0.95 (17-2-2006) -Fixes support for the online multiuser arcades. Meet your friends inside an arcade just like in the old days! -Easy login to the online multiuser arcades. Just doubleclick the "" link in the fe folder. Select a username and then select online from the main menu. -Most of the newer arcades are now available in the online multiuser arcades. -Skin cfg files now accept the initfpstext property to change the text shown in the message sprite while the fps arcade is initialised. 0.94.3 (29-11-2005) -Fixes a bug with models with a different width property screwing up the rotation in cylarcade. Very importent fix when using the larger cabinet models in this mode. -Fixes a bug that the search and filter box did not get rotated correctly for 90 degrees cw rotated skins. 0.94.2: (20-9-2005) -Fixes the mame parser for the removel of -listdetails from mame in mame 0.100 and later. -The fe will now first search for history.dat in the utilities folder and then if not found the fe root folder. 0.94: -Zone based realtime culling of models. Realtime, no loading between zones! This should make it much easier to create faster and much larger arcades and combine indoor and outdoor scenes. -Event and time based scripting control over all the objects and their properties in the 3d world. I included some example scripts for light switches, elevators, texture animation, colliding with models in the scene and more. -As a bonus, scripting control over all other sprites and members too. Sprites and members can be created from scratch, giving the potential of expanding the functionality of the frontend itself! -Rating dialog box, for rating the selected item. Works just like the search dialog box. -Maturity dialog box, for rating the maturity of the selected item. The icons for the maturity dialog are from the esrb game rating system. These can be replaced by any other rating system if so desired. -Info and message sprite formatting now accepts variables for current games and total games, $cg $tg. -Set the renderformat of specific textures with fpsrenderformat, cylrenderformat and listboxrenderformat properties in arcade cfgs. -Disable kgsmenu when the fe shows the ss menu. -Some more stuff... 0.93.2: (17-3-2005) -Fixes error on some machines with runbefore, runafter when the commandline does not contain a variable reference. -Vpforcetablefocus now checks for the presents of the pinmame rom disclaimer window and will not force focus on the table while its still present. -Fescreensaver now uses the same forcefocus routine as the fe. -Random game screensaver should now work better with visual pinball tables. 0.93: (25-2-2005) -Support for optional transitions in the 3d sprite on load, on launch and while switching between menutypes. First included transition is a zoom effect. More will follow. -Bitmap cycling is now also supported on the static model in the cylarcade menutype. -Simplified the random game screensaver support. Set randomscreensaver to true in the general cfg (cfg\fe.cfg) and it should work. -Variables in any commandline string will automatically be replaced with the contents of those fields before the game is launched. (For example c:\mame\mame.exe pacman -$15 will automatically be replaced by c:\mame\mame.exe pacman -Vertical. Works als with runbefore, runafter, etc.) -Key (krunexe) to launch a commandline string at any time. Useful for example to popup a controlpanel viewer. For the commandline the fe will first search for the runexe property in the emulator cfg and then in fe.cfg. Thanks to minwah for the idea :) -Added the option to limit the matching between games and models for locked and static models to a sequence of gencab filters. -Fixes the fixed size issue of ambient sound loops. -Fixes an obscure bug that occurs when a video plays in the gs or ss menu and the user selects the current menu item and the next screen on the gl menulevel is of type listbox. 0.92.4: (7-1-2005) -Fixes a bug with sorting a-z in 0.92's new on the fly filter dialogs. -Added more sorting options to the on the fly filters. -Fixes the size of the handle bar in relation to the scroll content of the text sprite in the new dialogs with rotated skins. -Fixes a bug when clicking on a column label, to sort the column, in the second field of the gamelist editor. -Added the vpforcetablefocus property to the general cfg menu (cfg\fe.cfg) vpforcetablefocus|true|#boole|When set to true this will check if the vp table has focus and if not it will force focus to the vp table window. It will do this for 2 minutes everytime it checks if the kquitvp is hit. Therefore this only works with the special internal vp launcher. This will prevent the vp table to launch behind the fe and become invisible.| -Added karateg's pinball_demo gamelist to the list archive in the main fe zip that covers most of the current games. 0.92: (6-12-2205) -Add, replace and remove games/models on the fly in movecabs mode. Simply click on a model while holding down the home or delete key to replace or delete it. Or click anywhere in the viewport while holding down the insert key to add a new game. Creating your own arcade layout has never been this easy! -Added an elaborate gamelist editor to the gamelist section of the listmanager. The editor can create, edit, sort and filter gamelists, cut and paste between gamelists and more. -Added new skinnable versions of the filter and search dialog boxes for the listbox, cylarcade and texture overlay menus. Enable them by setting searchmenutype and filtermenutype to dialog in the general cfg menu / fe.cfg. -Added the kmenu function that when triggered shows a customizable menu dialog box that can list any of the button/key functions of the frontend. This can be used to dramatically reduce the number of keys/buttons needed to operate the frontend. Or you just might prefer to select these functions through a menu ;) -Deniro updated the manual and made it 100% compatible with firefox and opera. -Setting up autofilters can