I went ahead and updated the about mamehooker page to list the new output devices supported. This page as well as most of the pages on the site will undergo a overhaul in the next few weeks. Examples for mamehooker, as well as downloadable display files and scripts will be added and the direct download link in the menu will probably be removed in leu of a link inside the about page. This way people will HAVE to see what an app is for prior to downloading and read any important documentation it might have.

Right now mamehooker is the app in active development, mostly for personal reasons. (My cab is getting a hardware upgrade atm.) So I thought I would share my progress.

I saw headkaze's controls.dat viewer and how it can display secondary artwork on a secondary screen and thought that would be a good layout to make for mamehooker considering it supports display layouts. Then I remembered that mh doesn't support pngs, full path names, aspect ratio preservation, nor does it use the "%rom%" flag when loading images in a ".dis" file. Luckily all of this is easy to implement, so I took 20 minutes and added it all! Also I found some nice example code for vb6 that loads pngs purely with gdi+, which means I get to omit png librarys and the like. This is good news for some of my aging vb6 apps as I can remove the functional, but very slow libpng.

I also thought about the dream cheeky missile launcher support and realized how silly it would be to add it. I don't want to be adding hid devices for the rest of the app's life. This lead me to a better idea. Namely all hid devices support pure byte writing to control them. I will instead add a generic hid function that allows you to send a byte string to a device. All you need is the vendorId ProductId and Device number. And trust me, if you know enough about the device to know what raw bytes to send to it then these things are easy to obtain. I'll try to add this for the next version and also support for the DC missile launchers in the form of mamehooker scripts for each direction. If I can successfully do this then, in theory any future input devices that are made for the community can be supported without me, ensuring the app a long life!

After a very lengthly absence, my first NEW piece of software!

Mamehooker adds a ton of features and bugfixes. Main highlights include support for wiimotes, xbox 360 controllers, speech synthesis and more. For those of you that want a more lengthy "what's new" read the readme. I would post it but the last version of mamehooker released to the public was 2.1 and we are on 3.0 now. The link is in the interop section to the right.

While we are on the subject, the mamehooker section will be redesigned to include sample scripts, layouts and real-life examples. Also we've started a mini-project of documenting all the outputs in mame. I will be working on all of that next. Also the source code will be up soon, but I need to clean out the source folder first.

Almost two years to the day when I left and the Dragon King website is finally back in action! I haven't been sitting on my laurels these past couple of years either, so there are a lot of releases to look forward to. I have finally made the jump from xp to windows 7 and thus now is the time to clean house on all my out-standing projects. Couple that with the fact that I have been doing various hardware-related projects during my hiatus and this god-awful weather we have all been having and this means that the site is going to expand greatly over the next few months.

The first thing you'll notice is a "games" section to the right. Yes I do make games from time to time, but I seldom release them in any grand fashion. I'll be adding more games as the week progresses.

Upcoming releases will also include a non-emulation related section, a GREATLY expanded misc-utilities section, a "my cabinets" section for those of your who bug me about pics of my cabs, a "hardware hacks" section and a brand new release of mamehooker and johnny 5.

All of these things I mentioned are ready to go, they just need uploaded to the site, so they WILL be released. Just be patient as it will take me a while.

No news isn't always good news I'm afraid. I've spent the last week or so struggling over this decision and believe me when I say it's been a difficult one for me. After a lot of soul searching I've decided to leave byoac forums indefinately. It just seems like it isn't a healthy environment for me to be involved in anymore. Before speculation as to why I'm leaving pops up everyone needs to know that it's no one person's fault or even any group of person's fault, I just feel I will be a lot healthier and happier on my own. I hold no ill-will towards anyone and I hope by explaining myself somewhat I will be leaving on good terms. I honsetly feel like a pompus jerk making a big announcment like this, but when somebody who's been on the forums nearly every day for 10 years suddenly leaves in the middle of a big release the rumors get started as to why they left, so I wanted to squash that right here and now.

I just want to leave to keep some of the stress off of me so let's leave it at that.

This doesn't mean I won't be making applications and utilites anymore, it simply means that the general public won't be a part of the process and I'll release them whenever, without wip or warning. Unless it's a brand new app I probably won't even make a news announcment on byoac's main page, so you'll have to check my homepage regularly. You might see me make a brief visit once in a blue moon, but definately not anytime soon. If you want to get ahold of me, you'll need to do so here or via email as I won't be checking my byoac stuff anymore.


Of course I realize the irony of this announcment as I've just recently moved my homepage to the byoac server. To be honest I haven't figured out what to do on that front. Saint has always treated me like gold, for better or worse and he was nice enough to give me this space after oscarcontrols went down. I'm not sure how appropriate it is for me to keep the space considering I won't be contributing to byoac directly anymore. On the other hand, I don't want all of my applications wiped from existance and would like them to still be available to the community if they should want them. I'm thinking about setting up my own web-space, but I'm not sure if it'd be worth it, because I can guarantee you that new releases will be few and far between for a good while. So for a while, with saint's blessing of course, I'd like to leave everything as-is and consider the whole site a working archive.

In case you are wondering, no dk will not be released at the end of the month as I promised. For one thing, I haven't worked on it in the last two weeks, so I'm way behind schedule. Also I've ran into a minor stumbling block that'll be difficult to fix and I don't have it in me anymore to work on things that aren't fun. What'll probably end up happening is sometime within the next month or so I'll be so bored one weekend I'll give it another look and I'll fix the issue and go ahead and make the final release. No promises though.


If and when I start coding seriously again, I intend to change direction. I'll still be working on emulation related things, but less with the front-ends and utilites and more on the actual emulators and simulators. Yes, believe it or not, I've progressed far enough with my coding to attempt (keyword attempt) to start work on some emulators/simulators for some very obscure consoles and arcade devices that nobody else is touching. So, I'm ok... don't start weeping or something.


So long story short, goodbye and thanks for all the fish. I've had fun, everyone as a whole has been a joy to interact with and I've gotten a lot of help over the years that can never be repaid. Take care of yourselves and drop me a line once in a while. Who knows, I might pull a "frosty the snowman" one day just don't hold your breath.

If anyone wants to relay this post in the byoac forums I'd be very grateful. I'd do it myself but I'd be tempted to stick around for a response and the whole viscious cycle would start again.