty sure it's name was cpwizard.   

[youki]

Nice work,

But  it is a pity that you need to have .NET to use it.

I'm curious, what is the purpose of this features?

* IRC Chat will full color and smilie support


Another question,  the recommanded system is :

* Pentium 4 2 Ghz
* 512 MB of RAM
* Windows XP
* .NET Framework 2.0

I'm curious too , to know why you need so much power for this kind of tool.

[headkaze]

Man, I hate to burst yoru bubble, but you've got to lay off the generic names.  I can't sware to it, but you remember that flash-based app that let you design control panels?  Pretty sure it's name was cpwizard.   

Do a search on Google for CPWizard there is nothing coming up. I'm not changing the name again! Although I found a nice util on the Net that makes changing project names easy just in case.

Nice work,

But  it is a pity that you need to have .NET to use it.

I'm curious, what is the purpose of this features?

* IRC Chat will full color and smilie support

People wanted a place to chat so I added an IRC client to CPWizard. The purpose of it is to chat to other people who have arcade cabs or brag about your current high score or whatever. I don't think all things need a reason, some things are just cool to have.

Another question,  the recommanded system is :

* Pentium 4 2 Ghz
* 512 MB of RAM
* Windows XP
* .NET Framework 2.0

I'm curious too , to know why you need so much power for this kind of tool.

Those are recommended specs but are probably a bit of an exaggeration, but the reason is I chose to use GDI+ initially to support alpha channel png graphics. To use Direct Draw overlays you also need to have a bitmap on a surface so that was another reason. So the performance issues on slower machines is all to do with alpha channel graphics, GDI+ and Direct Draw overlays. I never intended to make this into a menu driven program so at first there was no need to worry about frame rates, but then I kept adding more things on, so you need a fairly decent machine and video card to run it. I'm not particularly fond of the idea of re-writing the rendering engine into DirectDraw or Direct3d to speed it up. I have written programs in those API's so it's not that I can't it's just that it wasn't a consideration in the beginning.

[Howard_Casto]

Well afaik the app has been dead for some time, so there's no wonder it didn't show up.  I'm confused about changing project names being a chore though.  Most of my apps are saved as "project 1" while the folder itself is the name.  Of course I edit the internal project name, but even in .net that should be extremey easy.  Regardless, cpwizard it is I guess.   

I wasn't going to say anything, because it's always good to throw in stuff you want, but since youki mentioned it.... 
It seems to me that irc on a cab, where you'd need to use a on-screen keyboard, is rather useless.  The irc channel itself certianly wouldn't be, but having it in the viewer sorta is.  It could be harmful as well since adding in all that extra code/graphics/whatever into a resident program is only going to bulk up whatever memeory footprint it already has. 

Also I'm curious as to your line of thought as to why it would be so slow on lesser machines.  I chose to write j5 in gdi (which is even crappier proformance-wise than gdi+) specifically to make the required resources lower!  Processing power isn't going to be an issue because mame is paused nor is rendering speed as, save your irc component, It'll be rendering static images.  I mean I don't know what's going on inside which is why I'm asking....

Just as an example j5 can display sf2 (which is a "full load" game that uses all labels) with scrolling text and the full resolution control panel pack image shown and it uses ~0% procesing power and roughly 7 megs of ram... 8 megs under "full load" (when it's calling mame multiple times to get various data).  The procesing requirements never spike above 1% either.  Now unfortunately, you are using .net so we can add 15-20 megs on to that, but that's still fairly slim.  Even the direct draw overlay shouldn't be effecting things that much.  Dx7 has a fairly small footprint. 

With that being said, if anything is slowing down your app it's the fact that you are using directx.  The reason I did gdi is because when two direct-x apps are open at the same time (in this case one being mame) they fight over the rsources to the video card, even if there are more than enough resources.  I can't run 3dsmax and dk at the same time, for example, they both stutter and eventually crash.  My point on that is switching to full direct-draw or d3d would probably slow it down, unless you are doing some kind of crazy animations I don't know about or constantly refreshing the screen instead of just doing it once.

I'm not trying to be critical on that point, I'm just trying to be helpful.  If it's really hogging the resources like you say (even to a much lesser degree than the minimum specs you posted) then there might be something off in the code.

[headkaze]

Well afaik the app has been dead for some time, so there's no wonder it didn't show up.  I'm confused about changing project names being a chore though.  Most of my apps are saved as "project 1" while the folder itself is the name.  Of course I edit the internal project name, but even in .net that should be extremey easy.  Regardless, cpwizard it is I guess.   