be made more easy by selecting filters from a list dialog. A filterset for mame is included, others can be added at will. -Added the ability to filter a random selection of games to the autofilters. This can for example be used to fill an arcade with a different set of games every time you go in there. Add these in the listmanager in the autofilter dialog. Or by hand like this: format: "0/random/number_of_games". -Create/update gamelists from folder contents versus a master gamelist. Optionally automatically create/update a set of gamelists using filters just like the mame parser does. -Launch games/applications directly from the gs and ss menu level. -Added a forcefocus property to fe.cfg which lets the users select ways to force focus to the fe window after returning from a game. -Enhanced the look of the cfg utility to blend in better with fe skins. -Added -resolution widthxheightxdepth commandline option. This will force the specified resolution. -resolution 1024x768x32. -Added -resize commandline option. This will force the fe to resize itself to fit the screen resolution. -I gave in to the the kwhichmenu and kwhicharcade haters. So kfpsarcade changes the menu type to fpsarcade. kcylarcade changes the menu type to cylarcade. And klistbox changes the menu type to listbox. 0.91.5 (17-8-2004) -Hopefully fixes a major bug introduced in 0.91.0 that caused several unpredictable issues and even crashes after coming back from a game! It was caused by a Director quirk that causes havoc when moving around scripts... 0.91.4 (27-7-2004) -By request from Pixelhugger I added the keyjumptolist property to the general cfg (fe.cfg) which allows to setup keys to directly jump to any gamelist in the hierarchy. They can also be binded to buttons as simulated keypresses. 0.91.3 (23-7-2004): -Mame 0.84 no longer supports -listinfo only -listxml. The internal mame parser needs the info from -listinfo. As a workaround the fe will now look in the mame folder or in the fe utilities folder for xml2info.exe that converts the xml output to info format. It ships with mame so it should normally be already in your mame folder. If its not found the fe will prompt you to point to a valid dat. If you use an old mame version that does not support -listxml then be sure to delete the xml2info.exe from the mame folder and or the fe's utilities folder. If its not found the fe will use the old -listinfo flag... -Better support for artwork with "."' characters in the filename/ -Adding fpsxtramodels through the arcades section in the listmanager works again. 0.91.2 (17-6-2004): -Mr Bond reported problems with the saving of gamestats. I dont think its a bug...at least I could not reproduce it...but I added some error checks for incorrect gamelists anyway...which should make it more robust...and solved Mr Bond's issue. -Oops, I forgot that you can change views in cylarcade using the kviews key (default=9). We dont want that with "wheel" skins...so its now disabled when cylarcade is setup like that. (In the default skin the ss menu, gs menu, console cylarcade skins, and the ultrawheel skin in the various section use a setup like that.) 0.91: -Support for lightmaps as a second texture layer. (See Voodooscientists lovely Voodoo Lounge Arcade to see this new feature put to great use!) -Major update to cylarcade with new options, more straightforward setup values (tutorial coming soon) and externalising lots of its parameters. (See Deniro's ingenious c64 skin that shows off some of these new features.) -The menulevel have been removed from the skins and all remaining camera related stuff has been moved to the arcade cfgs in order to make skin assigment more userfriendly. The fe will accept old skins but its recommended to update your skins. The fe will help by saving updated skins to skins\updatedskins\. See the sticky thread in the "setup help" section of the forum if you need assistence with the conversion of skins and for more info about how to assign skins under the new scheme. -New set of generic magiccabs by Deniro. With shapes typical for the 70's, 80's and 90's. More will follow! -Added the option oldkeyhandler|| in the general cfg menu (fe.cfg) to invoke the old keyhandler because several people reported problems with the current one. -Added lots of checks against user errors in the listmanager. -Added several new options to the creation of dummy marquees. -The fe now also recognises the .jpg extension for artwork. (Yes i finally gave in ;-) ) -Search and filters can now also use dialogs instead of the highscore like interface. See filtermenutype and searchmenutype in the general cfg menu. -New commandline options: -menulevel, -menutype, -selset, -gamelist and more... -Workarounds for the teleporter turning the camera upside down when going fullscreen or switching menutypes when cabs are in positions that result in gimbal lock. -Fixes an error in the mame parser that when a new line is inserted in a gamelist some addtional empty lines were added to the list. -Animated .cst textures no longer has to be on the environment model for them to work with prop, fpsxtra and gamelist models. -And more... ;-) 0.90: -The preloadcab property in general cfg can now be set to false. When set to false the fe will no longer preload all models on boot but only when needed. -Texture overlay menus can now be put on fpsxtramodels. This way jukeboxes, arcgates etc. don't have to be part of a gamelist anymore. -Support for positional sound effects. For a demonstration see Deniros new 7thHeaven arcade and hear the zeppelin flying over ;-) -Gencab entries can now use all search operators the fe supports. -Option to set the camera to be the parent of the environment model in cylarcade. Watchout for a demonstration of this featuring Q-bert soon... -Added some more dialogs to the internal cfg utility and changed all of them to be compatible with a possible mac port. 0.89: -Support for external "magic" generic models. -Support for a new kind of generic models that