Hyperlaunch HQ Pac-Man Pack :)

[kaz321123]

I've been starting to name the descriptions like: Arcade Pac-Man (and keeping the rom name still pacman for mame).

The categories I'll just not have a 'txt' file-so that they appear red on the hlhq list (and will appear like headers).

Hyperspin part sorted fine also.

[Polemicist]

My recommendation since you are using HS would be start small. You make an XML based on MAME only. Put all the pacman games into that XML making no name changes. Drag a copy of the ROM files over to a new folder just to make sure you don't cause any issues with your MAME set. Setup your default emulator as MAME for your pacman wheel as you can quite happily stuff around with most of the other systems ROM file names. So now you have a MAME Pacman wheel setup. Then you goto your next system and copy the sections for one game fro that XML and paste it into your new one. Then you setup your alternate emulator for that one game and then you test your wheel.

Making a huge messy XML dumping it into your system and hoping it works is never really a good idea. As you have now found out.

Yeah. My OCD is possibly worse than Brolly's but I hide it better.

Oh and personally if lose the headers in your XML and just put the system names neatly in the Description and use at least a 3 letter code to change the file names for a fake example: nes-pacman

snes-pacman

a2600-pacman

Etc

This way when you put the ROMs you need into the folder you will have them very nicely sorted. You might have issues with CD based games though.

Anyway enough of my guff.

[kaz321123]

I've got all the roms launching fine in hyperlaunchhq-off of my xml. All is going according to 'plan'-once I figured out the hyperhq situation (with crashing/roms only). If they launch in hyperlaunchhq they launch in hyperspin also (assuming I have hyperhq setup correctly for roms only).

I have quite a big 'alternate emulator list' and they are working ok so far

[kaz321123]

I'm starting work on the intro 'main menu' movie-using "Zinc" as a template for my images.

Once I'm done I'll post it here and see if you guys think it is of sufficient 'hyperspin quality'

[kaz321123]

I finished the pac-man main menu theme-please try it out guys

Pac-Man Pack Theme (5.4MB): https://mega.co.nz/#!iwIRnBRQ!XinLKkkAzRdbGFfH3JbReXZjZeB-8c25SI8HfPvXlC8

I've included the video with this download also.

Add this system to hyperhq and all that good stuff to test it (then you could later delete if ya wanted.)

[kaz321123]

I noticed I can provide people with the 'games.ini' of my pac-man pack-so they don't have to do the tedious adding to the 'alternate emulators'.

Plus I'm getting adept at just typing in the information manually in the 'games.ini' and not having to use the alternate emulators section (except for the first one of each system perhaps).

[Polemicist]

Glad you are having fun.

[horseyhorsey]

Haha... All this work you're doing I've tried to save you from doing.

If it was a tl:dr all you basically had to do is :

1. Pick games from your existing hyperlist xmls with Dons tools

2. Merge the xml with his tools

3. Drop the merged xml onto the exe I uploaded in my folder which creates that games.ini

4. Make a Main-Menu entry for "Pac-Man" , In hyperlaunch add the games.ini

[kaz321123]

I will try that horsey-those are really great suggestions! I have many more pac-man games to do.

And it is fun actually-I have a pretty good compilation going so far even if I did it the super long way.

It is like telling someone who never drove before-that it would be faster to drive than walking to the store. Driving is a no-brainer for some who have done it a long time. Driving is easy-but not to someone who never tried it before. But I'm going to try out don's tools method so I can learn how.

I haven't used don's tools much except for renaming my rom lists from an xml-tho that doesn't seem to work if the xml doesn't have crc codes

I have a bunch of playstation 1 roms that need renaming-but don's tools doesn't work-but maybe there's an 'easy' method that I had no idea about.

[kaz321123]

You've got a lot of xpadder profiles in your ftp horsey-I was working on xpadder a lot of today.

Very useful files you got on your ftp Thanks!

Downloading rom mapper right now from your ftp-gonna try to construct a list.

[Polemicist]

To be honest if you can create a real XML with a complete romset, wheel images and videos and create a dodgy pack of goodness (minus those ***headings***) I'd test it for amusement I still gotta setup the CPS wheel yet.

[horseyhorsey]

Yeah , honestly it's best to learn use the merging tool because if you wanted to create a Fighters xml that included every system, trust me , you don't want to be making a games.ini by hand.

You will see in the merged xml, Don adds an <exe> tag, which isn't used anymore. Just make sure this has the system name "<exe>mame</exe> before you drop it onto the file. This is why before you merge them ,name the xmls by system.

By using the games.ini you don't have to be renaming any roms or media then. If your playstation needs renaming that's a mission as well so I would learn to use the rom mapping like djvj posted.

[kaz321123]

I tried to merge pac-man games from atari 2600, atari 5200, and atari 7800...

