Comments for The Mika Connection

Comment on Mamesaver by TheManuel

TheManuel — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:02:15 +0000

I really appreciate it.
Work is more important.

Regards.

Comment on Mamesaver by mika76

mika76 — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:02:45 +0000

Just to let you know – I will definitely look at making those changes – but I’ve just hit a very busy moment at work which is keeping me away from my other interests.

Comment on Mamesaver by TheManuel

TheManuel — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 21:44:30 +0000

Ah, I see.
One particular build of MAME called MAMEplus is distributed on a large dll along with two small executables for command line and MAME32 interface usage. This happens to be the build of MAME I use but I realize most people probably use the official one.
I think the work-around suggested above could be a secondary alternative…

Comment on Mamesaver by mika76

mika76 — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 07:30:58 +0000

What I mean was that I’d like to call mame using COM calls or by using a DLL directly and not through the command line as a separate process, but thanks for the links – I’ll have a look at them.

Comment on Mamesaver by TheManuel

TheManuel — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:26:17 +0000

The web addresses above are missing the “http://” because otherwise, my post was not going through..

Comment on Mamesaver by TheManuel

TheManuel — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:25:17 +0000

Here is the response I got from the original author of the front-end:

MaLa starts an emu with the function CreateProcess.
msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682425.aspx

This function needs a StartupInfo structure and there is one field (wShowWindow) for the visibility of the window.
msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms686331(VS.85).aspx

Here you can find possible values for the visibility parameter.
msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms633548.aspx

MaLa is using SW_HIDE to hide the window.

I’m not a programmer myself but the information looks pretty helpful.

I hope it helps

Comment on Mamesaver by TheManuel

TheManuel — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:30:25 +0000

Interesting. The front-end I am using, MaLa, hides the command lines of the emulator. I’ll ask the current developer how it does it.
It is rather strange that I get that and you don’t. I normally use an older version of MAME so, just in case, I tried a recent release of the official build and the same thing happens.

Comment on Mamesaver by mika76

mika76 — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:06:35 +0000

Strange – doesn’t happen to me at all. I’ll have a look and see if I can come up with a solution. Ideally I would like to call MAME directly and not through the command line, but I cannot see how to do that yet.

Comment on Mamesaver by TheManuel

TheManuel — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:18:31 +0000

After a few seconds of showing the black screen with the name of the game and the MAME logo (which looks very nice, by the way), it briefly shows the Windows taskbar and a command window loading the game. This lasts more or less depending on how big the rom is. It disrupts the flow going from the info screen to the MAME game.
I tried to get around this using a wrapper application that hides the command window but then mamesaver only shuts down the wrapper and MAME stays so when it cycles to another game, it creates a new instance of MAME so that did not work.

But I don’t want to come accross as a knit-picker. I’m already grateful that you are considering adding the feature to play games directly from the screensaver.

Comment on Mamesaver by mika76

mika76 — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:11:39 +0000

Well on mine it doesn’t show at all. What are you seeing?