SlideDog

What's new in this version:

Emu Loader 8.8.1
Fixed:
- Icons in web info tool bar buttons were not loaded as disabled; font colors of disable buttons were wrong in night mode
- Function to delete/copy/move files was in debug mode, not working... again


Emu Loader 8.8
Fixed:
- Fixed a bug in "TCustomColorBox" Delphi 7 class, "SetSelected()" procedure: it was not repainting the control properly, and it was not caused by the frontend (damn you Delphi 7!),  my custom TColorBoxEx component was also affected due to this "Delphi 7" bug,  the fix was taken from "Code Gear Delphi 2010" source code ("vlcExtCtrls.pas")
- Event "OnSelect()" was not properly executed on TColorBoxEx components (color dropdown buttons)
- A few default settings in "EmuLoader.ini" and "nightmode.ini" were causing problems on a clean install
- Colors for "Game Docs Status Bar" not updated when switching between light mode and night mode
- Fixes for the night mode: search bar background had gradient always enabled even if the gradient setting was not ticked, floating panel gradient background colors were not properly set, specially at startup, TColorBoxEx were resetting to default colors at frontend startup when viewing the "2 pages" in night mode screen
- Hint box colors and style not updated when switching between light mode and night mode
- Control "Buttons" was listed twice in "Game Details" screen when a game have multiple controls + buttons
- Game selection bar colors and font colors were not correctly set in several screens, including in "Customize Game Fonts"
- Font of column header was not properly set when night mode is enabled (MAME Machines Filter Panel)
- My custom component TEditEx was not repainting the frame color when required
- Pressed button custom colors were not applied to buttons in night mode
- Font "Terminal" is used in a few places and if it's not installed in Windows, it will be replaced by "Lucida Console" (Windows 7 users don't have to worry about this)
- App crash when trying to show game images if image category folders are not successfully loaded
- Updates to my TAdvCheckBoxEx and TAdvRadioGroupEx components: fixed icons positions as they were not drawn at the same position on Windows 7 and Windows 10, RadioGroup icon updated with a 13x13 sized image when working with Delphi 7 in design time (easier to align controls),  added a couple commands to get the correct CheckBox/RadioGroup icon sizes from Windows theme
- Metadata files are no longer used when mounting images on a "virtual drive" app (.cue, etc...) even if "use .cue" tool bar button is enabled (console/computer games)
- Game image files failed to mount on a virtual drive, returning an error to the user (console/computer games)

