Only unzip themes, no xml editing

[BadBoyBill]

Alright I just finished up a feature so that you can just unzip themes only and not have to add an xml entry after unzipping. This was pretty annoying as we all know, this also eliminates the need for me to write an installer also.

The main reason I didnt have this at first is because I was concerned with the speed of parsing an entire full mame list xml when simply trying to go from the main menu into the mame menu which would slow HS down alot when navigating in and out of menu's.

But to my surprise its actually pretty fast. You do see about a 1 or 2 second longer delay as I suspected between the main menu and mame but it might be worthed for you not to have to manually make database entries.

How it works is you keep a full master xml in your database folder that has every game. It them compares it to your theme folder with all your theme.xml files. Your list isnt sorted with HS so you will need to make sure you have an alphabetized xml handy. Someone here I'm sure can provide one. Turn the option on in your ini file to activate themes only and thats it.

Im tempted to release a new release tomorrow just with this feature added since it will help so many people.

So one master list , download and unzip themes, play HyperSpin.

[Circo]

Wow Bill, thats fantastic news!

[cathaldub]

Brillant
I think my full xml is in alphabetical order
I'll see when I get homehttp://www.manic-motorz.com/forum/images/smilies/expressions/woohoo.gif

[Aabra]

This is awesome. It's going to be a great time saver. I'm curious though - does it scan the entire file/create the 1-2 second delay *every* time you change between the menus or only when there has been a change in the number of theme files?

Also - will this work for other systems as well or only mame?

Thanks a ton.

[RetroBorg]

Sounds like an excellent feature.

[The Loafer]

I'm very cool with a small wait time, it's no biggy and because I'm a lazy bastard at heart, I know I can't wait to try it! But it's quite possible some of our members may not be so patient with this 1-2 second delay, so is there still a way to do it the old way? ie: is this set as an option or does everyone now have to do it this way?

p.s. playing devil's advocate here, I really rather do it the new way!

edit: I can't wait for this feature. Am I the only one that's started to cringe when there's a lot of themes released, just knowing all the work involved in the copy/pasting of the data from a master xml to the mame.xml?

[Visitor Q]

Sounds good, I mean really in the end in a year or so I hope to have a full theme list for all of Mame anyway and at the rate this going, it does not sound that crazy really.

Adding info to the xml file is definitely the biggest drag so far with HyperSpin so this is for sure a welcome. Question is, how will this effect other xml file one may have created for HS to use from the menu option to switch xml files? Will full list now not show full if there is no theme created?

[joebells]

its a setting in the ini file, per system you can turn this on or off

[Visitor Q]

I mean multi xml files per Mame if you are refering to me.

[scrapple]

nice!
upload!

[Ego-X]

I'm obviously having a dim day because noone has mentioned anything but I've re-read this a few times now and i'm struggling to grasp what this is about.

As long as you have the corresponding game in your gamelist the theme shows up, where does the no xml editing bit come into this?

[BadBoyBill]

As for the xml theme only feature, it can be turned on or off, so you can still do it the old way. The order of your games really depends on the master list. So hopefully someone posts one for us. If you have genre.xml files then it will also apply to those also if you have it turned on. I'll upload shortly. You'll need add this new setting on a per emu basis for testing. You should only download this if you want to test the new feature since its not an official release. It will also contain the no run fix exe so please let me know if you notice any difference in how HS runs all around.

[themes]
themes_only = true

[BadBoyBill]

I'm obviously having a dim day because noone has mentioned anything but I've re-read this a few times now and i'm struggling to grasp what this is about.

As long as you have the corresponding game in your gamelist the theme shows up, where does the no xml editing bit come into this?


Some people only want to have a list with just themes that are released only. If you do it that way then each time you download a new theme you have had do manually add an entry to your list. This will remove the user having to do that.

[SomewhatLost666]

? all I have done with themes is unzipthem and drop them in the media folder? should I have been editing an xml somewhere? what xml?

oh, and just in case no one told you, or you didn't know, HS is really cool:burnout:

[Ego-X]

Arhh that's makes sense to me now, cool feature!

[The Loafer]

BBB: I'm not sure I fully understand. When we generate the full mame.xml, does this not get generated alphabetically? Also, sharing a full list may be irrelevant, we all don't use the same version of Mame and *I think* some versions have changed the rom name so the list could have a few incompatibilities (though I could be wrong, maybe they've only changed the roms themselves but kept the same name for the folder/zip).

