WHAT'S
NEW
WHAT'S
NEW
17-NOV-2008
Version 5.71 has been released!
I found a bug that I can't believe managed to make it into the previous build. I
say that because it popped up while I was working on that build, I fixed it, but
then it came back and got in there anyway. The bug is with the show icon
checkbox found under the Icons tab. If this checkbox is unchecked, then the
checkbox will become disabled preventing you from checking it in the future.
This has been fixed in this release (V5.71).
Since I had already completed a feature for the next major build, that feature
has been included in this bug-fix build. It is a new option in the Startup
dialog (seen when running the screensaver as an executable (*.exe) rather than
as a Window's screensaver (*.scr)). That feature allows the startup dialog to be
removed from the taskbar so that the screensaver is not as conspicuous while it
is running. To make the screensaver completely inconspicuous, you can minimize
the startup dialog after pressing the Start button. If you do this then the only
way to get back to the startup dialog is to press the ALT-TAB keys on the keyboard, and then select TB_Screensaver from the list of running tasks.
15-NOV-2008
Version 5.7 has been released!
Time for another release. I had a frequent user suggest that I add support for
putting Windows in a hibernate or standby mode. Normally, you will not need to
do this since Windows supports this functionality as part of its "Power Scheme"
options. But, in his case, he was running the screensaver in his MAME cabinet
and found that MAME prevented Windows from going into hibernate/standby mode.
Since this is functionality that a typical user may(?) not normally activate, I
have added the option under a new 'Advanced' tab. I have also moved some
existing screensaver options that I considered advanced under this tab as well.
They are: "Hide Windows task bar", "Only terminate screensaver when the
following key is pressed", "Allow 5, 6, 7 or 8 key to start a game" and
specifying optional MAME startup arguments.
In the previous release I had to fix the Picture/Run List dialogs so they would
once again properly identify CHD games. In earlier releases of MAME, a CHD game
was simply identified in the MameXml.xml file as a game with a disk region
attribute of "disks". In later releases, the MAME development team identified
the type of CHD medium that was used in those games. Now they are identified
using attributes such as "scsi0", "laserdisc", "cdrom", "ide", etc. As such, the
CHD column no longer identifies CHD games as simply "Yes", now they identify
them with the type of CHD medium they use (e.g. "laserdisc"). This was done to
give you more flexibility in sorting and identifying your CHD games.
Oh, and somewhere along the line the picture preview feature in the Picture/Run List dialogs stopped displaying pictures properly (if at all) when the dialog was resized from its default size. I have fixed that in this release.
31-OCT-2008
Version 5.6 has been released!
After more than 6 months I finally have another release. This version truly supports Windows Vista without all of the security issues (if you could get it to run at all). There will now be two versions available for download - the standard 32-bit version and a 64-bit version. The 64-bit version are for those of you running Vista x64 or XP x64.
This version also supports the latest version of the .NET Framework (V3.5). As such, you will need to insure that you have this version installed. If you don't have it then you will need to download it from Microsoft's web site at...
Several enhancements have been made in the Picture List and Run List dialogs. The filtering has been improved, you can open and save files, you can easily jump between the two lists, plus a few other niceties. The complete list of features and bug fixes can be read about here.
Finally, the CATVER.INI file is no longer installed by the installer. In addition, the file should now be placed in the folder where your MAME executable resides. If you currently use this file then move it to your MAME folder otherwise your game list will not show any information under the Category, Mature and Version columns.
As always, if you have any problems with this then let me know. Enjoy!
22-OCT-2008
FYI... Today I updated my version of MAME from 0.124u5 to 0.128 and ran it through the screensaver. I discovered one thing that was broke and that was the identification of CHD games. Somewhere along the way MAME changed the way these files were identified.
The next version of this screensaver will once again be able to correctly identify CHD games.
21-OCT-2008
OK, the next release is going to take a little bit longer than I originally planned. Mainly because I decided some additional features were needed. Since I was away from the project for 6+ months, I was able to discover things that were not that intuitive and others that I didn't like how they worked. Still others I had planned on fixing anyway. And so, while I was rediscovering this program to make it work under Vista, I figured I might as well tackle some of these other things to make the release more worthwhile.
The main improvements will be in the MAME Picture and Run List dialogs. While these dialogs went through a major overhaul at the beginning of the year, I found that they still needed some tweaking. The way the filter works has been overhauled. Gone are the sorting restrictions. You will also be able to see all items in your game list while the filtered items are shown highlighted. In fact, the new filter will now become another grouping option.
Another area being overhauled is the file I/O in the MAME Picture and Run Lists. A new File Open menu item is being added. This means that the Picture List filename that you currently specify under the "Picture Selection" tab will be moved to the Picture List dialog. I am also making it so that navigating between the Picture List and Run List dialogs can be done from within these dialogs without having to go back to the main configuration dialog.
