Emulaxian Troubleshooting *problem solved!*

[mushmouth]

Hey P or anyone else,

I downloaded Emulaxian and got it loaded up. I have a couple of questions:

1) Turned 3d stuff off, so the game selection menu is the two windows side by side. Left menu game list, right is marquee/and, or/cabinet window. In the background of the cabinet window on the right is a screenshot of Galaxian that never goes away. The background shots behind the list change with the game selection, but that galaxian screenshot on the right in the other window never goes away regardless of the game selected in the list. How do I either get rid of that graphic, or make it change properly with the game selected?

2) When I try to run the FE with 3d stuff ON, when I start up the FE it gets as far as drawing the big wide rectangle, says "loading 3d models" then I get a Director Program Error which says it's a "script error" and it asks if I want to continue, yes or no. If I choose no it quits the FE, if I choose yes, the same error message pops up over and over. Any ideas? For the record, I have no problems running the rotating cab on the right, just not the 3d arcade stuff...

[)p(]

Hey P or anyone else,

I downloaded Emulaxian and got it loaded up. I have a couple of questions:

1) Turned 3d stuff off, so the game selection menu is the two windows side by side. Left menu game list, right is marquee/and, or/cabinet window. In the background of the cabinet window on the right is a screenshot of Galaxian that never goes away. The background shots behind the list change with the game selection, but that galaxian screenshot on the right in the other window never goes away regardless of the game selected in the list. How do I either get rid of that graphic, or make it change properly with the game selected?

2) When I try to run the FE with 3d stuff ON, when I start up the FE it gets as far as drawing the big wide rectangle, says "loading 3d models" then I get a Director Program Error which says it's a "script error" and it asks if I want to continue, yes or no. If I choose no it quits the FE, if I choose yes, the same error message pops up over and over. Any ideas? For the record, I have no problems running the rotating cab on the right, just not the 3d arcade stuff...

1) your talking about the image behind the cab model? If so that is set by defalut to the flyer image. In the lists manager click on the mame emulator...choose edit..and point the flyer path to the location you keep your flyers. Alternatively remove it.  In the listmanager click on the default arcade cfg file..choose edit..go to section 7. Then set the first item of the backdrop2listbox property to false to remove the flyer backdrop.

2) this happened also when you first launched the fe after unzipping without adjusting any of the cfg's? As by default the fe will boot into the fpsarcade. What videocard are you using with how much videoram?

peter

[mushmouth]

P, yes. It did it right from the get go. So I went into the configuration and switched it to 3d off. Works fine having the cab model rotating though, but have to have 3d stuff off.

My video card is a Nvidia GeForce4 128 mb.

[)p(]

P, yes. It did it right from the get go. So I went into the configuration and switched it to 3d off. Works fine having the cab model rotating though, but have to have 3d stuff off.

My video card is a Nvidia GeForce4 128 mb.

If you have the model on in the listbox menu type you have at least some 3d working ;-)

I am curious if you set show3dwhich in the general cfg menu to cylarcade instead of fpsarcade does that work ok?

Geforce 4...mmm I also use one...it should not give any problems booting the fe right after unzipping...you could try to set the renderer to use directx in stead of opengl in section 5 of the general cfg menu. But on my geforcres I allways have prefered the opengl renderer.

peter

[)p(]

Just to make sure as I recently updated the zips. I downloaded them myself...unzipped them in a new folder..and doubleclicked the exe..it booted correctly in to the default small fpsarcade...so they are ok...

So it might be a driver issue. Especially the opengl part of them. I am still using the 44.03 detonator drivers.

[mushmouth]

It does the same thing in cylarcade.

I also get the same director script error if I try to run donkey kong... ?

I'll try messing with the renderer and see what happens.

[mushmouth]

I also get a script error trying to open ms pac-man. Tried opening it in command line mame and it opened fine. Donkey Kong also started up fine in command line mame...

Some games and not others... hmmm...

What could be up?

[mushmouth]

Tried opening it changing config to cylarcade per your instructions and it worked and opened. Only in that one, I get the Director script error if I try to open ANY games.