But it seems some games are missing from the list:

I'll copy paste it here:

<menu>

<game image="" index="" name="Jr. Pac-Man (USA)">

<description>Jr. Pac-Man (USA)</description>

<cloneof />

<crc>5C345BAC</crc>

<manufacturer>Atari - GCC</manufacturer>

<year>1986</year>

<genre />

<rating>HSRS - GA (General Audience)</rating>

<enabled>Yes</enabled>

<exe>Atari 2600 List</exe>

</game>

<game image="" index="" name="Ms. Pac-Man (USA)">

<description>Ms. Pac-Man (USA)</description>

<cloneof />

<crc>B2D08FC9</crc>

<manufacturer>Atari - GCC</manufacturer>

<year>1982</year>

<genre />

<rating>HSRS - GA (General Audience)</rating>

<enabled>Yes</enabled>

<exe>Atari 2600 List</exe>

</game>

<game image="p" index="true" name="Pac-Man (USA)">

<description>Pac-Man (USA)</description>

<cloneof />

<crc>DDC9A881</crc>

<manufacturer>Atari</manufacturer>

<year>1981</year>

<genre>Maze</genre>

<rating>HSRS - GA (General Audience)</rating>

<enabled>Yes</enabled>

<exe>Atari 2600 List</exe>

</game>

<game image="p" index="true" name="Pac-Man 4K (USA) (Unl)">

<description>Pac-Man 4K (USA) (Unl)</description>

<cloneof />

<crc>76876F98</crc>

<manufacturer>AtariAge - Dennis Debro</manufacturer>

<year>2011</year>

<genre>Maze</genre>

<rating>HSRS - GA (General Audience)</rating>

<enabled>Yes</enabled>

<exe>Atari 2600 List</exe>

</game>

<game name="Pac-Man Collection (Homebrew)" index="" image="">

<description>Pac-Man Collection (Homebrew)</description>

<cloneof />

<crc />

<manufacturer>Namco</manufacturer>

<year>1988</year>

<genre />

<rating>HSRS - GA (General Audience)</rating>

<enabled>Yes</enabled>

<exe>Atari 7800 List</exe>

</game>

</menu>

I see 5 games that got into the list-but my separate xmls have more pac-man games. I obviously didn't do it correctly-but I'll see if I can figure it out

-Kaz

[kaz321123]

I threw the merged file at the rommapper-and it spit out a nice ini file

[Jr. Pac-Man (USA)]

System=Atari 2600 List

[Ms. Pac-Man (USA)]

System=Atari 2600 List

[Pac-Man (USA)]

System=Atari 2600 List

[Pac-Man 4K (USA) (Unl)]

System=Atari 2600 List

[Pac-Man Collection (Homebrew)]

System=Atari 7800 List

Your suggestion was really awesome-just wanted you to know that. I can very much see how useful it is!

-Kaz

[horseyhorsey]

First you got <exe>Atari 7800 list</exe>

Before merge, name that xml to just Atari 7800, then hyperlaunch knows what system to launch. Like I tried to explain before on codemasters, if the roms are named the same over systems it will only add the top most list.

[kaz321123]

Yep-I put list at the end of the name-gotta try again without that

[horseyhorsey]

Right, that was a bit of mission but got a way to use both games.ini & rom mapping inis so you can have Pac-Man (USA) for both consoles.

I'll try and find a decent way to automate making those inis. I had been wanting to do it anyway but never got into it that much.

[kaz321123]

How would the rom mapping procedure work when naming media files?

I managed to get Atari 2600 media files to work with my pack-and I can see the wheel and the videos come up fine.

My Method: Rom name would be like: 2601 Atari 2600 Pacman

(The description just says: Atari 2600 Pacman)-so the list looks very tidy when you make the field sort by description in hyperlaunchhq)

Media files would be named: 2601 Atari 2600 Pacman.png or 2601 Atari 2600 Pacman.mp4

And my procedure-although long and tedious-does show the videos and media files. I have a pretty nice pac-man pack wheel right now-including at least all the arcade pac-mans and their themes and some atari stuff. Atari 2600 only has videos so far-but I might stick in some system pictures (just like my other pac-man pack for xbox). So it would show the video to atari 2600 pac-man and its video, and a picture of an atari 2600 system (I already got the image).

The other rom mapping method would confuse me as to what to name the media files.

[kaz321123]

To be honest if you can create a real XML with a complete romset, wheel images and videos and create a dodgy pack of goodness (minus those ***headings***) I'd test it for amusement I still gotta setup the CPS wheel yet.

One thing that is challenging about this project is the wheel images.

I have the same looking wheel image for lets say: Atari 2600, as I do for Atari 5200.

At a glance it is like you are scrolling through a bunch of 'sameness'.

