Ce frontend pour MAME connait une mise à jour conséquente. Voici les nombreux changements apportés ainsi que les conseils d'utilisation: After 4 months of hard work and beta testing, here it is. MAME software list games (console/computer) and tons of fixes, changes and optimizations. So much has changed on this build, you wouldn't believe the lengths I had to go thru to support software lists as Emu Loader was created to support arcade games and nothing else. Talking about software lists, MAME's games count have increased to more than 100 thousand... if you have Create Software List Games setting enabled, that is. I had to do something to optimize games list loading, and I did. Now EL takes half of the time... Remember, don't add software list paths in mame.ini, and put all your software list game files in sub-folders named the same as xml files in mamedir\hash folder. Check this thread for more details. Running console/computer games. You can select what machine to use with the new Machine to Run Game option in games popup menu. The last selected machine will always be used so, you can just select the game and hit ENTER / mouse double click... If you want to separate MAME arcade machines from non-arcade, you need category_home.ini file from category ini for MESS pack made by AntoPISA. Without it, EL will handle MESS machines as arcade. Check the new Machines filter in tool bar buttons and you'll see why. Just put the file in el_dir\ini_files\ folder before starting the frontend. There is a new MAME Machines Side Panel filter listing all non-arcade machines, so you can filter software list games by a specific machine. When this feature is enabled, games list columns will use a new columns profile to remove the ones with no game info. You can customize this profile without affecting the full profile, except for the column width, which is the same for both profiles. Thumbnails view mode is also updated... support for zipped images! You don't have to keep your in-game snapshots unzipped for this view mode anymore. Other tweaks and bug fixes applied. Note that EL needs to unzip multiple files at the same time from the .zip file so, it will not be as fast as using unzipped images. You can have the images panel enabled while in thumbnails view (requested feature). You can see game snaps in thumbs, and flyers/cabinets in the images panel. I did my best to support Unicode texts in the games list. As a bonus, EL will try to read Unicode strings from catver.ini and languages.ini files. But texts in game documents panel and run game confirmation dialog do not show Unicode texts. RichEdit control is weird to work with. One last major change. Video preview bug fixes and optimizations. There's also a new Play Dummy Video to Stop Current Playback setting with custom media player parameters. If you select a new game while a video is playing, EL will not stop the current video. There's a new el_dir\resources\images\no_image\novideo.avi with 100ms length that EL will use. After so much work, I'm sure I missed one or two bugs that needs fixing. EL's games list files have been renamed and reformatted... again. Don't worry, you current lists will be updated in the first run. One removed feature that will angry some EL users. No more auto-create games at startup if you update the emulators. You must re-create your games list manually from now on. This was necessary to adapt the frontend for console/computer games. It makes no sense ? EL suffered gigantic internal changes not apparent to end users, that's why.
Changelog:
Fixed - Some sets with no game ROMs but with device ROMs were not audited correctly even when all device ROMs are found (I hope I didn't break anything else in EL's games validation system) *alto2: Alto-II *fds: Famicom (W/ Disk System add-on) - Frontend crash at StrToInt() conversion if ROM size contains '????' instead of numbers - Heavy text flickering in splash screen if they change too fast - Old "Game Documents" bug (F3 hotkey; games popu menu): game entry detection function would continue to scan all the way to the end of the file even after the game info was found and loaded, resulting in slow text parsing and games browsing (mameinfo.dat; history.dat; story.dat; marp.dat; messinfo.dat); - "quick access" menus in game documents popup menu were still visible for games without text to show - Grouped view mode fixes: *search bar filtering was placing clone sets in wrong parent sets (main tool bar buttons)... nobody noticed this ?!! *tweaks when accessing group items; twice as fast when looping thru games so filters can be applied; this view mode is still slow as hell though NOTE: a new message panel appears when changing games filters, so you know the frontend is not frozen - Changing game icons size was unnecessarily resetting icon indexes and reinitializing items, causing lag ("View Mode" tool bar button, "Game Icon Size" sub-menu... grouped/details view modes) - Some categories were displaying HTML tags (function "uMain.HTMLDecode()" is now executed in 'category' field) - Feature "Add Selected to Favorites" / "Delete Selected From