Visual Studio .NET 2005 projects are not easy to rename. In fact I tried to do it manually (search and replace) on all the files but it wouldn't run right after that. I found this utility called vsrename which worked a charm.

I wasn't going to say anything, because it's always good to throw in stuff you want, but since youki mentioned it.... 
It seems to me that irc on a cab, where you'd need to use a on-screen keyboard, is rather useless.  The irc channel itself certianly wouldn't be, but having it in the viewer sorta is.  It could be harmful as well since adding in all that extra code/graphics/whatever into a resident program is only going to bulk up whatever memeory footprint it already has.[/url]

The IRC code isn't adding much footprint to the code. CPWizard's binary is less than half a meg so how is that going to be a problem? And it's too late anyway I've already added the IRC code and some people like the idea, there is no point in removing it because some people think it's pointless. You can also join the room using mIRC if you wish to use a fully featured IRC client. The idea is people can drop in while they're having a beer and playing a game on their cab to come in and chat with other people doing the same thing. I've also been working on a multiplayer feature in CPWizard for Mame using the kaillera client/server, so it could also be a place to initiate a match over the internet.

Also I'm curious as to your line of thought as to why it would be so slow on lesser machines.  I chose to write j5 in gdi (which is even crappier proformance-wise than gdi+) specifically to make the required resources lower!  Processing power isn't going to be an issue because mame is paused nor is rendering speed as, save your irc component, It'll be rendering static images.  I mean I don't know what's going on inside which is why I'm asking....

I thought J5 used windows forms and labels for it's rendering? For J5 you generate the image and display it. With CPWizard I have menus and text to scroll so every time you take an action by pressing a key the graphics are rendered again. That can be a little slow in GDI+, but I don't have an old PC to test it so I assumed it is because it isn't blistering fast on my P4 whereas a DD or D3D program would be. But it runs great on my cab and dev machine so maybe I'm wrong in recommending specs that high. It's up to people to test it on their PC and let me know, I can change those numbers in a future release if necessary.

Just as an example j5 can display sf2 (which is a "full load" game that uses all labels) with scrolling text and the full resolution control panel pack image shown and it uses ~0% procesing power and roughly 7 megs of ram... 8 megs under "full load" (when it's calling mame multiple times to get various data).  The procesing requirements never spike above 1% either.  Now unfortunately, you are using .net so we can add 15-20 megs on to that, but that's still fairly slim.  Even the direct draw overlay shouldn't be effecting things that much.  Dx7 has a fairly small footprint. 

CPWizard uses 0% CPU when minimized. In fact it uses 0% CPU maximized too. It only takes CPU when you press and key and it renders a new frame while in the menu system or when your manipulating graphics in the CP Editor. The program itself reads a file it generates called MiniInfo.xml which is a combination of GameInfo.xml, controls.xml etc. into one file. That file stays resident. I might change that in the future as the program takes about 100 MB total in RAM thanks to this large file in memory. So with Mame taking an average 100 MB, CPWizard taking about 100 MB and your FE taking up whatever, I recommend 512 MB of RAM to comfortably run it in the background. I may change it to load data dynamically in the future, but it's still in beta anyway.

With that being said, if anything is slowing down your app it's the fact that you are using directx.  The reason I did gdi is because when two direct-x apps are open at the same time (in this case one being mame) they fight over the rsources to the video card, even if there are more than enough resources.  I can't run 3dsmax and dk at the same time, for example, they both stutter and eventually crash.  My point on that is switching to full direct-draw or d3d would probably slow it down, unless you are doing some kind of crazy animations I don't know about or constantly refreshing the screen instead of just doing it once.

I'm not trying to be critical on that point, I'm just trying to be helpful.  If it's really hogging the resources like you say (even to a much lesser degree than the minimum specs you posted) then there might be something off in the code.

No, I appreciate your opinions but I'm not using DirectX. If you turn on DD overlays which by default is turned off, then it uses DD but it only uses one surface for rendering and thats it. There is nothing "off in the code" I would just recommend people with older/slower systems/video cards to try it out and if it runs badly then use a different viewer or wait for some possible optimizations in the future.

It would be nice to get a little more feedback on the actual program and bug reports etc.

[Howard_Casto]

J5 uses both actually.  Windows forms and picture boxes are easier to scale, so I use those by default.  The png generator can't capture a copy of a windows label though, so I use gdi to render the text and image files manually and then blit everything to a buffer before printing. 

