FlightRisk

Here are my steps. I get that RL is probably the issue here, but was hoping for a reason: set default to use RocketLauncher (which runs MAME and is set to have loading and unloading fade screens and bezels) Find a game, right click and select "launch with" and choose MAME press the pause screen key (J in my case) I get the expected pause screen with several menu items on it including the load and save states turn off startup screens so they don't compete with launchbox (or leave it. same result) just click on the game which will now launch through RL Press the pause button This time, I get a pause screen with only 3 items on it; resume game, manual and exit game. Also pause button no longer works, but I can scroll to resume

I have no idea what overhead my playing a sound with code behind will have on the startup screen. It isn't elegant, but I may just add silence to the beginning of my audio files in Audacity.

Phenomenal work as usual Jason. Some issues/questions. Just testing with Arcade games running MAME: Startup: Fade in to startup blanks the mouse cursor, shutdown screen does not Startup and Pause: How do I get backgrounds? I just have a black background with "loading" in the center, the game clear logo in the top left and sometimes a cart in the top right (capcom roms). Pause has a logo at the top left and a menu under it. Startup: If I turn off startup screens, but leave pause screens, and use Launchbox to launch, the pause screens show only "resume game" and "exit game". Pause: Is there a way to control the fade effect in and out duration (the "attack" and "release" for you musicians, vs. just the "sustain" we have now? 2 side questions: Is there a way to assign a key sequence (like a macro or auto hotkey script) to do the equivalent of right clicking on a game, selecting "launch with" and choosing "MAME" (or whatever other emulators are in the list)? Is there a way to delay a sound playing in my startup theme using XAML? I use "mediaelement". It plays as soon as the startup screen loads. So I hear "loading" before I even see the word "loading". I could set it to "manual", but have no idea in XAML how to do what I would do with a timer. I could assign "play" to a click event, bu then how do I automatically "click" it after 500 milliseconds? As I write I am thinking I need an event in XAML that calls a code behind routine that uses a DispatchTimer.

Ah, now that's cool. I'll have to think through and play with that. Would still be nice to have things in folders automatically found for guides, manuals, control layout, etc. Basically a set of folders it can look in and then show PDFs, images or videos.

What is everyone else wanting on the pause screens? My top 3 are "guides", "controller layout" and "manuals. My understanding based on this thread is that this is really not available yet, is that right? I pretty much can only have one PDF file? I might want videos, commercials, etc and perhaps artwork like at least the original cabinet. I assume we are trying to have at least as much functionality as rocket launcher has? @neil9000 I didn't follow what you meant about the additional apps folder. How does it use that and what could I use it for? I maybe lacking in imagination, but I thought it was all about creating a sort of macro so that if I launch a game, it can display a manual in browser or call some other function. How does that fit with pause screens?

What other folders is it using? It looks like it automatically looks to the "manuals" folder for one, correct? It must be matching the names to the rom or using the games database? It seems to be catching some of my manuals, but not others.

I saw it last month and was wavering on supporting it beyond my token $5 which has no "reward". I know if I don't, and it comes out later, I will regret having to may more for it. But I spent a lot this month and just supported a kickstarter for $100 for a genius who is writing a book and help for computer pattern recognition. I have another project where I will use a Raspberry Pi to recognize areas, detect motion, exclude certain areas, etc. So that is my other project over the summer I have to admit, though, that other than having to have a white border around the screen and perhaps some slight latency issues until he uses a more expensive 60fps camera, it is the best solution going. It will even be able to recognize 3D space, not just where you are pointing on the screen.

So are the new pause screens pretty much the same as the startup screens in that there will be downloadable versions of them? Are they linked to the overall theme you are using (like Unified)?

Ok. I'll probably just install a later version while I am at it.

I also turned startup screens on. I did have them off. I'll run through all the combinations including the new options in the "manage emulators" menu for "forceful pause screen activation" and "suspend emulator process while paused". Right now they are at the default for beta 10.

Ok, good job Jason. Much better. I give it 80%. You still can't keep hitting the pause key though. It works so much better but at some point will still leave the MAME window suspended and stop responding to the pause key. I am not jabbing the key, I am pressing it about every 2 or 3 seconds. If I alt-tab through the open windows, I can hear the ones not suspended (LB if it is playing music, for example). Once the emulator is "locked" (won't come out of suspend) there is almost nothing I can do. For those who don't want to reboot, this is the only way to get out of it: 1. Press Alt-Cntrl-Esc. This will bring up task manager, but you won't see it because exclusive full screen mode is buggering you 2. Press Alt-O. The options menu for task manager should display over the exclusive full screen window. 3. Press Enter for "Always on top" 4. Now the full task manager will be visible and you can find what is suspended (MAME in my case which has a command window and the emulator in it), right click on the main tree item for MAME and terminate it. You may experience issues with the mouse cursor, but I am usually able to get it back by moving it around if it disappears.