can be skinned completely. -New internal pinball model that takes advantage of the new generic model type. More info soon in the pinball section. -The chat sprites can now, when not in multiuser mode, be used to show info- and history content for the selected game just like in the info screen. Including basic html if the text method for the sprite is not set to field. -More options to format information content for the selected game. -Updated the internal visual pinball launcher. With vp in it's default location, (c:\program files\visual pinball\ , c:\program files\visual pinball\tables\), it should now work out of the box. Reinstantiating of textures is no longer nescessary. And fixes and issue with names with . in it. -Enhanced support for the mouse in cabinets. -The new keyhandler in 0.88 ignored the ctrl, alt and shift keys. Reported by Cory. -Force1024x768 set to true resulted in an error when leaving the internal cfg utility. Reported by several people..ouch -And as allways more small enhancements ;-) 0.88: -A new default default skin and configuration package with the same Asteroids inspired theme as the new website that is more userfriendly for dekstop users. The skin makes it easier to add any new arcade comes available to the demo arcades section with a few clicks in the listmanager. See section 1.3.3 in fereadme. -Renewed the demo arcade selset with a new demo arcade that fits better with the new theme and a preinstalled version of Scapino's arcade. Visit the animated Q-bert at his desk in the new demo arcade...he might have something to say ;-) -Use the mouse in movecabs mode to select, move and rotate. See the movecabs section in the arcades section of fereadme for more info. -Added the arccolumsrefmap option to the arcade cfg files. This will create animated reflectionmaps on the colums in the default cylinder fps arcade. -Added the cylwheelkeys option to the arcade cfg files. When a wheel is used instead of the normal cylarcade layout this can be used to get more inuitive keysetup, ie up and down to rotatate the wheel and left and right to jump by letter. -Added the cylcameralock option to the arcade cfg files. This option locks the camera. The camera control keys will have no efftect when this option is enabled. -Added the fakemouseclick option to the emulator cfg files. In the unlike circumstance that the fe does not get proper focus back after running a game this option might be useful. -The renderformat of the overlays and backdrops and the animated textures in the 3d sprite can now be adjusted. For example render them with 32 bit instead of the default 32 bit colors. Or with a 8 bit instead of the default 1 bit alpha chanell. See the skins section in fereadme. -Fixed the fullscreen html version of the info screen and enhanced it so it will now search for matches in field 2,5,6,10 in the emulator gameinfo path. When no match was made then it does the same in dummys\info. And if it has still not found anything still it will try to display dummys\info\dummy.htm 0.87 -Added a new dhtml version of the manual made by Deniro (thanks!) that even lets you choose different layout styles. I like the asteroids style best ;-) -Enhanced the internal parser. It can now be setup to automatically update all gamelists that contain mame games instead of the default set. See for more info the updated "How to create new gamelists" section in fereadme. It will now also keep all custom info users put into empty fields. You can also choose if a gamelist is only updated or also new games that match the filter criteria are added. Useful for, amongst others, lists with favorites. -Finally enabled the savegamestats option in the general cfg. When enabled the fe will keep track of the number of times and the duration each game is played in field 30 and 31 of a gamelist entry. These values are also displayed in the infoscreen. -Field 29 is from now on reserved for html links. -Added to the default filter the option to sort the lists on the fly alphabetically, by times played or by duration played. -Added the screensaverjump option to the general cfg to either jump to the randomly selected game in the gamelist or stay with the previous selected game when returning from the random game. -Added a skinner option to go directly from the ss-menu to the gs-menu of the newly selected selection set. -Some more small enhancements ;-) 0.86: -All artwork sprites can now be used with all menutypes. -Arcade cfg files can now be associated with individual gamleists and selsets for all menulevels. -Fixed the basic html text formatting and hyperlinks support in the text sprites of the infoscreen. -The default model spacing and rotation steps in cylarcade can now be overruled in arcade cfg files. -The createmarquee property in the general can now be overruled in arcade cfg files. -Options to speed up cylarcade with models that use only one visible dynamic texture. For example a pricewheel model. -Fixed a bug when starting up the fe in gs menu it would use the skin settings from the ssmenu. 0.85: -Added two new internal default cabs for horizontal (defaulthor) and vertical (defaultvert) games by DeNiro with a magic touch. Using uvw mapping the cab grabs colors from the marquee image and places them on different parts of the cab...so each cab gets its own color scheme based on its own artwork. The marquee irtself is also used on the side and the contolpanel. -Added the ability to move the camera on the z-axis to the arcade cfg files with the cylarcglcampos, cylarcgscampos and cylarcsscampos. This is useful for price is right like frontal wheels in skins. -Added to the altmame property the option to run the alternative exe and commandline options if the second skin is the current skin. Use altmame|skinbased| -Added the fpsloadingnosound property to the general cfg to pause the sound while loading to vram. For those who experience sound stuttering during this very cpu intensive operation. -Improved keyhandling with adding and