Wombat

You're onto something there FyreCrypts... I just created empty trackfld.hi and turfmast.hi files in the mame/hi directory and GameEx now shows the "High Scores" option in their respective game info pages before launch (although it only shows about the first 16 scores of the possible 160 of the "base" trackfld scores... maybe a scrolling or pageflip display could be contemplated?) So far there doesn't seem to be any ill-effect in either CPWizard or MAME of having these extra files but I'd appreciate Tom (GameEx) looking again to see if he indeed has a secondary check for the existence of a .hi file and hopefully amend it (to cater for .nv only) if necessary.

Well... you have to colour me still confused then. 1) I have the 1st of July 2009 version of HiToText.exe and hiscore.dat downloaded. hiscore.dat goes into mame root directory. HiToText.exe copied to root directory of both CPWizard and GameEx replacing whatever version is delivered with them. 2) Opened a DOS command prompt and navigated to both. Did a HiToText -l and saw that (amongst everything else) dkong (Donkey Kong), turfmast (Neo Turf Masters) and trackfld (Track & Field) are in the output. The latter two are relatively new to HiToText. 3) I have "Show My High Scores" enabled in CPWizard. Fired up those three games and displayed the CPWizard control panel. It displays the option for view my high scores and indeed does display them. It's therefore okay for the -r records. 4) Went back to GameEx. I have "View High Scores" enabled as an option. In the Donkey Kong "info" screen the "View High Scores" option is available and selecting that option does indeed display my high scores (this also works for Galaga etc.. i.e. stuff that's been around for a while) 5) No such option is presented on the Neo Turf Masters and Track & Field info pages. 6) I've deleted some cached files (manually under Windows Explorer) and Rebuilt the MAME game list but I can't get the option to show up for those games. So... what now? I'm on the latest version of CPWizard and GameEx and a compiled version of 0.132 of MAME. The GameEx log file confirms I am on version 10.17 but I see no instance of a call to HiToText in there. When does the call get made... once when building the entire mame list (and it's stored somewhere) or each time the mame game info page is displayed? Dare I ask if anyone's on the same combination of these elements as me that they can see this option under Track & Field and Neo Turf Masters? Can I supply any sort of log (after setting any extra debug switches) that can assist in my problem?

Found this in and oldish post on the aracdecontrols thread for HiToText. I guess I'll see if and where this file exists on my system tonight. Quote from: redhorse on November 28, 2008, 02:34:05 PM Ok, I have it running now and after updating the GameEx HiScore_SupportedGames.txt file I can see my R-Type Higscores now!!

Now that Firecrypts has fixed my trackfld error, let me bump this topic to ask again the main original question which may have got lost. i.e. How does GameEx (and CPWizard) know when to display the menu option "View High Scores" in the front-end? If I'm going to keep HiToText (and hiscore.dat) up-todate outside of GameEx/CPWizard updates I'd like to know if I can do it and what I may need to do/edit in order to do so.

I'm currently struggling with a problem with the latest version of HiToText (which I've manually copied into the base program directories for CPWizard and GameEx) and MAME.132 which I've posted on http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?...84017#msg984017 Basically it's reading the prime record for games like dkong and galaga fine but I'm having trouble with Track & Field (so I'd love it if anyone can help me out with that problem or confirm it does/doesn't happen for them under MAME.132) I've have an alternate question for Tom and HeadKaze though... I've noticed under GameEx the existence in some game displays of the HighScore option on the info page displayed prior to selecting to launch the game and in CPWizard when I pause it (I have the option ticked on to display my high scores yet not the world records since they seem sadly out of date in some cases). Donkey Kong and Galaga both display this option and the scores fine. Track & Field doesn't display the option however. I always assumed that both GameEx and CPWizard used HiToText with its -l option to determine what games are valid to be viewed in this fashion and that maybe this information was stored somewhere (so maybe I had to rebuild the mame list under GameEx which I tried) in some GameEx database (I haven't yet looked) However Track & Field doesn't show up in this fashion so I'm wondering if (and where) the information is stored and how it can be updated (assuming I wish to keep HiToText updated more frequently that I update GameEx (although I usually keep up to scratch on that too)) "manually" Additionally I see HiToText has had for some time, support for "alternate formats" such as the best stage times in Moon Patrol or all of Track & Field's individual sport best 3 records (i.e. for 100M, Long Jump, Javelin etc.) as opposed to the generic "score" High Score table. Any plans in how these could be incorporated/displayed in both GameEx/CpWizard (as scrollable tables or pageflip displays)?

Been a longtime user of Visual Pinball 8 but sometimes get frustrated with (lack of) speed issues on my latter day machine/video card since it was coded for older machines/Direct X7. So I'm starting to incorporate some rewritten tables for the newer (takes better advantage of your latter-day hardware) Visual Pinball 9.0.2 Works well (especially the JPSalas tables) but a minor, yet continued, issue still exists with rulesheet displays. Because vpauto is listed in my "also run" fields under GameEx, I assume this is a compiled screen that gives focus to the pinmame rom/Visual pinball table and keeps focus, and also handles relevants tasks, like dialog boxes on entry/exit and this continues to function under VP9. However table authors often include rulesheets with their tables that you can display with a press of a key. These are primarily done in the table script as a popup window although JPSalas is now displaying these as .hta files which gives extra scope for html elements. Unfortunately whilst the display does quickly popup, presumably the focus element of VPAUTO quickly throws it to the background. Is it possible for this script to be updated so that this windows is not forced to the background until the user dismisses it? Assuming VPAUTO is a compiled script, is it also possible to get the original, uncompiled script? (I'd like to look at it to increase my knowledge of such matters with a view to doing similar arrangements)

Cero... if, like me, you have CPWizard loaded with GameEx at startup then you have to ensure that when you exit GameEx to use CFGMagician that you also unload CPWizard (it'll be an icon in your system tray). CPWizard seems to read the key definitions upon loadup (unless you have dynamic data loading turned on) i.e. do you find that your remaps out of CFGMagician (once placed back into the mame/cfg file) do show up the next time you boot up?