I am testing mostly using the MAME 1941 rom. It freezes in BB too. I normally use RockeLauncher, so from BB, select "run with" and use MAME (I have also tried just switching to MAME in options). It seems to show the pause screen, but often it doesn't return. Right now it just sat there. So I looked with alt-tab and see a black screen for mame and another one for "launchbox game startup". I tried hitting escape the the game startup window went gray. Trying different things (like escape) Windows pops up the "BigBox is not responding" dialog. If I try to exit BB and come back, when I launch a game, I just get a black screen. Looking at the open windows, I see MAME is there and blank. I exit BB, check again and MAME is there and hosed. I can't close it. I bring up task manager and see "console window host" and "MAME" when I expand the "MAME(2)" item in the list. MAME shows as "Suspended" and has a little leaf (eco mode icon) next to it. I have never seen that before. I looked it up and see it is a relatively new feature of Windows 10. I assume it is something you are doing to pause or suspend an application running in a window? So that may tell you something. I have to terminate MAME in order to test again. Even clicking on the X to close the window does nothing.

@Jason CarrOk, will do on checking resolution and whatever else I can. Also, all my testing until now has been in LB only, not BB. And the error was posted to your website. The error box was yours and had a button to report. So I clicked it. I didn't see that it attached the log, maybe it did, but I cut and pasted it anyway. It is your bitbucket issue #4865. "Cannot set visibility to visible or call Show, showdialog, close, or WindowInteropHelper.EnsureHandle while a Window is closing", etc. It is a system.invalidoperationexception. The log shows a log of "AM Music." stuff. There are multiple "AM Music.Pause Start" messages and then an exception. The last items I think in the stack trace were your "Wpf.Views.MainPauseView.CloseAndDispose()" method call and then the System.Windows namespace's "InternalClose" method. If I had to guess, my uneducated, ill-informed, unsolicited out loud thinking is that it may be a threading issue where a window is still open in one thread and LB is trying to close a window when another thread isn't finished with it. Or... Gremlins.

@PanteraZombie, you bring up a good point. I will try different games as well. So far I have been only in my classic arcade games. I tried 005 and 1941 just because they are on the first row of my list May be time for bed and do more testing tomorrow.

I just tried launching by right clicking and telling it to use RetroArch and MAME-Libretro and it seemed to work a little better. But it "flashes" windows. I chose exclusive full screen mode. So when I go into pause, it flashes the game window, then when I go out, I see the game flash quickly, then all black very quickly, then the game again. Hitting the key every 5 seconds, it locks in pause screen sooner or later. Usually 5 to 10 pause unpause cycles. I was able to hold down alt-tab and then hit the X on the pause window and get back into LB. No error popup so far in RA MAME as opposed to Standalone MAME. Oh and GO 'Canes!

Windows 10, older machine, Pentium dual core 2.8gHz, 4GB ram, GE Force GT-710 2GB, Using MAME .198. I sent a crash window that I saw twice also.

Yeah, it has some issues. I did a shutdown and restart and can get it to work, sort of. It doesn't like coming in and out of pause. It is slow. There is a lag and then the pause screen comes up. Then I try to unpause and it flashes different screens like it isn't blanking the windows or is alt-tabbing through them. So I will see my underlying LB window, or the game screen quickly before finally settling on the LB window finally. But it often hangs the game window. So I will here the stuck "broken record" sound of the game I was running, but then LB comes back and has it's game video sounds running at the same time. I did get that error box again so I could send a report. Hopefully that will give Jason something to go on.

I am using a keyboard for testing. No controller. I'll change buttons again. I tried ? and J. Also, it stopped loading games at one point. I could click on them and see the spinning wheel for a second and then it didn't do anything.

Having lots of trouble with beta 8 and pause screens. Things lock on the game window. If I hit alt-tab to see the other windows, I can see them, but can't get to them because the game window takes precedence. Sometimes I can click on the close window X button in the small windows while I hold Alt-Tab down, but usually I can't close the game window. I can see LB running in the background. I can't even call up task manager because I can't get it to give me the focus. At one point I saw a bug report window that said something about it could not do something with visibility. The print is very small since all I can see is the thumbnails for the Alt-Tab function. Does anyone know first of all how to get around these focus issues so that I don't have to reboot and so that I can get access to the other windows? Especially when an error box pops up so I can send a bug report. I also sometimes see a window that says "pause". There is no pattern yet as to what I do to make it popup. It seems random. I can hit my button (J) multiple times, sometimes it comes up after a bit on it's own, mostly not.

I have been trying to find the magic sequence that makes this happen, but it is usually when I right click on a game to edit its settings. Usually the screen dims to put focus on the edit popup, but then the entire screen jumps or zooms just slightly. I notice that the top border has shrunk so that looks like it zooms just a few pixels. In other words, I am missing a border (at least at the top) so that the top of the words for the menu in the top right no longer has space between it and the top of the window. It then jumps back when I exit the popup window. I am using the default theme.

Well I still can't get pause to do anything. I made the slash / question mark my pause key and nothing happened while playing the game. Then I changed it to J. All I should have to do is press that key in the middle of the game, right? I have my pause theme set to "default". Are there themes I need to install?

What keyboard button and/or controller sequence is everybody using for pause screens?

Is there a video or description of how to use pause screens yet?

It might be nice to compile a list of what keyboard keys, arcade buttons or controller mappings people find helpful. What do you use for controlling LB/BB and what do you assign when playing a game? Whether you use RetroArch, MAME or other emulators, do you try to keep them all the same or have different mappings to be more true to the original setup for consoles? Share your tips and configurations that work for you.

That's a good tip for a workaround. I can always create playlists from that too. Including it on a game screen is nice because it is part of the "history" of the game and prompts you when you didn't know, "Oh, I have the Sega version of that, let me give it a try". Thanks again Rincewind.