Favorites" updated to check for the "IsFavorite" game tag before displaying games popup menu on a single game selected. Both menu items will appear if multiple games are selected - Interface bugs in "Multi-Slot Games" dialog - Memory leaks when switching in and out of thumbnails view mode - Setting "Alternate Title Format [Game, The]" was not working when loading the games list (main menu "Games List") - Atomiswave games not using the new "awave" machine name of Demul v0.7; Emu Loader now tries to detect Demul version to support older Demul builds - Frontend crash when trying to select parent set with arcade controller, if current selected game is not a clone - Emulators selections were not saved to "\ini_files\folders_emulators.ini" file after exiting "Emulators Setup" screen
Changed - Changes and optimizations to frontend's games list files *ROMs database files renamed from "systemname_roms.el" to "systemname.elrom" ('frontend_dir\arcade\' folder) *new "systemname.elstatus" file with "game ROM ID", "set status", "scan mode" and "is_merged"; moved from "systemname.el"; easier and faster to update game status info without altering game list files (arcade games; MESS software lists) *files "mame_merged.ini" and "hb_merged.ini" no longer required *audio samples files renamed from "systemname_samples.el" to "systemname.elsamples" (MAME/HBMAME) *detection of "softwarelist" entries from "-listxml" output, for MESS games (non-arcade) *the following machines are not included on software lists: neogeo, stv, megatech, playch10 *new file: 'arcade\mame.elsoftlist' with software lists for each MESS machine *new file: 'arcade\mame_machines.ini' to list all supported machines for each software list *new file: 'arcade\mame_machineslast.ini' with the last used machine for each software list *minor code optimizations and removal of unused variable declarations - Minor change to frontend's logo, now called "Emu Loader: MAME and Arcade Frontend"... because MAME is no longer an "arcade only" emulator - Optimized MAME/HBMAME emulator version info detection *emulator version info no longer extracted from -listxml output *for MAME v0.119 and newer, version number is read from file details (Windows file properties); much faster than "mame -help" output *older MAME builds and builds with no file details falls back to "mame -help" output *emulator custom title is limited to "MAME Plus!" (*mamep*); "UME" (*ume*) and HqMAME (*hqmame*), and no longer extracted from file details or -help output *emulator MD5/version parsing message panel removed from emulators setup screen *new emulator binary detection is always done at startup and their info updated (all emulators) - Moved "Export Games List" sub-menu from "File" to "Games List" main menu; deleted "File" main menu - Optimized games list/ROMs list loading by adding game info + ROMs list in one pass instead of loading all games first and then ROMs lists separately - Optimized games list filtering when in grouped view mode... it takes around 3 to 5 seconds now; still too slow for my taste since details view takes less than ONE second - Renamed "Main Filters" tool bar button to "Main Arcade Filters" since they are for arcade games only - Feature "Images Manager" is limited to MAME emulator only, other emulators are no longer supported! (main menu "Images"); software list games are partially supported - Changes to "MAMu_ Icons Manager" feature *removed "Search Icons for Devices With No ROMs" option from missing icons, they are not runnable games! *New missing icons option "Search Icons for Device Sets", disabled by default ("Options", status bar button) - Moved "Screen Orientation" filter tool bar button to MISC filters button - Optimized frontend startup to avoid unnecessary function calls and speed things up a little bit :) - Renamed "Show User Interface" to "Enable Partial Keyboard Emulation (UI Enabled)" to make it easier to understand (MAME Settings, "Input" tab) - Scanning games list would call "ApplyFilters()" function repeatedly on every scanned system (MAME, ZiNc, Demul, MAME software list games, etc). If status of any game changed, EL was re-applying the games filters several times over. Now, ApplyFilters() function is called only once at the end of the scanning process - Tweaks in "Run Game Confirmation Dialog" (main menu) *default font size reduced to size 9 *added support to show info on software lists and non-arcade machines *replaced "Consolas" font by "Lucida Console" on full command line texts and reduced font size *games list version info and emulator version info texts merged into one line to reduce dialog height and to avoid waste of space *removed some redundant text to avoid confusion *added "usage" text below game name text (top bar) for software list games *machine name is now displayed below the machine title when running multi-slot machines (neogeo, megatech, stv, playch10) *renamed "Run Game" button to "Execute" - Full scan games feature always close/re-open parent .zip sets now, to avoid validating ROMs of parent sets with no relationship to the clone set being scanned... huh, what did you say ? :D - Screen "Select System" to create games list and scan games is properly resized to fit 640x480 resolution - Screen "View ROMs Folders" properly resized to fit 640x480 resolution (main menu, "View" sub-menu) - Feature "Scan MAME/HBMAME Missing Audio Samples" (main menu "Games List): multiple games using the same sample file are no longer listed, only the first found game - You can select between different favorites profiles while favorites filter is enabled (main tool bar button). :) All other favorites functions are disabled! - Tweaks to game details screen (games popup menu or "Shift+I" shortcut) - Frontend's main screen now hides itself when creating a new games list using main menu "Create Games List", and it restores itself at the end