Ahh ok, that's your problem.  You should never keep xml databases in memory for any program ever.  Those things can be frikkin huge!  The whole point of xml is you can parse it quickly so you can just retrieve data as need.  Then again, imho the whole point of xml is to bloat what would otherwise be a very slim text file. 

I'm going to have to go wildy off-topic for a sec and go on a rant.

 

Ok mame's "improved" listxml prints out roughly a 30mb file.  The dragon king takes this file and converts it to a delimeted text file, stripping out all the tags.  Wanna know the size of that file?  Oh btw this file stores all the data for every emulator on my system, not just mame.  Still wanna know... It's less than 2mb!  That means just adding the stinking xml tags into the file bloats it by a factor of 10!

Sorry man, but I've barely had time to download it.  Besides real world stuff, j5's new dde code is acting up and I'm having a hard time tracking the bug down.  Worked on it for about an hour today and have yet to be any closer to figuring it out. 

[headkaze]

J5 uses both actually.  Windows forms and picture boxes are easier to scale, so I use those by default.  The png generator can't capture a copy of a windows label though, so I use gdi to render the text and image files manually and then blit everything to a buffer before printing. 

Ahh ok, that's your problem.  You should never keep xml databases in memory for any program ever.  Those things can be frikkin huge!  The whole point of xml is you can parse it quickly so you can just retrieve data as need.  Then again, imho the whole point of xml is to bloat what would otherwise be a very slim text file. 

I'm going to have to go wildy off-topic for a sec and go on a rant.

 

Ok mame's "improved" listxml prints out roughly a 30mb file.  The dragon king takes this file and converts it to a delimeted text file, stripping out all the tags.  Wanna know the size of that file?  Oh btw this file stores all the data for every emulator on my system, not just mame.  Still wanna know... It's less than 2mb!  That means just adding the stinking xml tags into the file bloats it by a factor of 10!

Sorry man, but I've barely had time to download it.  Besides real world stuff, j5's new dde code is acting up and I'm having a hard time tracking the bug down.  Worked on it for about an hour today and have yet to be any closer to figuring it out. 

Again, you assume things about the program that are just plain wrong mate Do you think I keep the entire formatted xml file in memory? That would be stupid. I parse the data into objects. ListInfo.xml generated by Mame is 27.5 MB in size. I generate a file called MiniInfo.xml which contains data from ListInfo.xml, controls.xml, catver.ini, colors.ini, HallOfFame.xml, nplayers.ini etc. all joined into one file, and the size of that file is about 7 MB. Then I parse that file which means all the padding of an xml file is not stored in memory at all. It's the logical way to go as xml and objects fit together extremely well, it's what OOP is all about. Perhaps you didn't mean it that way, but the padding of the xml file is only stored in the file, not in memory. I could have output to a comma delimited text file, but I decided to use xml. It's just the way I do it, and parsing the whole file on my PC takes about two seconds and that includes history.dat, mameinfo.dat and story.dat. And since CPWizard was designed to run resident, on startup it parses the files once, then it never needs to load in that particular set of data again until your PC is started up again.

Now I would be appreciate if you would stop scaring people into thinking it's some bohemeth program that will eat away at your precious computer memory like some rouge troll in your PC hehe I'm kidding, but seriously if you want to debate methods of storage with me, why not send me an e-mail instead of posting about it in my beta testing thread with jargon the common person won't understand anyway. Don't get me wrong I always appreciate your feedback, it's just most of your assumptions you've made about the program so far have been wrong and you havn't even tried the program out yet! I've also mentioned a few times that it is beta, and there will most probably be optimizations as far as dynamic data loading in the future. Right now I don't mind it taking up 100 MB of my 1 gig RAM on my cab anyway. And even after having Mame, CPWizard, XP and GameEx all running together there is still plenty of memory free on my system.

On the DDE stuff for Mame hooker, I'm quite fond of Mame's method using hidden Windows and custom messages. But I guess your aiming for something that communicates faster or something. I've never looked into DDE, it doesn't seem to be a common method for interprocess communication, not these days anyway.

EDIT: Can someone explain to me how the screenshots image can be viewed 5714 times when the thread has only been viewed 326 times?? 

[loadman]

EDIT: Can someone explain to me how the screenshots image can be viewed 5714 times when the thread has only been viewed 326 times?? 

