Recent changes to Win32

WikiPage Win32 modified by Björn Ståhl

Björn Ståhl — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 06:34:30 -0000

--- v6
+++ v7
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@
 9. Copy any snapshot videos you want to be shown into the movies folder.
 10. Run the "Arcan (Gridle)" shortcut, you should now be up and running. Enjoy.

-If internal launch performance is sluggish, try and disable vsync (add -v argument to commandline). The 'welcome' theme has a list of supported command-line arguments.
+If internal launch performance is sluggish, try and experiment with VSYNC (-v), Waitsleep (-V) and vsync-falign (-F). The 'welcome' theme has a list of supported command-line arguments.

 ------

@@ -31,13 +31,13 @@

 Note that if you get a message box that says: “openal32.dll” was not found — try and rerun the oalinst.exe that's hidden away in your installation directory.

-Note that if the #games shown in the welcome theme is 0, most other themes will refuse to run. The reason 
+Note that if the #games shown in the welcome theme is 0, most other themes will refuse to run. The reason is quite simply that your database doesn't find any games. Possibly because nothing has been added to the resources folder, see *Configuration* below.

 If you just get a window that appears and quickly disappears again, it seems like the OpenGL support on your installation is too primitive (check graphic card drivers and all that).

 Configuration
 ----
-Next step would be to add some games. The ‘Build DB’ tool will try and do this automatically (if you are feeling brave, fire up a terminal window and look through all the different options that the tool ‘arcan_romman.exe’ accepts) or check out [Database Tool] for a more detailed description.
+Next step would be to add some games. The ‘Build DB’ tool will try and do this automatically (if you are feeling brave, fire up a terminal window and look through all the different options that the tool ‘arcan_romman.exe’ accepts) or check out [Database Tool] for a more detailed description. This tool can also try and automatically fill out more detailed game information, download additional artwork assets, generate thumbnails etc.

 However, this tool also requires a certain structure for things to go smoothly. Open the folder where you installed Arcan and look inside the subdirectory marked ‘resources‘. 

@@ -74,10 +74,10 @@

 The toolchain used to build and package the windows version however, isn't. The engine code is compliant with the age-old ISO/IEC 9899:1999 standard which Microsoft have explicitly stated that they will not ever support. Any configuration / build-system manager experienced with CMake/MinGW64 should feel free to contact the dev-team if you care to help out.

-That said, the only tangible benefits here would be a possible increase in performance for libretro cores. 64-bit applications can still be launched externally and the engine itself shouldn't be performance sensitive enough for it to matter until the 0.3.0 branch.
+That said, the only tangible benefits here would be a possible increase in performance for libretro cores. 64-bit applications can still be launched externally and the engine itself shouldn't be performance sensitive enough for it to matter until the more advanced 3D stages in the Roadmap have been reached. 

 Hijack- support
 ----
 The library and injection mechanism used to hijack 3rd party targets have not been ported to the windows platform. Due to the limited number of OpenGL and/or SDL compatible applications it would make more sense to develop a similar one for Direct3D/Direct Input using the support functions part of the frameserver as a template, or make a specialized SDL build altogether.

-As the current dev-team has little access or use for Windows outside of VirtualBox and VMWare, which doesn't support enough OpenGL features for this to be successfully developed, it would be a good starting point for any senior w32 developer to help out.
+As the current dev-team has little access or use for Windows outside of VirtualBox and VMWare, which doesn't support enough OpenGL features for this to be successfully developed, it would be a good starting point for any senior/master w32 developer to help out.

WikiPage Win32 modified by Björn Ståhl

Björn Ståhl — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 11:28:35 -0000

--- v5
+++ v6
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
 Short version:
 
 
-1. Download installer, libretro-cores and whatever models you want.
+1. Download installer and libretro-cores.
 2. Run installer, open installation directory and go to the resources subdirectory.
 3. Copy the libretro-cores into the target directory, rename them to look more pretty (e.g. snes.dll rather than libretro-git-snes9x.dll) and perhaps a mame/ume.exe.
 4. Create folders with names matching the targets (mame.exe -> mame etc.) in games
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@
 9. Copy any snapshot videos you want to be shown into the movies folder.
 10. Run the "Arcan (Gridle)" shortcut, you should now be up and running. Enjoy.
 
-If internal launch performance is sluggish, try and disable vsync (add -v argument to commandline)
+If internal launch performance is sluggish, try and disable vsync (add -v argument to commandline). The 'welcome' theme has a list of supported command-line arguments.
 