Forgot to mention that I had always enabled "Enable SlikStik and IPAC Support" in the GameEx configuration because I DO have an IPAC4 in my cabinet so it seemed to make sense to do so (even though I know not what it actually does.) After reading Frequency's response that the H/L "inactivation" seemed to have to do with this setting, I have turned this option off and can confim that my H/L letters jumps in my game lists now function like the rest of the alphabet and that I am (so far) suffering no ill-effect due to this change within GameEx. Thanks Frequency!

GameEx.ini attached (as GameEx.txt... not permitted to load .ini)GameEx.txt

Having some large ROM lists it's sometimes handy to press a letter on the keyboard so as to jump directly to games beginning with that letter rather than use the alpha-paging joystick direction/button combo (which I also have turned on). But my H and L keys don't appear to function... why? Some things you should know. All of the keyboard letters do output a key (i.e. no faulty keyboard). For example if I go to the SEARCH function within GameEx I can press all the letter keys A thru Z and they all appear (including H and L.) I do have (within MAME at least) roms that begin with each letter, so the keyboard letter press does have something to jump to. I do know that, as delivered, the key setup to display the in-game control panel viewer is "L". However, in the Advanced Configuration, I initially blanked that out (to no effect) and, after reading another (old) post on this forum, instead set it to some inconsequential key of 145 (which I believe is "SCROLL LOCK"). To confirm this I look into GameEx.ini and see that InGameVK=145 and I don't find any reference in that file to values I can relate back to H or L. Whilst I have custom joystick commands setup to navigate GameEx I do NOT use custom key commands and the relevant options within GameEx configuration are set to YES and NO respectively. I mention this only because they share the file custominput.ini ... just in case I kept the values within the "KEYBOARD" section of custominput.ini away from 72 (H) and 76 (L) anyway. I am not running any key translator like XPadder or AutoHotKey at any point at this stage. I DO run CPWizard alongside GameEx but it is only triggered from within a GameEx menu item or from within MAME when I press the P (pause) button. I do not use either the L or H key in any of its settings. So, can anyone verify whether this behaviour also affects them and, if not, do they remember doing something proactive to avoid it?.... even in this case I could understand the "L" key being usurped but the H key throws me.

Not sure what to tell you Headkaze... remember, this is in the editor so there's no debug log as far as I know (but let me know where it is if there's one and I'll post it) Just tried it again (ver 2.14 which I believe is current) Ran it from Windows. When started, maximized the window. Moved joycode1_button1 label down one grid point. Did the same for Joycode2_button1. Hit the FILE->SAVE option. Hit the FILE-EXIT option (and answered YES to the "Really Quit" dialog box) and got a similar error to before (the letters are now different but I wonder if in my experimentation last night I added and deleted an extra label that may give rise to this) i.e. Object reference not set to an instance of an object at ai.c() ai.b() bt.a() Anyhoo, I started CPWizard up again and the labels appear to be where I moved them to and without doing anything else I did a FILE->EXIT, did the YES to the "Really Quit" dialog box again and got the same error. This appears infinitely repeatable (based on a sample set of 5) Is there some extra option I can turn on or some debugging version you can pass me that I can run on my system to give you more clues? ***IMPORTANT UPDATE TO ABOVE*** Just playing around at random, I just found that if I toggle "Hide Desktop Using Forms" off (EDIT->OPTIONS-GENERAL->HIDE DESKTOP USING FORMS), then I DON'T get the error upon exit. If I go back in and toggle it on, then I DO get the error.... hope this helps. (That said, I have bugger-all idea what this option does... I think I was switching on and off everything when trying to get the panel to consistently show as per another thread a while back)

Nope.... take it as read that if I ever get an error then usually the first thing I do is check for the latest version. This error appears under the latest version.

Headkaze... I do have a (seemingly) working CPWizard panel display for mame but after noticing a text overlay I wanted to correct (button text was overlapping) I went into CPWizard to move the labels around and saved it. Upon exit from the editor you get the dialog box asking you if you wish to quit (and you confirm it) then I receive the following. Object reference not set to an instance of an object at ah.c() ah.b() bs.a() This is continually repeatable (and the CPWizard panel viewer still works fine under GameEx) but I'm not sure what it's complaining about. Attached is my xml for my control panel. Wombat.xml

I'm in...we're now at 13.7%

Downloaded and tried out the latest CPWizard on the weekend with about 20 of my favourite MAME games. So far, I have only seen one "artifact" whereby you could see CPWizard display the control panel before the game for a nano-second before "disappearing" but then presumably one of the retries kicked in and it displayed again (very) shortly thereafter. So far, it has appeared every time it's been called for...from within GameEx menu, prior to launching a game, and upon pause within a game. So Yay!!!! Thanks Headkaze.