If one follows the excellent "Hyperspin installation" tutorial from this website, it's very easy to generate a mame.xml.

[BadBoyBill]

Ya but its not in order coming from HQ, someone will post the full xml alphabetized

[Visitor Q]

Ya but its not in order coming from HQ, someone will post the full xml alphabetized

Yeah that is the only one I have currently as well.

So this is a function there per Emualtor. So that means if I have two Mame.xml files say:

Mame.xml and Mame (Puzzle).xml this rule applies to both of them then?

[The Loafer]

I still don't get it. One thing I found cool with HyperHQ was you can:

- add the themes manually to your mame.xml
- load hyperHQ
- load the relevant mame.xml
- use the "sort by alphabetical" option
- Save
- Exit, load Hyperspin and voila, they're all sorted alphabetically.

Whether we add them manually or not, the function still works, it can take any xml and sort them alphabetically. Just don't forget to save afterwards.

Perhaps I'm thinking oranges and you guys are speaking apples. Sorry about that, me bad :).

[BadBoyBill]

Yep

[BadBoyBill]

Oh didnt see the alphabetical option, guess I need to make me a new list.

[The Loafer]

Yep I'm an idiot? :) (see post above yours, we posted at the same time).

edit: never mind :)

[The Loafer]

HyperHQ kicks butt, even in its unfinished state. I always finish adding my themes by loading up the xml into HyperHQ and sorting them, saves a lot of effort and time and my lazy ass always help me find shortcuts eheh. This also allows me to catch any errors that crept into the XML.

[Visitor Q]

Good God, he's right! I have been making more work for myself it seems even at this rate... =[

[BadBoyBill]

Ok new test release up to test this feature, and includes the no run fix for those that cannont run HS. Just overwrite the exe.

To test the new feature for me then add this to mame.ini:

[themes]
themes_only = true

[The Loafer]

VQ: You'd have found out earlier if you'd click on my SIG eheh ;). Glad to be of help, my pleasure.

Thanks Bill, I'll have to try this tonight and start catching up on themes!

[Visitor Q]

I give this a go later tonight when I get in from work. I got some PC problems to srt out first. =[

[kingb33]

thank God....thx Bill. it was a total pain to do. Upload!!!! Upload!!!!

**Just so i got this straight, this new feature eliminates having to add games manually to the XML file right?

[BadBoyBill]

been uploaded

[Visitor Q]

thank God....thx Bill. it was a total pain to do. Upload!!!! Upload!!!!

**Just so i got this straight, this new feature eliminates having to add games manually to the XML file right?

I have not tested this yet but from what I gather is you have a Mame.xml file with all the games listed in it for mame. Whatever themes you have installed HS knows and then it looks to that master xml file for the information. The key thing is once you create that file in HyperHQ, is to then sort it from A to Z so that your games are listed like that on the wheel.

It may sound a little confussing but once someone uploads the Mame.xml (master list), the rest should be easy for you. You just install the (theme) files as you would before and there is nothing to edit in the xml file anymore as it is complete.

[The Loafer]

Again, just to be clear, you don't have to wait for someone to upload the mame.xml. You can produce one in about 5 minutes using the following procedure. I highly recommend it because of the various versions of mame out there. If not (we're all busy, no problem with no time for this), then hopefully someone will post a mame.xml very soon.

http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/wiki/Quick_Start_Guide

[Visitor Q]

Again, just to be clear, you don't have to wait for someone to upload the mame.xml. You can produce one in about 5 minutes using the following procedure. I highly recommend it because of the various versions of mame out there. If not (we're all busy, no problem with no time for this), then hopefully someone will post a mame.xml very soon.

http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/wiki/Quick_Start_Guide

Understood.

[The Loafer]

I apologize, I'm not intending to push VQ, I'm just thinking many are not aware the Wiki does address this. I'll drop this issue.

[tk375]

One of the best inventions since (in this case a feature) Edward Madison invented the bulb!

Thanks a lot!

[The Loafer]

Ok, I've tested this. Overall, a huge thumbs up. I downloaded a bunch of themes (around 20?) that I was missing, unzipped them in the proper media\mame folder, ensured I had my mame full roms set.xml renamed to mame.xml, adjusted the mame.ini accordingly and tried it out... and...

Worked very nicely! On my test PC which has been laggy of late (unrelated to HyperSpin), I had a bit longer wait than 2 seconds, probably a shocking 4 eheh, but it worked fine.