Removed - A few redundant messages were removed from the splash screen (and at startup) since they appear only for a split of a second - Setting "New Emulator Detection" removed (preferences screen); no longer needed, now always enabled - Setting "Games List Not Found" went kaput! (preferences screen); games lists will not be auto-created anymore, except on a clean install; use "Create Games List" option in main menu to create lists manually when updating your emulators executables - Feature "Not Used Game Files" is no more; it was never 100% accurate, it always listed files that shouldn't be removed - Feature "Auto Rename Snaps to EL Format" is gone. Emu Loader will no longer try to rename "snap\gamename\0000.png" files to "snap\gamename.png"... if you want to take MAME snapshots in "snap\gamename.png" format just change "snapname" entry to "%g" (without quotes) in "mame.ini" - You can find this setting in MAME Settings screen, "Video 2" tab, "Snapshots/Movies panel", "Name Format" edit box - Replaced all texts using the odd "Segoe UI Semibold" font by more common Windows fonts - Replaced almost all texts with "Consolas" font by "Lucida Console" and "Verdana" fonts - Image splitters style is gone, only solid style is avaiable from now on with customizable colors (preferences screen, "Images" tag) - Feature "Images Manager" is disabled; adding software list games support broke this feature and it needs to be completely rewritten :_(( - Image effect "Scale 2x" is no more (main menu "Images" / "Resampler")
Added - New MAMu_ icons setting: "Enable Device Set Custom Icon". Enable this setting to use a single "deviceset.ico" file for all device set entries... only if "deviceset_name.ico" is not found! - I'm sure MAMu_ will appreciate this setting as device sets are non-playable sets - New library "SynFastWideString.pas"; better handling of WideString vars; this libary is a lot faster than WideString var from Delphi 7, and use FastMM v4 improved RAM manager - Unicode strings support in games list; game title; manufacturer; category; language; and usage tip for softlist games - New "Scan MAME Sets (v0.162 and newer)": choose what kind of MAME sets will be validated; located in "Scan Games Mode" screen (games popup menu) and select system dialog (create games list/scan games) *Scan All -> will validate both arcade/machines and software list games *Arcade/Machines -> will validate only arcade/machines sets, excluding software list games *Software List Games -> will validate only software list games, excluding arcade/machines sets - Support for MAME software list games (home consoles, computers) *feature enabled by default, you can disable it when creating a new MAME games list (select system dialog) *for UME and MAME 0.162+ builds *game files must be placed in sub-folders with the same names as xml filenames from 'mamdir\hash' folder *DO NOT set folders for software lists in 'rompath' (mame.ini); MAME and Emu Loader search in 'roms\soflistname\' sub-folders automatically *games files must be zipped; except CHDs *detection of 'softwarelist' tags in MAME -listxml output *new status bar info text "xml file: softlist_name" (selected game) *XML files in 'mamedir\hash\' folder are required and NOT auto-created by the frontend *XML files in 'mamedir\hash\' folder not used by MAME's -listxml are not used by the frontend *basic games loading support only (no multi-floppy disk drives or multi-slot cartridges) *category column is used to display software list descriptions *new 'frontend_dir\softwarelist\' folder with all supported lists; for faster games list loading and auditing (direct XML parsing is too darn slow) *full scan games support (audit system) *preview snapshots and video previews use the softwarelist filename as a sub-folder (zipped images are supported); eg.: "mamedir\snap\msx1_cart\" *you can disable software lists you don't want when creating MAME games lists by using "Customize Software List" (main menu) or clicking the "custom" text in "Scan Games Mode" (games popup menu) or select system dialog ...or manually delete the desired files in 'frontend_dir\softwarelist\' folder *internet game info support with new MESS pages from Progetto-SNAPS - New "Machines" filter in main tool bar button *Filter games in the list the way you want; MAME arcade + machines + softlist games *Use the new "Machines List Side