Changed:
- Night mode is now enabled by default on a clean install or if "EmuLoader.ini" file is missing
- Shadow texts are disabled in light mode for panel texts, tool bar panels, floating panels; it looks better this way
- Improvements to night mode settings (night mode screen): added "Shadow Enabled" checkboxes for texts in "Search Games Panel Colors", so you can disable shadow texts,  added "Shadow Enabled" checkboxes for texts in "Panels Colors", so you can disable shadow texts,  added preview panels (click the "Preview" buttons) so you can see your color customizations: Games List Selection Bar, Panels Colors, Image Hint Box, Search Games Panel Colors, Tweaks to the layout
- Rounded corners in GroupBox frames are disabled for night mode
- The overlay folder "Dark Gray" is no longer needed, these icons are now the default for night mode ("resourcesmain_iconsoverlayDark Gray" folder can be deleted)
- Blue overlay icons moved to a new "Blue" folder ("resourcesmain_iconsoverlayBlue")
- If overlay files of a sub-folder are not found, the "Tool Bar Overlay Icons Folder" setting will reset to "Default" (night mode screen)
- Improvements to "Image Hint Box" (preferences screen, night mode screen): setting "Show Unzipped/Zipped Icon" is gone, the icon is now mandatory,  added a "Italic" font style checkbox, so you can disable the italic style (disabled by default),  text font size reduced to 10 pixels,  added a new "image resolution (image type)" text below the image category title; only font color can be customized,  added a "Larger Font Size" checkbox, for a 14 pixels font size like it was before (disabled by default),  added a "Box Position" setting to choose where the hint box will appear; default position is "Middle/Left",  fixed "middle vertical" position, it was not taking the hint box height into account
- Selection bar of menus/popup menus is a little darker, around 10%
- Moved settings panel to a popup menu ("Favorites Manager" settings button)
- Game details screen changes
- Removed shadow of texts in the left panel (night mode)
- Removed dual border from ROMs list
- Minor improvements to make sure border spaces are pixel perfect
- Removed shadow of texts in system title bars and replaced yellow font color by orange, on all screens (night mode only)
- Removed shadow of texts from labels and checkboxes in almost all screens (night mode)
- Color tweaks to texts font colors in "Delete/Rename Game Image File" screens (night mode)
- Several source code optimizations to remove redundant duplicates, mostly for the night mode
- Modified my TShadowLabel component to not show the shadow text if component is in "disabled" state and the "ShadowEnabled" property is unchecked
- If a "Label", "CheckBox", "RadioButton", "GroupBox" component is in disabled state and the "ShadowEnabled" property is unchecked, the shadow text is no longer displayed: it looks a lot better in night mode,  in light mode, the "3D effect" no longer applies, but texts still look good
- Games list in "Delete Multiple Games Files" screen now uses the same colors / background image as the main games list
- Replaced "Consolas" font by "Calibri" in "MAME Game Docs" panel
- Tons of interface tweaks, specially texts and their colors
- New interface for preferences screen: cleaner and easy to navigate, also to prevent waste of blank space,  page 1 is for frontend settings, page 2 is mostly for colors,  tweaks to existing settings so they are better aligned with panels,
- Several settings moved from "EmuLoader.ini" to a new "ini_filesLightMode.ini" file (preferences screen, mostly): they are all exclusive to the light mode,
now you can do a clean install and restore these settings easily,  most key names in .ini file were renamed to match key names from night mode preset files, you must modify your light mode settings again (sorry),  some "MAME Game Docs" settings moved from "el_extras.ini" file into "LightMode.ini"

Removed:
- Frames of games list panel, images panel and game docs panel is kaput!
- Setting "Games List Frame Colors" (preferences screen, night mode settings screen)
- Setting "Games List Status Bar, Inner/Outer Frame" (preferences screen, night mode settings screen)
- Setting "Games List Status Bar, Font Shadow Color" (preferences screen, night mode settings screen)
- Setting "Game Docs Splitter Style / Colors"; same style/colors as image splitters is used, as it was before (preferences screen, night mode screen)
- Setting "Image Panel Frame Colors" (preferences screen, night mode settings screen)
- Setting "Enable Edit Box Custom Frame Color" is no more; custom frame is always enabled in night mode (night mode screen)
- Setting "Games List Splitter" style is gone for night mode; only a single color is supported (night mode screen)
- Setting "Tool Bar Inner/Outer Frame" is no more (night mode screen)