Potential negative:
Unsure if this is related, but the background bug is occuring more often (background bug = the background.png pic stays on for the other themes, messing them up in the process). It gets worse, at one point I left the mame menu and the default mame menu theme lost its background (got the "no image" message at the top left) and HyperSpin crashed! Had to kill the process to get out. Again, it's very possible this is unrelated to the new exe, so more people should test this but haven't had this bad a problem before. Worth nothing, I think I'm at 330 themes now, so that's quite a bit of graphics swapping in/out of memory when spinning that wheel (And I did spin the biatch to test this appropriately :).

[The Loafer]

Found a bug, but not with the new exe, rather an incompatibility with hyperHQ. Here's the scenario:

- I installed the new HyperSpin 0.6.0.6 (full install)
- Adjusted the ini files to take into account the new "no xml editing" feature
- Oops! Since installing a full new hyperspin, you need to re-adjust the emulator paths, so I ran hyperhq to adjust the paths
- When I exited, I noticed I had a lot of "no image available" message on the wheel, then I realized that's because it's using the full mame.xml and not just using the one's I have a theme for
- but that's not all, I've also lost all the settings for the wheel fade, the new wheel type, etc.

When one thinks about it, this is not unexpected, after all hyperhq needs to be updated whenever new features are added to HyperSpin that use/update the mame.ini file. So this post isn't to point out a flaw in the new hyperspin, rather just a warning that maybe until it gets updated, perhaps it's wise to not use hyperhq.

Billy: HyperHQ is part of the HyperSpin 0.6.0.6 install, thus it is broken. Is still a known error? Perhaps it should be removed for now from the full install?

Loaf

[Leocmp]

Hello to all, worked very well, Thank you for doing this frontend, Thanks

[cathaldub]

Causes loads of lag for me when scrolling the wheel, and background bug, so back to the old way i'm afraid

System spec:
P4 2.8 Single Core
2GB Ram
Windows XP
ArcadeVGA AGP card

[Visitor Q]

New exe works good for me and the problems I have are there since the begining.

There are times where images from a theme stick around and do not refresh when I move to a new one, a graphic glitch. Only way for me to fix it is to exit HS and relaunch it. Also if I clitch throw the wheel sometimes I get dropped sound from the theme or certain sounds do not load.

I see the biggest problem now is with all these themes starting to come out is you really need a way to skip on the wheel by letter. My suggestion again is to hold down a button and use the skip feature to move forward by letter from A to Z.

I know everyone says this front end is so much easier to use than others but now I can find a game faster in my other front end then this one because of the growing amount of themes, a good and bad thing.

All in due time I guess. =]

[Goalies Rule]

Loafer, I can verify your bug. I noticed that about a week ago, but I wasn't sure if it was a known issue and we're just waiting or what.

Q, I've also had graphics stick before. Im using 6.0.0.6. I havent tried the new yet, but I plan on it very soon

[BadBoyBill]

Can someone faithfully reproduce this background bug? Maybe I can send you a test copy where I did more work in that area.

[cathaldub]

can youtube a vid or host else where?

[The Loafer]

I'll try and replicate the issue. it's difficult to narrow down, it seems to happen for me whenever I go through a lot of mame themes, playing a few sporadically. I'll give it a whirl.

[BadBoyBill]

Well lemme send you a new build first, and see if you can get it to happen then.

[The Loafer]

Sure, you know my email address.

[Goalies Rule]

Ive only had the graphic stick on me once. I remember it was a monkey graphic that stuck on me. It might have been DK3 theme. I was just flipping through themes, but not letting them fully load.

I'll try it reproduce it later on, but I havent even had my cab on in 3 days.

[Visitor Q]

It happens when you go though a bunch of themes on the wheel clicking them forward one by one at a fast pace.

It does not matter if it is the themes for Mame or the main menu. I have had the pacman sysmbol from Atari stick before on the main screen.

[SPARKY70]

the dk jr image stuck on me once, plus a few others.

[portnoy]

Just wondering if there are any updates on this. Last night I had a whole lot of overlapping themes and music to the point where I had to kill the app through task manager. I so don't want to go back to the old way of editing the XML :bawling:

Thanks

P

[BadBoyBill]

updated fixes will be on the next release

[vendur]

Has the Themes_only function been removed? It wont work for me...:-/