 ------
 
@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@
 
 Configuration
 ----
-Next step would be to add some games. The ‘Build DB’ tool will try and do this automatically (if you are feeling brave, fire up a terminal window and look through all the different options that the tool ‘arcan_romman.exe’ accepts).
+Next step would be to add some games. The ‘Build DB’ tool will try and do this automatically (if you are feeling brave, fire up a terminal window and look through all the different options that the tool ‘arcan_romman.exe’ accepts) or check out [Database Tool] for a more detailed description.
 
 However, this tool also requires a certain structure for things to go smoothly. Open the folder where you installed Arcan and look inside the subdirectory marked ‘resources‘. 
 
@@ -61,9 +61,23 @@
 Things may still look a little dull. We can fix this by adding screenshots and moviesnapshots. This is as simple as copying the images and videos you want associated with a game (assuming they match the ‘setname’ of the game of course), into the corresponding
  folders in ‘resources’.
 
-There are quite a few options to how you want to organise media files, and some are dictated by the specifics of whatever theme you are using. The pattern used by the [resourcefinder.lua] supportscript are:
+There are quite a few options to how you want to organize media files, and some are dictated by the specifics of whatever theme you are using. The pattern used by the [resourcefinder.lua] supportscript are:
 
 \group\setname
 \group\target\setname
 
 where (group) can be screenshots, movies, videos, snapshots, bezels, models
+
+64-Bit support
+----
+There's no 64-bit version available and thus, the windows build won't run 64-bit libretro cores as we currently lack a proper, working, 64-bit cross compilation tool-chain. The main application should be fully 64-bit compliant as it is with minor changes to the Windows specific parts of the code in arcan_general.c/h.
+
+The toolchain used to build and package the windows version however, isn't. The engine code is compliant with the age-old ISO/IEC 9899:1999 standard which Microsoft have explicitly stated that they will not ever support. Any configuration / build-system manager experienced with CMake/MinGW64 should feel free to contact the dev-team if you care to help out.
+
+That said, the only tangible benefits here would be a possible increase in performance for libretro cores. 64-bit applications can still be launched externally and the engine itself shouldn't be performance sensitive enough for it to matter until the 0.3.0 branch.
+
+Hijack- support
+----
+The library and injection mechanism used to hijack 3rd party targets have not been ported to the windows platform. Due to the limited number of OpenGL and/or SDL compatible applications it would make more sense to develop a similar one for Direct3D/Direct Input using the support functions part of the frameserver as a template, or make a specialized SDL build altogether.
+
+As the current dev-team has little access or use for Windows outside of VirtualBox and VMWare, which doesn't support enough OpenGL features for this to be successfully developed, it would be a good starting point for any senior w32 developer to help out.

WikiPage Win32 modified by Björn Ståhl

Björn Ståhl — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 18:46:06 -0000

--- v4
+++ v5
@@ -2,8 +2,7 @@
 ---------
 
 Short version:
-
-
+
 
 1. Download installer, libretro-cores and whatever models you want.
 2. Run installer, open installation directory and go to the resources subdirectory.

WikiPage Win32 modified by Björn Ståhl

Björn Ståhl — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 18:45:20 -0000

--- v3
+++ v4
@@ -2,6 +2,9 @@
 ---------
 
 Short version:
+
+
+
 1. Download installer, libretro-cores and whatever models you want.
 2. Run installer, open installation directory and go to the resources subdirectory.
 3. Copy the libretro-cores into the target directory, rename them to look more pretty (e.g. snes.dll rather than libretro-git-snes9x.dll) and perhaps a mame/ume.exe.

WikiPage Win32 modified by Björn Ståhl

Björn Ståhl — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 13:41:41 -0000

--- v2
+++ v3
@@ -12,6 +12,10 @@
 8. Copy the images you want to be shown into the screenshots folder.
 9. Copy any snapshot videos you want to be shown into the movies folder.
 10. Run the "Arcan (Gridle)" shortcut, you should now be up and running. Enjoy.
+
+If internal launch performance is sluggish, try and disable vsync (add -v argument to commandline)
+
+------
 
 Detailed
 ----
@@ -29,26 +33,35 @@
 
 If you just get a window that appears and quickly disappears again, it seems like the OpenGL support on your installation is too primitive (check graphic card drivers and all that).
 
-3. Next step would be to add some games. The ‘Build DB’ tool will try and do this automatically (if you are feeling brave, fire up a terminal window and look through all the different options that the tool ‘arcan_romman.exe’ accepts).
+Configuration
+----
+Next step would be to add some games. The ‘Build DB’ tool will try and do this automatically (if you are feeling brave, fire up a terminal window and look through all the different options that the tool ‘arcan_romman.exe’ accepts).
 
-However, this tool also requires a certain structure for things to go smoothly. Open the folder where you installed Arcan and look inside the subdirectory marked ‘resources‘. It will look something like this:
+However, this tool also requires a certain structure for things to go smoothly. Open the folder where you installed Arcan and look inside the subdirectory marked ‘resources‘. 
 