I am also unearthing a few minor bugs along the way.
13-OCT-2008
I am back from my hiatus and back on this. As I mentioned in my previous update, my primary objective for the next release is making the screensaver run under Vista x64. I have currently succeeded in that venture. In fact, the next release will have two installers - one for x86 systems (Windows 2000, XP, Vista) and one for x64 systems (Windows XP x64, Vista x64). So far I am keeping with the same .NET framework (.NET 2.0).
There really won't be anything new added, just a few improvements. I have a list of future features I need to sort through to determine where to take this from here. I will keep you posted.
17-AUG-2008
If you have been wondering what is happening with this program the answer is not much. I am currently taking a summer break from this. In addition, my development PC is now a Vista x64 Quad CPU and will not currently run the current version due to various security issues. So the my plan is to get back on this later in the year and make the program run under Vista x64.
06-APR-2008
Version 5.51 has been released!
This is isn't a big release. Mostly minor bug fixes. But I have added a couple minor features as well. Check out the Version History page for details.
09-MAR-2008
Version 5.5 has been released!
This is probably the biggest release I have done as far as the number of features and bug fixes. The Version History page describes what all is in this release.
28-FEB-2008
I will soon be releasing a new version (V5.5) of this screensaver. This version will have several improvements in both bug fixes and features. The two biggest changes are in the Picture/Run List dialogs and in the ability to run the screensaver standalone. For example, I have overhauled the look of the Picture/Run List dialogs. They are now less cluttered. Almost all functionality that was available via variously placed buttons has been moved into a menu-based toolbar. In addition, a context (right-click) menu is now available for testing a game, running a game, marking a game as bad, or marking it as good. You can also change the font used in the game list.
The other improvement is running the screensaver standalone and not as a
screensaver. What I mean by this is that you can rename the TB_ScreenSaver.scr
file to be TB_ScreenSaver.exe and then double-click on the .exe file to launch
it. This capability was available before but it had several limitations. One of
those was that you could not toggle between running the screensaver and
configuring it. If you wanted to reconfigure the screensaver after running it
you had to restart the program. The other limitation was that you could not
delay its startup like Windows does with a typical screensaver. In other words,
when you run the screensaver as a standalone application, you can specify how
many seconds of user inactivity must expire before the screensaver starts. You
may be wondering why would I ever want to do this since Windows already does
this with screensaver programs. Well for one thing, certain services sometimes
trick Windows in believing that a computer is "in-use" even though nobody is
actively working in it. I had this problem with a program that routinely updates
the data from my weather station to a web site. As such, when I configured
Windows to run my screensaver with a delay interval of 3 minutes or more, I
found that the screensaver would never start unless I either shortened the
period of time to be 2 minutes or less, or I shutdown my weather service.
Neither of those I wanted to do so I implemented keyboard and mouse monitoring
in the screensaver when running standalone. Now I can have the screensaver kick
in whenever I want. In addition, you can specify the startup delay to be less
than 1 minute since the duration value is specified in seconds.
By request from BYOAC member TheShanMan, a feature has been added to mute the
sound card while the screensaver is running. A couple of years ago the
screensaver had this functionality but it used to only mute the sound when a
MAME game was running. That caused problems with the sound coming back
prematurely. As such, this feature was removed. This version now mutes the sound
for the duration that the screensaver runs. Muting the sound for just the period
while a MAME game is running can still be accomplished with the volume slider
found under the MAME tab.
The complete list of improvements will be described when V5.5 is released.
Hopefully, in the next week or so after further testing and after I have updated
the documentation.
28-SEP-2007
Version 5.4 has been released!
Another release on the heels of 5.33. Since the overhaul of the icons I can now
add options that were not possible before. This release allows icons to move
over one another and underneath existing pictures. In addition, I have added a
new Change Icon option that allows an icon to only change its image when it
touches another icon (before you could only get this behavior when you enabled
the Change Icon on any edge option).
Also fixed a fairly major bug. If you did not have icons enabled you could not
get the screensaver to display pictures :-(
26-SEP-2007
Version 5.33 has been released!
After implementing the icon feature way back when I was never happy with the
amount of resources (CPU cycles)that it required and the fact that I could not
have (at least not on my machine) any more than a couple icons bouncing around
at a moderate speed.
The problem with the implementation was that I used PictureBoxes to hold the
images. PictureBoxes are overkill for this sort of thing. In this release I have
eliminated the icon PictureBoxes and simply draw the icons on the screen as
simple images. As a result of doing this, I can now have on my test machine 10
icons bouncing around the screen at full speed with negligible use of CPU and
smooth movements.
A few other fixes and changes have been made which you can read about here.
17-SEP-2007
Version 5.32 has been released!
This is relatively minor bug fix release. You can read what was fixed here.