Panel" to filter games by a specific machine (all other machines filters are ignored) (extra options can be found in the machines list popup menu) NOTE: To properly filter arcade and non-arcade machines you need "category_home.ini" file from "category.ini for MESS" pack made by AntoPISA - New "Machine to Run Game" menu item in games popup menu *When machines list side panel is disabled, to run softlist games you can select what machine to use - The latest selected machine for each softlist will be used if you hit ENTER or double click a softlist game... quick launch mode! :D - New icons for software list games; so you know if a MAME game is arcade/machine or from software lists *MAMESoftwarelistParent.ico; MAMESoftwarelistClone.ico; UnMAMESoftwarelistParent.ico; UnMAMESoftwarelistClone.ico - New column "Usage" for software list games; details/grouped view modes - Support AntoPISA "catver_full.ini"; category and version added for arcade and non-arcade machines WARNING: this file will tag all non-arcade machines as arcade machines and the "MAME Machines Without Software Lists" filter will not work! ('Machines' filter) - Support AntoPISA "category.ini for MESS" and "version.ini for MESS" so Emu Loader can separate MAME arcade from non-arcade (MESS) machines Put both files "category_home.ini" and "version.ini" in "frontend_dir\ini_files\" folder *for MAME 0.162 and newer / UME builds only; these files have no use on older MAME builds or MAME arcade builds *file 'version.ini' is optional and if using 'catver_full.ini' there's no need for this file *file 'catver.ini' or 'catver_full.ini" is still required for MAME arcade games *games from software lists are not supported since category is used to show softlist titles - Get files in Progetto-SNAPS website (renameSet page): http://www.progettosnaps.net/renameset/ WARNING: do not use "category_full.ini" file or the frontend will show incorrect categories for MAME arcade games and the frontend will not work properly! - Support "History.dat" 0.162 to show info for software list games ($softlistname=rom1,rom2); sadly, Unicode texts are not displayed in the RichEdit control - Support "messinfo.dat" created by AntoPISA; for non-arcade machines (MAME v0.162 and newer); put "messinfo.dat" in MAME's main folder (same as mameinfo.dat) favorites and playtime .ini files expanded to support software list games (MESS)... no updates required from your part *arcade: 'gamename=systemname' *softlist: 'gamename_softwarelist=systemname' - Support new .ini files for MAME v0.162 and newer: arcade.ini; console.ini; computer.ini; othersys.ini (games popup menu, "Custom Settings" / "Extra") - New setting: "Use Custom "snapname" To Take Snapshots" (main menu "Images") - Disabled by default, it adds an extra "-snapname softlistname/gamename" parameter into MAME's command line so your snapshots for software list games can be correctly created in MAME: "snap\softlistname\gamename.png" Without this, you'll need to manually rename files and move them to proper folders eg.: "goonies" game for MSX 1 cartridge ("msx1_cart" softlist name) will have a "-snapname msx1_cart/goonies" parameter; the created screenshot filename will be "snap\msx1_cart\goonies.png" no matter what MSX machine you're using to play the game It makes taking snapshots a lot easier, using the actual software list name "msx1_cart" as a sub-folder instead of the machine name - New games popup option "Main Menu" to access the main menu when tool bar filters is not visible - New feature: "Multiline Captions"; Enable it to show "two line" captions in details/grouped view modes; 32x32 and 48x48 icons only (preferences screen, "Games List" tag) - Support for zipped images in thumbnails view mode (finally!) - New MISC filter: "Show Merged Sets Only"; what does it do ? make you a cup of coffee... :) - New MISC filter: "Light Gun"; show/hide all games that use a light gun control; file "catver.ini" or "catver_full.ini" is required to detect "gun", "gallery" categories - Preview images / game docs panel can be enabled while in thumbnails view mode, using the new "Show Images/Game Docs Panel" setting ("Thumbnails" sub-menu in view mode tool bar / games popup menu) - Changes and updates to the video preview feature *new "experimental" setting: "Play Dummy Video to Stop Current Playback" in preferences screen; play a short video to stop current video playing if you select a new game that have no video to play (also executed before starting a game and exiting the frontend) - new file "resources\images\no_image\novideo.avi" - minor optimizations to the CallPlayVideoPreview() function - New favorites setting: "Show Favorite Icon In Games" (favorites tool bar button); show a fav icon in details view and add a fav image on top of thumb images (thumbnail view) - New game status filter: "Missing + Missing ROMs/CHDs" ("available/missing" tool bar button) *this filter will show games with all files missing and found games with missing ROMs/CHDs *filter "Missing" changed to only show games with all files missing (games you don't have) |
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