Super_Paulie

thanks Jason, it works an absolute charm and it goes down a storm here. All the artwork panels are under clear perspex so can be removed and replaced depending on the events we have. Here it is with just my own retro artwork while its in my office over the holidays. I was in the process of customising all the menus but its slow going. The marquees work a treat and with some coding any rom that has no marquee now shows the clear logo up there instead. Very pleased with it and the the help from you guys to make it.

guys, i can confirm, i downloaded the Beta and that has indeed fixed the problem. You guys do a brilliant job here, cheers.

thanks guys. How do i get a hold of the BETA?

its not me, the cabinet is in a public area and as such people press the buttons multiple times. It happens every single day and im the one who has to go up, open task manager and close down all the instances of it. Naturally i dont do it myself, but i cant control a rig out in the public areas. "For now you could try just pressing it once" I do. Unknown strangers/unfamiliar users dont. But the fact is we dont have a self contained unit there, it can be broken by people doing this. Thanks Jason, i will look into the BETA to see if that resolves it.

hi guys. Question for you. When using Big Box, when you select a ROM that opens with MAME. If you click/press enter/joystick enter button multiple times then the ROM tries to load up, multiple times. This then causes all sorts of issues when exiting as it leaves the other versions still open. Please see attached screen shot for what i mean. Is there any way around this, or to stop MAME opening up more than once? i am running Windows 7.

Hmm, i haven't been able to get the font to change to anything other than aerial or segoe I think for some reason. I am using textblock but it just won't pick the fonts up, I'm naming them exactly as they are in the fonts folder. Not the end of the world but I did have a Font in mind. **worked it out, for some reason it doesnt like the font i had in mind and various other ones so i think there is a limitation there maybe. I have found on very similar that works though! Thanks a lot guys.

excellent! Sorry for all the questions here, i know i must be hard work! Is there a way to add a border or show the grid on screen, so to help with placement? so that once you are happy you can then remove the border? ** actually i can use coloured blocks to recreate this, see attached. I have to admit i am quite enjoying this coding malarky even though i am basically trial and erroring it. ** Also can you use any font you like, as the font i did want to use simply wont show. I assumed you just reference the actual name of the font? Thanks guys!

thanks Jason, thats worked. Is there a list of the ActiveGame items and their syntax? i have looked but cant find a definitive list. Love the program Jason, it reminds me of the old Symbian OS that was on the Nokia phones.

its cool, im happy with what i have got, it works well. The code is just quite a steep learning curve to do in work time! Another quickie, how do i reference the games title? im WheelGamesView im making a custom screen but cant find any reference to the game title syntax, can anyone shed any light on that? i assume its: <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=ActiveGame.XXX}" XXX is the myserty for my currently. Cheers guys, enjoying trying to figure this out.

ok, so this is what i have came up with. My brain suggest this shouldnt work, as i am not referencing the clearLogo anywhere in the code, however it appears if no marquee is present. It also applies the clearLogo OR marqueeImage as the blurEffect image even though i am not referencing that directlty wither, i have even added "x" as the source and it still pulls it up, so there is something strange going on here. Anyways i have settled. If there is no marquee it shows the clear logo instead with the same clear logo behind but blurred. I have set up a grid so i can control the shape of the "blurred image" to make it more visually appealing. If there is a marquee present then it still shows the aforementioned clearLogo, blurred logo but then the marquee on top of both so you cant see them, job done. Heres the code, and heres how it looks in the cabinet for the outcome. Pic1 if the ROM has a marquee, and the other picture what happens if it doesnt. Thanks a bunch guys, i think ive worked out the code but still a bit of a mystery. <Grid Height="{Binding ElementName=Canvas, Path=ActualHeight}" Width="{Binding ElementName=Canvas, Path=ActualWidth}"> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="640*" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="640*" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="640*" /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="465*" /> <RowDefinition Height="615*" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Image Source="x" Grid.RowSpan="1" Grid.Row="0" Grid.ColumnSpan="3" Grid.Column="1" Panel.ZIndex="0" Stretch="Fill" RenderOptions.BitmapScalingMode="LowQuality"><Image.Effect><BlurEffect Radius="100"/></Image.Effect></Image> <Image Source="{Binding Path=SelectedGame.MarqueeImagePath}" Grid.RowSpan="1" Grid.Row="0" Grid.ColumnSpan="3" Grid.Column="0" Stretch="Uniform" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center" RenderOptions.BitmapScalingMode="HighQuality" Panel.ZIndex="1"/> </Grid> </UserControl>

still no joy. For my own interests now more than anything im interested in why the code doesn't work. So stripped back to the below, even this wont work. It just shows the marquee associated with the ROM. <Image Source="pack://siteoforigin:,,,/Images/defaultMarq.png" Panel.ZIndex="0" Stretch="Fill" RenderOptions.BitmapScalingMode="LowQuality"></Image> Now although its not picking the correct image, it is adhering to the Stretch and quality parts of the code, so is it the path that is not correct? So until the above works, then it will defo be a non starter. So how come the above code/path is being ignored...? or should i just leave this and move on! ha

Yes I think so. I'm not entirely sure what I want now! ? I don't really care if it 'over-runs' in any direction, as when the screen if in the cabinet you only ever see the top third. The blurred image is basically central to the screen but that means you only ever see the very top of it, if you get me. If you set that image to be "top" will it scale out from the top in every direction? Like off the top of the screen? I think that's what I'm needing, let me try to draw a picture on my phone... I think I would like it to expand from it's position at the top, hopefully the images explain a bit! The first image is what happens currently, the second image is what I would like. The red dotted box is the only bit visible when in the cab. You guys are really helpful, this has kept me entertained all day!

Sorry, I didn't explain that very well. I set the clear logo/marquee to the very top of the screen so that it shows in the cut out in the cabinet. This works perfectly. As an addition to this, I have the image show again at Z0 but blurred. Obviously to keep the aspect ratio of the blurred clear logo, it expands to the size of the screen and thus only the top third of that is visible when in the cabinet, which is mostly blank space usually in clear logos. Which is why I would have preferred a static image as the blurred background that I could have made to fit. It's not a problem, don't worry about it, it still looks great!

No worries, I really appreciate the help with trying to achieve it. Frankly it looks just fine with the image of the clear/marquee repeated underneath blurred, it's just often the clear has a lot of blank space at the top and as the marquee monitor only has the top third visible it's way off the mark. A very minor gripe in the scheme of things, it's looking great so far I'm really happy with it. Interesting how you can manipulate the code, I think I'll look into it to see what else can be achieved in the game wheel etc! Thanks for today guys.

no error this time, but again the same as the others, just shows the marquee/clearlogo again. (Capture 7) If you take out the lines referring to the clear logo and the marquee it just shows the blurred image this time, but still no sign of the "defaultMarq.png"! (Capture 8)