09-SEP-2007
Version 5.31 has been released!
A bug that I found today warranted a new release. I discovered that the screensaver would crash if you were not running in MAME mode.
06-SEP-2007
Version 5.3 has been released!
V5.3 is finally out. It was MUCH bigger than I anticipated.
Because of the port to Vista and .NET 2.0, I took the opportunity to do a code
review as well as a thorough testing of the code. As a result, a LOT of behind
the scenes changes were made. For instance, the creation of the PLF file is now
automatic so if you have never specified one or have inadvertently deleted it, a
new one will be automatically created for you. I am also doing a lot more file
checking then before. In addition, for new installations the default values for
various folders needed by the screensaver no longer defaults to 'C:\'. They are
now empty forcing you to choose a valid location.
Feature-wise an Apply button has been added that will only be enabled if you
have made a change. In addition, you will be prompted to save changes if you
Cancel your configuration changes after having made changes. Now you will know
when you close the screensaver's configuration dialog if you made any changes.
Another improvement is an option to auto-acknowledge MAME startup messages. As
mentioned in an earlier post, only the benign messages will be acknowledged. The
more serious messages that tell you that you should not be running a program
will not be acknowledged in order to minimize the risk of running a faulty game
and crashing your system. This feature will not work when you are testing a game
so that copyright messages and warnings are brought to your attention.
For Windows Vista users there are few caveats that you should be aware of...
- The "Only terminate screensaver when the following key is pressed" does not
work as intended. For instance, if you specify the F1 key as your termination
key you will find that you can terminate a running MAME game by pressing the
Escape key. This should not happen - instead the key should be ignored and only
the F1 key should terminate the game. This works fine under XP.
- The Picture List and Run List progress bar that is displayed when these lists
are initially displayed never reach 100%. This is just a minor cosmetic thing
that I am going to look into later. Again, they work fine under XP.
- Vista does not uninstall the screensaver when you use Control Panel's
Add/Remove Programs dialog even though the screensaver is removed from the
Control Panel list. So if you want to uninstall or upgrade the screensaver under
Windows Vista you will have to do it manually by performing the following
steps...
1. Delete the TB_ScreenSaver.scr file in the C:\Windows\System32 folder.
2. Delete the ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib.DLL file in the C:\Windows\System32
folder.
3. Delete the KeyBoardMouseHook.DLL file in the C:\Windows\System32 folder.
4a. For upgrades, delete the TB_ScreenSaver.htm file in the folder where the
screensaver was installed (typically C:\Program Files\TacoBirds\TB_ScreenSaver).
4b. For uninstalling, delete the folder where the screensaver was installed
(typically C:\Program Files\TacoBirds\TB_ScreenSaver).
Again, you will not have these problems under Windows XP.
As mentioned above, you will now need to install Microsoft's .NET Framework 2.0
to make this screensaver work. You can find links to download this over on the
Downloads page.
22-AUG-2007
So far I have not had any big surprises running MAME games using the screensaver under Vista. I still have some more testing to do so I cannot put a fork in it until the testing is complete.
I have decided for the next release to fix something that has been quite an annoyance for me and probably for you as well. It is those nagging messages MAME presents you that you must "OK" before MAME will run a game. You know the ones... this game does not have working sound, does not support screen flipping, or the colors may not be quite right. These warnings in most cases do not affect running a game in its demo mode. In earlier versions of MAME these messages were practically non-existant. Now, practically every game has a "problem" even though it passes a ROM audit and MAME says it drivers and emulation work fine. The screensaver will now acknowledge these messages automatically thereby eliminating you from having to do so. I will probably make this an option in case it causes adverse behavior on some systems but on my Vista system it appears to work just fine.
17-AUG-2007
Hey, I am still here! I was late getting started on this and then I discovered that the changeover was more involved than I expected. While I was making the changes to make the program compatible with Vista and .NET 2.0 I decided to clean up a few things and change the way some other things work. All of these changes are behind the scenes so you won't notice any of them. But they should speed up a few things or make configuring, especially for first time users, a little easier. Or, at least, a bit more intuitive.
So far I have got the basic screensaver working as well as all the dialog functions. The one thing I have not yet tested is running a MAME game. Yeah, probably the most important thing but until I get the core stuff working right, there is no sense on working on running games.
As expected, I have been testing the sh!t out of this and that has also taken more time than I expected. And there are still some other non-MAME functions to test. But I believe I am more than halfway through this. Plus, I am giving this a higher priority of late so hopefully this will get done sooner rather than later.
05-JUL-2007
Recently I tried to run this screensaver under Window's Vista operating system. It failed to run complaining that I did not have the correct version of the .NET framework installed. Actually, I did but for some reason Vista did not recognize it.