removing favorites. -Added options to better format the controlpanel bitmaps in the helpscreen. -Message formatting now also works when the seperators are not seperated themselves. i.e. with stuff like ($2, $3). -Fe now warns when it finds an empty skin entry. -Smoother scrolling in the info screen. -Fixes a bug the the volume of an event sound on an animated model was allways reset to zero. -Fixes a bug that switching from an arcade cfg with lighteffects to an arcadecfg with lighteffects set to false resulted in an error. -Fixes a bug that selecting a different background texture did not work when no animated texture is used. -Fixes an issue that under certain circumstances the fe will ask for realplayer to install when it is not on the computer. -Some more small enhancements ;-) 0.84: -Thanks to Laurent Cozic's free joystick xtra the fe now has native joystick support. Select the joystick in the general cfg menu. -Added the videonopause option to the general cfg. Set it to true to not pause the video on the selected model while moving the camera. -Added the fpsarcanimtxtnopause and cylarcanimtxtnopause options to the arcade cfg files to not pause the animated (background) texture while moving the camera. -Added the glvideovolume option to the general cfg to set the default volume of the video on the models. -Added the fpsfollowterrainstanding method to check terrain distance while not moving. Useful if an environment contains elevators. -Falling down is now smoothly interpolated with terrainfollowing. -Added by request especially for rotatable monitors the skinsautorot option to the general cfg. When enabled the fe will show returning from a horitzontal game the first skin frm the current skinset and when returning from a vertical the second skin from the current skinset. -Zooming in on the models in cylarcade and listbox will now also increase the volume of the video on the selected model when using mpeg's. -Added a number of properties to the arcade cfg files to limit the views in the 3d sprite so users can't put themselves in akward positions even if they try ;-) -Emulators of type arcmovies and arcmusic will start video's from the beginning and not randomly. -Added additional text display methods to the scrolling version of the listbox menu type and most other text sprites. -Added a new movierandomstartpoint option to the arcade cfg files. Set to true to start the selected movie at a random point and not from the beginning. -The fe will warn you if you have pointed defcab or gencabs to unavailable models and it will also warn you when you point to non existing skins and arcade cfg files. -New commandline options: -cylarcade, -fpsarcade, -listbox to startup the fe in one of those menu types overriding all settings in the cfg files. (reminder -cfg is used to go directly to the configuration menu) 0.83: -Added options to make cylarcade work better as an ultracade kinda wheel interface. See for example the vegasredbigheelskin in the skins section at the 3darcade site. -Options added to arcade cfg files include overiding the skin based rotation of the camera, overiding the default model to allways use the defined wheelpart model and setting the color and opacity of the body of wheelpart models. -Cylarcade transitions are now smooth with all jump, search and filter options. New models allways rotate in and out, no abrupt transitions anymore! -Fpsarcade and Cylarcade are now individually skinnable. Skins will be automatically updated. -Added debug mode to the initialization object. Toggle it on or off in the general configuration. This will check for configuration errors by the user..for now mainly in the gamelists...more to come ;-) -Updated the arcadetest.cst animated texture with a cleaned up version by Scapino. 0.82: -Updated budapi.x32 xtra to the new version 3.6...this broke all occurrences of the input text prompt in the internal cfg utility...so make sure you add this new version of the xtra to your xtra's folder if you upgrade to 0.82! -Using arcadefull (fullscreen 3d sprite) resulted in movecabs mode when movecabs mode is turned off in a script error. because of stupid typo by me! -The videoextensions property in fe.cfg get allways overridden by the defaults: rm, mpg, mpeg, pg2, mpeg2, mp4, mpg4, mpeg4, avi. -Added the runbefore and runafter option also the the special internal visual pinball launcher. -Fixed some issues with the skinner when the fe does not run in 1024x768 and it is set to resize itself to fill the screen. -In skinner mode text sprites will now show text on a red background when dragged with the mouse and are now 100% accurate the same in skin mode as in normal mode. -The text sprites of type field now have properly sized scrollbars when the fe does not run in 1024x768 and is set to resize itself to fill the screen. With this fix all issues with the resize option have been solved! -Fixes a small bug in the skinner. When you select the paging listtype the text items did not appear on the stage automatically as they should. -All stretch options now also work on bitmaps shown on overlays and backdrops in the 3dsprite in the listbox menu. -Changed the way lists are converted to strings when they are saved to file, for example by the internal mame parser. I use now my own code using a combine method instead of a sequentional one making it much faster. -Thanks to a very generous donation by Saint from byoac I was able to buy a license for the mpeg advance xtra. His website for all things related to building your own arcade controllers and cabinets was the place that gave birth to my Emulaxian cabinet and hence also the Emulaxian/3darcade frontend. I have been a regular there from the beginning so I really appreciate this...thank you John! This means the special exe using the xtra has been removed and the normal exe's in fe081part1.zip and fe081upgrade.zip have been replaced. 