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stigzler

GameEx Moderator
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Posts posted by stigzler

    [PLUGIN] Marquee Masher

    in User Projects

    Posted

    20 hours ago, 8trek said:

    Oh Mr. stigzler,

    Been a while since i posted here.  Not sure if you monitor this forum on a regular basis but hoping you'll see this.  Long time user of your products, both Marquee Masher and cpwizard.  Use cpwizard to generate a 1920x1080 image for all games. Use MM to show those images on a 2nd monitor.  Works great for Mame and Daphne games. Recently added a couple Teknoparrot games to my GameEx favs, although one requires launching without the Teknoparrot GUI.  Anyway, the proper image for those games appears but is shrunk and offset on the 2nd monitor.  From what I can tell has something to do with the primary monitor rez being changed upon launch of those games and is creating the problem for the 2nd monitor.  Is there maybe a pause I can implement to allow the 1st monitor to change rez before displaying MM on the 2nd? 

    Thank you.

    Hey. Sorry don't maintain this anymore. I can't even remember how it works. If there's facility to change the size of the image, why don't you just times it by the factor that the secondary screen is shrinking. E.g. of screen two is going from 1920 to half that, set the image size to twice that. I recall you can offset the image, so you could try changing that for the positioning. I also wrote a plugin called infoz. You could try messing around with that, although I lost patience developing for that due to constrictions around .net framework versions and impact on libraries. Not even sure it works in the wild. 🤷‍♂️

    GameEx process won’t close

    in General

    Posted

    On 2/5/2023 at 2:46 PM, Phantom said:

    Hi Tom,

    so I tried disabling Background Artwork downloading but the issue persisted. I don’t use GameEx online.

    I then decided to turn off the Marquee Masher plug-in and THAT seems to be the issue. I’ve exited GameEX a few times with Marquee Masher disabled and the process closes fine. So I guess this is a Marquee Masher issue. 

    Any Thoughts? 
    Thanks

    Whoops. Soz.

    These bloody hobby coders and their shoddy crap....

    [RESOLVED] Tekno Parrot

    in General

    Posted

    4 hours ago, DJ Infinity said:

    ok,

    make sure you have your games setup in tekno parrot 1st. working path is wherever you have it installed. rompath is the UserProfiles folder.

    extension is *.xml

    commandline is TeknoParrotUi.exe --profile="[ROMPATH]\[ROMFILE]"

    now off to find media etc. I might make a map file for games I have and see if that will work. Also see if I can get marquees added to my marquee sign when launched.

    Did someone say "marquee"? You might find this helpful:

     

    [RELEASE] CFG Magician 1.60

    in User Projects

    Posted

    On 12/17/2022 at 10:51 AM, zakvilneuv said:

    Hi guys.

    Same question for me : where could I find the method to create new data file for CFG Magician ?

    It seems there was a topic in the forum for that, but the page doesn't exist anymore...

    Could it be possible that an admin would post a copy of the old content of this post with the indications on how to create data files for most recent mame romsets ?

    This software seems to be a real magic software for our arcade cabinets, so it would be REALLY USEFUL !!!!

    Thank's, if someone could do this, please...

    Have you tried contacting @Circo directly? He's the owner of EmuMovies (the site that that old link is hosted on). If you're a member of EmuMovies you could manually browse the EmuMovies FTP yourself first to see if you can find it yourself...

    [PLUGIN] Infoz

    in User Projects

    Posted

    Yeah I know. It comes with infoz which re installs it! Given your repo system, and thus versioning system, I didn't know how you want the plugin files? Just on here as a zip file or what? Where do I put the version of the build (aside from in the plugin class itself). Also, how do you handle updates? 

    [PLUGIN] Infoz

    in User Projects

    Posted

    Well. Hopefully the tutorials will give you a flavour of what it can do and how to use it. Remind me @Tom Speirs about how to get this up and onto the Repo and I'll package it into a releasable version. Would you want a beta first for some testing by the GE boys or straight out into the wilds? It's rough and ready, so will inevitably have some bugs. It's essentially a prototype. 

    [PLUGIN] Infoz

    in User Projects

    Posted

    InfozLogoFull.png

    The GameEx backend you always needed...

    Currently in BETA V0.9

    Forum | Bugs/Reqs | Download

    Infoz was originally meant to be an application to display additional information about games on additional displays, but given the infrastructure developed to support this, it soon became apparent that I could use it to do so much more. So here are some of the things that Infoz does:

    Theme Designer

    I wanted to take the labour out of theme design - having to build each and every system or 'core' page was a pain. Infoz lets you either build a single template theme for all pages or separate templates for Core and System pages. It will then pull dynamic images (e.g. different backgrounds + media for different systems) to construct the different theme pages. This automates the process. So, if you add more systems, you just run the theme generator again and it generates the new System or Core pages. Once you've set up your templates/layouts, there's nothing more to do! It also has an automated Logo and Selector Builder. It also has an automated logo and Selector generator. Some pics:

    1003191404_2022-12-25(8).png   1179341242_2022-12-25(7).png  1617583761_2022-12-25(9).png

     

    Game Editor and MetaData/Media Scraper

    This allows you to edit any game information and also access screenscraper.fr to scrape metadata and game media. Screenscraper is an excellent resource and highly accurate and comprehensive, meaning your roms will have really well matched artworks. You can also choose a preferred region for imports (e.g. Europe or USA) and also a preferred language for game descriptions etc. Additionally, you can import extra media such as publisher and developer logos to use in any Game Info layouts that you make (see below). Infoz also presents you with an images wall, which helps you browse through your games and also has handy filters to help you discover to pesky games that are slipping through the net. Some pics:

    633583392_2022-12-25(3).png   2022-12-25 (2).png

     

    Game Info Displays

    These are auto-generated on the fly by infoz when you're browsing the GameEx interface or when you launch a game. You have the option of some animations (for example alternating images between, say, screenshots and title pages) and there's also a menu system which lets users pick what pages they want to see. All layout sets are allocated to a specific display, so you could have one as a Marquee and one as a Game info display, which can display a game info page, a system info page and then the default game controls, and also the menu navigation controls (see below). Infoz has a live view in the admin interface so you can see how the results will look in real time as you are editing things. Some images:

    1588801474_2022-12-25(4).png   1711649943_2022-12-25(5).png

     

    Games Controls Viewer

    I guess this is really the biggie! Infoz lets you set up controllers and controls for each system and then assign each game controls. The level of control is highly granular. For example, each game's controls scheme has 'game modes' - so for example, you may have a control schema for 'on foot' and 'on horseback.' Also, Infoz can handle both in-game and in-emulator remaps of controls. It also manages Control groups (for example a control function for 'D-Pad' - e.g. 'Move' rather than having to have up, down, left, right every time cluttering up your layout). It also automatically imports all MAME controls and even assigns the right button colours. A few pics:

    1521013313_2022-12-25(6).png  2022-12-25 (10).png  2022-12-25 (11).png

    2022-12-25 (12).png  2022-12-25 (13).png

     

    "Where do I start - this looks complicated?" 🤔

    As ever, the documentation's a drag. There is a help doc, but it's not fully done yet as I'm not sure how many people will actually use this tbh. I'd probably recommend you have a test GameEx installation that you practice on first whilst you get used to Infoz with some dummy roms + assets folders. The best way to learn Infoz is by watching the tutorial videos I've made. They are a little long, but the results will be worth it. Then you can ask questions in the Infoz Forum (I'd ask you post there to keep all help in one place and keep them separated into topics rather than have them all in this one thread).

    This is the tutorial playlist (view the list by clicking the icon in the top right):

     

    I've found a bug or I've got a feature suggestion!

    Please post these HERE.

     

    Download and Installation

    You can download it below. Regarding installation, I don't think it's available through the Repository yet, so you'll have to manually install it. Unzip the files, and install it so Infoz.dll sits in the GameEx/PLUGINS directly, thus:

    InfozINstallation.png

    Download it here:

     

    Enjoy. 🙂

    • Thanks 1

    [RESOLVED] Something rotten in the state of Denmark (aka me Repository Manager's gone a bit wonky, like)

    in General

    Posted

    Thanks Tom - yep sorted. 

    On an associated issue - I'm having a bit of an issue with launching my new plugin from RepoManager. It launches fine from the old PluginManager.exe and also from SetupPlugins in SetupWizard. However, it crashes when launched from RepoManager. 

    I've attached VS debugger and it's looking like something in RepoManager itself. The specific error:

    System.AppDomainUnloadedException
      HResult=0x80131014
      Message=The application domain in which the thread was running has been unloaded.
      Source=<Cannot evaluate the exception source>
      StackTrace:
    <Cannot evaluate the exception stack trace>
    (tried code block - but the syntax highlighting was unreadable - not sure of the markdown)

    image.png

    To be honest, I'm guessing it's going to be easier just to insist that any users launch config from Setup Wizard rather then delve into Ben's code? This would involve detecting if launched from RepoManager and giving the user a msg to launch from SetupWizard. Is there any way to detect in the plugin class library who instantiated/referenced it (i.e. RepoManager or SetupWizard)? The alternative rough method would be to scan processes for RepoManager, but this could give false positives of course if running, but config run from Setup Wizard.

    Happy to send you over the alpha if you want to see it in action for yourself.

    [RESOLVED] Something rotten in the state of Denmark (aka me Repository Manager's gone a bit wonky, like)

    in General

    Posted

    OK, so maybe that was a bit dramatic. So, I was tinkering (again..I know, I know - they always said I'd break it if I played with it too much) and I think I might have broked Ben's Repository Manager with one of my plugin WIPs. Here's how it's looking:

    image.png

    As you can see - nil, zilch, nada. Everything's disappeared. Also, all of the different item types have disappeared from the drop drop down. Had a scootch around the Config folder - couldn't find a way to reset it. Any ideas?

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