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Messages - checkist

Pages: 1 [2]
16
General / Re: Any way to hide lists?
« on: May 30, 2015, 04:48:48 AM »
How about making two lists, which shares same romlist file?

list   master
   layout               basic
   romlist              mame
   filter               All
   filter               Favorites
      rule                 Favourite equals 1
list   category
   layout               basic
   romlist              mame
   filter               Fighter
      rule                 Category contains Fighter
   filter               Puzzle
      rule                 Category contains Puzzle


Then you can normally stay in 'category' list, that people can cycle through (by next_filter / prev_filters).

If you intend to 'manually pick some games, and only those games are shown to people', you can use tags.



list   master
   layout               basic
   romlist              mame
   filter               All
   filter               Favorites
      rule                 Favourite equals 1
list   category
   layout               basic
   romlist              mame
   global_filter       
      rule                 Tags contains handpicked
   filter               Fighter
      rule                 Category contains Fighter
   filter               Puzzle
      rule                 Category contains Puzzle



Then you can manually pick games in 'master' list, by putting 'handpicked' tags to them. These games will be shown in 'category' list.

17
General / Re: Anyone tried MAME 0.161 yet?
« on: May 30, 2015, 04:39:22 AM »
I'm using Mameplus 0.157.

Interesting changes after 0.152 are (for me, of course)

0.155 Raiden 2, and Zero Team (2000/New)
0.161 DoDonPachi Dai-Fukkatsu Black Label


but yes, upgrading MAME romsets are really time consuming. (that's why I'm still using 0.157)

18
General / Re: mame ui 64 get an error on AM
« on: May 30, 2015, 04:30:33 AM »
I suggest to test

#1. run cmd.exe
#2. cd "B:\Emulators\MAME\MameUI64\"
#3. Mameui64.exe wupndown

It should have same result (fail) in your screenshot.

I cannot say for sure, as I haven't used MAMEUI64, but it should have built-in UI for assigning rom directories whatsoever.

If it does not have setting UI, most MAME releases have mame.ini as their setting file, add following line to the mame.ini

rompath      B:\mame151\MAME151roms


Once done, repeat above step #1 through #3. If it succeeds, then it can be also done in AM by your settings. (hopefully)

19
Scripting / Re: orbit style marquee scrolling but.....
« on: October 19, 2014, 01:32:34 PM »
This will not fix all the problems, but try :

// Set index_offset for these 5 artworks.
title_p3.index_offset = -4;
title_n1.index_offset = -3;
title_n2.index_offset = -2;
title_n3.index_offset = -1;
title_n0.index_offset = 0;
title_n5.index_offset = 1;
title_n6.index_offset = 2;
title_n7.index_offset = 3;
title_n8.index_offset = 4;



At least this will correct the 'order' (I hope)

20
Themes / Re: Post your custom layouts here!
« on: September 12, 2014, 11:21:18 AM »
Yet it's far from being perfect... but there are some new features, which I hope that somebody might get some inspirations....


#1. Built-in movie progress bar
Adjusting simple rectangle, according to movie position worked like charm...

movie_progress.width = (snapshot.width * snapshot.video_time + 1) / snapshot.video_duration;

Requires 'Progress.png' to be in the same directory (which is included in attached .zip file)



#2. Adjustable screen layouts
User can select either 3-screen column / 5-screen column on the left side.
Width of left-side column and height of main screenshot are now can be modified
 (the rest are auto-calculated from above values)


#3. Transition effect adjust
Rather than using 'cancel' (pressing up/down twice)
Pressing 'up/down' consistantly for 100 msec immediately cancels transition effect.
(Again, you'll know once you see it)


#4. Icons in bottom-right corner
Corresponding icon appears for vertical games, and favorite games.
You can define additional icons by using attract-mode's tag systems.
  #4-1. Set 'Tag 1' ~ 'Tag 7' to some value. For example, 'Violent' (e.g. mortal kombat series?)
  #4-2. Prepare an icon file named 'Tag-Your_Tag.png' in layout directory. For example 'Tag-Violent.png'
  #4-3. Tag your corresponding game by using attract-mode's tag systems.
  #4-4. Cha-ching! you can see your custom icon in #4-2 appear in your bottom-right, when you select tagged games



#5. Filter-dependent marquee
Yet another trick. By setting filter name including '#' symbol, corresponding filter-dependent marquee can appear.
  #5-1. Set filter name as 'something#marquee_name', for example '[1/15]#Action'
  #5-2. Prepare a filter marquee file named 'Filter-marquee_name.png' in layout directory. For example 'Filter-Action.png'
  #5-3. You can see your filter-dependent marquee on upper-middle screen

21
Themes / Re: Post your custom layouts here!
« on: July 31, 2014, 11:05:49 AM »
Well it's far from being perfect...

Since I don't have artistic skills, I decided to focus on functionalities / not-so-obvious tricks so that somebody might get some ideas to improve his/her layouts  :)

Below is functionalities of this layout...