0.81: -Expanded movecabs mode to cover fpsxtramodels, including texurizing them on the fly, turning it into a basic interactive worldbuilder! -The internal skinner now has full control over ink effects including transparencies and the overlapping order (z-order) of sprites. -The 3dpsrite supports now two layers of overlays and two layers of backdrops. Each can show bitmaps, bitmap cycles, video's and animated textures. The first overlay and backdrop have some special additional features to make the 3d sprite even in direct to stage mode appear to be behind transparent parts of the foreground and or appears to float above it. -Added an internal by the user customizable box model in addition to the cylinder model. Both of them can now also be scaled etc like external environment models. -The fe will now accept besides real media video any format supported by windows media player as video textues on models. -Added a new generic skin to the skin section of the 3darcade site. -Some more stuff, see als allways upgrading tips.txt 0.80: -Bitmap cycling, cycle between bitmaps on all models. For example cycling between title and screenshots images creates the illusion that the attractmodes are running on all models in the arcade and not only the selected one with the video texture! The effect is really great in cylarcade mode because of the number of cabs in view at the same time! Works also on regular bitmaps in the listbox menu without the 3dmodel. -The user can now set in the arcade cfg files the maximum speed, acceleration and deceleration for the movement of the camera in fpsarcade mode. -Externalised and expanded the stretch options for bitmaps and added these options to the active skinner. Stretch to fit, Stretch while keeping aspect ratio, Stretch to orientation (helpfull for screenshots that have been resized to 256x256) and Stretch to specified aspect ratio. -Enhanced options to create dummy marquees and added dialogs to the internal cfg utility for it to select font, color, etc. -Truncate text now with more then one delimiter. -Are you bored with the grey look of the internal cfg utiliy. The you can now change the font and color scheme ;-) -See upgrading tips.txt for how to use the new options... 0.79: -Renewed index based list core, resulting in more even access times to all items in any sized list, which for example makes spinning in the cylarcade more fluent. Also as there is no need for rebuilding the gamelist anymore after filtering, all of these operations are now without any noticable delay. -Several enhancements to the internal point and click configuration utility. -Added an option to arcade configuration files to use the a name of a gamelist entry instead of the position in the gamelist to retrieve positions for the games in the fpsarcade. -Assign a gamelist in a selectionset as the favorites list and add and remove dynamically items from it. -Gamelists can now be automatically filtered when they get selected. For example useful for filtering out adult games etc. -Added support to the skins for showing a title text sprite showing the descriptive name of the current gamelist. -Added support to the skins for showing a bitmap logo sprite for the current gamelist. -The texture overlay menu type now supports all jump, search and filter options of the frontend. Especially with the arcgategl variant you now have a complete frontend in a frontend ;-) -The number of items on a texture overlay menu page can now be adjusted in the arcade cfg files. -Added the option to save the current gamelist in its current (filtered) state to the configuration utility. -Truncate game names using any character to enhance the look of gamelists. ie when using ( as the truncate character Galaga (set 1) will show as Galaga. -The internal mameparser now updates the cfg\lists\favorites.atf list instead of replacing it using utilities\feparserfav.txt. It will now also keep any non mame gamelist entrys in it. -The handling of skinsets is now more logical. When you select a new selset or gamelist and a new skinset is found the fe will now always use the first skin from the set. If no new skinset is found or it does not get changed then the fe will keep using the skin from the set it had been using before the new selset or gamelist was selected. Useful for rotating monitors or cocktail cabs to associate selsets or gamelists with monitor orientations automatically. -When the gamelist has not changed switching back from cylarcade to fpsarcade is now much faster just like it allready was while switching back from the listbox. -In the info screen the fe looks again for videos (any format quicktime supports) in the dummys\qt folder for romof and clonof matches after no match was made the normal way. -Added a check for quicktime to the info screen. The fe can now function without any external dependencies. -Updated the basic filterset for mame and changed the field numbering to make it consistent with other options that look into gamelist fields. -See upgrading tps.txt for how to use the new options... 0.78: -Text and speech messages can now be formatted on an emulator basis using custom text and any information from a gamelist entry. -Enhanced the texture overlay menu system to work 100% ok with all videocards and added to it support for using screenshots and video's as a backdrop to the list. The result looks a bit like gamelauncher but then as a texture on a model. ;-) -Specific filtersets can now be created for each gamelist in a selectionset. It will be used instead of the general filterset. See fereadme about dynamic filtering and filtersets. -Enabled the runstopmusic, runbefore and runafter options in emulator cfg files. -Added a skin to the 3darcade website for monitors that are rotated to the left. -Option to set the default rotation of the model around its y-axis in the listboxmenu type. -Enabled and expanded the screensaver support for either launching a screensaver file or a random game. See the new screensaver section in fereadme. -Fixes several small bugs and issues especially in the internal configuration utility and added