GameZone

[idkpmiller]

Hi to all,

Well after a considerable amount of learning and frustration. I have finally released the GameZone Plugin its the first plugin I have written so I am anticipatin g many bugs, for that reason I declare that GameZone is an ALPHA release and requires willing members of the community to test it for me.

So what is it?
GameZone is a front-end for emulators that currently supports Playstation (using ePSXe) and MAME (actually specificlly Mame32FXpp). The idea is to add Emulators as I go forward and hope that the development time decreases as I get better :-)

GameZone can be downloaded from the Wiki here:
http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Plugin/GameZone

Please provide feedback.

I will monitor this thread for any questions and to offer assistance.

Thanks

[fuzzweed]

ok, first call for help then!
mame seems to lauch ok, screen resolution changes and I get the mame loading screen, but then screen flickers and im back to gbpvr before the game runs.
they'll launch fine from mame command line... any ideas???

also, will your plugin launch mame32 rather than mame? cos its loads easier to set up

[Slice]

Hi there,

Just tested mine tonight also, same problem, works fine by just dropping the zipped Rom on the exe. But same issues through GB. Using the mame windows command from the link in the WIKI. I see below you say

(actually specificlly Mame32FXpp)

I'll take a look at this tomo, as I didn't have much time and it was my first go.

[idkpmiller]

Mame has an issue, I changed it at the last minute from Mame32Fxpp.exe to mame.exe as it was far easier to tie into the configuration files as its command line driven. I should release a new 0.21 version that resolves your issue very soon.

thanks for the feedback (My kids dont use mame so they refuse to test all the "old games" :-)

[idkpmiller]

hi,

I found two issues:

1. Mame would lauch the first time correctly but only the first time every other subsequent attempt would cause the DOS window to appear briefly before shutting down. Fixed

2. the screen aspect setting in the config applet was setting the command line incorrectly.

As for the particular issue you guys have seen, this is most likely a configuration issue set the Config setting to "Game Specific" on the Mame Tab, unless you have a default.cfg or gamezone.cfg file in your devnz/gbpvr/gamezone/ctrlr directory (The other two options in the pull down list) this instructs mame not to use a specific global configuration file and that you will setup the controller through the game itself.

if none of this helps please send me the gbpvr.exe.log file or just the launch line will probably suffice example shown below:

INFO [1] GameZone: Mame launched C:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr\Gamezone\MAME\Mame.exe "C:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr\Gamezone\MAME\roms\88games.zip" -skip_gameinfo -sleep -triplebuffer -joystick

===================

The two corrected issues are fixed (I hope) in the attached update as well as some cosmetic logging issues, if you can test this for me I will then update the WiKi version.

Unzip the attachment and place in your Program Files/devnz/gbpvr/plugins/ directory.

Thanks

[fuzzweed]

sorry, the patch didn't help straight away, but I found that line in the logs and pasted it into the run box - with a bit of detective work it's the " -ctrlr default" switch that is crashing it.
If I change it to game specific in config it launches fine now.

[Slice]

Second that, good work!

[idkpmiller]

sorry, the patch didn't help straight away, but I found that line in the logs and pasted it into the run box - with a bit of detective work it's the " -ctrlr default" switch that is crashing it.
If I change it to game specific in config it launches fine now.

Thats what I meant when I said:

"As for the particular issue you guys have seen, this is most likely a configuration issue set the Config setting to "Game Specific" on the Mame Tab, unless you have a default.cfg or gamezone.cfg file in your devnz/gbpvr/gamezone/ctrlr directory (The other two options in the pull down list) this instructs mame not to use a specific global configuration file and that you will setup the controller through the game itself."

I was probably being far to verbose; anyway its good to hear that it now works. I will update the version on the Wiki

Whilst playing a game does pressing back on your remote bring you out of the emulator cleanly?

Also if your using HIP (or I presume Girder) sending the DECIMAL keystroke to GBPVR via the rote will bring you out of a game and back to GBPVR allowing you to select a new game to play. (The DECIMAL) is the "dot" found on the numpad)

[fuzzweed]

doh. sorry, its quite clear when I read it again - just didn't sink in when I first read it :o

I'm using a hauppauge remote, so the exitting is trickier. The remote only sends to the window in focus, and you can only describe the focused window by its windows name (e.g. "GBPVR").
In the case of MAME the window name changes with each game (e.g. "MAME - 1942", or "MAME - Outrun" etc) so it's impossible to get the remote to send an exit command to a generic "MAME" window (other than adding a new entry for every single ROM).
THe only way I've found so far is to assign one of the gamepad buttons to exit, rather than the remote.

On another note for a future feature request, it would be usefull to add a user defined arguments box, in addition to / or overriding the setup check boxes (bit like my programs - sorry to keep comparing them)

[Slice]

I'm running HIP with the MCE remote and it's exiting perfectly. One thing I did notice is that it was quitting back to the main menu screen after a few minutes until I disabled the screen saver in GB. Now it works well, next thing is to get my joypad to work !!

I have a question about the list on the bottom left it says for example 1/20 (I assume one out of 20 screens as there are more roms than that) Is there a way to skip pages instead of going rom by rom or is this something for the wishlist?