-now, there are two directories of immediate importance here, ‘games’ and ‘targets’. In ‘targets’ you add the executables (or symlinks to them) e.g. mame.exe.
+There are two directories of immediate importance, ‘games’ and ‘targets’. In ‘targets’ you add the executables (or symlinks to them) e.g. mame.exe. snes.dll, ... 
 
 Then you create a corresponding subdirectory in ‘games’ that has the same name (excluding extensions), so for this example, you’d get a ‘games\mame’ folder.
 
-Copy or move all the roms that you own and mame can play into this folder and re-run the ‘builddb’ shortcut again. If all goes well, it will autodetect that it is mame you are trying to add and run a specialized parser which will extract information (and optionally validate) and add it to your local database.
+Copy or move all the roms that you own and mame can play into this folder and re-run the ‘builddb’ shortcut again. If all goes well, it will auto detect that it is mame you are trying to add and run a specialised parser which will extract information (and optionally validate) and add it to your local database.
 
 When the ‘builddb’ step finished, relaunch the ‘Arcan (welcome)’ shortcut. Now, there should hopefully be a number in the #games field that corresponds to the amount of roms you added.
 
-This means that we can now launch some other themes, where the main ones of interest now are ‘Dishwater’, ‘Space’ and ‘Gridle’. Start with ‘Dishwater’, this is a normal ‘list + screenshot’ sort of layout. It does not use any of the real features of Arcan, but it is a decent testcase.
+This means that we can now launch some other themes, where the main one of interest is ‘Gridle’ (the rest are hidden in the Test menu folder). The little blue box asking for you to press a few keys is the autoconfiguration for your input. If you ever want to redo this mapping, there are two ways (if the theme doesn’t have settings menus that would help you with it).
 
-If all goes well, you’ll find a bunch of game titles listed (otherwise you’ll be given the ‘Fatal: No games configured, terminating) which means that you skipped a few steps above..), and a little blue box asking for you to press a few keys. This is the autoconfiguration for your input. If you ever want to redo this mapping, there are two ways (if the theme doesn’t have settings menus that would help you with it).
-
-One is to simply delete the  file. This will prompt a reconfiguration upon next launch. Another is to launch the theme with the argument ‘forcekeyconf’ added at the end.
+One is to simply delete the  file. This will prompt a reconfiguration upon next launch. Another is to launch the theme with the argument ‘forcekeyconf’ added at the end.
 
 Now you can try and launch a game, hopefully things will ‘just work’ ;-)
 
-However, it may look a little dull. We can fix this (partially) by adding screenshots and moviesnapshots. This is as simple as copying the images and videos you want associated with a game (assuming they match the ‘setname’ of the game of course), into the corresponding folders in ‘resources’.
+Add media
+----
 
-With screenshots and movies working, the more advanced themes ‘Gridle’ and ‘Space’ should now work as well. Enjoy ;-) 
+Things may still look a little dull. We can fix this by adding screenshots and moviesnapshots. This is as simple as copying the images and videos you want associated with a game (assuming they match the ‘setname’ of the game of course), into the corresponding
+ folders in ‘resources’.
+
+There are quite a few options to how you want to organise media files, and some are dictated by the specifics of whatever theme you are using. The pattern used by the [resourcefinder.lua] supportscript are:
+
+\group\setname
+\group\target\setname
+
+where (group) can be screenshots, movies, videos, snapshots, bezels, models

WikiPage Win32 modified by Björn Ståhl

Björn Ståhl — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 08:59:52 -0000

--- v1
+++ v2
@@ -1,17 +1,31 @@
 Win Quickstart
 ---------
 
-1. Download the prepackaged .exe installer, run it and make a note of where on your harddrive you’ve installed things.
+Short version:
+1. Download installer, libretro-cores and whatever models you want.
+2. Run installer, open installation directory and go to the resources subdirectory.
+3. Copy the libretro-cores into the target directory, rename them to look more pretty (e.g. snes.dll rather than libretro-git-snes9x.dll) and perhaps a mame/ume.exe.
+4. Create folders with names matching the targets (mame.exe -> mame etc.) in games
+5. Copy/Move all roms into their respective folders.
+6. Run the "Build DB" shortcut, with large mame romsets this will take a while. 
+7. Run the "Arcan (Welcome)" shortcut, check that the games you added were detected.
+8. Copy the images you want to be shown into the screenshots folder.
+9. Copy any snapshot videos you want to be shown into the movies folder.
+10. Run the "Arcan (Gridle)" shortcut, you should now be up and running. Enjoy.
 