several enhancements to it. 0.77: -Teleporter. If the currently selected game is in the fpsarcade, then when you switch to the fpsarcade you will be teleported in front of it. This way you can feven in fpsarcades find games fast by switching to the listbox menu type (or cylarcade but switching to listbox is much faster) select a game and switch back to fpsarcade and you will be in front of that game. -A new fpsstartpos option in the arcade cfg files defines the camera position when a new gamelist is loaded. If it is not found or empty you will be teleported in front of the model of the first entry in the gamelist. -Strafing. Setting strafing|true| in fe.cfg will enable strafing in stead of turning. And strafingspeed|| sets the strafing speed. -Updated the animation support. Every animation event (anitmate on load, select, startbutton) can now have its own animation. I also added support for keyframe paths for fpsxtramodels. Look out for the Grunt Robotron in the fpsdemo2 arcade ;-) -New fpshither and cylhither options in arcade cfg files. Objects closer to the camera then the hither are not rendered. -New fpsyon and cylyon options in arcade cfg files. Objects further away from the camera then the yon are not rendered. -Fixed search in the scrolling variant of the listbox menu type -Finally got a way around the spin at startup of the fpsarcade menu type -Fixed turning on and of collision detection in arcade cfg files with the fpscolldetect option. -Fixed script error while selecting a sprite with a custom scrollbar (chat,history,gameinfo) in the skinner. -Fxed script error when using a skin not setup in fe.cfg but only on a selset and or gamelist basis. -Fixed some bugs in the list manager 0.76: -Fixed several bugs reported by users...after the 0.75 test release the fe should be mostly bug free again...thank you all! -Changed the speech engine, it will use now any voice from sapi 4 or 5. Sapi 5 is allready installed on all xp systems. -Improvements to the multiuser online arcade. -Added a section in fereadme on how to use the mulituser stuff. -The online chat can now use text to speech engine. -You can now send private messages in online arcades to the avatar you are looking at...this can bring real arcade gossip to the virtual arcade ;-) -Text to speech can now tell you when someone joins the online arcade. -By popular request I upped the max number of models at the same time to 1000. 0.75: -Support for multi-user arcades. Meet your friends online in arcade environments using animated game character models as avatars, have a chat and hopefully when a commandline version of kaillera mame appears (hint! :-) ) walk to a cab together and start playing a multi player game ;-) -Active skinner. In skinner mode you can dragg all sprites with the mouse and resize and rotate them on the fly. Double-clicking a sprite will popup a menu with all detailed options for that sprite. -Internal configuration utility. The most requested feature ;-) All configuration can now be done from within the fe itself. -Support for terrain following in fps arcades. Use ramps, platforms, elevators etc. -Mouselook options. Reverse mouselook, adjust its sensitivity and rightclicking will toggle mouselook on and off so you can also click buttons. -Fully configurable buttons that can emulate any of the frontends key actions. -And more... Because of the many changes I consider this a test release to get as much feedback as possible... 0.70: -Full animation support on all models! The arcade environment model and all models in it can now be fully animated! -Animation can be played automatically, triggered when the model is selected and when the start key is hit. -Custom event sounds when an animation is triggered. -Support for additional models that not represent a gamelist entry. Ideal for non player characters and sliding doors etc. -Proper support for additional lights attached to models of the arcade environments and non gamelist models. -A scrolling listbox...yuck, not for me...I enabled it this time and only this time in the default skin for the gamelist menu: gllisttype|scrolling| I suggest go back to the normal one fast: gllisttype|paging| ;-) -Replaced the runhidden property in emulator cfg files with a runmethod property that can take any of the normal launching methods. -Speechvoice property to select a different voice for the speech function in the fe. -Renderfix property, try this if the fe reverts to software mode after running a game or you have problems running 3d games from the fe. -Adjusted crc.exe to not use a custom delphi dll. -Fixed jumping camera with mouselook enabled under windows 98. -Enabled doing stuff in the background while running a game. This means the runstopsound and vp exit key options work again. 0.69: -Much better selection of models in the fps arcade...perfect in my opinion! :-) -Looking at a model with mouselook now also detects it when you are not moving. -Adjustable widths in the cylarcade so those big cockpits don't overlap. I updated dotrone, sinistarcockpit and stunrun to use this new feature. -cylspacing option to set the default spacing of cabs in cylarcade for those cabs that don't have a specific width property. -Upped the max number of cabs from 50 to 200 in a fpsarcade. -Skin options to set default camera views in the cylarcade and paging menus. -Skin option to set an autorotation option for the model in the paging menus. -Videowait option to control the update rate of the real media video texture. -Runhidden feature option in emulator cfg files to not show those command/dos boxes. This replaces hidewin in fe.cfg that had issues under xp. -Colldetect option to enable or disable collision detection. -Fixed an error with rotate and movecabs under some circumstances. -Fixed an error with feutilites that was reported I hope, if not put it in the root folder that should solve it. -Fixed an error that a captured video was not saved in the correct folder. 