That got me thinking that now is the time to upgrade this screensaver to version 2 of the .NET Framework which also means upgrading my version of Developer Studio to 2005. The upgrade of the screensaver will be a little bit involved, but not terribly so. I was allowed to take a couple of shortcuts in my code in .NET 1.1 (because I was lazy) that allowed me to do things I really shouldn't do within secondary threads. Most, if not all, are fairly benign but anytime you need to rewrite code you run the risk of breaking something.
So hopefully after doing this upgrade the screensaver will run under Vista. I am curious if anyone has had success running the screensaver under Vista. If you have then drop me a note and let me know. I will still do the .NET upgrade but at the same time I would like to know if the older .NET version is the reason. Thanks
02-JUL-2007
I was poking around the internet and found an updated source for the catver.ini file used by the screensaver. This file is used by the Picture List and Run List to identify which MAME games have a mature theme, what category a game belongs to (shooter, maze, sports, etc.) and what version of MAME added support for that game. The web site for the updated catver.ini file can be found here... http://www.progettoemma.net/?catlist
Place the catver.ini file in the folder where you installed the screensaver (typically "C:\Program Files\TacoBirds\TB_ScreenSaver").
I have included a link to this file from the Downloads page. Thanks to Stefano B. for keeping this file updated!
01-JUL-2007
Version 5.22 has been released!
Another fixer upper...
This release eliminates some of the MAME messages you must acknowledge before starting a game. It purposely does not eliminate the copyright messages you see when testing a game for the first time under the Picture or Run List dialogs. It also does not eliminate messages having to do with games that may not run correctly. Copyright messages are important but can be an annoyance when running the screensaver as a screensaver, hence the way it works the way it does.
Fixed a bug that prevented the screensaver running from Window's preview button when the screensaver is not in MAME mode. Thanks to Jason for informing me about this.
Fixed an intermittent bug that would occasionally mark a game as bad when running it from the Picture or Run List dialog.
Improved the Q*bert icon in all configuration dialogs.
26-JUN-2007
All of the broken links and upload issues have been resolved.
12-JUN-2007
I am currently having issues uploading updates to this web site - hence all the broken links. I hope to get them resolved in the next couple of days. Sorry for the inconvenience.
16-APR-2007
Version 5.21 has been released!
This release updates the screensaver to support the latest version of MAME (V0.115). Specifically, the screensaver now supports -str (seconds to run), formerly the -ftr (frames to run), argument. This -str argument is needed by the screensaver to prevent intervention by the user to run a game. One benefit of this new argument is that the maximum game run time has been increased from 240 seconds to 3600 seconds. Actually, is could be increased further but I saw no need to have the screensaver run a game for longer than 1 hour. Of course, a game will still run indefinitely if you manually start it.
The other thing this release fixes is the documentation. For some reason the 5.2 installer did not install updated documentation.
05-APR-2007
Version 5.2 has been released!
This is a big release that has been a long time
in coming. A couple of months ago I had mostly completed this but had a couple
bugs that I needed to work out. Then I lost interest to work on some other more
pressing things around the house. A couple days ago I finally got around to
finishing this up.
The main features added to this release is support for a catver.ini file,
ability to select and rearrange columns in the Picture and Run List dialogs, and
automatic saving of your Picture/Run List configurations (except game selection
which still works the same way).
The catver.ini file is a file that categorizes games, identifies which games
have a mature theme and what MAME version the game was added. Unfortunately,
this file does not appear to be updated anymore. It appears that the file is not
even available anymore (www.catver.com). At
least I can no longer access that page anymore. I don't know if anyone is
working anymore on this or what. Perhaps someone can give me a heads up.
Fortunately, I was able to grab a copy of this file before it disappeared and
have included it with this version of the screensaver. The version included with
the screensaver supports all games that MAME 0.104u9 supports. The games
supported by more recent versions of MAME will not contain any category,
maturity or version information. Fortunately, since it is a simple text file,
updating the file yourself to include the newer games is pretty straightforward.
I have been debating whether I want to write a front-end for this file to make
this task easier. Currently, this falls under the heading of "If I have nothing
better to do" so I can't say that I will commit to this.
A Picture/Run List column editor has also been
added to allow easy management of your columns. You can hide/show columns or
change the order in which they are displayed using this editor.
Finally, any changes that you make in the Picture/Run List dialogs will be
automatically saved to the registry. This includes dialog placement and size,
game column order and size, grouping option and bad game status. The latter
saves you from having to rescan all of your games to find bad or missing ROMs
every time you open the Picture/Run List dialogs. The games that you have chosen
to display or run is still handled by the "Save" button.
Another nice feature is the ability to have the Picture/Run List dialogs
automatically open when you configure the screensaver. For me this was a
necessity since the vast majority of the time I configured the screensaver I
needed to open the Picture and/or Run List dialogs.
There are some other minor enhancements and fixes that you can read about on the
Version History page.