Added:
- New games list background images, for both night mode and light mode ("resourcesimages")... thank you Fabian for the new images
- New setting "Disable Aspect Ratio", to stretch the image on the entire image panel; requires "Image Stretch" setting to be enabled (popup menu "Images")
- New setting "Round Corners" to "Games List Selection Bar" colors (preferences screen, night mode screen)
- Night mode colors support for arcade emulator setup screens: MAME, HBMAME, Supermodel, Daphne, SEGA Model 2, ZiNc
- New "Left Align Emulators Info and Games Info" setting to show message box texts aligned to the left instead of centered (preferences screen, "General" panel)
- New setting to customize games filters tool bar in light mode (preferences screen): you can use gradient or solid colors, new "Windows Theme" checkbox, so you can disable Windows themed tool bar painting
- Support for multiple night mode profiles: change profiles with the new "Night Mode Profiles" box ("Customize Night Mode" screen, access thru main menu),  all profiles are now stored in "frontend_pathnightmode" folder,  file "nightmode.ini" moved to the new "nightmode" sub-folder and renamed to "Default.ini",  setting "Tool Bar Overlay Icons Folder" can be different for each profile,  setting "Menus / Popup Menus" frame color can be different for each profile,  current profile is automatically saved to .ini file when switching between profiles or when closing the "Customize Night Mode" screen
- New "RGB Quick Edit" for color dropdown boxes "TColorBoxEx" (popup menu, mouse right-click): for an easy and quick way to select a RGB color manually
Screens that support this new popup menu: Customize Night Mode, Image Category Settings, Customize Game Fonts, Customize Thumbnails, Preferences screen
- Added "Show Font Name" setting in "Customize Game Fonts" screen: access in popup menu (disabled by default),  useful for high resolution screens (1080p or higher)
- Added a custom game fonts set for night mode, split from light mode: have a set of game fonts for light mode and another for night mode,  light mode filename: "ini_filessysgamecustomfont.ini",  night mode filename: "ini_filessysgamecustomfont_nightmode.ini",  updated "Customize Game Fonts" screen to load the night mode font settings if this mode is active (games popup menu, main menu "Games List"), if file "sysgamecustomfont_nightmode.ini" doesn't exist, it is generated from "sysgamecustomfont.ini" at startup (useful for night mode)
- New "Use A Single Background Color" setting for image categories: select a background color that will be used for all image categories ("Image Category Settings" screen),  You no longer need to select the same color on each category if you want to use the same color for all of them,  toggle setting in main menu "Images", images popup menu or in "Image Category Settings" screen (disabled by default)
- Added options to customize games list header colors in night mode: text font,  column background color, hot color, disabled color, pressed color,  settings in Night Mode screen, "Games List Column Header" panel
- MAME v0.212 support


Emu Loader 8.7.8
Fixed:
- Event "OnChange()" was not executed in "TFontDialog" component after frontend recent changes
- Black frame painted in tool bar filters background when gradient setting is disabled
- Severe painting problems in my TPanelEx since last component update... damn you BitBlt()!

Changed:
- Icons of disabled menu items are now drawn with 50% blending effect instead of a grayscale icon, which looked terrible
- Delphi's TImageList component messes up with the icon's alpha channel
- Source files "ImgList.pas" and "CommCtrl.pas" updated with new constants and functions for better support on Windows 7 and newer
- Replaced TToolBar + TToolButton controls by my custom TSpeedButtonEx so the buttons can have white font in night mode ("Favorites Manager" screen)
- More tweaks to popup menus draw routine
- Modified "TRangeBar" / "TGaugeBar" components from "Graphics32" library to add a custom color for the arrow, it was using the same color as the border color

Night mode updates:
- Moved all settings from preferences screen to its own window and updated its interface with dark colors; you'll find it on main menu "Customize - Night Mode Colors"

Added new settings so you can have different ones from the light mode:
- games list splitter colors
- images splitter colors
- game docs colors and splitters
- image background color and image

New layout showing all settings without pages; high resolution only: 1280x1024 and higher

Added a new "Show Preview" button, showing a new floating window so you can see you customizations in real time:
- "Games List Selection Bar"
- "Panels Colors"
- "Image Hint Box"

Added:
Game Docs status bar (preferences screen, "Game Docs" page):
- For those who go berzerk on the fact that the bottom of the game docs panel is not aligned with the games list panel
- There's no useful info displayed there yet


Emu Loader 8.7.7
Fixed:
- Popup menus can now display Unicode texts, but this implementation is far from perfect
- Copy/move/delete game ROMs was not working due to an "Exit" command I forgot to remove, preventing further code from executing
- Removed some beeps playing while creating games lists
- Fixed bad Windows theme painting in my TPanelEx component, affecting all components in it... highly noticeable in light mode
- Hint text of separator lines were missing in popup menus