0.68: -Speed optimizations, The 3darcade should be much faster especially with a large number of different models. -Fps style mouselook and doubleclick launches the selected item. More mouse support in the next version. -Collision detection when going backwards. -Startup-, exit- and infoscreen-movies can no be any type supported by quicktime. I suggest using mpeg4. -User definable Wait loop to slow scrolling through items in the search and filter routines. -Fixed a bug when a filter returns exactly one item. -Fixed a bug when you start the fe with the paging variant of the gamelist menu and then switch directly to the fpsarcade. -I turned videotextures of by default in fe.cfg. Set glvideo to true in fe.cfg to enable them. 0.67: -Select and play movies and mp3's also in the cylarcade and paging variants of the game selection menus. -Fixed a bug while leaving movecabs mode when a gamelist is smaller then the max number of cabs allowed for the arcade associated with that gamelist. -fixed a bug when arcadefull is set to true in fe.cfg the fe would give an error when the first cab is selected in the arcade. -Readded the option to show bitmaps instead of the 3d model in the paging menus by default. Just add showglcabsorpics|false| to your fe.cfg. -Updated the tutorial to fix an imported omission, namely adjusting cfg/fewhichselset.cfg in the cleaning house section. -Fixed a bug in the mame parser causing it not to not work correctly under windows xp and maybe other nt based systems. -Be sure to take a look at the wrappers from Lazarus they can be used to launch non-commandline emulators, like modeler etc. -Some other stuff I don't remember ;-) And thanks a lot to the folks that reported the bugs :-) 0.66: -Use any custom model as the arcade environment! This can be anything from a simple box to a complete reproduction of an actual arcade. -Support for a working Jukebox in any arcade! Select mp3 playlists on the jukebox itself and watch that record spin! ;-) -Support for a movie theatre in any arcade! Select movies on the moviescreen... -Support for gates in any arcade! Menu's can be overlayed on any texture and go from one fpsarcade to the other without leaving the 3d environment! -A demo arcade (fpsdemo2) that shows how to use these new features. -Jump bij letter, game search, history search, and im most cases filtering are now much much faster. -Filters can now use whole phrases instead of only words. -Filters can now use larger, smaller, equals, notequals, contains and notcontains as operators. -Optimized the paging menu, yeah the fe also has a normal menu system! ;-) -The mame parser now works with long folder names. -Cleaned and optimized the feutilities to generate game/music/movie lists from the contents of a folder. -Fixed the 3 known bugs from the 0.65 release. -Thanks to Dave Dries, www.cinemarcade.com, for letting me use his mame logo movie as an animted texture in the fpsdemo2 arcade. 0.65: -Fps style 3d arcade! Walk around in rooms filled with 3d models. -Grab them and place them anywhere in the room to create your onw layouts! -Skin it! All visible objects have all there parameters exposed. file to use, position, size, rotation, blend etc. You get total control to create a theme that fits your cabinet! -Changed the key remapping to use keycodes, now all special keys can be used. -Each gamelist can now have its own arcade environment. -You can define additional rules which 3d model to show when no model was matched the normal way. For example use the same model for all horizontal games, all driving games etc. when no specific model was found. -Define which model to use when none is found...so you can get rid of my Emulaxian cab ;-) -Skinnable startup and exit screens using a bitmap, flash or quickttime movies -Helpscreens can now show bitmaps based on game name. For example to show the cp layout for that game. -Internally translate long file names into short file names before launching a game for emulators that don't like long names. -Changed the cfg files layout to be more hierarchical. I hope this will make setting up the fe a bit more straight forward. -Hide cursor bug finally fixed. 0.60: -Skinnable animated background, floor and ceiling. Create your own arcade! -Any number of 3d models in the arcade at the same time. -Ambient arcade sounds with real sounds from 80 arcades by James Widmark. -Animated arcade background by James Widmark, will be available soon at 3darcade.mameworld.net. -On the fly marquee creation based on gamename and screenshot/random color when there is no marquee picture available. -Adjustable light effects in the arcade. -Fullscreen arcade. -Changed the gamelist format. You can now mix emulators, games etc. any way you want... -filters based on any gamelist entry. -filter a selection of 1,10,25,50 or 100 random games. -Gamelist creator based on directory contents. Crc checking for visual pinball games. 0.52: -The 3darcade comes really alive with video with sound now also on the cabs in the 3darcade itself...yeah! This is a small demovideo how that looks: http://www.i-modernist.com/emulaxian/fe3ddemo.wmv -Antialiasing support -A more realistic monitor in the cab. 0.51: -Video with sound support on the screenshot texture of the 3d models in the gamelistmenu using realmedia *.rm files. I love it! Here is a demo video of it in action: http://www.i-modernist.com/zaxxon.wmv -A Virtual 3d "Pinball" arcade! (http://www.i-modernist.com/fe3dpinball.jpg) besides the "normal" 3d arcade (http://www.i-modernist.com/fe3darcade.jpg). More to come... :-) -Study mode in the gamelist menu. You can now also manipulate the view and rotate in place the 3d models in the gamelist menu. -Goto the first entry in the gamelist that starts with one, two or three letters entered just like you would enter highscores with the joystick. -Option to shutdown windows when the fe is closed. 