Update: I now can't open any games in any view mode. Script error... Hmmfffffffff...... Frustrating.

I reloaded from the zips, also updated both my directx and video card drivers to the newest versions (they weren't), but it's still not letting me select any games without the script error coming up. It's also still giving me the script error when trying to open in fpsarcade in 3d...

Question, it's a Director Program Error. Do I need to download any kind of Director-based driver or plug-in update or something like that? The only things I've installed are Mame, Emulaxian and OS 98SE off a disc dated 1999, do if it requires any kind of update for Director stuff, I don't have it...

[)p(]

No...the fe is selfcontained it does not need addtional Director stuff.

Mmm...this really sounds very weird. The only thing I can think about is that your old copy of win98se does not have directshow installed. An upgrade of the windows mediaplayer should solve that.

You could also try to enable debug mode in the general cfg menu. But that mostly checks for configuration errors and I don't think that is the problem. As the problem does happen right out of the box...

sorry...

peter

[mushmouth]

Ok. We're very close...

Bought a soundblaster PCI 128. Problems still there, only now I was having general system glitches all over the place too. Moved the soundcard to a different PCI slot and reinstalled Windows 98SE all over again. What do you know, everything was working properly (except one thing, probably not complicated...)

I can now even use all the 3d arcades, which is beyond cool. I LOVE the look of this front end. HOWEVER, here's the problem: When you have a game highlighted in a list, or if you're in front of a machine in 3d mode, pressing 1 won't start the game. It doesn't trigger it to start. It just sits there, and if you move side to side it moves to the next machine (or game in the list). I checked the key config and it's set to 1 to play the game.

It seems like it has to be something simple. Everything else works marvelous... So close... So very close... This was a good day.

[)p(]

Great to hear it was not the fe itself that caused the problems ;-)

-one of the options for emulators in the listmanager is to save the last commmandline to disk..enable it...launch a game..and then check if the fe uses the correct commandline...

post the contents of it
and your settings for
emupath||
gamepath||
workingdir||
and
mame||

[mushmouth]

edited: found it. Working on it...

[mushmouth]

I tried to choose the game '88 Games' from within the arcade.

The 'lastcloutput' file says:
C:\Mame\mamepp.exe "88games"

In my emu configuration for Mame for the settings you requested it says the following:

emupath; C:\Mame\
gamepath;
workingdir; C:\Mame\
shortnamepath;

Let me know if you see anything glaring...

OHH.... mame, under emulator specific options... That was the one. It said like "mamepp.exe". I pointed that one to my mame.exe and it all now seems to work. Only how do I declare the alternate emu to use and do I need to?

[)p(]

I am bit confused now ;-)

Does it work ok now?

Don't worry about that alternative exe...that is just an option if you for some reason for specfic games or category of games want to use an alternative mame executable. I for example used if for a while for running all system 16 games with an oplder version of mame after they got broken.

peter

[mushmouth]

It is now running BEAUTIFULLY.

For sure Emulaxian was never the problem. It was a bad install of 98SE. Once I reinstalled that, everything just worked. Big thanks to you for your help. Pulling this off on the machine I have is testament to how good a job you did on this front end. It runs really pretty well with all of the included arcades on my Pentium 3 450 with 364meg of ram. Miraculous...

I have to learn the ins and outs of all the key inputs and such, there's a lot to grasp, but the readme is pretty sweet, so I'll just read that 10 or 20 times. I'm a designer by day, so I'm looking forward to doing a custom skin mod to match the cab I'm using it in, which is a pac-man upright. I don't recall seeing a skinning tutorial or anything (is there one?) Wondering about file type requirements and such...

Peter, you rule.

[)p(]

There is only the info about the active skinner in the skins section of fereadme. Read it before you start. Especially the z-order stuff in the beginning.

But you can allways ask questions here or on the 3darcade forum...

peter

[mushmouth]

Found the tutorial in the readme. This has to be the best documentation I've seen for a front end.