-If you are upgrading from a previous version, make sure to uninstall the old version first. The uninstaller however, does not remove files that were created after the program was first installed, so you may have to delete the ‘themes’ and ‘resources\scripts’ folder for things t o go smoothly.
+Detailed
+----
+1. Download the prepackaged .exe installer, run it and make a note of where on your harddrive you’ve installed things. If you are upgrading from a previous version, make sure to uninstall the old version first. The uninstaller however, does not remove files that were created after the program was first installed, so you may have to delete the ‘themes’ and ‘resources\scripts’ folder for things to go smoothly.
 
 2. Try and launch the Arcan (‘welcome’) shortcut — this will show basic information about your current configuration, which kinds of controllers were detected and so on. It should look something like this:
 
+[[img src=welcome.png alt=welcome-screen]]
+
 If any LED controllers were detected, you should be able to see the program cycling through any attached LEDs one at a time.
 
-Note that if you get a message box that says: “openal32.dll” was not found — you need to go and install http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/Downloads/oalinst.zip . This have been included in the installer for 0.1.4 and above and shouldn’t be needed anymore.
+Note that if you get a message box that says: “openal32.dll” was not found — try and rerun the oalinst.exe that's hidden away in your installation directory.
 
-Note that if the #games shown in the welcome theme is 0, most other themes will refuse to run.
+Note that if the #games shown in the welcome theme is 0, most other themes will refuse to run. The reason 
 
 If you just get a window that appears and quickly disappears again, it seems like the OpenGL support on your installation is too primitive (check graphic card drivers and all that).

WikiPage Win32 modified by Björn Ståhl

Björn Ståhl — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 08:36:43 -0000

Win Quickstart --------- 1. Download the prepackaged .exe installer, run it and make a note of where on your harddrive you’ve installed things. If you are upgrading from a previous version, make sure to uninstall the old version first. The uninstaller however, does not remove files that were created after the program was first installed, so you may have to delete the ‘themes’ and ‘resources\scripts’ folder for things t o go smoothly. 2. Try and launch the Arcan (‘welcome’) shortcut — this will show basic information about your current configuration, which kinds of controllers were detected and so on. It should look something like this: If any LED controllers were detected, you should be able to see the program cycling through any attached LEDs one at a time. Note that if you get a message box that says: “openal32.dll” was not found — you need to go and install http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/Downloads/oalinst.zip . This have been included in the installer for 0.1.4 and above and shouldn’t be needed anymore. Note that if the #games shown in the welcome theme is 0, most other themes will refuse to run. If you just get a window that appears and quickly disappears again, it seems like the OpenGL support on your installation is too primitive (check graphic card drivers and all that). 3. Next step would be to add some games. The ‘Build DB’ tool will try and do this automatically (if you are feeling brave, fire up a terminal window and look through all the different options that the tool ‘arcan_romman.exe’ accepts). However, this tool also requires a certain structure for things to go smoothly. Open the folder where you installed Arcan and look inside the subdirectory marked ‘resources‘. It will look something like this: now, there are two directories of immediate importance here, ‘games’ and ‘targets’. In ‘targets’ you add the executables (or symlinks to them) e.g. mame.exe. Then you create a corresponding subdirectory in ‘games’ that has the same name (excluding extensions), so for this example, you’d get a ‘games\mame’ folder. Copy or move all the roms that you own and mame can play into this folder and re-run the ‘builddb’ shortcut again. If all goes well, it will autodetect that it is mame you are trying to add and run a specialized parser which will extract information (and optionally validate) and add it to your local database. When the ‘builddb’ step finished, relaunch the ‘Arcan (welcome)’ shortcut. Now, there should hopefully be a number in the #games field that corresponds to the amount of roms you added. This means that we can now launch some other themes, where the main ones of interest now are ‘Dishwater’, ‘Space’ and ‘Gridle’. Start with ‘Dishwater’, this is a normal ‘list + screenshot’ sort of layout. It does not use any of the real features of Arcan, but it is a decent testcase. If all goes well, you’ll find a bunch of game titles listed (otherwise you’ll be given the ‘Fatal: No games configured, terminating) which means that you skipped a few steps above..), and a little blue box asking for you to press a few keys. This is the autoconfiguration for your input. If you ever want to redo this mapping, there are two ways (if the theme doesn’t have settings menus that would help you with it). One is to simply delete the file. This will prompt a reconfiguration upon next launch. Another is to launch the theme with the argument ‘forcekeyconf’ added at the end. Now you can try and launch a game, hopefully things will ‘just work’ ;-) However, it may look a little dull. We can fix this (partially) by adding screenshots and moviesnapshots. This is as simple as copying the images and videos you want associated with a game (assuming they match the ‘setname’ of the game of course), into the corresponding folders in ‘resources’. With screenshots and movies working, the more advanced themes ‘Gridle’ and ‘Space’ should now work as well. Enjoy ;-)