mamewah help

[jvernick]

hello, i'm pretty new at this so please bear with me. i've been using mame32 for some time now and i thought it was a good time to try out mamewah. so far so good except for 2 problems. one, i cannot find where to put the layout files and,2, when i select a game to play from my mame list it takes me to another screen where it asks what game i want to play. shouldnt it take me to the game from the mamewah screeen? being a mame32 lifer, this is a new screen to me. please help

[FatTrucker]

You put the layout files in the mamewah/config/emuname folder you want to use it with. mamewah works on theme's now so create a new folder in each mamewah/config/emuname folder and give these folders a common name.

so:

mamewah/config/mame/mytheme
mamewah/config/snes/mytheme

and so on.

Now take your mame layout file (make sure its called layout.lay) and your mame background image (make sure its called main.jpg) and put it into the mame/mytheme folder.

Now do the same with your snes skin, naming the layout, layout.lay and the background, main.jpg and put them into the snes/mytheme folder etc etc.

Finally open the mamewah.ini file and next to the theme field type: Mytheme

Mamewah will now look for a folder called mytheme in each emu config folder and use the skin it finds there when you open that emulators gamelist.

The reason its going to a second list when you launch a game is because you are launching mame32 not commandline mame.

Download and set up commandline mame and use mamewah to launch that instead and it will go straight to the game.

[jvernick]

thanks for the help but none of those suggestions helped. i downloaded and and ran commandline mame and still got mame's game selection menu. i still cant get mamewah to display my layout

[FatTrucker]

Post your mamewah and mamewah/config/mame/mame.ini files here.

In relation to your layouts, if they are valid mamewah lay files and backgrounds then there has to be an issue with your file structure, how have you got your mamewah folders set up and where are you putting stuff.

Finally what version of mamewah are you using as the structure and filenames are different for each version

[jvernick]

I'm using mamewah 1.6.0.3. I've been trying command line mame and when i select a game to play in mamewah, i'm booted to another game selection screen. this is my mame.ini for mamewah....

### mame.ini (mamewah v1.63) ###

emulator_title Arcade

### List Generation Settings ###
rom_path [emuexepath]\roms
rom_extension zip
dat_file
nms_file
catver_ini_file [emuexepath]\catver.ini
list_generation_method rom_folder_vs_listxml

### Execution Settings ###
pre_emulator_app_commandlines
emulator_commandline j:\mame1\mame.exe
post_emulator_app_commandlines
general_app_commandlines

### Artwork Settings ###
artwork_image_paths [emuexepath]\snap
movie_preview_path [emuexepath]\previews
movie_artwork_no 1
enable_fuzzy_search 0
history_dat_file
history_dat_artwork_no 2

### Screen-Saver Settings ###
enable_music_in_screensaver 1
select_random_game 0
saver_type gamelist_slideshow
movie_path
movie_fullscreen 1
quit_delay 0
saver_commandline

### Additional Settings ###
music_path
lcd_display_file_path
description_display [description]{scroll}

### Settings used by MAMEWAH ###
current_list 0


what in the heck am i doing wrong? Plus i still cant figure out the layouts.

[FatTrucker]

Your emulator_commandline isn't a commandline, its just a shortcut to your mame.exe, try replacing it with:

j:\mame1\mame.exe "[rompath]\[name].[romext]"{autodosbox}{nosafelaunch}

(The space between mame.exe and the "quote marks is deliberate).

Re the layouts try going through it one step at a time:

1. Get your mame layout. Name the lay file layout.lay and name the background file main.jpg

2. Create a folder in your mamewah/config/mame folder called mytheme so the path is mamewah/config/mame/mytheme.

3. Place your layout and background image into the mytheme folder.

4. Open your mamewah.ini file and type mytheme next to the theme option.

5. Start Mamewah, press 2 and choose the 'select theme' option. You should be presented with the 'mytheme' option. Select it using the '1' key and your layout should appear.

Lastly if you're using commandline mame you need to create a mame.ini file.

Hit the Start button on your windows desktop, select 'run' and type cmd <hit return>

You should now have a command prompt open on your desktop.

Now type J: <hit return>

Then type cd J:\mame1 <hit return> (the cd is the command for change directory)

So now it shows:
J:\> mame1

Now type mame -cc <hit return> (note the space between the word mame and the -cc is deliberate, cc is the command for create config).

You've now setup commandline mame to work properly.

[jvernick]

thanks i'll give it a shot!!

[jvernick]

that worked for me , thanks. just one more question. based on my mame.ini file above, how do i add artwork, right now it's only set up for snaps. i would like to add marquees and game video too.

thanks

[FatTrucker]

In the layout designer that comes with mamewah, the various image fields are labelled artwork 1, artwork 2, artwork 3 etc etc. You can activate as many fields as you like and change their size and position on the screen then save the layout file.

In the mamewah/config/mame/mame.ini you express these fields like this:

artwork_image_paths [emuexepath]/snap;[emuexepath]/marquees;[emuexepath]/flyers

and so on and soforth. Mamewah allocates them in order so in the above case snap will be put in artwork field 1, marquees will be put in artwork field 2 and flyers in artwork field 3.

Also note that you only use [emuexepath] if your artwork folders are in the same folder as the emulator.exe file. Otherwise replace [emuexepath] with the actual location of the folders e.g. F:\emulation\artwork\snap;F:\emulation\artwork\mar quees etc etc.

To use the game videos you need to specify their location in movie_preview_path [emuexepath]/previews for example then you need to tell mamewah which artwork field you want the movies to display in using the movie_artwork_no setting. So if you want your movie previews to display instead of snapshots you would enter:

movie_artwork_no 1

Now if you open your mamewah.ini you will see an entry for delay_before_movie_preview. You can specify a number (in seconds) next to this entry before the movie previews display so for example if you set:

delay_before_movie_preview 5 in your mamewah.ini
and movie_artwork_no 1 in your mamewah, mame.ini

then Mamewah will display a screenshot in Artwork field number 1 for 5 seconds then start playing the movie preview file there instead.

Here is an example pic of my mamewah, mame setup with screenshots (and AVI's) in Artwork 1, Marquees in Artwork 2, Control Panels in Artwork 3 and Flyers in Artwork 4. I positioned them using the layout designer so they would appear in the correct places on the background image to make an image similar to the original cab.

[FatTrucker]

*deleted by FatTrucker - Double Post*