0.50: -This release features a new frontend interface I am working on where you can select games in a virtual 3d arcade. Games are placed in a circle with the camera facing towards them. When the camera rotates a cabinet is added in the direction the camera is moved and removed from the other side. This way you can rotate indefinately through any size gamelist. You view the virtual arcade by changing the camera position. Besides rotating horizontally for selecting games you can rotate the camera vertically, move the camera up and down and most importent zoom in and out on the cabinets. This will also be a part of my upcoming Robocade cabinet/frontend... (hint /robocade ;-) ) screenshot: http://www.i-modernist.com/fe3darcade.jpg You will need a fast computer with a recent vidcard with apporx 32mb vidioram to get good framerates. It works perfect on my geforce 2mx! -Visual Pinball support, the frontend can hide the loading of vp and vp can be closed from the frontend. The next version will also feature a virtual "pinball" arcade, see here for a wip pic: http://www.i-modernist.com/fe3darcade.jpg -Automatic resizing. When enabled this options will automatically resize the frontend to your desktop settings. 0.41: -Some small bug fixes and cosmetic changes -Speech:I forgot to set the languageid in the previous version. When msagent and the truvoice speechengine are installed speech should work now on all systems. 0.40: -The frontend now supports as many emulators as you want, each with an option for an alternative exe, up to 16 gamelists per emulator and 24 entry's per game that almost all can be used to set to whatever and used for triggering commandline options...I hope that is enough ;-) -I killed the seperate launcher, the frontend now stays resident, much faster and elegant switching between gamess and the frontend... -Change on the fly between using a 3dcabinet to display the marquee and screenshot of the current game or just the marquee and screenshot by themselves for both the horizontal en vertical version. -Cabinetmode: Hide the taskbar, hide the mousepointer, hide all windows so you won't see those ugly boxes and disable window keys for that real cabinet feel...but be careful, selecting this option can lockup your system ;-) -Better speechhandling, I now directly call the active-x control and check for most common errors. 0.37: -Besides the vertical version there is now also a horizontal version of the frontend available. -A new gamelist parser to generate all gamelists automatically. -A 3d model of a cabinet in the frontend interface to display the marquee and screenshot of the game selected. You can rotate the model around the x,y and z axis by dragging the mouse and holding the crtl or shift key for the y and z axis -Speech...The frontend will say then name of the current selected game when Microsoft's speech api is installed. 0.36: -Added support for MameW and the use of an altenative mame. You can set to use the alternative mame for certain games or categories like neogeo in the configuration file. -Added support for commandline options. They can be set for individual games or any other entry from the gamelist. For example you can set a commandline option for every horizontal game or every maze game etc. with only one entry in the commandline configuration file. There is also an option to combine two entry's with a logical AND. -Added support to switch between two gamelists with a key press. I use it for switching between favorites and all games and between all original games in a category (maze) and all games including clones in a category (maze_all). -Added support for quicktime vr movies that let you see the cabinet from all sides. When available the frontend will show it in the infoscreen instead of the cabinet picture. You can find qtvr of cabinets here: www.klov.com -I cleaned up the code a bit and made it more generic. You can now easily change the gamelistformat to include more or less options and the number of games displayed on a page. -Updated the gameslists to mame37b16. 0.35: I wrote a small launcher application, festart.exe, that replaces the batchfile. In some circumstances the batchfile could crash with that nasty blue windows crash screen...no more ;-) 0.3: Now that the loading time of the gamelists is no issue anymore, I have added support to the gamelistformat for all the info from mame's listinfo. The frontend displays this additional information about the games in the info screen. You have the use the new gamelists or make your own with the new template in fesortinfotemplate.txt. After a suggestion of Eric I improved the handling of clone games. When there are no screenshots, flyers etc. available the frontend will display the ones from the parent. Further, I am planning to make two new frontends based on Robotron and Tempest. The frontend based on Robotron will be horizontal oriented for my main pc...or a future horizontal cabinet...and the Tempest will be great for those nightly vector sessions... ;-) If you have any ideas, suggestions etc. for these new frontends I would love to here them!!! Also for an art history research project I am doing I am very interested to hear what in your opinion makes Tempest and/or Robotron such good games and why would you call them a work of 'art'! You can email me at peter@i-modernist.com ...please do! :-) thanks, Peter 0.2: I updated the Emulaxian frontend. I made the loading of the gamelists much faster. This was importent because every time you come back to the frontend from running a game the frontend has to read the gamelist again. It took more then 45 seconds to load the complete 37beta11 gamelist and now it takes almost zero seconds!!! I also updated the gamelists in the archive to 37beta11. And with the upcoming new version of Sortinfo from Robert Palmqvist you can filter gamelists for available roms. I had some request to include the creation of gamelists in the frontend itself. I myself have no need for it because I like to create the gamelists on my main pc and send them over the network to the Emulaxian. But I have looked into it and I may add this in the not to distant future...