#1. Built-in screen saver function
I'm aware that there is already a fully-functional screen saver included in the frontend.
But well, there are always more than one way to achieve one's needs. The more the better.

Anyway, notable differences of this screen saver of mine is..
   1) Has three modes, off / random game select mode / sequential select mode
     1-1) Pressing the key (defaults to 'R') cycles through these modes
   2) Automatically detects the end of movie file (if any), then picks next/random game
     2-1) Movie file loops normally, if built-in screen saver is not activated
   3) User can define durations for static images (10 secs, for example)
     3-1) Setting this value to negative skips games with no movies


#2. Scrolling effect, with some tweaks
User can adjust transition time to suit their needs.
One notable feature is that the transitional effect can be 'cancelled' by pressing up/down twice. Pressing 'up/down' consistantly also temporarily disables transitional effect, so that the effect does not slow-down the game selection.
Also, next/previous games are dimmed to emphasize current game. Transitional effect is also applied to this.
(It's hard to describe, but you'll know once you see it)



#3. Miscs
1) Pressing the key (defaults to 'T', which can be changed in the settings) will change left column to snapshot / titles.
2) Total running time is displayed in lower side..



22
General / Batch file scripting guide for Attract-mode (Basic)
« on: June 25, 2014, 01:48:38 AM »
First I planned to write this to wiki, but since it's not directly related to attract-mode frontend, so I write here.
Actually, this is more likely to 'tips & techniques' or something.....

Anyway, let's get started.

Using MESS in attract-mode can easily become copy-and-paste work, as MESS handles many console types, with slightly different running switches. (like 'mess sms -cart something.sms', 'mess famicom -cart something.nes')

Batch files, can be used to overcome such repetitions by simple scripting. Linux systems are known to have great shell scripts. Windows systems, on the other hand, have very-limited-functionalities-batch-files. Fortunately, even with their limited capabilities, it can (barely) achieve what we want.


Here is brief structure and strengths of how everything works together:
1) Mess.bat handles all kinds of file extension-emulator associations, using basic batch file syntaxes
1-1) Since it's just a batch file, it has transparent working mechanism. For those who doesn't like black-box.exe styles, it has its merits
1-2) You can easily switch between various emulators (mess.exe / snes.exe...).

2) Attract-mode has single configuration for Mess.bat.
2-1) This greatly reduces copy-and-paste operations.



<Setting up basic Mess.bat>
The key syntax in batch file is argument handling.
Suppose you called Mess.bat f:\something.nes, the f:\something.nes is passed into Mess.bat
You can refer them in batch file as belows:

"%1"   : complete path (f:\something.nes)
"%~n1" : file name (something)
"%~x1" : file ext (.nes)

then you can create basic batch file as belows:

------------------------------------------------
if "%~x1"==".sms"   SET MACHINE=smsj
...
if "%~x1"==".md"   SET MACHINE=megadrij
cd /d "C:\Emuls\Mess 0.152\"
mess.exe %MACHINE% -cart %1
------------------------------------------------

Note 'cd /d' command in batch file. It changes 'current working directory' to the target location.
Some emulators can work without such process (such as ZSNES), but most cases requires it.

You can even associate above batch file with rom extensions (like .sms, .md). Just double-click them on windows explorer, and associate them with your Mess.bat file. Next time, you can easily launch your emulators for selected roms by just double-clicking them on windows explorer.



<Setting up attract-mode>
Since Mess.bat will handle neccessary options, you can just pass [romfilename] to Mess.bat..

executable           C:\Emuls\Mess.bat
args                 "[romfilename]"
rompath              C:\Emuls\attract-1.3.1\roms\
romext               .sms;.nes;.rom;.smc;.gb;.gbc;.gba;.sg;.md;.pce;

Be sure to use quotation marks for "[romfilename]"



<Advanced topic 1 - Using other emulator than MESS in Mess.bat>
By using GOTO statement, you can choose other emulators as well.
For example, SNES implementation in MESS is not quite satisfactory. Let's use ZSNES emulator for .smc.

------------------------------------------------
if "%~x1"==".sms"   SET MACHINE=smsj
...
if "%~x1"==".md"   SET MACHINE=megadrij
if "%~x1"==".smc"   GOTO SNES

cd /d "C:\Emuls\Mess 0.152\"
mess.exe %MACHINE% -cart %1
GOTO END

:SNES
cd /d "C:\Emuls\zsnesw151\"
zsnesw.exe %1
GOTO END

:END
------------------------------------------------

You can practically add/change any emulator which supports command-line options.
(And almost every emulators supports command-line options)


<Advanced topic 2 - Using CD-ROM based games in Mess.bat>
With sufficient trial-and-error process, you can even use CD-ROM based games in Mess.bat as well.
It's quite complicated, so if anyone is interested in this, please let me know.


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