(SDL)MESS 0.133 has been released last night. Here are the quick links to the updated templates:

• SDLMESS: data/opt/SDLMESS/template.xml
• MESS: data/opt/MESS/template.xml

Either replace these files in the QMC2 0.2.b10 source tree and reinstall it, or put them in the paths where they have been installed (the default installation places them in /usr/local/share/qmc2/opt/… on UNIX and Mac OS X; on Windows, just replace the files in the directory where QMC2 has been installed/extracted).

Experimental 0.2.b10 RPMs for openSUSE 11.1 are now available in the download section.

Today we proudly announce the release of QMC2 0.2.b10. Besides a few bug fixes, the most important changes in this release include the following:

• Built-in support for dynamic loading of Qt style sheets
• Support for PCB images as an additional game/machine detail
• New MAWS quick download feature (supports manual and automatic downloads of images that are usable by QMC2)
• Greatly improved download retry logic & timing
• Enhanced ghost image with rounded corners and a semi-transparent shadow

Emulator-wise, QMC2 0.2.b10′s configuration templates are in sync with SDLMAME/MAME/MAMEUIFX32 0.133 and SDLMESS/MESS 0.132. Template updates for SDLMESS/MESS 0.133 will be posted here as soon as it’s available.

Windows users should note this: case-insensitive obsoleteness checks (image- and sample-checks) are currently/still not working correctly. For now, make sure to use only lower case letters for all PNG files (i. e. galaga.png instead of Galaga.PNG) or ignore the obsoleteness check results on Windows!

See change-log for more information.

Have fun,

The QMC2 dev-team

If you’ve not yet recognized the new support for Qt style sheets in 0.2.b10 SVN, take a look at our first style sheet experiments published on the style sheet page. Note that you really need the latest version from SVN if you dare to try them out (also note that there are some QtWebKit related issues with style sheets).

On a second note, Armin has released ZXMameCD 0.71 to fix problems with the Nvidia auto-configuration in 0.70 and to improve the USB installer a bit.

Armin Schmidhuber released ZXMameCD 0.70 today!

ZXMameCD is a multi-emulator Linux live (CD/USB) system using QMC2 as its front end for SDLMAME and SDLMESS. It’s using the latest SVN snapshot of QMC2 to be able to utilize the new style sheets .

Today we proudly announce the release of QMC2 0.2.b9!

This version now includes some (hopefully useful) web-based features using the QtWebKit module. The most important one is the new MAWS lookup feature implemented as a new game detail tab containing an integrated web browser.

The QtWebKit module was introduced in Qt 4.4, but is only really working since Qt 4.5 (4.5.1 recommended), so unfortunately this also means that Qt 4.4 is no longer supported — please upgrade to Qt 4.5!

Note that on Windows — even with Qt 4.5.1 (latest stable release as of this writing) — QtWebKit still has some glitches like for example missing backgrounds when rendering web pages. Basically though, it works. On UNIX/Linux, there should be no (major) issues left. We have no report yet as to how it works on Mac OS X.

Configuration-wise, all MAME variants are synced with version 0.132. Template updates for MESS 0.132 will follow here if required, but as MAME didn’t introduce any new options since 0.131, this is not to be expected.

In summary, the most important changes since 0.2.b8 include:

• Integrated (mini) web browser based on QtWebKit (with just a subset of typical browser features), including HTTP proxy support and a simple download manager
• MAME variants only: new MAWS lookup feature as an additional game detail tab, including on-disk and in-memory caching of MAWS pages (this is using the global browser functionality intensively, but adds some optimizations to speed things up)
• Free reordering & (de)activation of all available game/machine details
• Qt 4.5.0+ required now (Qt 4.5.1 recommended)
• On Windows, the executables (qmc2-emulator.exe) now include the respective application icon to make it look nicer in the Explo(r|d)er
• General layout face lift for all UIs (especially smaller layout content margins, and some fixed minor UI bugs)
• The option dialog now uses scrollable content to make it better suited for small resolution displays
• A few (more or less important) bug fixes

See change-log for more information.

Have fun,

The QMC2 dev-team

While hacking on the new QtWebKit based features for the upcoming 0.2.b9 release, and looking at the (old) homepage from QMC2′s built-in browser, I figured that the old look wasn’t really impressive. So I decided to give it a face lift, using WordPress to enable an easier administration at the same time.

All old archive entries were migrated to this blog, so nothing should be lost. But in case I missed something, the old site is still there: http://qmc2.arcadehits.net/oldindex.html.

The site’s theme and CSS is a slight variation of the Arclite theme made by digitalnature.

I hope you enjoy the new look. Don’t expect it to be perfect yet, though.

Special thanks to Vincent Bousquet for his administrative support on that matter!

Have fun, René

(SDL)MESS 0.131 has been released yesterday. To cleanly support the new crsshairpath option, you’ll need to replace their templates from 0.2.b8 with the updated ones from the trunk (only if you’re going to use this option, of course). Here are the quick links to the updated templates:

• SDLMESS: data/opt/SDLMESS/template.xml
• MESS: data/opt/MESS/template.xml

Either replace these files in the QMC2 0.2.b8 source tree and simply reinstall it, or put them in the paths where they have been installed (the default installation places them in /usr/local/share/qmc2/opt/… on UNIX and Mac OS X; on Windows, just replace the files in the directory where QMC2 has been extracted).

For those using SVN, please note that we’ve moved the complete source tree to the new trunk/ sub-directory in the repository. Also, we’ve created a new tags/ sub-directory to be able to tag specific (stable/released) revisions in the future — the first tagged revision is 0.2.b8.

So, from now on you’ll have to use this command to check out the latest codebase (the trunk):

$ svn co https://qmc2.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/qmc2/trunk qmc2

If you want to retrieve the code of a tagged revision, you can use this (example for 0.2.b8):

$ svn co https://qmc2.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/qmc2/tags/0.2.b8 qmc2

Also note that due to this move, some of the links below won’t work exactly as expected/before… but that’s just a minor issue, so we don’t really care .

This is version 0.2.b8 of QMC2 which we proudly release to the public!

QMC2 0.2.b8 is the first version which also supports Windows, includes quite a number of bug fixes, comes with lots of nice improvements, a good set of new features and is in sync with (SDL)MAME 0.131, MAMEUIFX32 0.131 and (SDL)MESS 0.130. If necessary, updated (SDL)MESS templates will be posted here as soon as (SDL)MESS 0.131 is available.

The most important changes since 0.2.b7 are:

• Support for Windows (Win32) and the original MAME and MESS variants as well as MAMEUIFX32
• ROMAlyzer: support for CHD v4, skip unsupported CHD formats
• Main widget layout improvements to allow for even more flexibility
• Updated template format to support directories and files (the emulator configuration now includes browse buttons for those options)
• Allow user to enable/disable double-click activation in game/machine lists
• Show sort indicator in game/machine list headers and let the user change the sort criteria & order by clicking an applicable column header
• Selectable tab positions (north, south, west, east) for the main widget — can be changed via context menus of these tab widgets
• Support for additional artwork (cabinets, controllers, marquees and titles)
• Print statistical ROM state information to front end log after game/machine list reload and ROM state checks

Thanks to all who helped making this release possible!

See change-log for more information.

Have fun,

The QMC2 dev-team