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Pause Option Breaks Mame


samgrant78

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Can anyone tell me how to get pause screen to show in MAME, I have .177 romset. Pause screen shows up in Retroarch and other emulators ok. I tried turning of and on options under pause tab in emulator settings in MAME. Pause just darkens the screen, no options are visible.

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I was having trouble with the pause screen on mame 0.201. When I press "p" the game will pause but no screen comes up. I noticed a setting in edit emulators/pause screen for "Forceful Pause Screen Activation". When I check this option, it works. What is it about my system or setup that is causing this?

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9 minutes ago, consumore said:

I was having trouble with the pause screen on mame 0.201. When I press "p" the game will pause but no screen comes up. I noticed a setting in edit emulators/pause screen for "Forceful Pause Screen Activation". When I check this option, it works. What is it about my system or setup that is causing this?

This can be difficult to figure out, unfortunately. It's either related to a glitch with one of your system's drivers, or it could be a MAME setting somewhere. Regardless, that's one reason why that option is available. Does everything work properly with forceful activation enabled?

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Hi Jason,

Thank you for responding so quickly and thank you for your excellent work on Launchbox. I have tried many frontends over the years and it wasn't until I found your software that I could finally just relax and enjoy some retro gaming.

I have successfully reset a game, saved state and loaded state. It seems to be working but it annoys me that I need to force it. I'm fairly certain that my drivers are in order. I built this machine in 2010 and it's been well maintained since. I don't have any real issues with it and all software runs as expected. That being said, anything is possible and I would gladly take a look at drivers or MAME settings that you think might be affecting the pause screen.

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On 6/1/2019 at 5:38 PM, consumore said:

Hi Jason,

Thank you for responding so quickly and thank you for your excellent work on Launchbox. I have tried many frontends over the years and it wasn't until I found your software that I could finally just relax and enjoy some retro gaming.

I have successfully reset a game, saved state and loaded state. It seems to be working but it annoys me that I need to force it. I'm fairly certain that my drivers are in order. I built this machine in 2010 and it's been well maintained since. I don't have any real issues with it and all software runs as expected. That being said, anything is possible and I would gladly take a look at drivers or MAME settings that you think might be affecting the pause screen.

It's not really a matter of if your drivers are up to date and in order; every driver is different and some have miniscule little bugs that can cause issues like this. If you want to look at MAME settings, I would suggest backing up your settings and reverting to the default settings, as those are what are known to be working properly with the pause screens.

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10 hours ago, consumore said:

Okay, I tried a default mame.ini with the same results.

Alright, well, I'm not exactly sure why forceful activation is required for you, but that's why we added it. All I can figure is that it's somehow related to your system's drivers, or something of that nature.

Edit: The only other thing to try (other than updating drivers) would be to try closing any apps you have running in the background. I've seen Remote Desktop sessions of all things cause conflicts before.

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Just for kicks and grins... (and process of elimination) maybe download a 'new' mame 0.201 from MameDev (Downloads - Previous Releases).  Just the program. No roms (which of course you can't find there).  This will ensure a complete 'reset' as opposed to just a file or 2.  Rename your existing Mame folder (i.e.  D:\Mame_old\) so as to keep save-states etc in tact.. and extract the download to the same folder-name as your existing folder was.  Then open LB, un-check the "Forceful Pause Screen..." and see if you still don't get the pause screen.  

If you don't get the pause screen, re-check the box and try again.  

Doh!  after thought... Before launching LB, you'll need to run [the 'new'] Mame and tell it where your roms are.  Don't worry about controllers, marquees ect. at this point.

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Thanks for your help, Jason and Joe.

I installed a completely new mame 0.201, which didn't change the pause screen behavior. I also closed my apps one by one, checking the pause screen after each. This included disabling Security Essentials and Malwarebytes real time protections. I even killed all of the processes that I could using task manager, but ultimately I still needed to force the pause screen.

I know that you must be busy and probably have more important things to occupy your time and this issue is really not that big of a deal for me, as it does in fact work. I am willing to continue troubleshooting, however, if it will help.

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  • 5 months later...
  • 4 months later...

Hi I'm having this same issue with pause screen functions resuming the game instead of the function selected. I've tried all of the ideas in this thread other then upgrading my pc to windows 10; I'm currently running windows 7 with latest mame and default ini setup. Can anyone confirm the pause screen and funcions working on windows 7 ? Would be good to know whether I can rule that out.

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