Perhaps the wheel images in my pack should look like a system itself. Less confusing when scrolling quickly through the list

So: Atari 2600 Pac-Man=atari 2600 system looking thing (named correctly for the rom).

My xml file is as 'valid' as the source I took it from. The same entry for some random snk game from mame serves as my main item for each game.

All the symbols are in the right spot-if they weren't-hyperlaunchhq would complain at me-and not show me my gloriously perfect green list.

Yesterday I was gonna do more pac-man pack stuff-but I was derailed by trying to get joytokey or xpadder to work. I still haven't gotten them to work too well-and it is frustrating. I tried another joystick to keyboard mapper called j2k-and what a hilarious disaster that was...it glitched out on me and started writing the letter ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo endlessly! My keyboard stopped working-so I couldn't control alt delete-I couldn't restart-I had to pull the plug on my computer.

I was worried the file would reassert itself and try to write ooooooooooooooooooo again after rebooting-thankfully it didn't.

All this because I just wanted to set up bluemsx which has a HORRIBLE controller setup (it doesn't even recognize my gamepad). It is the only emu that plays my special colecovision game 'pac-man collection'-for that one game the emulator is AWESOME!

Have I babbled on long enough?-hardly here's some more: I tested mike tyson's punchout with Nestopia vs PuNes. I went to the passcode entry screen-and just pressed repeatedly to the right (scrolling through numbers). Nestopia had no lag or stutters or missed inputs while PuNes was all over the place-sometimes missing inputs and generally being a laggy mess. PuNes is supposed to be awesomesauce for accurate nes emulation-but having that input issues makes it not very satisfying to play a game. Do you like my vanity card so far? I'm thinking along the lines of the random gibberish that is written at the end of Big Bang Theory episodes.

-Kaz

[horseyhorsey]

Well , I would just add a suffix to the rom name.

Pac-Man (USA) 2600

Pac-Man (USA) 5200

Rom Mapping:

[Pac-Man (USA) 5200]
Alternate_Archive_Name=Pac-Man (USA)
Alternate_Rom_Name_1=Pac-Man (USA)5200
Alternate_Rom_Name_2=Pac-Man (USA)

Games.ini

[Pac-Man (USA) 2600]
System=Atari 2600
[Pac-Man (USA) 5200]
System=Atari 5200

  <game name="Pac-Man (USA) 2600" index="true" image="p">
   <description>Pac-Man (USA) 2600</description>
   <cloneof />
   <crc>DDC9A881</crc>
   <manufacturer>Atari</manufacturer>
   <year>1981</year>
   <genre>Maze</genre>
   <rating>HSRS - GA (General Audience)</rating>
   <enabled>Yes</enabled>
   <exe>Atari 2600</exe>
 </game>
 <game name="Pac-Man (USA) 5200" index="" image="p">
   <description>Pac-ManAtari 5200</description>
   <cloneof />
   <crc>8873EF51</crc>
   <manufacturer>Atari</manufacturer>
   <year>1982</year>
   <genre>Action/Maze</genre>
   <rating />
   <enabled />
   <exe>Atari 5200</exe>
 </game>

The only thing you would need to rename is the media files but it that's not as hard as manually making it all. I'll try knock something up to make it easier.

[kaz321123]

Thanks for all your help Horsey! I'm learning quite a lot just by all this.

It has been tough for me to understand what rom mapping is. Where do you put that rom mapping code above?

Could you explain what rom mapping is/does? I sorta understand it now-but it is a hazy confusion.

I understand it so far as kinda like an 'alias'-where one word or phrase is programmed to mean another.

[horseyhorsey]

Well I couldn't work it out for 15 minutes even after reading but in short explanation that ini can be named whatever you like.

I named it pacman.ini and that goes "HyperLaunch\Settings\Atari 5200\Rom Mapping\pacman.ini" and just enable rom mapping in the HLHQ.

[kaz321123]

Many of my wheel images in Atari 2600 are 'cartridge end labels' type images.

But the pac-man ones are just the 'default' looking pac-man or ms pac-man

I got atari 2600 images loaded up into hyperspin-they are looking ok

Atari 2600 pac-man for instance-shows a picture of 2600 system, a video, and a marquee on top that says Atari 2600. The wheels still don't look nice-it is hard to choose a game with them all looking the same. I'll try to find end label images for pac-man.

Edit: The cartridge front view from artwork 2 will work as wheels-so I'm gonna use those.

Edit: The cartridge images are pretty big-it kinda crowds the other games-but it is a wheel-so you could just stop on what you wanted (and you'd know you were in atari 2600 pac-man area).

[kaz321123]

I just put three of the atari 2600 wheels in-they look ok like that.

How do I make them stay on each cartridge longer before changing to the 'bigger view'?

What value to change in default?

[horseyhorsey]

You could grab a pacman font & try wheel creator in my folder.