Changed:
- Improvements to my TBitBtnEx component
- font color is forced to black if button is not in "custom mode" and Windows theme is enabled
- BitBlt() function used to paint bitmap buffer into button canvas instead of Canvas.Draw() function
- replaced "Glyph" property by "Images" (TImageList container), for 32-bit+alpha channel icons (.ico)
- Improvements to my TSpeedButtonEx component
- font color is not changed when clicked (only applies if button style is set to "flat")
- font color is forced to black if button is not in "custom mode" and Windows theme is enabled
- BitBlt() function used to paint bitmap buffer into button canvas instead of Canvas.Draw() function
- replaced "Glyph" property by "Images" (TImageList container), for 32-bit+alpha channel icons (.ico)

Added:
- Custom border for menu/popup menus
- night mode only
- you can customize the border color in preferences screen "Night Mode 2" page
- experimental feature, might be buggy on Windows 10


Emu Loader 8.7.6
- Fixed: Crash caused by my custom TBitBtnEx / TSpeedButtonEx components when frontend is in light mode (default theme)


Emu Loader 8.7.5
- Fixed: buttons font color was black when in night mode


Emu Loader 8.7.3

Fixed:
- Parent .ico file not showing up in clone sets if clonename.ico doesn't exist ("MAMu_ icons" feature)
- Buttons "OK" / "Cancel" were invisible when viewing the simpler "arcade system select" dialog
- Wrong read/write of game info "playtime" / "last played" / "times played" if your have multiple games in the same system with same zipped filename but of different media types
- Example: 2 files named "Elevator Action (1995) (Nidecom).zip", both MSX1 games, one is cartridge media type and the other is floppy disk
- Wrong game info written in played games files after exiting a console/computer game
- Wrong game info read from played games files when loading games lists at startup
- The media type was missing when searching for the game entry
- Bugs related to files located in "console_computerplayed_games" folder
- Arcade systems and MAME software lists do not suffer from this bug
- Wrong "extra game info" data parsing for "Games Editor" (main menu "Console/Computer")
- Night mode was not toggled on/off correctly with the checkbox in messages dialog
- PaneEx "inner border color" was not set correctly in procedure uCommon.SetPanelNightColors() causing it to be the same as outer border color
- MAME arcade input files were not handled correctly in "Run Game (Extra Parameters)" screen
- Files "arcade_name.inp" in the "inp" root folder were not added to the files list, only "inpgamename*.inp" files
- For arcade games only, excluding MAME softlist games
- MAME save state files were not handled correctly in "Run Game (Extra Parameters)" screen
- Files from "stamachine_namesoftwarenamegamename" folder were completely ignored
- For MAME software list games only, excluding arcade games
- The image layout currently in use could be disabled in "Layout Settings" screen, causing corruption in layouts .ini file read/write routine
- Extra title/machine type text color of selected systems were hard to read in night mode; light gray color replaced by dark gray
- Selection bar was not red color for CHDs with bad checksum ("Arcade Audit Results" screen)
- "CPU Filter" edit box was not correctly painted in night mode
- Search games floating panel was not showing up at startup