Probably has something to do with the name being the same as another Program of the same name 'CPViewer'.  No doubt there is/was a file of that name on this forum and hence those stats are bloated. Just a Theory.

[headkaze]

EDIT: Can someone explain to me how the screenshots image can be viewed 5714 times when the thread has only been viewed 326 times?? 

Probably has something to do with the name being the same as another Program of the same name 'CPViewer'.  No doubt there is/was a file of that name on this forum and hence those stats are bloated. Just a Theory.

Yeah I think you might be on to something there. It's really wierd I'm getting all these people posting in here complaining about the name, or saying that IRC was a bad idea and this and that. All complaints so far. Noone has actually said they like the program yet, and I know people are testing it because I see them drop into IRC for a a few moments. Big waste of my time maybe? 

[Hoopz]

EDIT: Can someone explain to me how the screenshots image can be viewed 5714 times when the thread has only been viewed 326 times?? 

Probably has something to do with the name being the same as another Program of the same name 'CPViewer'.  No doubt there is/was a file of that name on this forum and hence those stats are bloated. Just a Theory.

Yeah I think you might be on to something there. It's really wierd I'm getting all these people posting in here complaining about the name, or saying that IRC was a bad idea and this and that. All complaints so far. Noone has actually said they like the program yet, and I know people are testing it because I see them drop into IRC for a a few moments. Big waste of my time maybe? 

Definitely not a big waste of time!  I haven't had time to get this going but when I do, I'll let you know how it goes.  The cab isn't networked so I won't be able to chat though. 

Thanks for doing this! 

[headkaze]

EDIT: Can someone explain to me how the screenshots image can be viewed 5714 times when the thread has only been viewed 326 times?? 

Probably has something to do with the name being the same as another Program of the same name 'CPViewer'.  No doubt there is/was a file of that name on this forum and hence those stats are bloated. Just a Theory.

Yeah I think you might be on to something there. It's really wierd I'm getting all these people posting in here complaining about the name, or saying that IRC was a bad idea and this and that. All complaints so far. Noone has actually said they like the program yet, and I know people are testing it because I see them drop into IRC for a a few moments. Big waste of my time maybe? 

Definitely not a big waste of time!  I haven't had time to get this going but when I do, I'll let you know how it goes.  The cab isn't networked so I won't be able to chat though. 

Thanks for doing this! 

Thanks Hoopz, people like you make it worthwhile 

Maybe there are no bugs? Well I found a few minor things, some have already been fixed for next release, but I'm blown away, noone has reported any problems yet.

Any requests? So far people have asked for hiscore.dat support, multiplayer Mame support and I intend on extending the data available for consoles (snaps, carts, boxart, manuals etc.).

[vindes]

Hey man, I just want to chime in and say it looks really cool and there are many of us who appreciate the work but haven't commented (yet).

I'm going to end up with either this or CPV2 running full time on my cab.  I just haven't had a chance to test either one yet.  But it's really great to have options and I'm sure each one will have advantages for different situations.

Also keep in mind that a lot of people with cabinets only get around to looking around for new "toys" every couple months, so it might take a little while for the users to trickle in.  But I'm sure there a lot of people out there who will love it.

[headkaze]

I know people are playing with it, the same people are in and out of the IRC room every day If they stayed around for longer than a few seconds I would have the place full of people!

I understand it takes a while for people to get around to playing with it. I'm still building up all the artwork collections to use it on my cab. My cab doesn't even have the latest version installed yet! So I understand it takes time for people to check it out. CP viewers are usually the last thing people consider on their cabs, but I think it's an important addition.

I've recently added more support for console emulators that will coincide with EmuMovie releases. This means you can view Manuals, Operation Cards, Snaps, Titles, Carts and Boxes for other emulators. Right now I'm adding support for Game Info which will include all the info found in the GoodName databases and naming convention and I will probably add support for TOSEC releases too. Still alot of work to do, but I havn't given up, and I intend on making this the best CP viewer program I can make.

It might be wise to get an FTP accound on EmuMovies or get the torrent because it is good to add the game's historical information to your cab, and there is the practical use for finding out the game's controls and instructions too.

[loadman]

I've recently added more support for console emulators that will coincide with EmuMovie releases. This means you can view Manuals, Operation Cards, Snaps, Titles, Carts and Boxes for other emulators. Right now I'm adding support for Game Info which will include all the info found in the GoodName databases and naming convention and I will probably add support for TOSEC releases too. Still alot of work to do, but I havn't given up, and I intend on making this the best CP viewer program I can make.