I've spent the last month or so jumping back and forth between various projects all in the hopes of getting my assembly line of apps flowing out the door again.

MameHooker 3.8 will be the next release. This is probably the most major release in the history of the application, with 15 lines of added features in the what's new alone!

The most notable change you will see is the addition of a GUI for editing scripts quickly without the need for the readme.txt I never thought that I would add such a feature but during the debugging of the latest build I became so annoyed over having to lookup the commands and checking for syntax errors when i use them. I figured if I was having trouble then there isn't any help for the average user.

The new method won't be perfect, but it is infinately easier to use than previous builds... at least for simple scripts and commands... you'll still have to do a bit of manual typing for really advanced stuff.


The reason I'm making this post is that I've totally rebuilt the pacdrive (now ultimarc) sections to incorporate the pacdrive.dll, which is richer in features. I need people with ultimarc devices (pacdrive, pacled64, UHID) lined up to test upon release as I don't own any of these devices. PM me at BYOAC if you would like to help.

While "real world" annoyances are slowing me down a little, I am still making steady progress.

The newest feature to mamehooker that I think a lot of the noobs will be most thankful for is the new ini editor. Run a game in MAME (in windowed mode of course) fire up mamehooker and select "edit ini" from the menu and a color-coded version of the ini file for that game will pop up. What's more, I've added a "add command" feature that allows novices to add commands to the ini via a drop down box instead of having to type them manually. The add command feature is rich enough to where only valid variable values are selectable and descriptions of each variable are given.

I'm powering all of this with a rich text box control, which I've never really fooled around with. I am more than impressed with the amount of functionality that the RTB has available. While the ini editor isn't going to be as smart as a visual stuido environment or anything, I think it will really cut down on the basic questions and hopefully make it easier for people to make their own scripts.

Well I became extremely busy last year and didn't get to do as much on the site as I wanted and I continue to be very busy, but that doesn't mean that I've given up.

I will slowly start to roll out releases again when I get time. Right now I'm working on a version of Mamehooker that I haven't touched since last year. Notable additions will be wiimote speaker support (really cruddy, but still) and a built-in ini editor!

Then I'll tackle the long neglected johnny 5, which I'm seriously considering overhauling onto a new programming language because SirPoonga and myself are overhauling the controls.dat project and it seems like an appropriate time.

In-between this I'll be working on MAME drivers again to get some outputs hooked up.


I can't promise anything but hopefully I can get some stuff out. A new release of MameHooker is probably due before the month is out, but as for the rest... we'll see.

I've done a lot this spring in terms of getting things back on track, but it's time to take a little break.

Although this site hasn't been updated all month, I've been working on mame drivers a lot, getting new outputs hooked up. I have a few outstanding drivers and hopefully I'll have time to get those out to mamedev before the month is out.

Unfortunately, this is about all I'll have time for right now. I caught a bit of a bug this weekend and that slowed down my real-world work schedule. There are a TON of things that need done around the house and the rest of this month, maybe more will be spent working on those.

After that expect some suprises.

So TTFN

I'll be back!

This is a minor revision that adds a major feature. Now you can optionally track key presses and set them up like outputs to fire events when you press a key!

Taken from the readme.txt:

What's New
==========
3.7
Added support for keyboard state detection. Now you can run scripts when a key is pressed!
Added Play Wav File command.
When used in conjunction with the keyboard state command, you could make a nice "quarter insertion sound" when the coin-up buttons are pressed
Made Mame Hooker invisible on bootup (hopefully.)
Finished the New Digit Creator, this program helps you generate led segmented digits for use with display files.


Barring any major developments, this will be the last release for a while. Mamehooker is pretty much finished at this point. I will instead work on building the rest of the mamehooker webpage and get examples and lists of known output-enabled games up.