Changed:
- Improvements to "version info" detection in "Arcade Emulators Setup" screen and at frontend startup
- Changes and tweaks to AlterMAME feature
- RAM variables were not initialized at startup, it could cause the frontend to crash
- Added a second AlterMAME slot so you can use two alternate emulators to run MAME games ("Arcade Emulators Setup" screen)
- new "Autorun Game With AlterMAME 2" checkbox ("Arcade Emulators Setup" screen and games popup menu)
- if game cannot be run with "AlterMAME 1", it will try again with "AlterMAME 2"
- new "Run Game With AlterMAME 2" option in games popup menu to run games directly with AlterMAME 2
- Added proper detection for "FinalBurn Alpha" and "Raine" emulators in "Arcade Emulators Setup" screen and when running games
- FBA website: https://www.fbalpha.com
- Raine website: http://raine.1emulation.com
- For Raine emulator, the "-nogui" parameter is added automatically to the execution command line and there's no way to toggle it off
- Better handling of CreateProcessW() exit codes "0, 1, 2, 5" after exiting emulators
- Tweaks and fixes to texts in "run game confirmation" and "execution error" dialogs
- Renamed file "image_category_overlay.ico" to "image_category_overlay_light.ico" ("resourcesmain_iconsoverlay" folder)
- Image category/layout icons updated to support overlay icons ("resourcesmain_icons" folder)
- Icon files "option_check.ico" and "option_radiogroup_on.ico" replaced by better versions, suitable for light and dark backgrounds ("resourcesmain_icons" folder)
- Changes and fixes to menu/popupmenu drawing colors
- Fixed a couple painting bugs in the selection bar outer border
- Fixed unreadable shortcut text color in selected items
- Added "help text" and "selected help text" in the colors array, changed them to "gray" to fix unreadable texts
- Added inner frame color to the selected items, slightly darker than menu background color
- Replaced TEdit standard component by my custom "TEditEx" component, to be used in "night mode"
- New properties: "Color Frame", "Color Frame Focused", "Color Frame Disabled", "Round Frame"
- Property "Use Custom Border" for an easy on/off toggle when changing between light/dark backgrounds; this property if OFF by default
- Allow custom frame colors instead of the fixed Windows themed frame
- Remove the fixed white inner frame when setting edit box background color to anything other than white
- Improvements to my custom "TShadowLabel" component for dark backgrounds compatibility
- Added new "Disabled Font Color" and "Disabled Font Shadow Color" properties so you can change font colors when the component is in "not enabled" state
- Added new "Use Disabled Font Color" property for an easy on/off toggle when changing between light/dark backgrounds; this property is OFF by default
- Modified image category/layout .ico files, removed monitor frames / texts to use with overlay .ico files ("resourcesmain_icons" folder)
- Moved "Tool Bar Overlay Icons Folder" setting to "Night Mode" page since this feature is not for the light mode (preferences screen)

Removed:
- All code related to "AlterMAME Default Emulator Settings" and "AlterMAME custom ini settings" completely removed from the source code

Added:
- New night mode .ico overlay files for image categories/layouts ("resourcesmain_iconsoverlayimg_dark" folder)
- Support custom game icons for MAME software list games; "MAMu_ Icons" feature
- File "softwarenamegamename.ico" in arcade "icons.zip" is no longer supported
- Zipped icons for each software list must be in: - "user_mame_icons_pathsoftwarenameicons.zip" filename or
- "user_mame_icons_pathsoftwarename.zip" filename (alternate .zip name, exclusive Emu Loader feature!)

Unzipped icons must be in:
- "user_mame_icons_pathsoftwarenamegamename.ico" or
- "user_mame_icons_pathiconssoftwarenamegamename.ico"
- Minor tweaks to improve RAM usage and .zip files handlinga


Emu Loader 8.7.2

Fixed:
- Commented ROM / DISK entries were added as game files when creating MAME software games lists (softwarename.xml files) ROM or DISK entries ending with "-->" tag will not be added ("rocnrope" from "msx1_cart.xml" is one of the affected games) you must create MAME software list games again to fix this bug (main menu "Arcade", "Create MAME Software Games List")

Changed:
- PDF game manual updates support for MAME software lists scan support for a sub-folder "manuals" added at the end of your selected PDF folder
- File "console_computermame_systems_softwarelist.ini" updated to MAME .204

Removed:
- Some code cleanup, mostly commented out and deprecated

Added
- "Search game" bar in "View Missing ROMs/CHDs" screen (audit results) the frontend searches the entered string in game title and then game name if title is not a match it works like the incremental search in the main games list, partial strings supported you can press ENTER key in the edit box instead of clicking the "search" button if there's no match, the edit box blinks red